Ethnographic research in a further education College (Borough College) between 2000 and 2005 assessed the impact of performance indicators (PIs) within a department teaching GCSEs and A-levels. Research focused on PIs integral to the Learning and Skills Council funding formula, the Common Inspection Framework and newspaper league tables, and the…

Higher education managers are under increasing pressure from governments to reduce costs by adopting more flexible staffing practices and tensions can arise as institutions seek to sustain motivation and morale across a diversifying workforce. This paper considers how institutional management and governance practices facilitate innovative…

After the 1992 Further and Higher Education Reform Act enabled polytechnics and the qualifying franchised colleges to be renamed universities or higher education institutions, the dominance of the rhetoric of skill development aggravated long-standing schisms between further and higher education about whether or not degree-level courses should be…

This paper provides a critique of the current policy orthodoxy of using markets to organise and structure education provision in England, focusing in particular on Further Education (FE) provision. Starting from the context of New Labour's so-called Third Way, it sets out research findings that indicate that marketisation not only produces…