The intention of government to create a fully academised school system in England, whereby every academy will belong to a large multi-academy Trust (MAT), further erodes community engagement and accountability. This paper illustrates how the policy of academisation has enabled a top-down governance framework to emerge, replacing the power and…

From the first co-operative trust school at Reddish Vale in Manchester in 2006, the following decade would witness a remarkable growth of 'co-operative schools' in England, which at one point numbered over 850. This paper outlines the key development of democratic education by the co-operative schools network. It explains the approach to democracy…

This article identifies a conceptual paradox between recent educational policy in England and a social-democratic understanding of critical literacy. Recent political events including Brexit, the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election, and the Coronavirus Pandemic reiterate the need for pedagogies that equip students to critique information circulated…

Since 2010 the government in England has committed to accelerating the expansion of academies ('state-funded independent schools') through displacing the role of local government as principal manager and overseer of schools. In response increasing numbers of schools are embracing the co-operative trust model to improve economies of scale,…

Despite the prevalence of corporate and performative models of school governance within and across different education systems, there are various cases of uneven, hybrid expressions of New Public Management (NPM) that reveal the contingency of global patterns of rule. Adopting a 'decentred approach' to governance (Bevir, M. 2010. "Rethinking…

This article recalls a time when local government infrastructure was strong and a Chief Education Officer's (CEO) vision could be realised across a region, in Clegg's case the West Riding of Yorkshire, one of the largest of the pre-1974 counties in England. It is timely to revisit Clegg's educational leadership and practice from 1945 to 1974, as a…

This article is written in response to widespread concerns about the inadequacy of the school curriculum in England, and the urgent need to rethink what public education should involve. It builds on earlier contributions in FORUM and elsewhere by discussing curricular opportunities arising from Labour's proposal for a National Education Service.…

The paper traces the development of citizenship in the curriculum in England since the 1960s, emerging particularly from the Crick report. It argues for lessons to be learnt from John Dewey's "Democracy and education", the centenary of which is being celebrated this year.

Shena Simon (1883-1972), a leading English socialist and educationist, actively called for the reform of secondary education in the 1930s and 1940s in order to bring the ideal of 'equality of opportunity' into the English educational system. This paper explores the continuity and changes in Simon's proposed reforms in relation to her ideals of…

Peter Jarvis is a towering figure in the study of adult and lifelong education and a leading and original theorist of learning. This paper sets out his intellectual and professional biography, maps the main contours of his work and introduces fourteen papers by leading scholars devoted to his work. Five broad phases in Jarvis' life are identified:…

The nineteenth-century British Co-operative Movement included a commitment to education. Although only a minority of consumer co-operative societies offered educational facilities for their members, there was a willingness to experiment among those Co-operators whose grasp of Co-operation extended ideologically beyond remaining content with…

Civilization is always a work in progress. Every civilization is an experiment in how far people can shift themselves from the evolutionary norm of the small, kinship-integrated tribal society governed by ritual and custom to any kind of society either more complex in structure or less tribal in foundation. People assume that given intelligence…

The idea of a system of education has never been fully accepted in England. A more realistic translation of the realities of English education is that of systems of education, folded inside each other. Although it is possible to outline the building blocks of a national system (primary, secondary, further and higher), the political, spatial and…

This article addresses questions of workplace democracy, particularly in relation to school education. Following Luciano Canfora in treating democracy as "the rule of the many", it traces the post-1945 rise of workplace democracy, and its post-1979 decline. Analysing the constitution of contemporary schooling in England, the article…

This article outlines an analytical framework that enables analysis of degrees of democracy in a school or other organizational setting. It is founded in a holistic conception of democracy, which is a model of working together that aspires to truth, goodness, and meaning and the participation of all. We suggest that the analytical framework can be…