Education Policy and Politics

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.

Who are universities for? argues for a large-scale shake up of how we organise higher education. It includes radical proposals for reform of the curriculum and how we admit students to higher education. Offering concrete solutions, it provides a way forward for universities to become more responsive to challenges.

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.

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.

Adopting a political economy perspective, Viv Ellis, Lauren Gatti and Warwick Mansell present a unique and international analysis of teacher education policy in the US, England and Norway after the 2008 Global Financial Crisis.

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.

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.