Embedding sustainability education in practice

A series of blogs that explore how new initiatives in a number of countries are developing and delivering education for sustainable development, from the early years to higher education.

Geographies of elite higher education participation: An urban ‘escalator’ effect

There is increasing attention on geographic inequalities in access to higher education (HE). This blog summarises a recently published article (Davies, Donnelly, & Sandoval-Hernandez, 2021)...

The great algorithm fiasco

When A-level examinations were cancelled in March 2020, the government instructed the Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation (Ofqual) to instead issue ‘calculated grades’ based...

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

Education & Covid-19: BERA Small Grants Fund research

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...

Social-emotional competences: Conceptualisation, childhood inequalities and predictive value for socioeconomic attainment in adulthood

The development of social and emotional competences is increasingly being recognised as essential for children’s adaptive development in school as well as in other settings and later life (OECD,...

Is ‘lost learning’ the new crisis in education?

Covid-19, education and educational research

Concerns around lost learning have been a pervasive and recurrent theme of late – all of which can be traced back to the closing of schools over the past year in response to the Covid-19...

The Skills for Jobs white paper: A chance to provide ‘flexibility’

The UK government’s Skills for Jobs white paper is clearly an attempt to realign post-16 education around the needs of employers. It presents a challenge for higher education to develop an...

The problems with resilience thinking

Covid-19, education and educational research

The Covid-19 pandemic has given new currency to the idea of resilience, in terms of adapting to and recovering from adversity. However, in recent years the discourse of resilience has become...

We need an evidence-based expert approach to the post-pandemic recovery of young people

Covid-19, education and educational research

In December 2020, the Westminster government promised to set up an expert group to consider solutions to the huge variability of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on pupils’ educational...

Not CRED-ible

On 31 March, the government published the report from its Commission for Race and Ethnic Disparity. It had briefed the headlines the day before and did a full media round before journalists, let...

Children have a right to be involved in decisions about their future education, health and wellbeing

Covid-19, education and educational research

Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, children across the world have experienced significant changes to their lives. Save the Children (2020, p. 4) report that an estimated 99 per cent of...

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...