This paper studies mathematics learning gaps within Indian children at two points in time. Dividing them into two groups, better performing and the rest, we investigate the causes of the difference in the average learning gap between them at those two points. We explore this question using the threefold Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition at these survey…

This article focuses on Chilean students from vulnerable school contexts facing a standard national curriculum. It offers insights into students' voices, while uncovering what they want to learn and the drivers behind this decision. Semi-structured interviews revealed the power of the school socialisation process; for the majority of students,…

There is near consensus that early childhood education and care (ECEC) is essential to children's early development. A common corollary is that early learning will be pivotal to helping redress inequities in educational outcomes. We examine whether this is true among rural communities in the Indian states of Assam, Rajasthan, and Telangana.…

Children 'in care' have, on average, lower educational attainment than their peers. This article tests the hypothesis that many of these children can 'catch-up', if in stable placements and secondary schools 'apparently effective' with other children with 'similar' difficulties. In a cohort of 542,998 16-year-old English children in mainstream…

Nancy Fraser describes parity-of-participation in social interaction as an important component of social justice. In this paper, we explore the participatory experiences of primary-school-children who have been labelled 'lower-attainers' in mathematics and/or writing. The paper explores justice drawing on the perspective of these pupils, in…

There are many potential ways to represent arithmetical tasks, but students' choices may be limited by beliefs that only certain standardised representations are "legitimate" in school mathematics. Furthermore, concern for the quantity and speed of "work done" can override opportunities for meaningful engagement with the…

In this paper, we examine the trajectories of initially higher- and lower-achieving children from lower and higher socio-economic status families from primary school through to university in England for the first time. We also explore what explains these trajectories. This enables us to provide new insights into when and why the performance of…

Mathematics education is a high-stakes indicator of success in 'über' performative systems. The search to address England's mathematics underperformance resulted in cross-national attraction toward, and policy borrowing of, 'teaching for mastery' from the high-performing education systems of Shanghai and Singapore. We argue that the cultural…

In the present study we compared comprehensive education systems and education systems using between-school tracking with regard to disparities in the quality of student-teacher relations between low and high achieving students, between students with different socioeconomic backgrounds, and between schools with different achievement and social…

This paper reports on a mixed methods study carried out within the Initial Teacher Education (ITE) programme at the University of Oxford on the ways that the course sought to frame and address the link between poverty and poorer educational outcomes. The study was concerned with the views held by ITE students on the effects of poverty on pupils'…

The principle of schools collaborating to improve is one that has seen growing interest in recent years, and there is emerging evidence that in particular collaboration between high and lower performing schools can be an effective school improvement method. However, this evidence relates primarily to secondary schools, and little research has been…

This article offers some explanations for the simultaneous expansion of special educational services and personnel, with the increasing inclusion in mainstream education of more young people with disabilities and learning difficulties. Following discussions with some 70 professionals, administrators and others in a study in four countries, it…

Starting from the present knowledge society with its social overvaluing of cognition and white-collar jobs at the expense of manual labour, this article examines whether school type--academic versus technical/vocational schools--relates to students' sense of futility. It assesses the schools' culture of futility and investigates the explanatory…

The two recent (2003) international surveys of pupils' attainments were uncoordinated, overlapped considerably, were costly and wasteful, especially from the point of view of England where inadequate response-rates meant that no reliable comparisons at all could be made with other countries. The surveys were conducted by the OECD (Programme of…

Multilevel modeling was carried out on national value-added data to study the effects of single-sex education on the progress of pupils from 2002 Key Stage 3 to 2004 GCSE. The analysis suggests that pupils in a selective environment achieve higher progress in single-sex schools; however, the advantage of single-sex schooling seems to decrease with…