This article extends the authors' earlier work (Young & Muller 2013) exploring the concept of 'powerful knowledge'. It first examines some of the origins of the concept and goes on to a brief consideration of how sociology, political theory and economics have traditionally represented 'power' and 'knowledge'. Two key senses of power are…

Piketty's "Capital" has created enormous interest around the world, not least in educational circles. One reason for this may be his readiness to refer, in a book largely focused on economic history, to the ways that education has, and might, contribute to better and more equal social outcomes. This article welcomes this approach, but…

The fiascoes that seem to accompany the annual publication of examination results in England, the subsequent inquiries instituted to ensure they "never happen again" and the Secretary of State's decision, reversed six months later because of fears about possible EU legal challenges, to "end competition between exam boards"…

The paper addresses national and global questions concerned with neoliberalism, social democracy and social justice. It explores a number of themes that arise from the British Labour Party's policy review and its rebranding as One Nation Labour (ONL). In particular it addresses ONL's approach to the economy, localism and vocational education and…

Recent radical changes to university education in England have been discussed largely in terms of the arrangements for transferring funding from the state to the student as consumer, with little discussion of what universities are for. It is important, while challenging the economic rationale for the new system, to resist talking about higher…

Corporatised leadership in schools in England is being promoted through new actors and new types of school, these latter with corporate structures, values, regulatory freedoms and contractual arrangements with staff. Corporatised leadership is characterised "inter alia" by the promotion of the interests of business through the…

Child wellbeing at school and enjoyment of the learning environment are important economic outcomes, in particular because a growing body of research shows they are strongly linked to later educational attainments and labour market success. However, the standard working assumption in the economics of education is that parents choose schools on the…

This report summarises the findings of research commissioned by Universities UK into the role and contribution of higher education in the UK's creative economy. The research gathered evidence from existing data and research as well as case study analysis and contributions from industry, higher education and public sector partners. The findings…

Students gain a better understanding of war and economics when the variables come alive through stories, artifacts, and paintings. In this article, the author describes a short story about the fur trade which can generate lots of student questions about the fur economics, the Eastern Woodland Indians, trade artifacts, and war. The author also…

A multiproduct cost function is estimated for English higher education institutions using a panel of data from recent years. The panel approach allows estimation by means of a random parameter stochastic frontier model which provides considerable new insights in that it allows the impact on costs of inter-institutional differences in the cost…

This article examines the findings of the recent London School of Economics RISE Report looking at policies relating to secondary school admissions in England.

After the 1992 Further and Higher Education Reform Act enabled polytechnics and the qualifying franchised colleges to be renamed universities or higher education institutions, the dominance of the rhetoric of skill development aggravated long-standing schisms between further and higher education about whether or not degree-level courses should be…

This paper provides estimates of the impact of higher education qualifications on the earnings of graduates in the U.K. by subject studied. We use data from the recent U.K. Labour Force Surveys which provide a sufficiently large sample to consider the effects of the subject studied, class of first degree, and postgraduate qualifications. Ordinary…

The new English system of student finance seeks to resolve a higher education policy trilemma created by government's desire to switch more of the costs on to students, whilst seeking to promote both increased and widening participation. The rationale for this new funding system is based upon orthodox economic analysis which, the authors argue,…

Educational planners know that international leadership in the 21st century will require a workforce that is: (1) skilled in science and technology; (2) able to provide better products and services; and (3) trained to solve problems by creative, innovative, and critical thinking. School reform is needed to enhance the potential leadership for this…