In this article the author argues that an incoming government should establish a new values base for educational policy focused on the well-being and educational entitlement of all children rather than the education market. A new government must prioritise learning and teaching: rather than pursuing an ideological agenda and attempting to control…

Despite claims made for them, many current education policies have perverse consequences. If all our children are to benefit from the good education they deserve, we need: forms of accountability that do not rely on school performance tables of test results; a focus on standards that embody high expectations for all; the urgent creation of a…

This article notes that the attempt to include all young people in education, an aim of Labour governments over the years, still relies on an expanded and expensive special educational needs "industry". How to include all lower attainers and those with disabilities in the education system and the economy is a political issue for a Labour…

Tertiary-level educational provision is being increasingly fragmented by government policies, with malign consequences for students and institutions. As currently constituted, higher education works to entrench inequalities and devalue qualifications, while bipartisanship around the future of further education risks reprising past failures. What…

This article reviews recent research looking at the socio-economic profile of pupils at faith schools and the contribution religiously selective admission arrangements make. It finds that selection by faith leads to greater social segregation and is open to manipulation. It urges that such selection should end, making the state-funded school…

This article examines whether or not teachers working in an inherently exclusive education system can in fact be "inclusive teachers". The author draws on work done over the past three years in a pan-European Teacher Education project highly committed to notions of social and educational cohesion and equity, and challenges both fixed and…

This contribution is an edited version of the "Alumni Lecture" organised by the Department of Education of the University of Oxford at Lady Margaret Hall on 15th September 2011. The article reviews the drift towards the centralisation of power in the way the schooling system is run, the conflict between a desire for equity in education and the…

Every school community is made up of several key partners, each of whom has a significant role in relation to the children. These are parents--who are their children's first educators, staff--all staff, the local community, the local authority and the governing body which represents all of these and is ultimately responsible for the school. All…

Poor social mobility has become controversial, with the stranglehold of the independent schools over elite universities intensifying during the New Labour period. The author identifies the failure of New Labour's Mark 2 A level reforms to deal with the situation, particularly the introduction of the A star at A level, which has given the…

The author, a former headteacher and now a county councillor, argues that the structural changes to the education system put in place in the first weeks of the new government in the summer of 2010 will exacerbate the gap between the highest and lowest achieving schools, will destabilise the state-funded education system, will expose it to…

The authors argue that it is time to get radical about the Left's vision for education and develop a direction that communities can really own. The Labour Party being out of government for the first time in 13 years gives us a chance to consider what education means to the Left, and allows us to be innovative in how the Party can approach…

The extent to which education can compensate for social disadvantage is a matter of political controversy, especially in the context of policies for social mobility. On the one hand, to blame poor achievement on social class or poverty was seen to dodge the professional responsibility of teachers. On the other, the strong correlation between…

This article is a contribution to the debate in England about the Coalition Government's policy to encourage interested parties to set up Swedish inspired Free Schools. The article argues, that in order to understand how Free Schools in Sweden operate, it is important to see them in the context of the Swedish school system. The article presents…

The UK's new Coalition Government looks as if it will make the narrow, traditional school curriculum we have now even narrower and more rooted in the past. The Labour government made timid moves to improve the National Curriculum, not least by equipping it with a few general aims, even though these meshed poorly on to intra-subject aims. Michael…

Zero exclusion schools are possible. More realistically, clusters of schools, with support, coordination and brokering by the local authority (LA) or through local partnerships, can organise and sustain an inclusive educational community. Exclusion from school is a quiet mockery of "Every Child Matters." Even with the coalition government's…