In contemporary higher education systems, funding is increasingly associated with performativity, assessment, and competition, and universities are seeking different forms of financing their activities. One of these new forms is crowdfunding, a tool enabled by the digitalization of finance. Based on data from the UK higher education system and two…

We report an evaluation of a book gifting scheme (the Dolly Parton Imagination Library; DPIL) that targeted families from disadvantaged areas. We considered the impact that length of participation had on children's interest in literacy-related activities, the frequency of parent-child reading interactions, duration of reading, and whether the…

This article explores student engagement with tuition at The Open University (a distance learning Higher Education institution in the UK), specifically students with declared mental health disabilities, comparing their access rates with (disabled) students overall, studying in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, 2018-2019. The results show…

The number of students with special educational needs (SEN) is growing rapidly. This study compared the correlations between the share of students identified with SEN and student diversity (socioeconomic status and ethnicity) at the school level in three countries. We used the principal questionnaire from the 2018 Teaching and Learning…

Through the method of tracing-and-mapping, this paper traces the history of how menstruation has been conceptualized in English education policies since 1928, as well as how such conceptualizations have positioned young people. It explains how education policy in England has conceptualized menstruation as a (cis girls') biological process; a…

There is increasing emphasis on understanding economic advantage alongside disadvantage -- on studying both 'poverty' and 'riches'. This trend prompts and requires new ethical reflection. I argue that in qualitative interview research, a clearer distinction needs to be drawn between ethical commitments to individual research participants, and the…

Early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings faced significant disruption during the COVID-19 pandemic, compromising the continuity, stability and quality of provision. Three years on from the first UK lockdown as pandemic-era preschoolers enter formal schooling, stakeholders are concerned about the impact of the disruption on children's…

The call to raise educational standards in the UK has a particular focus on the underachievement of pupils attending schools facing challenging socioeconomic circumstances. In 2017 the Education Policy Institute (UK) reported that the most disadvantaged pupils in England are on average over 2 years of learning behind non-disadvantaged pupils by…

As the United Kingdom (UK) labour market faces challenges on multiple fronts, the Further Education (FE) sector is identified as a potential source of solutions, alongside Higher Education (HE). The FE sector has an important role to play in social mobility. Young people from more disadvantaged backgrounds are much more likely to undertake further…

Intersectionality highlights that different aspects of individuals' identities are not independent of each other. Instead, they interact to create unique identities and experiences, which cannot be understood by analysing each identity dimension separately or in isolation from their social and historical contexts. Intersectional approaches in this…

The worldwide school closures in early 2020 led to losses in learning that will not easily be made up for even if schools quickly return to their prior performance levels. These losses will have lasting economic impacts both on the affected students and on each nation unless they are effectively remediated. While the precise learning losses are…

This paper presents a new methodological model termed Airbag Moderation: That the relationship between two variables varies as a function of a third, and that this third variable depends upon one of the others. Airbag Moderation extends and bridges a number of theories and it can be implemented using existing statistical models and software…

Reforms to GCSEs were introduced in 2015. The major changes were a move from modules to a focus on final exams, and a change in the grading system from letters (A*, A…G etc), to numbers (9, 8…1 etc). The aims of the reforms were to improve standards overall by making courses harder and increase differentiation at the top of the grade range. This…

This report looks at the picture of apprenticeships at levels 6 and 7, equivalent to a bachelors or postgraduate degree. Degree apprenticeships in England were launched in Autumn 2015, and offer a potentially powerful combination of on the job training and academic learning. With the prospect of gaining industry-specific skills, a…

Descriptions of educational inequality, or 'gap talk', require principles of categorisation that divide humans into groups between which a 'gap' can exist. The principles used in education equity policies to define groups affect the nature of the educational interventions that these policies propose. Drawing on critical discourse analysis of…