A baccalaureate curriculum
The Times Education Commission produced its final report in June 2022, making forty-five recommendations for reforming the English education system. The recommendations ranged from the banal –...
Continue reading blog postBERA Blog
The BERA Blog was established in 2015 to provide research-informed content on key educational issues in an accessible manner.
Refine results
Higher education in further education: A bridge to widening participation?
Widening participation in higher education (HE) among underrepresented social groups has been a focus of successive UK governments since the 1960s. But is this actually being achieved? Delivering...
Continue reading blog post
What are dual-language books and why are they crucial for schools?
Dual-language books are bilingual books that present the same narrative in two different languages. In most cases, the whole book is written in two languages throughout: one side of the text in...
Continue reading blog post
Understanding girls’ experiences of being at risk of permanent exclusion: How do we get there?
This blog considers some of the issues highlighted by existing research on girls’ exclusion from schooling and the challenges of beginning research in this area. Although boys are three times...
Continue reading blog postVisibility of structural injustice in early childhood degrees
The Early Childhood Studies Degrees Network advocates for a graduate-led workforce that is competent in leadership and in promoting social justice. The recently revised QAA sector benchmark for...
Continue reading blog post
Being a young and highly educated woman: My positionality in doing qualitative educational research in China
This blog post provides two examples of how my researcher positionality intersects with those of participants, and challenges traditional stereotyped expectations of power relations in Chinese...
Continue reading blog post
Data in schools: Why gathering reliable data is so important
In 2017, the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills in England (Ofsted) stated for the first time that all of its work is evidence-led. Specifically, the regulator’s...
Continue reading blog post
Dropping off a cliff: What’s really behind the fall in trainee teacher recruitment?
Graduates are giving teaching the swerve in increasing numbers. The Department for Education (DfE) has announced that recruitment for Initial Teacher Training (ITT) courses at secondary level is...
Continue reading blog post
Editorial: Spotlight on language and literacy
Findings from studies captured in this special issue make for compelling reading about the direction of language and literacy research in the UK and further afield. Ian Collen, from Queen’s...
Continue reading blog post