Climate change is an incredibly important issue that has horrific long-term impacts if necessary lifestyle and policy changes are not made now. Despite the presence of significant scientific evidence of climate change for years, many politicians are still unable to admit that climate change is real, let alone create policies to better combat this…

The 'school-readiness' agenda is becoming increasingly dominant in recent policy discourse, and this article explores how the Bold Beginnings report builds on this agenda. By focusing on the curricular gap between the end of Reception and Year 1, and on the importance of mathematical and literacy outcomes, it is argued that Bold Beginnings clearly…

This article considers the experiences of two teacher educators working with undergraduate and postgraduate trainee teachers in the School of Education at the University of Brighton. It foregrounds reflections shared within education studies seminars and on conversations with early career teachers on how trainees and new teachers negotiate their…

FORUM invited Melissa Benn and Jane Martin to interview Clyde Chitty, a brilliant and effective classroom and university teacher, one of the most well-known advocates of comprehensive education, a long-standing member of FORUM's editorial board, and for two decades co-editor of the publication. It was Michael Armstrong who called him 'the patron…

This article investigates how vested interests, particularly the teacher unions, responded to the British Labour government's school reforms designed to increase educational equality. Two significant reforms introduced to this end were Circular 10/65 on comprehensive education and the Learning and Skills Act of 2000 on the City Academies. The…

This reflection does not pretend to be a scientific survey of curriculum trends but is, as the title suggests, a personal reminiscence of governorship across different phases of education, with snippets about the curriculum that my memory recalls.

The author is a long-time advocate inside the Labour Party for ending selective education and the 11-plus. She outlines how Labour Party frontbenchers routinely ignore or deflect calls from Party members to stand up for comprehensive education in both word and deed. As UKIP, whose policy is to extend selective education more widely, rises in the…

There are problems with considering children and young people in schools as quite separate individuals, and with considering them as members of a single collectivity. The tension is represented in the use of "voice" and "voices" in educational debates. Voices in dialogue, in contrast to "children's voice", are…

Over the past four years, the UK coalition government has made significant progress in transforming the state education system. This transformation has its roots in a longer-term restructuring of education. This article argues that, in order to counter this attack, we need to build a movement around an alternative vision of education. Further, it…

Teacher education programmes in the United States and in England with early childhood certification usually include courses with topics such as early childhood theory and curriculum, child development, model programs, and history of early childhood education but less often include courses with content focused specifically on advocacy. This article…

The author of this paper, Matt Bailey, has taught for six years at Northcliffe School, Doncaster, where he is the NUT representative, and Head of Science. A member of the NUT's national working-party on academies, he outlines here the first successful campaign waged by a local community to thwart the imposition of a privately-run Academy in place…