Throughout the history of education different conceptions have been developed about the role and the function that education has in society as a whole. Such conceptions have been constructed around different discourses that show underlying social conflicts. The different educational practices acquire their legitimacy through such discourses, which…

Well-organised waste management is an essential part of sustainable development. The saving of resources and energy is everyone's concern and environmental education is vital to guarantee a sustainable lifestyle in the long run. To find out what similarities and differences in views regarding waste management exist between grammar school pupils…

Using a multiple case study approach across seven schools in the United States and Sweden that serve newcomer students exceptionally well, we identified the strategies they implemented across sites that served to meet the educational needs of these students. We found that these schools provided a comprehensive approach to support the…

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…

In the present study we compared comprehensive education systems and education systems using between-school tracking with regard to disparities in the quality of student-teacher relations between low and high achieving students, between students with different socioeconomic backgrounds, and between schools with different achievement and social…

It is 25 years since the Inner London Education Authority (ILEA) was abolished and management of education in central London transferred to 13 London boroughs. The author reflects on the experience of being an ex-ILEA head teacher, and of managing one of the new local education authorities in the immediate post-ILEA period. He begins by commenting…

Schools in England are radically changing their organization and governance, casting aside the founding principle of the 1944 Education Act that education is a public service and abandoning the ideal of education as nurturing a sense of community. This book presents a portrait of a successful comprehensive school, between the years 1980 and 2000.…

This is an article about secondary schools in England, and what type of school is fair and efficient for a national education system. It discusses what "fair" could mean in this context, summarises some key policy revisions since 1944 in this light, and reminds readers of the damage caused by unfairness within education. Most notably it…

This article argues that comprehensive reorganisation was not a one-off policy reform but a complex, bottom-up campaign for equity and fairness in education, with varied consequences and outcomes. Recent battles over student fees, free schools and academies show that the quest for democratic education does not lead to a permanent achievement but…

Anybody who has studied education over the past forty years is aware that secondary education in England is the subject of continuous and continuing debate. Everyone has been to school and therefore everyone lays claim to some expertise--the lot of teachers is never easy. But it is a contention of this article that teachers are at least partly…

Educational leadership practice is embedded and shaped in its own context. However, contemporary policy makers are keen to use research findings from multiple educational systems to produce overall, generic models of best leadership practice. Therefore, research needs to encompass analyses of the political, societal, cultural, and institutional…

This study looks at publicly available data on the proportion of pupils eligible and claiming for free school meals (FSM) in the top 500 comprehensive state schools and at how representative they are of their localities and of their school type. We have looked at the top 500 when measured by five good GCSEs including English and Maths and at the…

The objectives of this study were to (1) explore the nature of caregiving for orphaned and non-orphaned adolescents; and (2), examine how changes in the caretaking roles, as a result of a parental loss, impact on an orphan's sexual behaviors. A total of 52 in-depth interviews and 11 focus group discussions (n = 83) were conducted among adolescent…

Three different "logics"--that of the internal strategies of the institutions, the economic pressures of the socialist market economy and the political policies of the state drive the development of a university. The dynamic interaction and coexistence of the three logics has determined the transformation models of teacher-education or…

Income inequality has been rising in Britain for two decades and wealth is also more unequally distributed now than when New Labour first came to power. Various factors have contributed to this, including education which, according to the PISA 2006 data, has more unequal outcomes in the UK than in all but 2 of the 29 tested countries. Comparative…