The United Kingdom (UK) is facing a series of long-term economic challenges. To confront increasing regional inequality, flagging productivity and an ever-widening skills gap, universities and local businesses need to work together better. University Enterprise Zones (UEZs) offer a promising solution. The report, "Our Universities: Generating…

This paper examines the political and relational dimensions of leading and managing schools in the early stages of pandemic-induced school closure in the four nations of the United Kingdom. It draws on in-depth interviews with 12 headteachers from primary, secondary and special schools. Headteachers used adaptive leadership strategies, including…

This paper examines the complex relationship between the state, civil society and education through comparative research with young people in France and the UK. Survey data derived from two cohorts of school students in South Wales and Lyon reveal strong differences in their levels of civic and political participation. While our Welsh students…

In the prevailing economic and political climate for Higher Education a greater emphasis has been placed on diversifying the funding base. The present study was undertaken between 2012 and 2014 and addressed the implementation of an approach to the transformation of one academic school in a medium-sized modern university in Wales to a more engaged…

This paper revisits the abolition of the colleges of education in England and Wales, specialist providers of teacher training which were effectively eradicated in the years after Margaret Thatcher's 1972 White Paper "Education: A Framework for Expansion." Its central argument is that the way in which change was enacted thereafter…

Since 1870, levels of pupils' absence from maintained schools in Wales have always been higher than those in England. Since devolution in 1999, the Welsh government has tried exceedingly hard to improve this situation. Despite much effort, improving school attendance in Wales is proving stubbornly difficult to achieve. The present article…

School improvement depends upon mediating the cultural conditions of learning as young people journey between their parochial worlds and the public world of cosmopolitan society. Governing bodies have a crucial role in including or diminishing the representation of different cultural traditions and in enabling or frustrating the expression of…

This paper presents the evidence collected for the National Behaviour and Attendance Review (NBAR) in Wales on the professional development needs of staff on behaviour management and school attendance. These data were collected in two stages between 2006 and 2008. At Stage 1, data were collected from four pre-selected professional focus groups who…

In 2009, the Welsh Assembly Government published its Report on the review of behaviour and attendance in schools in Wales. The National Behaviour and Attendance Review (NBAR) in Wales was chaired by the author of this paper. Both the Review and the Welsh Assembly Government's response contained recommendations related to the training and…

Wales provides an interesting case study of the ways in which policies relating to continuing professional development (CPD) change over time. During the past three decades there has been a swing from central political influences on CPD policy to a focus on school priorities coupled with greater individual professional focus, then back again to…

In 1992, the University of New Hampshire (UNH) held a conference featuring leaders in the field of composition studies, attended by a wish list of luminaries, including Lil Brannon, Ed Corbett, Peter Elbow, Donald Murray, and Ken Macrorie. James Britton and Nancy Martin flew over from England to join the conversation. The prestigious research…

This paper presents the methodology and some of the findings on school behaviour obtained for the National Behaviour and Attendance Review (NBAR) in Wales. This work was undertaken over two years between 2006 and 2008. The Report was widely circulated in Wales to schools, local authorities, health and social service departments, as well as a wide…

This paper argues that the neoliberalization of education in England, begun in the 1980s, is having profoundly harmful effects on the lives of individuals and society. Neoliberalism represents a shift away from the post-war social democratic notion of universal "citizenship" rights/identities toward a system of individual consumer…

The National Behaviour and Attendance Review (NBAR) was a comprehensive review of behaviour, exclusions and school attendance in Wales, commissioned by the Welsh Assembly Government. The Review's Steering Group started its work in 2006 and produced its final report in 2008. This article focuses on the Review's study of exclusions of children from…

This paper explores a "critical incident" in relation to a Further Education Funding Council inspection during 1995. The FEFC's short lived and under-researched "project" is discussed against the background of the Major Government's "Back-to-Basics" policy. The FEFC, through its inspection regime and the ways in which…