What impact have the unprecedented and rapid changes to the structure of education in England had on school governors and policy makers? And what effect has the intensifying media and regulatory focus had on the volunteers who take on the job?
Jacqueline Baxter takes the 2014 ‘Trojan Horse’ scandal, in which it was alleged that governors at 25 Birmingham schools were involved in the “Islamisation” of secular state schools, as a focus point to examine the pressures and challenges in the current system. Informed by her twenty years’ experience as a school governor, she considers both media analysis and policy as well as the implications for the future of a democratic system of education in England.
Schools play a vital role in safeguarding children and young people, yet there has been little research into how schools identify and respond to child protection concerns, and their engagement with local authority children’s services.
This book highlights the findings of a major ESRC-funded study on the child protection role played by schools, their decision-making processes and involvement in inter-agency working. Crucial reading for academics, practitioners and managers in children’s social care and education, it evaluates the impact of recent policy developments, including the Academies and Free Schools programme, as well as the restructuring of local authority children’s services.
59 FOUR Schools Ruth Lupton, Stephanie Thomson and Polina Obolenskaya The situation on the eve of the crisis Throughout this book, 2007 is referred to as the last year of the ‘warm climate’ for social policy that Labour enjoyed. In schools policy, it also represents a turning point, with Ed Balls taking over as Secretary of State for Education and beginning to take policy in new directions. The Labour programme for schools up to 2007 had four key themes. The main policy emphasis was on pushing up standards of teaching and learning. National Strategies were
There is an enduring belief amongst some that segregation is worsening and undermining social cohesion, and that this is especially visible in the growing divides between the schools in which our children are educated.
This book uses up-to-date evidence to interrogate some of the controversial claims made by the 2016 Casey Review, providing an analysis of contemporary patterns of ethnic, residential and social segregation, and looking at the ways that these changing geographies interact with each other.
The processes for allocating places at secondary schools in England are perennially controversial. Providing integrated coverage of the policy, practice and outcomes from 1944 to 2012, this book addresses the issues relevant to school admissions arising from three different approaches adopted in this period: planning via local authorities, quasi-market mechanisms, and random allocation. Each approach is assessed on its own terms, but constitutional and legal analysis is also utilised to reflect on the extent to which each meets expectations and values associated with schooling, especially democratic expectations associated with citizenship.
Repeated failure to identify and pursue specific values for schooling, and hence admissions, can be found to underlie questions regarding the ‘fairness’ of the process, while also limiting the potential utility of judicial responses to legal actions relating to school admissions. The book adopts an interdisciplinary approach which makes it relevant and accessible to a wide readership in education, social policy and socio-legal studies.
At a time when education and school choices are under increasing scrutiny, this topical book considers education more broadly than ever before. The author, an experienced teacher and researcher, highlights what happens when parents discover that an alternative to school education exists and is legal. This under-researched topic highlights the lack of governmental interest in alternative education and also considers the human rights issues, conflation with safeguarding, the relationship of the state to education and parental education choice.
Focusing on the discovery of elective home education (EHE) in England as a case study for new and necessary arguments, the ideas discussed are also relevant internationally. The book considers the global fact of education as not just mainstream schooling, but how the dominance of schooling has affected our ability to conceive of education as diverse and different. This thought-provoking book will appeal to academic, teaching and policy-making audiences.
The COVID-19 pandemic closed schools, but this hiatus provided an opportunity to rethink the fundamental principles of our education system.
In this thought-provoking book, Alice Bradbury discusses how, before the pandemic, the education system assumed ability to be measurable and innate, and how this meritocracy myth reinforced educational inequalities – a central issue during the crisis.
Drawing on a project dealing with ability-grouping practices, Bradbury analyses how the recent educational developments of datafication and neuroscience have revised these ideas about how we classify and label children, and how we can rethink the idea of innate intelligence as we rebuild a post-pandemic schooling system.
60 4 The School Counselling Partnership: providing support and promoting self-care for school communities Maddie Ohl and Toni Medcalf The provision of counselling support in primary and secondary schools in the United Kingdom has increased exponentially since the 2000s. A report by Place2Be and the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT, 2020) identified that between 2016 and 2019 school-based counselling support had risen from 36 to 66 per cent. This increased capacity in schools was a strategic response to the widely reported rise in psychological
185 ELEVEN school choice Kirstine Hansen and Anna Vignoles introduction In 1988, the Education Reform Act for England and Wales strengthened parents’ rights to choose the school their child attended at primary and secondary school levels. Similar legislation was applied in Northern Ireland. The 1988 Act was introduced to encourage competition between schools, as they sought to attract pupils, with the idea that this would lead to higher standards of teaching and children’s achievement. Despite obvious policy interest in the extent and consequences of school
