Book contents
- Politics and Knowledge Shaping Educational Reform
- Politics and Knowledge Shaping Educational Reform
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures and Tables
- Contributors
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Radical Curriculum Change and the Politics of ‘Implementation’
- 3 Towards a Play-Based Pedagogy in Ghanaian Kindergarten Education
- 4 Implementing Fee-Free Education in Rwanda
- 5 Policy Implementation in a Sisyphean State
- 6 Reforming the School System
- 7 Educational Reform in Scotland
- 8 The Role of Textbooks in Improving Education in Portugal
- 9 Turning Social Capital into a Working Wage
- 10 High-Performance and Equity
- 11 Missing Opportunity?
- 12 Conclusion
- Index
- References
6 - Reforming the School System
Lessons from England
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 February 2025
Book contents
- Politics and Knowledge Shaping Educational Reform
- Politics and Knowledge Shaping Educational Reform
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures and Tables
- Contributors
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Radical Curriculum Change and the Politics of ‘Implementation’
- 3 Towards a Play-Based Pedagogy in Ghanaian Kindergarten Education
- 4 Implementing Fee-Free Education in Rwanda
- 5 Policy Implementation in a Sisyphean State
- 6 Reforming the School System
- 7 Educational Reform in Scotland
- 8 The Role of Textbooks in Improving Education in Portugal
- 9 Turning Social Capital into a Working Wage
- 10 High-Performance and Equity
- 11 Missing Opportunity?
- 12 Conclusion
- Index
- References
Summary
This chapter reviews the development and implementation of English school education policy following an exploratory report by the Department for Education and Skills on the future of primary school collaboration and three major Blair (Labour) government initiatives focused on inter-school collaboration: the New Labour Academies; the Secondary Leadership Incentive Grant programme; and the Networked Learning Communities programme (and their further evolution under Brown (Labour)) until 2010. It traces the dramatic intensification of these policies under the Conservative–Liberal Coalition including incentives to create new academies and Teaching Schools. The Conservative policy also revolutionised school administration and performance by removing the remaining state schools from local government control. The stated aim of a 2016 White Paper ‘Education Excellence Everywhere’ was that, by 2022, every English state school would be in a multi academy trust. It is now past 2022 and, while this goal has not been attained, there is no doubt that ten years of a combination of policy and austerity have transformed England’s state school systems.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Politics and Knowledge Shaping Educational ReformCase Studies from Around the Globe, pp. 79 - 98Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2025
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