CJO - Social Policy Digest

Social Policy Digest

Subject:	Education
Topic:	Education policy
Year:	2014 \| 2013 \| 2012 \| 2011 \| 2010 \| 2009 \| 2008 \| 2007 \| 2006 \| 2005 \| 2004 \| 2003 \| 2002

Public reactions to education policy

An article (in the 27th British Social Attitudes report) examined what the public thought compulsory education should involve, and how well they thought schools were doing. There was high public support for the broader curriculum introduced by the Labour governments (1997-2010) as well as satisfaction with the performance of secondary schools. But concern remained about the effectiveness of schools in preparing young people for work.

Source: Elizabeth Clery and Natalie Low, 'One school of thought? Reactions to education policy', in Alison Park and Elizabeth Clery (eds.), British Social Attitudes: The 27th Report, SAGE Publications

Links: Summary | NatCen press release

Date: 2010-Dec

Scotland, England, and European education policy

An article examined differences in the referencing of 'Europe' in education policy-making in England and Scotland in order to highlight the emergent complexity of post-devolution policy-making in education. Policy-makers in England referenced global influences, rather than Europe: whereas policy-makers in Scotland referenced Europe in order to project a new positioning of Scotland in closer alignment with Europe.

Source: Sotiria Grek and Jenny Ozga, 'Governing education through data: Scotland, England and the European education policy space', British Educational Research Journal, Volume 36 Number 6

Links: Abstract

Date: 2010-Dec

Schools system – White Paper

The government published a White Paper on the schools system in England. It included proposals to: raise the quality of new entrants to the teaching profession; increase the authority of teachers to discipline pupils; strengthen headteachers' authority to maintain discipline beyond the school gates; protect teachers from malicious allegations; refocus the national curriculum on core subject knowledge; increase freedom and autonomy for schools; extend the academies programme; support teachers and parents to set up free schools; introduce a new measure of how well deprived pupils did; establish a new 'floor standard' for primary and secondary schools; and target more resources on the most deprived pupils through a new 'pupil premium'. An accompanying policy paper said that it was possible for the education system to be both better and more equitable.

Source: The Importance of Teaching, Cm 7980, Department for Education/TSO | The Case for Change, Department for Education

Date: 2010-Nov

Department for Education – business plan 2011-2015

The Department for Education published a business plan for the period 2011-2015. Three new measures of pupils' progress would be introduced: 'readiness to progress' measures at ages 5 and 11, and a 'basics' measure at age 16. Parents would be given more details about schools, their teachers, and the pupils attending them – including general details of teachers' qualifications and pay.

Source: Business Plan 2011-2015, Department for Education

Date: 2010-Nov

Public spending review 2010 – education

The coalition government announced (in its 2010 Spending Review) that spending on schools in England would increase by 0.1 per cent each year in real terms over the period to 2014-15. But £2.5 billion would be diverted to a 'pupil premium' targeted at disadvantaged pupils; capital spending would by cut by 60 per cent; grants to higher education would be cut by 40 per cent; and the educational maintenance allowance would be scrapped in favour of 'targeted support'.

Source: Spending Review 2010, Cm 7942, HM Treasury/TSO

Date: 2010-Oct

School reform a 'significant move in the right direction' – CBI

A report (by a business organization) said that the new coalition government's programme of school reform was a 'significant move in the right direction' and should help drive up standards: but that much remained to be done if more young people were to achieve their full potential.

Source: Fulfilling Potential: The business role in education, Confederation of British Industry

Links: Report | CBI press release | ATL press release | Telegraph report

Date: 2010-Sep

School reforms – call to protect pupils from poor backgrounds

A paper urged the new coalition government to balance its desire to increase school autonomy through academies and free schools with measures to reduce the attainment gap between pupils from poor and better-off backgrounds.

Source: Ensuring Less Privileged Pupils Benefit from the Government's School Reforms, Sutton Trust

Links: Paper | Children & Young People Now report | Guardian report

Date: 2010-Sep

Call for fairness in education system

A think-tank report examined what a fair education system would look like, and called for reforms to narrow the gaps in educational attainment and opportunity between different social groups. It was not good enough just to accept educational segregation and seek to compensate those who suffered from it with more funding: the underlying vision had to be one of a greater social mix.

Source: Louise Bamfield and Tim Horton, What's Fair? Applying the fairness test to education, Fabian Society

Links: Report | Summary | Guardian report

Date: 2010-Sep

Relationship between policy-makers and schools – new book

A new book examined the relationship between policy-makers and schools. An evidence-informed view of policy-making had yet to be realized: many recent political decisions in education could be explained by the personal experiences, predilections, and short-term needs of key decision-makers.

Source: John Bangs, Maurice Galton and John MacBeath, Reinventing Schools, Reforming Teaching: From political visions to classroom reality, Routledge

Links: Summary | Telegraph report | Guardian report

Date: 2010-Sep

Education policies in 2010 General Election

An article examined the policies relating to families, children, and education that were presented to the electorate by the three main parties in their 2010 manifestos, together with the policies listed in the new coalition government's programme.

Source: Derek Gillard, 'Hobson's choice: education policies in the 2010 General Election', FORUM: for promoting 3-19 comprehensive education, Volume 52 Number 2

Links: Abstract

Date: 2010-Aug

Academy school policy 'risk to educational equality'

A briefing paper said that the new coalition government's policy on academy schools – unlike the previous Labour government's policy – was not targeted on schools with relatively disadvantaged pupils. There was a 'serious worry' that this would exacerbate already existing educational inequalities.

Source: Stephen Machin and James Vernoit, A Note on Academy School Policy, PA11, Centre for Economic Performance/London School of Economics

Links: Paper | Telegraph report

Date: 2010-Jul

Academies Act

The Academies Bill was given a second and third reading, and received Royal assent. The legislation was designed to allow the governing body of each maintained school in England to apply to the government to convert the school to an academy. The government would also be empowered to convert schools that were 'eligible for intervention'. The legislation also made provision for 'free schools' – new schools that could be set up by parents, teachers, charities, universities, business, or community or faith groups where there was parental demand: free schools would have the same legal requirements as academies.

Source: Academies Act 2010, Department for Education/TSO | Debate 19 July 2010, columns 24-138, House of Commons Hansard/TSO | Debate 26 July 2010, columns 742-833, House of Commons Hansard/TSO

Date: 2010-Jul

Department for Education – structural reform plan

The new coalition government published a draft 'structural reform plan' for the schools system under the Department for Education. The plan set out how the department would implement the coalition government's key policy aims, in particular taking power away from Whitehall and putting it into the hands of people and communities.

Source: The Schools System: Draft Structural Reform Plan, Department for Education

Links: Plan

Date: 2010-Jul

Formation of educational policy

A report examined the factors that lay behind the formation of educational policy. There was evidence of a gap between evidence and policy-making, which seemed to get wider as governments stayed in power. The media was very influential, and its attention to the short-term and particular created severe difficulties for policy-making.

Source: Adrian Perry, Christian Amadeo, Mick Fletcher and Elizabeth Walker, Instinct or Reason: How education policy is made and how we might make it better, CfBT Education Trust

Links: Report | Guardian report | BBC report

Date: 2010-Jun

Educational achievement PSA – review of data systems

An audit report reviewed the data systems used to support delivery of the Labour government's public service agreement 10 – to 'raise the educational achievement of all children and young people' – over the period from 2008.

Source: Review of the Data Systems for Public Service Agreement 10, National Audit Office

Links: Report

Date: 2010-Jun

Academies Bill – Education and Children's Bill

The new Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government announced (in the Queen's Speech) plans for:

An Academies Bill, designed to enable more schools in England to become academies – including removing the requirement to consult the relevant local authority before opening an academy.

An Education and Children's Bill, designed to give all schools in England greater freedom over the curriculum, reform the schools inspectorate and other accountability frameworks to ensure that head teachers were held accountable for core educational goals, and introduce a 'pupil premium' so that funding followed pupils from the lowest-income groups.

Source: Queen's Speech, 25 May 2010

Date: 2010-May

Academies Bill published

The Academies Bill was published. The Bill was designed to enable all maintained schools to apply to central government to become an academy. All applications would be approved in respect of schools that had been judged 'outstanding' by the schools inspectorate, unless there were good reasons not to. (Academies are all-ability state-funded schools, operating outside the control of local education authorities.)

Source: Academies Bill [HL], Department for Education/TSO

Links: Text of Bill | Explanatory notes | ATL press release | NGA press release | TUC press release

Date: 2010-May

Children, Schools and Families Act – Royal assent

The Children, Schools and Families Act 2010 was given Royal assent. Large parts of the planned reforms contained in the relevant Bill, including plans to make sex education a statutory part of the national curriculum, had to be dropped because of an inability to secure cross-party consensus prior to the general election.

Source: Children, Schools and Families Act 2010, Department for Children, Schools and Families/TSO

Date: 2010-Apr

Labour's record on education

A paper examined Labour's record on education policy, along with the manifesto proposals of the three main political parties. Labour had overseen a surge in education spending, with annual increases more than twice as generous as under the Conservatives. There had also been a clear shift in funding priorities towards younger children, with the United Kingdom becoming one of the developed world's biggest spenders on early years programmes. Despite the introduction of national literacy and numeracy strategies, however, improvements in results had been slower than the government had hoped.

Source: Haroon Chowdry, Alastair Muriel and Luke Sibieta, Education Policy, Briefing Note 98, Institute for Fiscal Studies

Links: Briefing Note | IFS press release

Date: 2010-Apr

Families and children – party manifesto proposals

A paper examined the manifesto proposals of the three main political parties in respect of families with children, including: taxes, benefits, and tax credits for families with children; abolishing the 'couple penalty' in the tax credit system; parental leave, pay, and flexible working; and childcare, early years education, and education.

Source: Mike Brewer and Ellen Greaves, Families and Children, Briefing Note 103, Institute for Fiscal Studies

Links: Briefing Note

Date: 2010-Apr

Education reform – new book

A new book said that since 1988 education reform had been driven by a 'delusion'. The notion that learning could be improved by performance tables, competition, poverty denial, best practice recipes, and 'quick leadership fixes' had proved to be wholly untrue.

Source: Bernard Barker, The Pendulum Swings: Transforming school reform, Trentham Books

Links: Summary | Leicester University press release

Date: 2010-Apr

Policy networks and New Labour

An article examined the role of 'policy networks' in the formulation of the social and educational policies of the New Labour governments.

Source: Stephen Ball and Sonia Exley, 'Making policy with "good ideas": policy networks and the 'intellectuals' of New Labour', Journal of Education Policy, Volume 25 Number 2

Links: Abstract

Date: 2010-Apr

Education system in England – report by MPs

A report by a committee of MPs highlighted some of the common themes in its previous reports on the education system in England – including the national curriculum, national testing and assessment, accountability structures, and the training of teachers.

Source: From Baker to Balls: The foundations of the education system, Ninth Report (Session 2009-10), HC 422, House of Commons Children, Schools and Families Select Committee/TSO

Links: Report | BBC report

Date: 2010-Apr

Secondary education 'impoverished' by curriculum and assessment system – new book

A new book said that secondary education had been impoverished by a narrow curriculum and by a rigid bureaucratic assessment system. Despite government attempts to widen participation, the social gap in education remained wide. It called for a different approach that would kindle the interests of young people and give teachers more freedom. It examined initiatives that had been successful in raising aspirations and participation.

Source: Patrick Derham and Michael Worton (eds.), Liberating Learning: Widening Participation, University of Buckingham Press

Links: Link removed by UBP

Date: 2010-Apr

Manifesto for education reform in England

A manifesto called for a radical shake-up of the education system in England, designed to break the link between education and disadvantage. It said that the obsession with targets, grades, and 'micromanaging' the system from the centre were root causes of the problem. Instead, the government should encourage a wide range of learning opportunities, decided locally and linked to the aspirations and needs of young people, their families, and communities.

Source: Alan Dyson, Sue Goldrick, Lisa Jones and Kirstin Kerr,Equity in Education: Creating a fairer education system – A manifesto for the reform of education in England, Centre for Equity in Education/University of Manchester

Links: Manifesto | CEE press release

Date: 2010-Apr

Call for independence for all state schools

A think-tank report said that too many state schools had became 'factories'. Reluctant students were processed through a system that was closely controlled and monitored by the state. Schools turned out young people who were often incapable of living full and autonomous lives. The model of large, de-personalized, and exam-focused schools was no longer appropriate. The report called for independence for all state schools.

Source: Anthony Seldon, An End to Factory Schools: An education manifesto 2010-2020, Centre for Policy Studies

Links: Report | CPS press release

Date: 2010-Mar

Essays on education policy

A new publication contained 13 newly commissioned essays on education policy by philosophers, journalists, and practitioners.

Source: Questa, Issue One/March 2010

Links: Magazine | Guardian report | Times Education Supplement report

Date: 2010-Mar

Children, Schools and Families Bill – third reading

The Children, Schools and Families Bill was given a third reading. The Bill was designed to strengthen the government's powers to intervene in and close failing schools; and to provide new guarantees for parents and pupils in respect of contact with teachers, and school policies to tackle bullying. All local education authorities would conduct an annual survey of parents on the provision in secondary schools – and where parents were unhappy, local authorities would be forced to intervene. The Bill also provided for a new primary curriculum, starting in September 2012. The Bill would make personal, social and health education (PSHE) – including sex education – mandatory in primary schools for the first time.

Source: Children, Schools and Families Bill, Department for Children, Schools and Families/TSO | Debate 23 February 2010, columns 173-269, House of Commons Hansard/TSO

Links: Text of Bill | Explanatory notes | Hansard

Date: 2010-Feb

Children, Schools and Families Bill – second reading

The Children, Schools and Families Bill was given a second reading. The Bill was designed to strengthen the government's powers to intervene in and close failing schools; and to provide new guarantees for parents and pupils in respect of contact with teachers, and school policies to tackle bullying. All local education authorities would conduct an annual survey of parents on the provision in secondary schools – where parents were unhappy, local authorities would be forced to intervene. The Bill also provided for a new primary curriculum, starting in September 2012. The Bill would make personal, social and health education (PSHE) – including sex education – mandatory in primary schools for the first time.

Source: Children, Schools and Families Bill, Department for Children, Schools and Families/TSO | Debate 11 January 2010, columns 425-520, House of Commons Hansard/TSO

Date: 2010-Jan

Education – Tory draft manifesto

The opposition Conservative Party published the education section of its draft election manifesto. It included proposals designed to achieve better teacher quality (described as 'brazenly elitist'); tougher discipline in schools; a rigorous curriculum and exam system; and access for every parent to a good school for their children.

Source: Urgent Action to Improve Our Schools, Conservative Party

Date: 2010-Jan