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This article investigates the ways in which students are constructed in contemporary English higher education policy. First, it contends that, contrary to assumptions made in the academic literature, students are not conceptualised as ‘empowered consumers’; instead their vulnerability is emphasised by both government and unions. Second, it identifies other dominant discourses, namely that of ‘future worker’ and ‘hard-worker’. These articulate with extant debates about both the repositioning of higher education as an economic good and the use of the ‘hard-working’ trope across other areas of social policy. Third, it shows that differences are drawn between groups of students. Contrasts are drawn, for example, between international students, juxtaposing the ‘brightest and best’ with those who are considered ‘sham’. Finally, the article argues that the figure of the ‘vulnerable’ student and ‘thwarted consumer’ feeds into broader government narratives about its policy trajectory, legitimising contemporary reforms and excusing the apparent failure of previous policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The provisions of the Higher Education Act (2004) have renewed interest in widening participation research. Therefore, this paper explores the development of this scholarly field, primarily in the United Kingdom, by examining major trends in the study of higher education. Political debates related to higher education, the prevailing structure of the sector and predominant sociological perspectives have largely shaped the empirical and theoretical concerns of widening participation research. These delimiting factors have resulted in incomplete accounts of the barriers to higher education, which do not fully explore the relationship between students' social characteristics, learning experiences and university careers. Furthermore, contemporary research runs the risk of reinventing the wheel and replicating the mistakes of the past, since there has been a collective act of forgetfulness with respect to earlier contributions. In contrast, this paper provides guidelines to facilitate a holistic agenda for future widening participation research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Universal access to the 'new capital' of information and knowledge via Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) has become a central goal of education reform under the New Labour Government. Public policy and media discourses, however, currently construct young children in a paradoxical relationship with new technologies, as both at the vanguard of the digital revolution 'effortlessly grasping the tools' of the new technologies, and at the rear, requiring educational policy interventions to ensure their acquisition of 'key skills' in ICT. While this meta-level discourse in policy statements, television coverage and advertising permeates reporting of young people's use of computers, however, both children and their parents are negotiating competing definitions of the function and uses of these new technologies in the home. Drawing on data gathered from 16 case-study families over a 12-month period, this paper therefore explores the subject positions constructed for young people by these discourses, the ways in which educational policy-makers are beginning to appeal to young people as consumers of digital technologies, and the responses of young people and their parents to these often conflicting images of 'the child computer user'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores the emerging consensus around post-compulsory education and training. It argues the notion of settlement needs to be developed to incorporate concepts of race and gender. It suggests a settlement is developing amongst the major political parties and other constituents who have a stake in post-compulsory education and training. These constituents share a common analysis of the problem facing education and training. Whilst these different groups have varying strategies to address the problem these are held under the sway of a capitalist logic. Post-Fordist arguments celebrate the progressive possibilities that inhere in a high skill, high trust economy; however, such optimism is easily co-opted and colonised by capitalist interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines recent empirical work on the lived experience of learners in post‐compulsory education. The starting point is a brief examination of the socio‐economic context of the sector. Despite the sophistication of analyses of learning cultures, a more radical approach is needed. Failure to do so renders these analyses amenable to appropriation by ‘new labour’ modernisers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the Conservative Party, the 'age of egalitarianism is now over.' This article explores the development of egalitarianism in the United Kingdom in the last decade and the threat represented by the Education Reform Act 1988. It focuses on the political struggles over gender and 'race' equality in education since the significance of these struggles appears to have been neglected in current reassessments of social democracy. Teacher autonomy, child-centred learning and freedom of curriculum choice, as defined by social democracy, have been challenged by campaigns for social equality. Yet calls for increased state intervention and more coercive strategies of reform were not conductive to a participatory democratic order. The analysis, therefore, demonstrates the tensions between equality and democracy as political goals within advanced capitalist societies, and suggests that not only liberal, but also the egalitarian approaches of the 1980s require critical re-evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The participation of children with disabilities in regular schools is too often the prerogative of education boards, who decide whether a child can learn within existing educational environments, rather than pressuring for systemic change and organization in school curricula that would grant the right of education to all children. This article looks at education as a right, as found in international agreements including the UN Covenant on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities, and education as a development tool, and discusses the limits and potential in each of these frameworks. An alternative model is proposed as an approach to universal pedagogy, which incorporates the idea of a flexible curriculum and the development of literacy skills, accessible and applicable to students with different backgrounds, learning styles, and abilities. Qualitative data from a large study in a number of nations monitoring the rights of people with disabilities are presented to illustrate the arguments and provide the perspective of people with disabilities themselves about their experiences in schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Education Law in Great Britain has evolved into a legitimate category of academic law and legal practice. No longer simply an aspect of public, welfare or family law, it already has its own specialist practitioners, legal associations, case reports and journals. Much of the existing academic work focuses on the rights and responsibilities of parents, schools, governors and local educational authorities. More critical approaches have explored the theoretical, political and social conflicts underlying the changing roles of local education authorities and parents, and identified the tensions between policies that emphasize both enhanced consumerism and central regulation. While this article draws on much of this work, it differs radically in that it is not concerned primarily with the structure of education, its content or the competing rights and responsibilities within in. This article focuses in particular, on how education law responds to and defines appropriate pupil behavior. Section 9 of the Education Act of 1997 introduced a category, that of children with behavioral difficulties. This term is not defined by statute, but the provisions indicate that it includes excluded children and children with special educational needs and it is these educational and legal responses that are the central focus of this article.

The article presents authors' comment on the book "The State and Education Policy," by Roger Dale. Individual chapters delineate a neo-Marxist framework, or give an account of developments in English education. This procedure parallels the contents of Dale's book. Reasonable expectations were that the theory would be sufficiently distinctive from non-Marxist conceptions to offer a superior alternative, and that such advantages would be demonstrated through application. The conventional depiction of the field of education policy studies, that neo-Marxism and something called pluralism are adversarial schools, is at issue. Dale's discussion of education and the capitalist state lays the theoretical foundations of his approach. Its main thrust is robustly non-determinist. It identifies permanently insoluble core problems of the capitalist state and of its education system, explores their mutual contradictions and points up the incompatible solutions that are tried. The core problems are supporting the capital accumulation process, guaranteeing a context for its continued expansion and legitimising capitalism and the state's part in it.

The article presents the author's perspectives on gender and equal opportunities in education. The concept of equality of opportunity was first given official recognition in the 1944 Education Act though since our interpretation of its meaning has undergone substantial alteration. Equality of opportunity was defined in terms of equalising current school resources and educational benefits rather than in any deliberate attempt at positive discrimination in favour of girls. It may well be that there is a fundamental difference between boys taking child development courses and girls taking physics, one relates to restructuring social relations in the family and the other to changes in the workplace. It could be argued that the establishment of single-sex groups for maths and science is a statement about the importance of power relationships between the sexes. In addition to recognising the importance of changing the nature of school knowledge and progressing towards a girl or woman-centred curriculum the radicals have taken up other areas of school life hitherto neglected or ignored by the egalitarians. I see the development of girl centred education as not necessarily an alternative to egalitarian strategies but as a much more powerful dimension and extension their work.

This article examines political support for brain dysfunction which is culminating in the Children With Learning Disabilities Act of 1969 in the U.S. The act among other things, added learning disability to the list of educational abnormalities recognized by the federal government and authorize federal expenditures for research and pilot school programmes. There were two broad interpretations of the basic brain dysfunction model. The first of these was learning disability, which de-emphasized neuropathology and provided a relatively optimistic prognosis. Special educators and some researches urging this orientation used it to press for a less physiological and more educational approach to educational abnormality, intended to give them more independent control over the operation of special education categories and programmes and through this strengthen the power of educators to define normality and abnormality, as well as increase the demand for learning disability specialists. The other interpretation of the model, sociogenic brain damage, pointed to social and especially family factors as significant causes and its attention to neurostructural damage and non-development carried a distinctly pessimistic prognosis.