This paper explores questions of relevance to Ethiopian primary education policy. It examines (i) the match/mismatch between government-prescribed pedagogy and actual student learning practices and (ii) the relationship between those practices and school, class and teacher level factors. The paper employs evidence from government documents on…

Due to the rarity of longitudinal data, evidence on the benefits of education across the life-course is relatively sparse in developing countries. Young Lives is the only comparative dual-cohort study to combine data collection using mixed-methods at child, household, school and community levels, following 12,000 children in two cohorts across…

This paper explores the changing relationships between the UK government, its research councils and universities, focusing on the governing, funding and organisation of doctoral training. We use the Doctoral Training Centres (DTCs) funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) as a prism through which to study the shifting nature of…

In recent years there has been a heightened interest in educating for well-being; the belief that even when beset by economic gloom, schools can be a civilising force for good and can help make young people's lives more fulfilling and meaningful. However, the relative lack of conceptual analysis on well-being values and how they can flourish…

Educational and occupational aspirations have become an important reference point in policy debates about educational inequality. Low aspirations are presented as a major barrier to closing educational attainment gaps and increasing levels of social mobility. Our paper contributes to this on-going debate by presenting data on the educational…

This paper investigates the relationship between stream placement and the academic progress made by children in England in Year 2 of primary school, drawing on data from the longitudinal Millennium Cohort Study (MCS). The MCS is a sample of 19,000 children born across the UK around the turn of the century and their families. Academic progress was…

Across Europe there are growing concerns about Islamophobia and far-right and anti-democratic movements. Until Anders Behring Breivik's July 2011 attacks in which 77 died, Norway's vulnerability was not perceived as great as that of other jurisdictions. Breivik declared his abhorrence of multiculturalism but also drew the world's…

This article critically examines pupil councils as a means of developing pupils' citizenship participation. It draws on findings across two research projects. The first study is a mixed method study commissioned by Learning and Teaching Scotland (LTS) that reviews the range of participatory activities in Scottish schools and their…

Since coming to power in 2010, the UK Coalition government in power has implemented a range of reforms in relation to assessment at all stages of education in England. This paper focuses on two assessment reforms relating to children aged five and six years old, and considers their evolution from manifesto commitments to practice in classrooms.…

In an earlier study of learning on a practice-based postgraduate programme participants indicated that certain artefacts were critically important in enabling them to gain "permission" to act differently in their schools. Picking up on this suggestion, this study begins to explore how looking at the composition of texts by teachers as a…

The decline in the number of UK universities offering undergraduate degree programmes in subjects such as sciences, mathematics, modern languages and humanities has been well documented and is now of real concern. It appears that economics may be going through a decline in new (post-1992) UK universities with many economics programmes having been…

After a brief review of some milestones in the story of how schools contribute to inequalities in student achievement, more recent work on how experience of collaboration between schools can help to narrow the gap is shown to underpin the new concept of a self-improving school system. The main focus is then on the principal features of a…

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…

In the first volume of the "Oxford Review of Education" Jerome Bruner (1975) showed how the upbringing of the very young is influenced by poverty, and how different kinds of upbringing shape human development. He called the paper "Poverty and childhood" and baldly stated "With respect to virtually any criterion of equal…

This paper takes Mary Warnock's paper in the first issue of the "Oxford Review of Education" as its starting point, and explores how both philosophical thinking about equality in education and the landscape of educational provision have changed. It articulates a view of justice in education that emphasises benefiting the least…