Educational strategies & policy

Amid debates about the future of both higher education and Europeanisation, this book is the first full-length exploration of how Europe’s 35 million students are understood by key social actors across different nations.

Written by academics from different disciplines and backgrounds, this book offers an international practical guide to doing diversity in the social sciences.

Peter Scott examines the development of mass higher education and calls for robust action to secure fair access at all levels and changes in the governance and management at both system and institutional levels to ensure more democratic accountability.

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.

Alice Bradbury discusses how the meritocracy myth reinforces educational inequalities and analyses how the recent educational developments of datafication and neuroscience might challenge how we classify and label children as we rebuild a post-pandemic schooling system.

Situating the cases of England and Australia within broader global policy trends, this book critically analyses what has gone wrong with education policy. Drawing on wide-ranging research, the authors issue a fundamental challenge to current policy orthodoxies, and identify policy alternatives to make education both better and fairer.

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.

The nuanced interconnections of poverty and educational attainment across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are explored in this unique analysis. Experts investigate how different educational structures and policies affect teachers’ engagement with marginalised groups and consider how inequalities might be reduced.

Measuring research impact and engagement is a much debated topic in the UK and internationally. This book is the first to provide a critical review of the research impact agenda, situating it within international efforts to improve research utilisation.

This book uses up-to-date evidence to interrogate contemporary patterns of ethnic and social segregation at a school-level, looking at how the changing geographies of ethnic segregation reflect those of social segregation.

Neoliberalism is having a detrimental impact on wider social and ethical goals in the field of education. Using an international range of contexts, this book provides practical examples that demonstrate how neoliberalism can be challenged and changed at the local, national and transnational level.

Drawing on empirical data from the field of education governance, the book traces how scales are crafted and mobilised in policymaking practices, demonstrating that ‘scalecraft’ is key to understanding the production of hegemony.