The free school meal voucher scheme & children’s access to food during the Covid-19 crisis

Education & Covid-19: BERA Small Grants Fund research reports

With schools closed in the UK in response to the Covid-19 crisis, children who would normally receive free school meals were at an elevated risk of food insecurity. However, the voucher scheme...

Bubble, toil and trouble: School leadership as Shakespearean tragedy in and after Covid-19

Covid-19, education and educational research

In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the witches exacerbate divisions, push ambition through brute force, hierarchy and power; their interventions end in the wicked destruction of leadership potential and...

BERA Research Commission 2021/22 – A teacher and youth co-created manifesto for Education for Environmental Sustainability (EfES) from the four jurisdictions of the UK

The primary objective of this commission was to co-create a manifesto for Education for Environmental Sustainability (EfES) in secondary education in the UK.  To achieve this, the commission...

The BERA Blog: Highlights of 2020

BERA Blog end of year highlights

A warm and wintery ‘welcome’ to all our readers, wherever you may be. This time last year I wished all of you a seasonal ‘yo-ho-ho’, blissfully unaware of how 2020 would play out. Today,...

Do private schools make a difference to mental health?

Parents send their children to private schools for a range of reasons, and we know that British private schools are successful in terms of academic attainment and that their alumni tend to go on...

Education: An academic discipline or a field?

What is the problem? Education research has periodically been sharply criticised for being weak in comparison with research from other disciplines. Some of this criticism has implied, or...

Editorial: Education, #BlackLivesMatter and racial justice in the UK and beyond

Education, #BlackLivesMatter and racial justice in the UK and beyond

The structural inequalities faced by Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities have been deepened by a decade of austerity. We are in the midst of a global pandemic and, following yet further...

Implementing citizenship education in a post-conflict society: Lessons from Northern Ireland

Citizenship education is intended to foster civic and political participation by encouraging students to critically reflect on and challenge established attitudes, values and behaviours (Niens,...

Why do school exclusion rates continue to rise in England?

Children and young people excluded from school for poor behaviour have lower than average educational outcomes. They are more likely to experience ‘deep exclusion’ (Levitas et al., 2007), with...

General Election 2019

Ahead of the forthcoming General Election to be held on 12th December 2019, the manifestos, or equivalent, of the parties can be found below. Conservative Party Labour Party Liberal...

Children’s awareness and understanding of conflict-related groups in divided education systems

Over 420 million children live in conflict-affected areas (Save the Children, 2019). Conflict greatly disrupts education, with long-lasting negative effects even after peace agreements are signed...

BERA Bites, issue 4: Reimagining a curriculum for teacher knowledge

BERA Bites

The BERA Bites series presents selected articles from the BERA Blog on key topics in education, presented in an easily printable and digestible format to serve as teaching and learning...