The NASUWT's landmark agreement with the Schools Co-operative Society has provided a new spur to co-operation, collaboration and collegiality in schools. Against a background of rapid and radical changes to the education landscape, co-operative schools are viewed by many as a means to maintaining public service ethos and values in education. The…

This article seeks to explore the dilemmas that schools and their members encounter whilst striving to establish a co-operative culture within an educational landscape contoured by decades of neo-liberal policy "reform". In order to (re)consider the construction of democratic subjectivity within contemporary educational discourse, the…

The recent progress of "co-operative schools" both confirms and disrupts many assumptions surrounding contemporary compulsory schooling. The term itself refers to an eclectic array of schools, both primary and secondary, of which there were, by June 2012, almost 300 in England that have adopted co-operative values, in terms of…

Recent governments have transformed the English education system from an arrangement of local, democratically managed, groups of schools into a market free-for-all in which individual schools compete for pupils, status and resources. Elements of a market exist in the relationship between parents and private schools but much market behaviour is…

The author has drawn on interviews conducted with 24 education professionals in Norfolk to present an overview of teachers' responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. The teachers address the immediate aftermath of school closures from a logistical and emotional point of view. They also discuss the different strategies that schools have adopted for…

This article looks at the learning of African Caribbean pupils in art and design classrooms in the United Kingdom. It proceeds from the proposition that African Caribbean pupils, as the descendants of enslaved peoples whose cultural lineage has been blurred by the skewed relationship with the white majority group, are uniquely disadvantaged in the…

Ofsted has always courted controversy. With the appointment of a strident new chief inspector its operations are likely to remain, or become increasingly, controversial. This article provides a detailed critique of key documents which describe the new inspection regime that for good or ill will have major consequences in schools. Although in…

In the eyes of policy, the transformation of European education systems has become essential. Economically, education change is deemed vital to the successful emergence of knowledge economies. Politically, educational institutions and their cultures are seen as unhelpfully residual, providing a home to beliefs and practices that are not aligned…

This account of the author's learning to read, write, speak and listen was inspired by English teachers in a post-war democracy, and by the discovery that Eltham Green School, the original of his comprehensive experiences, had ceased to exist. The author believed the theme of learning English would help him write more coherently than before about…

This article gives an account of the way an opportunity has been taken to draw together ideas for a curriculum for the common school and beyond, during the writing of a new edition of the "Index for Inclusion; developing learning and participation in schools" (Booth & Ainscow, 2011). I discuss the way thinking about the curriculum…

This article points out that recent government pronouncements clearly envisage an enhanced status for the provision of physical education in schools in Scotland. This being the case, it is essential that policy makers, researchers and teachers examine many of the contested aims and conflicting agendas now in existence so that outcomes can match…

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…

This article explores the reasons why transformation of the school system is urgently needed. It is suggested that the system will implode as a result of a growing dislocation between what schools need to achieve and the inadequate, if not damaging, practices forcefully promoted by increasing numbers of school leaders and politicians.…

This article portrays Key Stage 2 primary school teachers' perspectives on, and experiences of, New Labour's education policies. Evidence is derived from fieldwork conducted in 2003-2005 in a sample of 50 schools throughout England, replicating a study conducted a decade previously in the same schools. It is suggested that there have been more…

This article reviews the current state of education reform in the United Kingdom and uses the BBC film "The Choir to explore alternative ways of improving the quality of learning and teaching in schools.