The 'virtual school' is an approach to supporting care-experienced children and young people in education. The Virtual School Head (VSH) has been a statutory role within the education landscape in England since 2014. In Scotland, where the education, social care and legal systems are distinct from those in England, there has been a recent increase…

In recent years the taught masters course has become an even more important component of the curriculum portfolio for universities in the UK and elsewhere. In the spring of 2021, the Student Assessment and Classification Working Group (SACWG) surveyed a small number of English and Welsh universities to compare assessment regulations for taught…

This report is focused on the uptake of General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) subjects in England in 2023. Uptake in a GCSE subject is defined as the number or percentage of students at the end of Key Stage 4 (KS4) taking the subject. This report was produced using publicly available data from the Department for Education's (DfE). The…

Going to university is a key route to enhancing life opportunities for young people and for promoting social mobility. Despite the action of widening participation programs, substantial sociodemographic inequalities in participation persist. Few studies have focused on the role that school attended may play in exacerbating or mitigating these…

In England, the Studio Schools model, focused on developing employability skills in young people, represents a disruptive attempt at educational innovation. Through a documentary analysis of foundational documents, interviews with the model's architects and case studies of five Studio Schools, we map the tensions between theoretical…

International research on adult education systems reaches certain limitations when explaining differences between and within countries. Often, research within the multilevel system of adult education examines issues located at the macro-level, meaning policy and legal frameworks, and at the micro-level, dealing with impacts on learners. This…

Background: Secondary school teachers sometimes teach and assess material outside their specialisms for reasons including staff shortages or the growing popularity of the interdisciplinary courses. We hypothesised that teacher-assessors with different subject specialisms may differ in their interpretations of frequently used words in teaching and…

This paper provides a 'home international' comparative analysis of education policy on social and emotional wellbeing, drawing on the case of the UK and its four distinct education systems of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have developed more holistic policy in this area, which stands in stark…

Teacher collaboration has gradually become a common idea in the reform of teacher education all over the world. However, up to now, the current situation of teacher collaboration is still isolated and conservative to a certain extent. How to avoid being mere formality and promote the development of teachers' cooperative practice effectively has…

This report looks at the provision of GCSE subjects in England in 2023. Provision in a subject is defined as the number or percentage of schools with at least one student taking the subject. It could be argued that this may not cover all the 'provision', since schools might offer to provide a subject but none of their students wants to study it.…

Essential skills, including literacy and numeracy, are increasingly crucial for life and work, for business success, and for economic growth. However, the number of adults improving these skills in England has reduced by more than 60% over the past decade as Government investment in skills is set to be £1 billion less in 2025 compared to 2010. As…

Increasing school choice has been an active objective of policy in England but not in Scotland. Whereas in England all families are expected to list a rank ordering of schools, in Scotland the vast majority of children attend their catchment school by default. This article reviews the differences in approach, family experience and outcomes between…

Concern that children are not engaging in enough physical activity (PA) to bring about health benefits is a crisis globally. This paper aims to examine primary school-based PA initiatives from within an English context. A qualitative inquiry was adopted and underpinned by the socio-ecological model. The study was presented through a realist case…

High-stakes assessments are a common feature of many education systems. One argument often made against their use, however, is that they have a negative impact on wellbeing across the education sector, including teachers. We present new evidence on this matter by examining how the Statutory Assessment Tests (SATs) conducted in England's primary…

This pilot project explores how young children's self-identity with a focus on respecting difference might be nurtured through Community of Enquiry (CoE), in the tradition of Philosophy for Children (P4C) using artwork in a gallery space. In valuing diversity, respecting difference is key. A group of four- and five-year-old children who expressed…