In the recent debate over education reform, Japanese conservative politicians and intellectuals have selectively appropriated a particular crisis-and-success narrative of British education reform to de-territorialize contentious policy changes. They assert that Britain achieved successful education reform by transforming the very same teaching…

Olive Banks' work Parity and Prestige in English Secondary Education made a major and distinctive contribution to the literature on the historical development of secondary education. Her work exemplified a close relationship between sociology and history, examined a vital and enduring theme that continues to be relevant and pervasive, helped to…

This paper examines issues of selection, merging an analysis of policy with data from a qualitative case study. It focuses on the "modernisation of the comprehensive principle" proposed by New Labour, in which selection within schools (through setting "by ability") is increasingly encouraged. Data collected at an inner-city,…