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This paper considers alternative ways of teaching Romantic poetry to post-sixteen English Literature pupils in England. It explores how practitioners can value tangents developed by pupils' independent thinking when pupils are given the freedom to develop their own ideas. It reflects on a lesson planned to respond to a tangent developed by the class in a previous session; that William Blake's "The Tyger", to a contemporary reader, explores the 21st century preoccupation of climate change. The lesson outlined in this report built upon these ideas further, valuing the pupils' tangential thinking. Approaches like these are particularly important now as the performativity agenda in schools, promoted by league tables as a measure of effectiveness, can result in some schools teaching to the test, at the exclusion of encouraging personal and creative responses to texts.

This article describes an evaluation of universal resources designed to support motor development in Reception and Year 1 children. Four schools (Year R-Year 6) in the South East of England, three with high numbers of disadvantaged children participated. Senior leadership influenced take up of the initiative. Health and well-being practitioners and occupational therapy students contributed to "roll out" of the resources with support provided by the authors over 12 weeks. Interview and focus group data from participating staff were gathered alongside examples of schoolwork from pupils. School staff needed access to support when incorporating universal strategies. The initiative contributed to schools working towards Healthy Schools targets. At the end of 12 weeks, improvements in children's sitting position, handwriting and lunchtime skills were noted, warranting further exploration of this approach to address the needs of children with poor motor skills at school entry.

Recent policy in England has suggested that educational outcomes will be raised if schools specialise in particular subjects. In contrast, calls for the reform of 16-19 education have suggested that these outcomes will be improved if students become less specialised in their studies. At present, there is a limited evidence base from which to judge these arguments. In particular, we do not know the extent to which students' achievements in 16-19 education are higher when they choose subjects which play to their perceived strengths. We also do not know whether students are more likely to choose to study subjects taught by more effective departments. That is, outcomes may be affected by the relative strengths of students or departments in circumstances where there is freedom to choose. In this paper we provide evidence of the existence and strength of these relationships. This evidence suggests that reducing the scope within schools for specialisation or competition will reduce average student attainment and these effects ought to be taken into account when evaluating alternative curriculum policies. (Contains 4 tables.)

The authors investigate the size and stability of departmental effects in English secondary schooling during a period in which extensions to parental choice and annual publication of school performance tables had significantly increased competitive pressures on schools. Their database of nearly 450 English secondary schools enables them to investigate departments in terms of both their unadjusted and value-added average students' performance in national examinations. They are interested in the nature of within-school competition and concentrate upon two subjects, geography and history, which were optional subjects in each of these schools. In general, they find that relative departmental performance varies significantly over time and that few departments manage to persistently out-perform the other subject in their school. They conclude that given the instability of relative departmental performance, publication of department-level performance indicators is unlikely to generate strong incentives for departments to raise their effort and effectiveness. (Contains 3 tables and 2 notes.)

The performance of departments has been largely neglected in previous studies of subject choice in secondary schools. This is a significant omission because analysis at departmental level enables a fuller assessment of the effects of competition and specialisation on pupil performance. This paper examines relationships between both absolute and value-added measures of departmental performance and the likelihood of students being entered for examination in a subject. It examines these relationships with reference to four option subjects: French, German, Geography and History. It utilises data from an Economic and Social Research Council-funded study which examined trends and patterns in departmental effectiveness using a sample of 664 schools which participated in the Yellis monitoring system for a minimum of five years during the period 1995-2002. (Contains 6 tables and 2 notes.)

Background: The desirable extent of curriculum choice to be offered to students remains a central policy question in England. Previous studies of the impact of the introduction of a common curriculum for 14-16 year olds in 1988 have suggested that some gender differences were narrowed as a result. These studies examined subject choice either in terms of students' "ex ante" preferences in advance of enrolling for subjects or in terms of "ex post" aggregate data on examination entries. There is some conflict between the evidence provided by these two sources. One possible reason for this conflict could be that existing "ex post" evidence does not examine the interaction between student characteristics or the effect of school-level variables. Purpose: This study aims to identify effects of social class and gender on subject choice for 14-16 year olds in England over and above effects that are attributable to students' ability. Effects that operate at school level are separated from those that act at the level of the individual. Sample: The sample is drawn from the schools that participated in the Yellis system for providing analysis of the examination results achieved by 16-year-old students. The sample of 664 schools and 112,412 16-year-old students was selected by including all schools who had participated in the Yellis project for at least five years during the period 1994-2002. All of the sample schools were participating in the scheme in 1998, the year for which a cross-sectional analysis is presented in this paper. Design and methods: Statistical (probit) models are used to investigate effects of student and school characteristics on the probability of a student entering for examination in each of six option subjects: Business Studies, French, Geography, German, History and Home Economics. The models take account of levels in the data and identify interactions between the student characteristics. Results: After taking prior ability into account socioeconomic background effects, taken together, exert a stronger effect than gender on the likelihood of entering for examination in history. Socioeconomic background effects are also stronger in the case of business studies. The effect of socioeconomic background is stronger for females than for males. There are also strong social effects operating through the characteristics of the cohort of students at the school. The proportion of students eligible for free school meals has a significant effect on the probability of entering for examination in geography, German or History. Conclusions: In so far as the results from this study can be compared with previous research they support the conclusions of previous "ex post" studies rather than "ex ante" studies in terms of gender preferences in subject choice. This might suggest some difficulty in generalising from the kind of "ex ante" data gathered previously. The evidence of the effect of socioeconomic background at individual and school level suggests that current policy aiming to increase subject choice within and between schools will deepen differences between the subjects studied by students from different socioeconomic backgrounds. (Contains 4 tables and 2 notes.)

The importance of numeracy for professional practice in nursing is increasingly recognized in the USA, UK and elsewhere, but there is no consensus on what is meant by numeracy for nursing, nor on how it should be taught, learned and assessed. Meanwhile, studies in various countries indicate a lack of proficiency in numeracy of some students and qualified nurses. Against this background, the authors undertake an exploratory interdisciplinary (nursing and education) study to evaluate the teaching, learning and assessment of numeracy for nursing in a large pre-qualification program at a school of nursing in England and draw out implications for the teaching, learning and assessment of numeracy for nursing in the school and elsewhere. The authors' analysis points up the dangers of high stakes testing with a 100% pass mark in the absence of a reliable and valid assessment instrument set to an agreed standard and reflecting the scope of numeracy for nursing. While this is intended to indicate mastery of a safety-critical aspect of nursing practice, the analysis shows that the test in the study does not warrant this. The test is neither reliable nor valid; it does not consistently test what it is intended to test. (Contains 3 figures.)