The impact of academically selective schools on children's learning achievement has received global attention for decades. Despite the persistence of early-age selection in many countries, evidence of its impacts is mixed. This study analysed national achievement data covering 149,072 secondary school students and examined whether academically…

This paper interrogates international and domestic peer relations in two Australian schools and how they are shaped by structural, cultural and discursive dimensions of schooling. In particular, it analyses intercultural relations between domestic and international students in the context of policies promoting…

To ensure inclusion and equity in education, both teacher beliefs and practice are cited as influential. However, the connection between beliefs on student diversity and inclusive practice is often more complex than straightforward. Professional vision is theorised to be important in aligning beliefs with practice. Hence, this study investigates…

The current study investigated the spatial restructuring of the Swedish upper secondary school market over time, which happened as a consequence of school choice reform started in the early 1990s. The school choice reform enabled students to choose and attend schools (public or private) based on preference rather than residential area.…

This article examines digital data use within three Australian secondary schools, drawing on in-depth interviews with 50 school staff to explore tensions between: (i) established logics of "data-driven" schooling; and (ii) emerging "datafied" practices associated with digital systems, platforms and devices. Using sociological…

In this paper, the concepts of fabrication, subjectivation and performativity are mobilised in an analysis of varied exclusionary practices in England's schools with particular reference to "off-rolling", defined by the national school inspectorate as the illegal removal of a student from a school roll in order to enhance academic…

This paper describes and evaluates the "Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) in Schools" project; which was designed as a public health intervention to explore the extent to which focusing on schools as community assets can promote well-being for pupils, their school and the local community. The paper reviews the literature in…

With the global expansion of International Baccalaureate (IB), tensions have emerged between IB and the national education systems. This poses challenges to international education governance in many countries. In mainland China, IB programmes have rapidly become more prevalent since their introduction in 1991. However, new policies have imposed…

The deployment of Teaching Assistants (TAs) to support learning has been the subject of much critical debate, including the particular concern that TAs too often becomes a less skilled replacement for the teacher rather than acting as an additional source of support. Despite efforts to encapsulate the TA's contribution to learning within specific…

Views on how schools in Australia are responding to student victimisation were accessed through an on-line survey answered by 167 parents whose children were attending government schools in year levels 5 to 10. Some 50.2% of the parents believed that their children had been bullied at school. The perceptions and judgments of these parents were…

This paper uses the National Pupil Database to explore how grammar school opportunities vary among pupil groups, and how grammar school opportunities correlate with the Local Authorities (LAs), pupil backgrounds and attainment. The results show that grammar school admission is relatively fair, based on its selection criterion, but there is no…

Research suggests that children with behavioural difficulties exhibit "positive illusory bias" (PIB), in which they overestimate their competencies leading to a perception of self that is more positive than the perceptions held by their peers, parents or teachers. However, research to date has focused on children of elementary school age…

This paper examines how marginalisation of students in schools can be understood and addressed. Usually the term marginalisation is associated with existing categories, which mostly relate to policy formulations, and shape teachers' expectations of these groups as well as their practices. Using examples from the author's research, it is argued…

This article provides an analysis of the frequency with which the word radicalisation appears in 21 Ofsted reports published as a result of inspections carried out in some Birmingham schools following the "Trojan Horse" affair. The technique of key-words-in-context was employed to study the range of its uses in the corpus of the reports.…

This paper investigates differences in approaches to learning and teaching English as a second language (ESL) as reported by 324 mixed-ability Grade 7 Hong Kong ESL students and 37 ESL secondary school teachers with different backgrounds. Information about participants' perceived approaches to learning/teaching English were collected through a…