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Engaging with digital media is part of everyday living for the majority of children, yet opportunities to learn about, through and with media are denied many pupils in compulsory schooling. Whilst Media Studies in the UK is internationally reputed to be well established, changes made to the primary and secondary national curriculum in 2014 included removal of existing media study elements. We demonstrate what is lost by these actions in relation to the United Nations Rights of the Child and, in particular, the right of the child to express identity. We demonstrate how media literacy had previously been included in curriculum, enabling opportunities to address children's rights, and propose that the absence of media education is part of an overall trend of the non-prioritisation of children's rights in England and Northern Ireland. The paper calls for media literacy to be reintroduced into primary and secondary curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on findings from the first cross-national study of school exclusions in the four jurisdictions of the UK. It sketches factors associated with the past research with reductions in exclusions. It then reports interview data gathered in England in 2018 from five specialist officers working in two Local Authorities and a senior officer working for a national voluntary organisation. The officers describe good practice but also national, local and school level developments contributing to a deteriorating situation. These developments include unhelpful government guidance and regulations; school accountability frameworks affecting curriculum and leading to the neglect of Special Educational Needs; loss of Local Authority powers and funding resulting in reductions in support services. Data gathered for this study in other UK jurisdictions suggests that in Scotland and Northern Ireland, and to a lesser extent in Wales, a practice that avoids school exclusions has persisted more than in England. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite Northern Ireland’s deeply rooted religious history and the assumption that its citizens’ sexual attitudes and behaviours are more reserved than their English counterparts, comprehensive school-based relationships and sexuality education (RSE) has been statutory for primary and post-primary pupils since 2007. The non-biological aspects of the subject continue to remain non-statutory for all grade levels in England. This article presents a comparative analysis of the effect Northern Ireland’s and England’s policy-making models and networks have had on the status of sex and relationships education within each country’s respective national curricula. Two main sets of issues are examined: the approaches taken and values upheld by policy actors, and access to ‘policy speak’ and ‘power’ within policy-making networks. Applying thematic and content analysis to official government transcripts, legislative and statutory policy texts and interview data, the article discusses connections among the main points of comparison and suggests that these central differences within Northern Ireland’s and England’s policy-making processes may explain what has been conducive to Northern Ireland’s statutory comprehensive RSE policy development while comprehensive sex education remains controversial in England. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]