It is 25 years since the Inner London Education Authority (ILEA) was abolished and management of education in central London transferred to 13 London boroughs. The author reflects on the experience of being an ex-ILEA head teacher, and of managing one of the new local education authorities in the immediate post-ILEA period. He begins by commenting…

This review of Caroline Pratt's life and work in early years education includes an account of how a six-year-old boy taught a woman in her thirties what she needed to know in order to open a school--in 1914--that continues to this day, a school that was, in the founder's own words, fitted to the child and not the other way around. It…

Rachel and Margaret McMillan created an open-air nursery in Deptford, London that has influenced early years education for 100 years. Their vision for young children living in poverty and deprivation to have access to fresh air through outdoor learning, nutritious meals, and an enriching environment to explore and develop has been embraced and…

The decision by ex-Secretary of State for Education Michael Gove to send his daughter to a state school caused much press comment and was discussed in a widely read article by Gove's spouse, the "Daily Mail" columnist Sarah Vine. In this piece, Vine praised non selective state education, drawing on her own personal experience and…

Democratic comprehensive education has been the target of neo-liberal governments--Conservative and New Labour--for thirty years. The project of the present right wing regime Coalition is to complete the demolition. The question before the social democratic tradition is thus to ask whether Raymond Williams' historic "long…

This article examines the minefield that now surrounds admissions starting with a comparison of the relatively easy system of the 1950s and early 1960s and the complexity of multiple admission authorities of today. Taking evidence from a range of agencies, including government official bodies, and admission issues, the article aims to show that a…

Joan Simon (née Peel, 1915-2005) was the life-long partner of Brian Simon who helped launch FORUM in September 1958. Like Brian, she embraced a Communist outlook and engagement in the area of education. Unlike Brian, she practiced the historian's craft outside the male academic hierarchy. Based on newly available personal papers this study…

Amid the horrors of the Second World War, a group of Board of Education officials met to plan a new public education system which would be fair to and free for all. In the seventy years since then, successive governments have not only failed to live up to their vision but have increasingly sought to interfere with the teaching and learning process…

A review of American charter schools and Swedish free-school research is outlined, providing strong evidence that both free-market models are flawed in their claims of enhancing young people's educational experience. A substantial body of work is included that strongly indicates charter and free schools increase social segregation and lower…

This article examines School Direct, a model of initial teacher education (ITE) in England, recently introduced by the coalition government and based on a paradigm of teaching as a craft to be learned as an apprenticeship, significantly reducing and in some cases removing the influence of higher education. The history of the move away from…

The review of the National Curriculum and the centenary of the First World War have emphasised an orthodox patriotic and nostalgic historical ideal. The British coalition Conservative-Liberal government has aligned itself with the centenary commemorations of the First World War, while the war as social and political history may be in danger of…

On 13 July 2013, the Cherwell School in Oxford celebrated its Golden Jubilee. Among the speakers was Philip Huckin, a pupil at the opening of the school in 1963 who went on to work in education for more than 33 years, mostly in comprehensive schools and often in socially challenging areas. This is the text of his speech.

Anybody who has studied education over the past forty years is aware that secondary education in England is the subject of continuous and continuing debate. Everyone has been to school and therefore everyone lays claim to some expertise--the lot of teachers is never easy. But it is a contention of this article that teachers are at least partly…

This article is not intended to be an autobiography. It relates to the experiences of the author as a pupil in a secondary modern school in Wiltshire during the late 1950s and early 1960s. He suffered the experience of being an 11-plus failure and a secondary modern graduate at the age of 15 years. Later in life he had a much more rewarding career…

This article, which accompanies Jane Martin's piece in this issue of "FORUM" (Volume 55 Number 2 2013, pp. 327-333), is a revised version of a lecture given at the History of education conference held in Winchester, December 1, 2012. [See the accompanying article "Caroline Decamp Benn and the Comprehensive Education Movement:…