This paper looks at the evolution of the girl's school story in "The British Girl's Annual" during the interwar period. The school story played a crucial role instructing young female readers about their gendered role within the school as a kind of microcosm for nation/empire. Most of these lessons focus on loyalty and leadership, topics…

British schools are teeming with cultural richness and have long been at the heart of a celebration of heritage. However, the riots in the north of England in 2001 exposed fractures in community cohesion, a loss of economic opportunity for marginalised groups and a rise in far-right activity. The London bombings of 2005 revealed deep fault lines…

This paper looks empirically at how the UK's policy of securitisation within education impacts on the meso-level space of cultural ethos and pedagogy within two majority non-white secondary schools and one majority non-white further education college. It does so primarily by documenting how British Values and Prevent policies enabled through the…

This article is a critical discussion of the requirement placed upon teachers by the United Kingdom (UK) government to promote fundamental British values. Using Deleuze and Guattari's concept of the White Man face, I argue that fundamental British values operate as a racial deviance detector whose purpose is to discipline, reform and reintegrate…

This article reconsiders the literature on civic nationalism and argues that, rather than representing an alternative to ethno-cultural nationalism, it is more accurate to think of the two terms at either end of a continuum. Whilst the fundamental British values (FBVs) are often interpreted through a cultural discourse, which serves to alienate…

This paper reads the U.K. Government's "fundamental British values" project alongside two children's Gothic novels, "Coram Boy" (2000) by Jamila Gavin and "City of Ghosts" (2009) by Bali Rai. In 2011 the U.K. Government outlined what it described as "fundamental British values" (FBV), making it a requirement…

In April 2015, the "Early Years Inspection Handbook" instructed inspectors to make a judgement on the effectiveness of leadership and management to actively promote British values in the settings. This contribution discusses the paradoxical position of fundamental British values within the cultures of education underpinning the…

This article examines the antecedents of the 'British Values' (democracy, rule of law, equality of opportunity, freedom of speech and the rights of all men and women to live free from persecution) which it is incumbent upon British schools to teach. But it also seeks to move the debate forward by pointing to the 'British Virtues' without which it…

In 2016, Britain voted to leave the European Union: over-65s were more than twice as likely to vote for Brexit as under-25s, amidst campaign rhetoric steeped in colonial nostalgia. This article explores how this generation was taught in many English state schools to imagine Britain's place in the world during a period of rapid decolonisation from…

Fundamental British Values are regarded as a tool in the UK counter-terror strategy to support the Prevent Duty (2015) of steering pupils away from extremism. 'Fundamental British Values' is understood here as a label, developed in the wake of the 'end of multiculturalism' rhetoric, and is promoted as a new form of discourse for schools. I explore…

This paper examines how politics have shaped Turkish Cypriot educational institutions and school buildings in Cyprus, focusing on the British colonial period (1878-1960). Unlike other British colonies, Cyprus enjoyed considerable autonomy on educational matters in the early decades of British occupation. During this period education, which was…

The Singapore Polytechnic underwent a period of both rupture and adaptation as British advisers worked with the post-colonial government to facilitate technical education reform and Singapore's transition to a nation-state. Established in 1958 and based on the metropolitan model, the Singapore Polytechnic constituted an imperial project for…

The UK's 2016 decision to exit the European Union and the discussion surrounding it indicate that public understanding of British identity has important consequences, one way or another. Defining British identity will be an important task in the years to come. The UK government not long ago provided some guidance on the matter of British identity…

This resource gives students and teachers a greater understanding of identity, membership, citizenship, and belonging in the UK. In a time when debates about national identity and integration have taken on increased urgency, Facing History and Ourselves introduces, "Identity and Belonging in a Changing Great Britain". It reveals…

Participants in the public discourse pertaining to religious education and education for citizenship in English schools between 1934 and 1944 included many "Christian educationists". They advocated a conservative and elitist form of education for citizenship as taught through indirect training, Arnoldian public school traditions and…