EDUCATION / Educational Policy & Reform / School Safety

Education under siege considers the English education system as it is and as it might be. It identifies the current system’s strengths and weaknesses and proposes radical changes to ensure fair education for all.

Pat Thomson takes on England’s muddled education system and exposes fraudulent and unethical practices, including the skewing of the curriculum and manipulation of results. She argues for an urgent review of current practices, leading to a revitalised education system that has the public good at its heart.

This extensively updated fourth edition by the key author in the field will maintain its place as the most important text on education policy and makes essential reading for all students and anyone interested in education policy more generally.

This report presents different models of The Learning Society, of lifelong learning and of the learning organisation, through cross-national and 'home international' comparisons. It then explores the limitations and advantages of comparative research. It will be of particular use to researchers planning international, and intra-European studies.

Despite the expansion of higher education, representation, level of participation and likelihood of academic success remain highest amongst young people from affluent areas and lowest amongst those from deprived neighbourhoods. This report identifies factors which impact upon the minority of disadvantaged young people who enter higher education.

This book illuminates current debates about the nature and status of research in education and calls for a wider understanding of education by policy makers and research funders.

Policies to increase participation in learning need to concern themselves not only with increasing access and appreciating the different contexts in which learning takes place, but also with the different forms of learning. This report constitutes an exploratory study of the submerged mass of learning, which takes place informally and implicitly.

In this collection of essays, researchers discuss the implications of their findings for policy. Findings are also presented for the first time from a major new survey, commissioned by The Learning Society Programme, which examined the skills of a representative sample of British workers.

This first report in the ESRC Learning Society series examines the key processes of learning, as embedded in particular workplaces, organisational structures and specific social practices. The authors explore the conflicts and barriers which organisations run into, even when they are trying to promote greater learning among staff.

COVID-19 has widened inequalities in schools and left the future uncertain. Richard Riddell argues that the increasingly narrow focus of education governance has made new thinking impossible and has degraded public life. Nevertheless, he highlights new possibilities for democratic behaviour and the opening up of schooling to all it serves.

Working within the spirit of David Blunkett's visionary foreword to The learning age: A new renaissance for Britain, David H. Hargreaves' analysis challenges the myth that lifelong learning can or should be separated from school education. It asks what changes are needed for the culture and process of lifelong learning to become a reality?

Important reforms are taking place in children's services in the UK, with a move towards greater integration. In England, Scotland and Sweden, early childhood education and care, childcare for older children, and schools are now the responsibility of education departments. This book is the first to examine this major shift in policy.