The higher skills policy of the UK New Labour Government emerged from the recommendations of the Leitch Review of Skills, and was implemented in England between 2007 and 2010. The policy aimed to encourage higher education (HE) institutions to engage with employers and employer representative bodies to design and deliver HE provision that…

Deriving from the authors' respective ethnographic fieldwork (around two decades in each context), this position paper considers experiences of education across two communities: Gypsy/Roma in the UK and Indigenous in Australia. The article brings together understandings across these traditionally nomadic communities, with no shared history or…

The main task of this paper is to understand the methodological insights from researchers' reflexive accounts about the production of gender in the specific practices of three Scottish elite schools. Accordingly, the paper poses three questions: How is gender re/constructed through the specific practices of these elite schools? What insights…

Our investigations into the politics of the Academies Programme in England have generated thinking that draws on data about the conversion process from two projects. We engage with an early City Academy that replaced two "failing" schools, and a recent Academy that replaced a "successful" high school. We deploy Hannah…

Academies (and free schools) in England and independent grant-aided schools, "fristående skolor" (or "friskolor"), in Sweden have been the subject of much academic debate, but there is a paucity of comparative research relating to policy development or outcomes. This paper adopts a comparative perspective, outlining the…

This paper considers the pupil intakes to Academies in England, and their attainment, based on a re-analysis of figures from the Annual Schools Census 1989-2012, the Department for Education School Performance Tables 2004-2012 and the National Pupil Database. It looks at the national picture, and the situation for Local Education Authorities, and…

In England, Free Schools were announced as a dramatic way in which government policy has changed such that it is now possible for groups of parents, organisations or charities to start their own schools. They are seen as an attempt to stimulate to "supply side" of the quasi-market of schools, but they are not the first such initiatives.…

Behaviour in schools is an enduring public policy concern not only within the UK, but internationally also. Current concern should come as no surprise as behaviour is intimately connected with policy priorities for schools, namely raising standards of attainment and promoting social cohesion. Clearly, standards are threatened where disruptive…

This paper explores the evidence relating to how primary schools are responding to the "gifted and talented" initiative in England and Wales. A questionnaire survey which invited both closed and open-ended responses was carried out with a national sample of primary schools. The survey indicated an increasing proportion of coordinators, compared…

In the last ten years teacher education in the further education (FE) sector has witnessed a substantial reform of teacher training with the introduction of qualifications designed to meet the professional needs of people in different teaching or training situations across the sector. The assumption of the new system is that workforce issues and…

In this paper, I explore the enhancement agenda, which aims to enhance well-being nationwide and particularly among young people. Although it is said by its proponents to embody the ideas of Aristotle, I argue that its true theoretical underpinning is the polarised thinking of positive psychology. The sharp distinction between positive and…

Charles Dickens famously satirised the rationalism and mechanism of utilitarian educational ideas through the figure of Gradgrind in "Hard Times". Even in the nineteenth century there were very few people, in reality, who would have agreed that the education of children should be a matter of purely intellectual, rather than emotional, instruction.…

This paper, based on ESRC-funded research work in four case study schools, explores the "pressures" to "deliver" which bear upon English secondary schools in relation to GCSE performance. It further illustrates the ways in which pressure is transformed into tactics which focus on particular students, with the effect of "rationing" education in the…

This paper presents the perception of practitioners of the impact of the Moser Committee recommendations and the Skills for Life agenda it generated. The paper further explores areas of convergence and divergence between practitioners' perceptions and the underpinning values of the Moser Committee recommendations. The study utilised a range of…

The ESRC Teaching and Learning Research Programme (TLRP) worked for ten years to improve outcomes for learners across the United Kingdom. Individual projects within the Programme focused on different research questions and utilised a range of methods and theoretical resources. Across-programme thematic seminar series and task groups enabled…