This paper is one of two that bring together a range of education scholars to consider how education might be for democracy in a time of complex challenges facing twenty-first century societies. In this paper, scholars from Australia, Japan and the United Kingdom consider how sites of formal and informal education can respond to multiple unfolding…

This article highlights the current collapse of adult learning opportunities and the key importance of adult learning to a new public education in a fast-changing world, and makes practical proposals for Labour's National Education Service.

The UK's neoliberal polity is undermining the very public institutions it requires to resolve its most pressing collective predicaments, in education especially, with its essential role of enabling society to learn the virtues and practices of cooperative enquiry necessary for remaking the common good. The author begins by understanding the nature…

This paper explores the ethics of the mathematics teacher, starting from the ethical obligations that all human being and professionals share towards those in their care. Most notably this involves a duty of care for students, since teachers can be the most influential persons after their parents. The ethics of mathematics teaching is analysed as…

In this article the author remarks on the difference in genesis between the National Health Service (NHS) and comprehensive schools. She argues that we need to develop a clear national understanding of the purpose of schools in society in order to make all-ability schools as popular as the NHS. Finally, she suggests a set of principles upon which…

This paper explores the ethics of the mathematics teacher, starting from the ethical obligations that all human being and professionals share towards those in their care. Most notably this involves a duty of care for students, since teachers can be the most influential persons after their parents. The ethics of mathematics teaching is analysed as…

To date research and scholarship on privatisation in education lacks critical depth and intensity. Many accounts have been largely descriptive, focusing on how privatisation takes places, or on the threat of privatisation, or its insertion within education systems. Furthermore, work on educational commodification has been substantially dissociated…

In Britain in the period 1760-1845 the debate on the relative merits of public (school) versus private (home) education remained unresolved and was vigorously debated in many media. It was in this same period that children's literature began to flourish: a much wider variety of books were published in much greater numbers. The new children's…

The modernisation of education and other public services remains a major political objective of the current Coalition government in the UK. This paper focuses on "Tory Modernisation 2.0," a blueprint for the second stage of the public sector reform produced by the Conservative pressure group, Bright Blue. From the critical theory…

In the cold war, the United Kingdom government devised a number of public education campaigns to inform citizens about the precautions that they should undertake in the event of a nuclear attack. One such campaign, Protect and Survive, was released to the general public and media in May 1980. The negative publicity this publication received is…

Twenty students from different educational backgrounds within the UK were interviewed to investigate how well they considered their secondary school education had prepared them for the educational and social demands of an "elite" university and life within its most traditional colleges. The study asked them how they perceived students…

The objective of this study is to improve the situation of the general education curriculum in Saudi Arabia, in line with global aspirations in this area and a proposal to implement international education issues in general education curricula. The study was centered on answering the following questions: What is the reality of issues of…

Policy pursued by Education Secretary Michael Gove promises to bring about the first national teachers' strike for a generation. This article reviews the nature and effect of Gove's intensification of academisation, and outlines ways in which edu-business is involved.

Educational policies and practices are influenced by cultural, political, and economic factors, and this is also true of specialized educational approaches such as gifted education. Factors such as a country's cultural tendency toward egalitarianism or meritocracy, whether the political system is centralized or decentralized, and the degree to…

This commentary explores the so-called global "crisis" in education and the corresponding pressures and moves to "reform" education, and in particular, public education. The myths underpinning and driving these developments are examined. Supposed problems with (public) education and proposed solutions are explored. The…