The Department for Education (DfE) commissioned this high-level research in December 2024 to understand, through analysis of the 2023-24 yearly reports, how safeguarding partnerships have developed their approaches in the past year. Yearly reports must be published in accordance with the requirements set out in the Children Act 20041 and Working…

The Department for Education (DfE) is committed to minimising the use of reasonable force, including physical restraint and other restrictive practices in all schools in England, including special schools and alternative provision. This work programme will include updating the 'Use of reasonable force' guidance (2013) to provide school staff with…

Many national education systems incorporate a central inspectorate tasked with visiting, evaluating and reporting on the performance of schools. The judgements produced by inspectors often play a part in the way that schools are held to account and constitute an important source of data in their own right. Inspection reports are therefore of great…

An interpretive narrative inquiry approach is adopted to shed light on the improvement agendas applied in a specific set of coastal schools. The unifying thread between the focal cases is that they had been designated as failures and made notorious through association with their communities' tainted reputations. These schools feature in a report…

The Commission on Religious Education's Final Report, "Religion and Worldviews: The Way Forward, a national plan for RE" (https://www.commissiononre.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Final-Report-of-the-Commission-on-RE.pdf, 2018), has been given a mixed reception by advocates and leaders of Catholic education in England and Wales. The…

In 2017 the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of the much misunderstood and maligned Plowden Report went unnoticed -- a pity for those sharing progressive values, needed much more now than in the 1960s. In this article the author argues that the spirit of the report and its underlying values need restating in the current climate.

While speaking, reading and writing are identified in the Newbolt Report as components of English and are still acknowledged as such one hundred years later, Reading Aloud, which the Report ranks alongside them, is no longer accorded any prominence. The Newbolt Report connects Reading Aloud with literature and announces it as a method of…

The notion of worldview figures prominently in the recent discourse surrounding Religious Education (RE) in English schools following the publication of the final report of the Commission on Religious Education (CoRE) in 2018. This article reflects on the veracity of this initiative. It begins with an autobiographical reflection on the impact of…

This guidance suggests actions universities can take to tackle antisemitism. It builds on the principles of our "Changing the Culture" framework and outlines how the recommendations in our tackling racial harassment guidance may be applied to antisemitic racial harassment. Antisemitism -- prejudice or hatred towards Jews -- is wrong and…

This article reports on an analysis of reflections by students and staff following their experience of a student-staff partnership which conducted a case study exploring student mental health in higher education. During the primary project, several students commented on the benefits of the partnership. Furthermore, following completion of the…

In today's age of information, the use of data is very powerful in making informed decisions. Data analytics is a field that is interested in identifying and interpreting trends and patterns within big data to make data-driven decisions. We focus on informal statistical inference and data modeling as a means of developing students' data analytics…

In this article we offer reflections on the final report of the Commission on Religious Education (CoRE) that was published in England in 2018. We expose and problematise the prominent place of understanding in the report, not only as an educational method, but also the underlying world view of the report itself, a world view which we characterise…

This article contributes a historically reflective critical exploration of the relationship between English state education and social class. In analysing selected historically significant policy documents, the article provides insights into the changing dynamics of social class educational inequality in England. Specifically, how across the life…

In November 2015 the House of Commons Education Committee launched an enquiry into the purpose and quality of education in England. Among the written submissions was one from this author on behalf of the Cambridge Primary Review Trust. At the request of "FORUM" an edited version appears in the journal. The submission's centrepiece was…

The centenary of the publication of "The Teaching of English in England" provides an opportunity to consider the current National Curriculum for English in England from a historical perspective. This paper reports on a hermeneutic study that explores the humanist values underpinning Newbolt's Report and how they shape the creative…