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BERA Bites, issue 12: Education and the environment

BERA Bites

Today, in 2025, as an Earthly community, we face the ongoing triple planetary crises of climate change, nature and biodiversity loss, and pollution and waste. Across the UK, and in many other...

10 years of the BERA Blog

This series celebrates one decade of the BERA Blog, as an important and growing space to explore current and varied issues and questions of concern to the education community. To mark this...

Equity by design: A shared vision to reduce school exclusion in England

School exclusion and social exclusion are complex, multi-dimensional and intertwining processes. The disproportionate impact that school exclusion has on children with special educational needs...

Special educational needs policy requires research infrastructure

Over the past 25 years, there have been successive policy changes to funding, categorisation and implementation of special educational needs (SEN) provision in England. Yet there is limited...

The importance of social security to children’s lives: Lessons from a mixed methods study of the two-child limit and the benefit cap

In recent years, stories of schools providing for children’s basic needs have become common. We hear that nearly one-in-five teachers has personally washed a school uniform; one-in-four has...

Creating a more equitable curriculum: Why and how education needs a reset

Adopting an equity approach in education is about confronting social class divides inside and outside the classroom and rebalancing the school curriculum to nurture all children’s talents. More...

School-based early years provision: We need to know more about how to support effective leadership

Incoming policy In response to growing pressure on the early education and care system, the new Labour government is forging ahead with plans to create thousands of nursery places inside existing...

Editorial: Revisiting the Children’s Plan: Towards a new manifesto for tackling early years inequality

The new Labour government has made a commitment to support the early years sector as well as launching a curriculum review. This presents us with an opportunity to revisit Labour’s 2007...

Revisiting the Children’s Plan: Towards a new manifesto for tackling early years inequality

The new Labour government has made a commitment to support the early years sector, as well as launching a curriculum review. This presents us with an opportunity to revisit Labour’s 2007...

Children’s attainment in the early years in a post-pandemic world

The new Labour government has pledged to reform the education system. With reports highlighting the pandemic’s negative impact on children’s development, it is crucial to assess post-pandemic...

Putting oral language at the heart of early years education

In her TES article in July 2023, the now UK Secretary of State for Education, Bridget Phillipson, emphasised oral language skills in her commitment to improving early years education. This is a...

(Re)focusing on high-quality early childhood education and care

Over the past 25 years, the early childhood education and care (ECEC) sector in England has undergone significant transformations. As the evidence of its positive impact on children’s social and...