Recent years have seen international and national policy intensification in early childhood education (ECE). This has manifested in multiple ways, including the design and implementation of increasingly prescriptive curricular policies. Against this backdrop some early educators are pushing back. Drawing on work from their recent enquiries and…

This article reflects, and encourages, the growth of grass-roots revolt to bring about change in an assessment system which systematically undermines real education.

This article uses data from a research project exploring grouping practices based on 'ability' in classrooms for children aged 3-7 years in England to consider the relationship between teachers' views of ability and their ways of organising children. The widespread use of grouping with young children and the concomitant 'fixed-ability thinking' by…

This article introduces this Special Issue of "FORUM" with a discussion of freedom and autonomy and considers the ways in which alternative approaches to pedagogy might provide opportunities to address inequalities in the context of education and in society beyond education. The article draws on work carried out in a project funded by an…

Public school teachers in the USA are working in an era of intense interference from neoliberal reform policies. Corporate-driven forces are working to dismantle unions, narrow curricula, replace neighborhood schools with charter schools, tie student test scores to teacher evaluations and replace university-prepared career teachers with…

This article investigates how vested interests, particularly the teacher unions, responded to the British Labour government's school reforms designed to increase educational equality. Two significant reforms introduced to this end were Circular 10/65 on comprehensive education and the Learning and Skills Act of 2000 on the City Academies. The…

Efforts to reform public education along free-market, corporate-styled models have swept across many nations. In the USA these reforms have included an intense focus on the use of high-stakes, standardized tests to quantify students, teachers, and schools for market comparisons, the deprofessionalization of teaching, and the establishment of…

The past 30 years have seen a series of major shifts in English education. Central to these changes has been the growth of data systems which now measure and control the work of teachers to a huge degree. This form of data-led surveillance was predicted in the work of Gilles Deleuze, a totalising process where data become more important than the…

Over the past four years, the UK coalition government has made significant progress in transforming the state education system. This transformation has its roots in a longer-term restructuring of education. This article argues that, in order to counter this attack, we need to build a movement around an alternative vision of education. Further, it…

Education "reforms"' have been accelerated in the last decade in Turkey. Teachers, as the main actors of the education system, have developed a variety of responses to the reforms implemented in the field of education, both individually and collectively. They give directions to the change process in education by means of their trade…

This article describes how one local teachers' union branch has developed an active and imaginative campaign as it has challenged both national education policy and also the very specific attacks on schools in the community. By connecting local and national issues, and by linking struggles on pay and pensions to wider questions of policy, the…

The author provides a year-by-year account of events during the period of the Conservative-led coalition government from 2010 to 2015 and concludes with some observations on the damage done to England's state education system.

Policy in relation to early years education is developing apace and is likely to be a significant issue in the 2015 election. This articles critiques current government thinking with its emphasis on "school readiness". The article argues that the emotional and learning needs of young children are being neglected by a system that sees…

Michael Gove has made examination reform a marked feature of his period as Education Secretary in the coalition government, although he has not always found it easy to bring about the changes he feels so strongly about, in the face of widespread opposition from teachers and educationists. This article seeks to analyse the Education Secretary's…

Not content with the response to his offer to outstanding schools to become academies, Michael Gove's next move has been to force schools to become academies. Resistance from parents and the local community has made no difference. This article explains what happened in Haringey and how undemocratic the whole process has been.