Construction of science education policy is, for most practising educators, somewhat shrouded in mist. Policies are currently conveyed by the present Secretary of State with responsibility for education through presentations of governmental papers and curricular documents. While it may seem strange that a politician can be elected one day, and…

The article argues that science assessment should change from an item-driven to a construct-driven practice and pay more attention to disciplinary scientific reasoning. It investigates assessment scales developed from a novel theoretical rationale, describing scientific reasoning as three fundamental practices (hypothesizing, experimenting, and…

Inferences from recent international comparative data on mathematical attainment, frequently quoted as justification for curriculum change, are critically examined, and the implications are contrasted with expressed curricular aims. Using characterisations by Ball (1990) and Ernest (1991), positions of key actors are analysed in relation to…

Background: Political devolution occurred in the UK in 1998-99, following many years in which some degree of policy administration had been devolved to the four nations. Since devolution, all four countries of the UK have pursued increasingly divergent education policies. This is true in England in particular, where diversity, choice and…

This report provides an overview and discussion of the past decade of academic evidence on the causal effects of resources in schooling on students' outcomes. Early evidence lacked good strategies for estimating the effects of schools resources, leading many people to conclude that spending more on schools had no effect. More recent evidence using…

Education is an area that is highly devolved in the UK, and the fact that all four constituent countries have pursued very different policies in the recent past provides a good testing ground to undertake a comparative review of the merits or otherwise of the education reforms that have taken place. There is, of course, an important policy context…