Is the ‘attainment gap’ fit for purpose?

In 2011 the UK government announced that it would introduce a new stream of funding to support ‘disadvantaged students’, and ultimately aim to close the attainment gap between these students...

The Future of Educational Research in Wales

This report, published by BERA in partnership with the Welsh Government, presents the proceedings of and lessons from the Future of Educational Research in Wales conference. Held in Cardiff on 14...

Curriculum development through professional enquiry: Developments in Wales

Since the publication of Graham Donaldson’s report in 2015 (Donaldson, 2015) and the adoption of its recommendations by the Welsh Government, pioneer schools across Wales have been taking the...

Forget me not? LGBTIQ+ representation and rights in education

In the film 120 Beats Per Minute, which depicts the work of Act UP Paris during the AIDS epidemic in France in the 1990s, activists perform a nonviolent instance of direct action: they enter a...

The gender wars, academic freedom and education

Academics who do not adhere to a particular line on gender and transgender issues have suffered intimidation by trans activists. The people under attack are not mavericks or extremists. They are...

Deconstructing the SATs process: Resistance is futile?

In April 2016, a mother voiced her concerns on the English Local Schools Network website (Secret Parent, 2016) about withdrawing her 10-year-old from the new key stage 2 SATs. Her main concern was...

Let’s make education fairer

A group of colleagues from the Durham University Evidence Centre for Education (DECE) were highly commended in the 2018 BERA Public Engagement and Impact Award, for their work on making education...

Data for decanting and the hatching of life trajectories

Education provides a sequence of academic production – the Department for Education sets outcomes for each stage of education for the learning, development and care of children from birth to 18....

BERA Blog highlights from 2018

BERA Blog end of year highlights

A seasonal welcome to all our BERA Blog readers in the UK and around the world in this, our third end-of-year-highlights special edition. And what a year this has turned out to be. (I really will...

Aspirations, expectations and rethinking outreach

‘Aspirations’ are a wonderfully simple concept. The problem is that it’s becoming increasingly clear they are of little worth in terms of understanding pathways towards higher education, as...

In pursuit of a secure base? Education commentary in times of socio-political uncertainty

In 1973, at the beginning of the 1970s international oil crisis, and amid emergent Watergate revelations, Paul Simon sang ‘we come in the age’s most uncertain hour...’. At around the same...

Student behaviour, motivation and the potential of attachment-aware schools to redefine the landscape

The starting point for our article (Parker & Levinson, 2018) was the apparent contradiction in current government policy between an essentially top-down, ‘zero tolerance’ behaviourist model of...