After exploring what we mean by 'public', this article advances the argument that there have been two distinct periods in the post-war English schooling system and argues that the latest one, of markets and managerialism, ushered in on the back of neoliberal economic theories during the 1980s, has internal contradictions if, as both parties…

The school system in England has undergone significant change following the introduction of the academies policy and the subsequent mass conversion of secondary schools to academies. In this article we address two issues arising from this process of academisation, namely equality of opportunity and local democratic accountability, both of which…

England's premier league of public schools, educating less than three thousand boys, started life in medieval times as charity schools for the poor. Closely tied to the Church, they found favour as institutions of social mobility. By the turn of the eighteenth century, vandalism and violence were endemic in many; misrule and abuses so common that…