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This paper presents selected findings from a wider study on the expression of health within physical education (PE) curricula in secondary schools in England and Wales. The study revealed that the expression of health in PE broadly reflected ideologies associated with promoting ‘fitness for life’ and ‘fitness for performance’ and that representations of both discourses were present, to a lesser or greater extent, in all schools in the study. Curiously, however, rhetorical ‘fitness for life’ discourses were commonly expressed through ‘fitness for performance’ practices in the form of testing and training activities. This paper attempts to explain this mismatch between health-related policy and practice by focusing on what was revealed about the influences on the expression of health in PE. A case study approach was adopted, involving five state secondary schools, three in England and two in Wales. Data sources included health-related school documentation, interviews with PE teachers and observation of a health-related unit of work in one of the schools. The reasons that testing and training activities were the most common contexts for the delivery of health-related learning included the following: conceptual confusion and limited understanding, leading to a belief that training and testing activities are unproblematic and result in increased health, activity and fitness levels; the resolution of pragmatic issues associated with large groups, limited space and minimal equipment as well as preparation for accredited courses in PE; tradition and a desire by teachers to remain with familiar content and teaching approaches, and limited awareness of alternative ‘fitness for life’ pedagogies. This study has served to increase awareness of the influences on and tensions between health-related discourses in secondary school PE curricula in England and Wales and has provided further demonstration of and insight into the complex relationship between health-related policy and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Creativity is widely accepted as being an important outcome of schooling. Yet there are many different views about what it is, how best it can be cultivated in young people and whether or how it should be assessed. And in many national curricula creativity is only implicitly acknowledged and seldom precisely defined. This paper offers a five dimensional definition of creativity which has been trialed by teachers in two field trials in schools in England. The paper suggests a theoretical underpinning for defining and assessing creativity along with a number of practical suggestions as to how creativity can be developed and tracked in schools. Two clear benefits of assessing progress in the development of creativity are identified: 1) teachers are able to be more precise and confident in developing young people's creativity, and 2) learners are better able to understand what it is to be creative (and to use this understanding to record evidence of their progress). The result would seem to be a greater likelihood that learners can display the full range of their creative dispositions in a wide variety of contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In England, federations are defined as groups of schools that have a formal agreement to collaborate with the aim of raising achievement and promoting inclusion and innovation. This paper presents a number of findings from the case study strand of a 3-year study investigating the impact of 37 federations (see Lindsay et al., 2007). Maximum variation sampling (Maykutt & Morehouse, 1994) was used to select 10 case study federations. Key stakeholders were interviewed during 3 rounds of field visits. Documentary evidence from each case provided important contextual information and provided a source of triangulation. Within- and between-case analyses from case studies (Miles & Huberman, 1994) highlighted a number of key themes, patterns, and trends that have implications for the development of collaborative strategies attempting to restructure and reculture schools and their communities. This paper explores issues of leadership, management, and governance in federations. Findings suggest localised ownership and control of the process within the context of interdependent relationships have supported the development of a range of models of governance, leadership, and management in school federations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper describes the role taken by a subject association in defending the position and status of geography in schools in England and Wales. This has involved a risky, but eventually successful, pro-active approach, and has implications for higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The number and range of school types in England is increasing rapidly in response to a neoliberal policy agenda aiming to expand choice of provision as a mechanism for raising educational standards. In this paper, I seek to undertake a mapping of these school types in order to describe and explain what is happening. I capture this busy terrain from different perspectives: legal status; curricular specialism; pupil selection; types of academy; and school groupings. The mapping highlights the intersections between the current reform agenda and the historical diversity within the English school system to show the dialogue between past and present. Borrowing the geological metaphors of faulting and folding, I argue that long-established school types are not buried under sedimentary layers of reform, but are thrust into the present where they are discursively re-imagined through neoliberalism. Finally, I conceptualise the landscape holistically through the lenses of locus of legitimacy and branding, where I argue that current structural diversification policies enable the enactment of interests other than educational through transferring responsibility for education and related assets away from public and towards corporatised or religious actors and institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article, co-authored by two research-active teachers with the support of their academic partner, reports on the resistance of an urban primary school in a northern city of England to the label 'disadvantaged school' and various judgements that refuse to take into account its holistic work with students and families from different and diverse minority ethnic backgrounds. The article will argue that there are flaws in the ways the school's story is officially told where it does not acknowledge what is being done to address students' experiences of immigration, poverty and deprivation, and the cultural barriers they often negotiate in coming to school. As a driver for change, practitioner research foregrounds the authenticity of school and classroom contexts and puts them under scrutiny as a means of informing strategic decisions. Utilising a case study design, this paper pulls together a range of data evidence to construct its narrative and tell the school's story, working in collaboration with its university academic partner. In doing so, it contributes to our understanding of practitioner research within challenging urban school settings, under pressure from centralised conceptualisations of achievement gaps and school performance. It puts many of these ideas under scrutiny and asks fundamental questions about curriculum, pedagogy and accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the role played by universal, school-based social and emotional learning (SEL) programmes in addressing the mental health needs of children and young people. Theory and research in the field are discussed. Particular attention is paid to the social and emotional aspects of learning (SEAL) programme in England, a flagship National Strategy under the New Labour government whose outcomes were mixed. We examine the findings of the various evaluations of SEAL and consider what learning can be taken forward to inform future attempts to prevent emotional and behavioural problems in school settings. Recommendations include proper trialling of SEL initiatives before they are brought to scale, the use of research to inform and improve programme design, the need to temper expectations, and the importance of educating implementers about the importance of implementation quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that key education policy initiatives since the introduction of the National Curriculum in the UK are Government-mediated responses to pressures in the global knowledge economy. Successful implementation of these policies has required a change in the way in which education institutions and professionals are controlled and managed. George Ritzer's ‘McDonaldization’ thesis, a conceptualization of a dominant form of economic and cultural globalization, is outlined and it is then argued that national education policy has led to the ‘McDonaldization’ of the state school education system in England. Benjamin Barber's concept of ‘McWorld’ is used to represent the consumerist world which a narrowed educational vision seeks to serve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Encouraging pupils to develop a sense of European identity is one of the implicit aims of the ‘European Schools’. This paper reports on a small case study that was carried out in 2004 that investigated how the European School at Culham attempts to develop in its pupils a sense of European identity. In particular, the study looked at the secondary school’s organizational features, its curriculum, extra-curricular activities and teachers’ conceptions of European identity. The research findings reveal that above all else, pupils’ sense of European identity is encouraged indirectly through the many opportunities the school provides for these children from diverse European backgrounds to integrate and interact with one another. Teachers at the school believe that it is through such interactions, which take place both in the classroom and through extra-curricular activities, that pupils learn about each others’ cultures and languages and develop a feeling of being European. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Market-based reforms of state schooling systems have been justified by the benefits anticipated from encouraging greater inter-school competition in local schooling markets. Promoting increased school choice and competition by comparison were seen as a means of stimulating greater allocative, productive and dynamic efficiency in the schooling system. However in England, school effectiveness research suggests that once adjustment is made for pupil characteristics, variations in pupil attainment levels between secondary schools are small and unstable over time. Some evidence suggests that differences in pupil attainment by subject within schools are larger, indicating the potential to raise attainment levels by increasing choice within schools. In this paper we seek to extend the school choice debate by examining the rationale for increasing competition within secondary schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on the author's doctoral research to examine the relationships between children's geographies in different spaces of geographical thought in England – geography in and of everyday life, geography as an academic discipline and geography as a school subject. It begins by setting out how children's geographies have largely been omitted from school geography due to complex reasons including the impact of governmental policy on teaching and teacher education, and the public accountability of schools. Drawing on a case study of five young people's narratives about London, the article then examines their perspectives on education – highlighting that the young people view both London, and the education system, as a space of opportunity and hope, but also of inequality and injustice. The article concludes by arguing that through drawing on the ideas and methodologies of children's geographies as a subdiscipline, and recognising and exploring the geographies of those who are taught, school geography can be enhanced by making teachers more informed about the children they teach and providing children with opportunities to examine (their own) geographies through engaging with disciplinary thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1989, the progressive introduction of a National Curriculum of subjects to all maintained schools in England and Wales brought compulsory science education into the primary sectors of these two countries for the first time. Such was its considered importance, science was placed alongside English and mathematics in what became known simply as 'the core'. As a result of its elevated profile and an immense amount of hard work and effort by teachers and other professionals responding to requirements, science education provision appeared to benefit enormously. Successive revisions of the national primary science curriculum have brought about many changes, however, each impacting on the primary profession individually in different ways and as a whole. Findings from a recently completed 'preparation to teach' survey across several geographically distinct regions of England are presented here which contribute to our ongoing understanding of the overall status of science teaching within primary schools. Twenty years on from when the national primary science curriculum was first introduced and independently evaluated, attention is drawn to the continued progress being made at the 'chalk-face' and to those factors widely perceived as continuing to inhibit delivery. [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]

Analyses of the relationship between levels of implementation and outcomes of school-based social and emotional learning (SEL) interventions are relatively infrequent and are typically narrowly focused. Thus, our objective was to assess the relationship between variability in a range of implementation dimensions and intervention outcomes in the Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies (PATHS) curriculum. Implementation of PATHS was examined in 69 classrooms across 23 schools in the first year of a major randomized controlled trial. Implementation data were generated via classroom-level structured observations. In addition to factual data on dosage and reach, exploratory factor analysis of observer ratings revealed two distinct implementation dimensions, namely, "quality and participant responsiveness" and "procedural fidelity." Student social-emotional skills, pro-social behavior, internalizing symptoms, and externalizing problems were captured through child self-report and teacher informant-report surveys (N = 1721). Hierarchical linear modeling of study data revealed that higher implementation quality and participant responsiveness was associated with significantly lower ratings of students' externalizing problems at 12-month follow-up. Conversely, and contrary to expectations, higher dosage was associated with significantly lower pro-social behavior and social-emotional skills at 12-month follow-up. No significant associations were found between variability in either procedural fidelity or reach and any intervention outcomes. The implications of these findings are discussed, and study limitations are noted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is increasing international interest in learning outside the classroom; place-based education is one manifestation of this. In this article, some conceptualisations of place are considered and attention drawn to alignments with habitus at micro, meso and macro levels. I develop a concept of cultural density as an explanatory tool to theorise how place and culture intersect to support some educational aims and interfere with others within a cross-sectional research study of a place-based curriculum centred on three schools located in the Southwest of England. Cultural density refers to the nature, thickness and dominance of habitus and norms of practice in places. Reflecting on the interface between how young people come to ‘know their place in the world’ and learning opportunities, careful alignment of purpose, pedagogy and place considering past, present and future is argued as a means of maximising the opportunities afforded by learning outside the classroom. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article revisits the underlying principles of the citizenship curriculum in England to address reports of communication breakdowns between schools and students and to consider whether the curriculum can do anything other than prescribe what democratic participation should be. Although the focus is on the curriculum in England, it has implications for citizenship education programmes around the world. The government agenda is contrasted with that of young people who may be politically active but in ways that place them outside the participatory framework of the curriculum. Two fundamentally opposed interpretations of democracy are considered. These, it is suggested, predicate incompatible understandings of what it means to be a citizen participating in a democratic society. The article then addresses their implications for the citizenship curriculum and concludes by suggesting that these different interpretations of democratic participation will inevitably lead to a curricular failure to move beyond political prescription. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fifty‐year retrospective has led to recent media interest in the comprehensive school. Bristol, located in the south‐west of England, is frequently portrayed as an early provider. This article draws on documentary evidence and life‐history interviews with ex‐pupils to explore this claim. It finds that they were not comprehensive schools, but selective bilaterals that, despite including grammar and secondary modern streams within the same physical site, constructed, through their curricular and non‐curricular practices, a rigid divide between the two. The selective schooling of the bilateral consolidated the classificatory practices that began in primary school. Framed by Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus, disposition and classificatory practices, it is a study of explicit selective schooling that was reliant not only on key moments of selection, and differentiated curricula, but on everyday practices and signifiers of difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 1 August 1989, the introduction of a National Curriculum of subjects to all maintained schools throughout England and Wales brought compulsory science education into the primary sector for the first time. As a direct result of its elevated profile and an immense amount of hard work and effort by teachers and other professionals responding to requirements, science education provision benefited enormously. Despite this, however, successive overhauls and radical revisions of primary science have brought about many questionable changes, some not necessarily for the better or resulting in improvement. This article presents a critical, analytical and personal review of the history and development of science in the primary school and draws attention to the need for care at times when classroom practices and expectations are driven by national science curricula that remain to be fully informed. Astronomy is used to contextualize some of the changes at their most extreme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a survey focused on the perception of teachers and class teachers regarding the arts curriculum in the primary schools in England, funded by the Local Government Association with support form the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and the Ernest Cook Trust. Perceptions of the teachers and class teachers of the levels of support for arts teaching from outside their own school; Purposes for teaching the arts; Survey about the currently available time for arts teaching.

This article examines official policy discourses on sex within the health education curriculum of schools during the period 1928–77. The article begins with an account of the origins of sex education in schools, and of why, in the early twentieth century, its inclusion in the health education curriculum was problematical. In the main section, the article examines the content of consecutive editions of the government published “handbooks of health education”, and of an important supplementary guidance pamphlet, published during the Second World War. It traces the gradual shifts over time in official discourses of “sex education”, and in the sets of understandings about children, sexuality and the role of parents, for example, which underlay them. The shifts in official guidance discourses on sex within the health education curriculum of schools are explained through locating changes in their broader social and political contexts, especially the impact of the Second World War on sexual morality and the post-war emergence of youth as a significant social grouping. The article concludes by evaluating the handbooks as a source for the history of school-based health and sex education and by drawing attention to the wider historical and sociological significance of official discourses on sex education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]