National and regional variations in school systems, have often been explained in comparative school governance research in the Nordic countries with variations in long-standing traditions in curriculum development, characterised by a dichotomy between an Anglo-American curriculum tradition and a German/European continental tradition of Didaktik.…

We trace the recent development of the Oxford Education Deanery as an expansion of an initial teacher education partnership to include wider school-university collaboration in professional development, and in research. The current policy pressures in England are described on both school-university partnerships for initial teacher education, and on…

Good information and career guidance about which post-compulsory educational routes are available and where these routes lead is important for ensuring that young people make choices that are most appropriate to their needs and aspirations. Yet the Association of School and College Leaders (2011) expresses fears that future provision will be…

The Conservative-led Coalition government in Britain is strongly committed to a programme of austerity. In the short term, this is a programme which makes more difficult the country's exit from a period of recession and slow growth; in the longer term, it threatens cuts and privatisation which call into question the welfare state. Yet,…

This paper reviews the recent history of English education in connection with British state attempts to 'manage diversity'. It offers a new analysis on points of coherence and tension between the role of education and state policies in relation to race and ethnicity. Drawing on the Prevent strategy as an example, the paper highlights the role that…

This paper addresses some recent changes in the landscape of state education in England. In particular, it focuses on the way in which Academies, state-funded independent schools introduced by New Labour and now being drastically extended and taken further by the Coalition government, are contributing to the ongoing and increasing blurring of the…

New public management and the neo-liberal principles that sustain it have driven performance agendas in government across Europe and beyond. This has produced a loss of the traditional role of education in creating a coherent and persuasive collective myth of belonging, identity or purpose. This chapter discusses current developments in the policy…

In England, over the last decade, powerful technologies and software have enabled a new way of governing education through performance data. This has allowed the landscape of education to be reshaped. Its surface features continue but underneath new connections are made and older relations severed. Data flows travel between schools and central…

This paper aims to develop understandings around the factors which facilitate and those which constrain implementation of Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989; UN General Assembly Resolution 44/25) in student voice projects. Article 12 is concerned with children being given the right to express their views…

This article reviews the changing relationships between education policies and their links to social disadvantage and conceptions of school leadership. The argument is that definitions of leadership evolve as the assumptions underpinning the relationships between society, the economy and education institutions change. The article draws on the case…