The number and range of problems associated with academies and "free" schools is worrying and can be attributed to the lack of ability of central Government to oversee the increasingly fragmented education provision. In this article, the author looks at just a few of those problems which have been reported since she started to log them…

In 2008 Ireland found itself in the forefront of the Eurozone crisis. The impact on education has been profound. In this article it is suggested that Ireland's education problems long pre-date the economic crisis and current "reforms" are about long-term neoliberal restructuring, not short-term solutions to immediate economic problems.…

Following the indecisive general election in May 2010, the Tories and Liberal Democrats formed a coalition government with David Cameron as Prime Minister, George Osborne as Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Michael Gove as Secretary of State for Education. Right from the start, Gove was a man in a hurry. Within two weeks of his appointment he had…

Coalition education policy threatens to transform the school system in England. A combination of public spending cuts, and the drive to making all schools Academies, represents a key moment in the restructuring of the education service along neo-liberal lines. This article argues that there is nothing distinctively "new" about Coalition…

This article reviews the current state of education reform in the United Kingdom and uses the BBC film "The Choir to explore alternative ways of improving the quality of learning and teaching in schools.

This article looks at one of the dominant themes of English education over the past twenty years. It examines the various ways in which privatisation has affected schools and schooling since the early 1980s. It may no longer be possible to indulge in a blanket defence of the public sector; but we do at least have to recognise that privatisation in…

This article raises the question, "Is the rapid expansion of the school Academies programme consistent with the Government's policy of enabling socially disadvantaged local communities to participate in making decisions that shape the quality of their lives?" (Contains 1 note.)

The need for small human scale learning environments in which young people have the chance to learn what it means to be human, in other words to become educated, has never been more pressing. This article reviews the progress of the American small school reform movement, considers the lessons that teachers and policy makers in the UK might learn…