Reclaiming communities after the Brexit vote

In the aftermath of the Brexit vote, the divide between the south and the north, the disarray in government, and the uncertainty of what will happen in the future need to be considered from a...

Welcome Justine Greening – please take care with English education!

So farewell, Nicky Morgan and Michael Gove. Welcome Justine Greening, our third Conservative English Secretary of State for Education since 2010. This is beginning to look a bit like the musical...

Wales and the politics of education

On the 5th May 2016, the people of Wales went to the polls to elect members of the National Assembly – to which all matters of education policy in the country are devolved. The outcome of the...

Unauthorised Absences

If there’s one issue on which Mumsnet users all tend to agree, it’s the importance of education. Not all of them would necessarily say that ‘education’ and ‘schooling’ are exactly the...

Localism in Education: A Reflection on the EU Referendum

In the aftermath of the EU referendum the BBC has published two graphs revealing the English regions where votes were highest for the leave and remain camps. The region topping the leave vote was...

BREXIT – initial thoughts on effects on our schools

Alea iacta est, the die is cast! With 5am last Friday morning it was obvious that a majority (51.9%) of the UK electorate had voted for BREXIT. By lunchtime it was clear what BREXIT means for the...

Tablets in schools: Tools for learning or tantalising toys?

Tablets are coming to a school near you. Actually, they’re probably there already. In the UK alone, around ¾ of schools were using tablets in 2015, for over half of lesson time, according to...

Involving the Stakeholders that Matter Most: Student Voice in School Reform

Traditionally adults do not consider students as a source of valuable insight about school problems and students are not seen as mature enough to be real partners in change initiatives. Adults’...

The Adventure of Education

Is it possible to think about education as adventure? This is a question I raised in a recent article I wrote for the Journal of Education Administration and History (Tamboukou 2016). The idea...

What do ‘skills’ mean for school governing bodies?

In a recently published article[i] in the Journal of Education Policy (JEP), I traced how governors with ‘skills’ are increasingly privileged over representative governors. I wrote about the...

Explaining Trump’s Rise, Educationally

The rise of Donald Trump as front running Republican Party presidential candidate in the United States has startled many left-liberal leaning members of the society, and captured the attention of...

Pupil voice in quality assurance of schools

Highlights from the first 1,000 BERA Blog posts

The importance of quality assurance in education is established both by politicians and teachers alike. Schools embrace quality assurance primarily because they recognise its role in...