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...

SERA Conference 2020

To mark the 2020 conference SERA has organised three online events on Monday 16th, Wednesday 18th and Thursday 19th November 2020.  The theme for the week of events is:  Education and...

Curricular breadth in Scottish secondary schools: Access and inequality

Curriculum policy in many countries in the period since the 1960s has aimed to provide a broad, liberal programme to all students as a route into common citizenship. My recent paper (Paterson,...

Justifying curricular enrichment in performative times

Much has been written about the tendency to narrow the curriculum to focus on what counts in measurable terms in testing times. This effect is felt most acutely in schools servicing disadvantaged...

#BlackLivesMatter in education

The sickening death of African-American George Floyd by suffocation at the hands of a White-American policeman has justifiably fuelled the force of the #BlackLivesMatter movement across the world....

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...

Local language, school and community: Curricular innovation towards closing the attainment gap

BCF Curriculum Investigation Grant Research Reports

An investigation of how schools can, by working in and with local languages and dialects, raise pupils' educational attainment, cultural awareness and self-esteem.

Crisis for whom? Education for climate justice in Scotland

Education for our planet and our future

This research was borne of our shared conviction that education fit for addressing the climate crisis must move away from a vague discourse of undifferentiated responsibility and squarely pose the...

BERA Blog highlights from 2019

BERA Blog end of year highlights

A seasonal ‘yo-ho-ho’ to all our BERA Blog readers here in the UK and around the world in this, our fourth end-of-year-highlights special edition. The BB continues to grow, with more special...