In England and Scotland, the History National Curriculum avoids the prescription of specific content; expecting schools instead to devise a curriculum appropriate to their pupils within broad guidance. This means in both countries, teachers apparently have responsibility for constructing a curriculum: selecting content, sequencing learning and…

In this paper, we report data from the first national survey of secondary Shakespeare teaching in the UK, conducted online in 2017-18 with a sample of 211 teachers distributed through England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. We report on what is taught and why. Our survey shows that the most popular play in the UK is "Macbeth,"…

Assessment and feedback are interrelated challenges for higher education, being perceived as key facets of the quality assurance of degrees, and yet commonly found to be sources of dissatisfaction for students. We performed a thematic analysis on the free-text comments of the National Student Survey for a large, Scottish, Russell Group university…

Policy changes in the higher education landscape have given way to increased interest in the way students perceive engagement in UK higher education. This paper examines whether we can reliably distinguish between institutions and disciplines, and what key student and institutional variables are a predictor of engagement of undergraduate students.…

The Scottish Government's ambitious 1 + 2 Language Strategy has refocused attention on language education policy (LEP) and the provision for learning additional languages in Scottish schools. However, the maintenance of community languages continues to be the responsibility of minoritised parents and their complementary schools. This article…

With the increasing number of teaching and classroom assistants across the UK there is now much debate about what their role should be. In particular concerns have arisen about the extent to which they overstep the boundary from supporting teaching and learning into teaching pupils. This study assesses this issue within Scotland. It draws on a…

The National Student Survey (NSS), which is a major source of data for UK league tables, is completed by students in their final year of study at all publically funded Higher Education Institutions in England, Wales, Northern Ireland and the majority in Scotland. It asks for twenty-two statements to be considered. An apparent lack of definition of…

This paper investigates the factors influencing the likelihood of choice of Gaelic-medium primary education in Scotland by means of the analysis of a national survey of public attitudes conducted in 2012. Binary logistic regression is used to investigate the association of five dimensions found in previous literature to be associated with the…

This research set out to investigate the part-time student experience of higher education across the United Kingdom, in the context of a well-publicised contraction in the sector, and increasing divergence between policies affecting part-time study in the four nations. In order to explore the part-time student experience in England, Scotland, and…

Although a number of analyses have addressed whether initial cognitive ability level is associated with age-related cognitive decline, results have been inconsistent. Latent growth curve modeling was applied to two aging cohorts, extending previous analyses with a further wave of data collection, or as a more appropriate analytical methodology…

Feedback has been a major area of dissatisfaction according to the UK National Student Survey in recent years, despite general acceptance of its importance. A feedback strategy was implemented in October 2009 at a small specialised higher education institution (HEI). A case study was carried out to assess how satisfied staff and students are with…

At a time of burgeoning Sino-Scottish engagement, and the introduction of a new national education policy, "Curriculum for Excellence" designed to enhance teacher autonomy, this paper draws on the national response of Modern Studies teachers who are the only group of Scottish teachers to have the (voluntary) option of including the study…

In the year 2007 in Scotland, in common with countries elsewhere in the world, the difficulty of recruiting high-calibre school leaders was becoming an increasing concern. The recruitment and retention study, commissioned by the Scottish Government and undertaken by three universities (Cambridge, Edinburgh and Glasgow), was charged with exploring…

This paper reports on phase 1 of a project commissioned by Learning and Teaching Scotland to explore the continuing professional development (CPD) needs of teachers in Scotland in years 2-6 of their careers. Nominal group technique (NGT) was employed to identify the CPD needs of year 2-6 teachers and to identify the relative priority of these…

Higher cognitive function is associated with faster choice reaction time (CRT), and both are associated with a reduced risk of mortality from all-causes and cardiovascular disease (CVD). However, comparison of the predictive capacity of CRT, an emerging risk factor, with that for established "classic" risk factors for mortality, such as…