The number and range of problems associated with academies and "free" schools is worrying and can be attributed to the lack of ability of central Government to oversee the increasingly fragmented education provision. In this article, the author looks at just a few of those problems which have been reported since she started to log them…

In a rapidly changing external environment, for many universities, restructuring of the academic organisation is the most important leadership challenge. In this article, the author provides an analysis of academic restructuring in UK universities. Using the "Commonwealth Universities Yearbook", he looked at the changes in academic…

This article analyses patterns of post 2000 governance in Israel's education system. Drawing upon literature on educational regimes, governance in neo-liberal societies (for example, the UK and the USA), law-based educational reform and policy analysis, this study sets out to inquire how Israel's system was governed with minimal legislation for 60…

The swift nature of school reform enacted by the new Conservative-led coalition government has sparked debate over the future of state education in Britain. While the government rhetoric suggests a decisive break with past policies, there is evidence to suggest that these reforms constitute the next stage of a long revolution in education reform,…

This study explores what academics in one major university in Great Britain (The Great Western University) perceive interdisciplinary research (IDR) to be, and in doing so, differentiates it from associated concepts, such as multidisciplinary research and transdisciplinary research, found in the research literature. This study is important because…

The paper explores pedagogies of surveillance and counter pedagogies of radical democracy and co-operative practice and their implications for continuing professional development (CPD). Teachers have had to respond to an increasing naturalisation of surveillance in schools. However, this naturalisation can be countered by drawing upon the emergent…

This article explores the context of the period following the Education Reform Act 1988 in terms of the efforts by successive governments to raise academic standards. These attempts are illustrated by discussion of the impact of the introduction of market forces and parental choice, a centralised National Curriculum and associated assessment…

Following his previous article in this journal on the centralisation of power in English education post the 1988 Education Reform Act ("The Era of Centralisation", "FORUM", 50[2], pp. 255-261), the author considers the apparent turn to school autonomy central to the Conservative Educational Revolution. He argues that the power…

For many years, England has been the epitome of high-stakes accountability, often playing leapfrog with the USA. It represents an extreme of centralized surveillance, with schools organized as a quasi-market and supervised through a punitive combination of external inspection, the use of test data to name and shame schools, and ultimately closure…

While networking is becoming an increasingly popular school improvement strategy with high levels of success, there is little research that shows the challenges school leaders face as they enter into these new relationships. This article supplements current literature by providing documentation and analysis of some internal leadership…

This article reviews the current state of education reform in the United Kingdom and uses the BBC film "The Choir to explore alternative ways of improving the quality of learning and teaching in schools.

This article raises the question, "Is the rapid expansion of the school Academies programme consistent with the Government's policy of enabling socially disadvantaged local communities to participate in making decisions that shape the quality of their lives?" (Contains 1 note.)

Analysis of school improvement projects in Britain and elsewhere identified successful practices: vision, extended view of leadership, program-context match, multilevel approaches, and focus on student outcomes. Projects failed when contextual factors were ignored, schools were treated the same, or single-level perspectives were adopted.…

This paper reports on a study that took place in a faculty of humanities and social sciences at a UK university. The institution had recently undergone a radical restructure and the vision for the future presented by the new senior management team highlighted internationalization as one of four major areas for growth. The internationalization…

This qualitative, historical study, based on interviews with participants and archive data, reconstructs the extended process through which three successive heads contributed to the transformation of the Felix Holt School. Over a 10-year period the roll rose from 560 to 1109, while the percentage of pupils achieving 5 GCSE higher grades increased…