This paper discusses one of Furlong's major areas of work, the theory and practice of teacher education. Taking up where our joint publication "Teacher Education in Transition: Re-Forming Professionalism?" (Open University Press 2000) left off, it examines how accelerated moves towards school-based teacher education, as well as…

Focusing on data and policies from England, trends in educational disadvantage by area are traced from the late 1960s when the first pilot projects were established in the UK, to the present. The origins of these developments and the subsequent rises and falls of such area-based policies in England are reviewed. Specially collected data for the…

Rhetoric about young people's "ownership" of future socio-technical change is a familiar part of much educational and political discourse. This does not, however, translate in practice into a meaningful dialogue with young people about the sorts of futures they might wish to see emerge. This paper argues that a number of social and technological…

Several authors posit the notion that universities have experienced "moral loss" over the last 15 years under the sustained influence of neoliberal education policies. However, whilst some consensus exists around the causes and effects of moral loss, there appears to be little agreement about how "moral reconstruction" can be enacted. This paper…

Since 1997, England has seen massive changes in the Early Years including the introduction of an early childhood curriculum, free pre-school education for three-year-olds and local programmes for disadvantaged communities. Many of these initiatives took time to introduce and become established. Beginning in 2001, and each year thereafter until…

Over the last 45 years, two major trends have characterised French educational policies: a voluntary move towards widening access to upper secondary school and a related diversification of the diplomas available at the end of it, especially through the creation of the technological "baccalaureat" in 1968 and the vocational "baccalaureat" in 1985.…

Only since the 1990s has the impact of globalisation on education drawn scholarly attention, primarily due to the impact of international school achievement surveys. This study argues that the globalisation of education began much earlier, with the establishment of intergovernmental agencies, such as UNESCO and the OECD, and the adoption of…

This paper looks at underlying patterns of school effectiveness through analysing a GCSE examination data-set over a period of ten cohorts (1993-2002) in one very large English school district. Both value added and raw score approaches were explored by employing different statistical multilevel models to examine time trends of school and pupil…

In 1993, the UK Economic and Social Research Council funded the Parental and School Choice Interaction (PACSI) Study into the marketisation of education, conducted by the author along with Philip Woods and Ron Glatter of the Open University. The findings from the PACSI study highlighted the localised and complex nature of markets in education and…

Summary statistics continue to play an important role in identifying and monitoring patterns and trends in educational inequalities between differing groups of pupils over time. However, this article argues that their uncritical use can also encourage the labelling of whole groups of pupils as "underachievers" or "overachievers" as the findings of…

This article describes the course and causes of the expansion of higher education in the UK since the 1960s. The number of university students from modest social backgrounds has increased, but they comprise much the same proportion of the university population as they did 40 years ago. Though personal rates of return from higher education are…

Reviews the legacy of previous educational reforms in special education and discusses the current trends in government policy for special educational needs (SEN). Addresses three possible outcomes of the current policies. States that current policy will not change systems and approaches for special educational needs. Includes references. (CMK)

Provides a brief historical background on political education in England. Describes four reasons for the development of political education policies during the 1970s, the three types of political education (political literacy, 'new' or 'adjectival' education, and education for citizenship) promoted from 1969-98, and four trends across political…

Discusses the background to and the deliberations of the Advisory Group on Education for Citizenship and the Teaching of Democracy in Schools. Discusses the main recommendations of the Advisory Group in their final report. Reports on four challenges (curriculum, community, global, and individual) that will be faced in the future. (CMK)

Addresses the development and problems associated with British teacher education programs particularly focusing on the practices that failed to prepare student teachers during the 1965-76 period. Argues that locating teacher education in the schools will not solve the problems in education but instead the program should remain in the university…