A new film explores the UK's most radical state secondary school. XP school in Doncaster, a disadvantaged area of England, is putting kindness at the heart of its school culture, and reaping outstanding student engagement, attainment, attendance and behaviour. Its approach is in marked contrast to a recent tendency in UK schools to focus on tough…

The 1988 Education Reform Act (ERA) changed the direction of statutory education in England by introducing a culture of competition between schools. A market in education was created that placed school against school in neighbouring communities with the aim of the 'fittest' ones surviving while the weaker ones failed and closed. By the end of the…

The article reports on the efforts to establish a secondary school, set up within the free school legislation, to be comprehensive, serving the diverse population of the city in which it is located. This was achieved through a policy which admitted students from four 'nodes' across the city and gave priority to children with special educational…

The following two articles are taken from the FORUM archive. First published in the autumn of 1981, they offer a restatement of comprehensive principles in the context of the educational policies of the incoming Conservative government from 1979. The first thing Margaret Thatcher's education secretary, Mark Carlisle, did was to repeal Labour…

This article reports on a short film being made for the Edge Foundation by the author. It records the innovative approach to learning taken by two comprehensive schools serving areas of high deprivation. Work in these schools integrates knowledge and skills, and offers a context in which all students, whatever their perceived 'ability', make…

The school system in England has undergone significant change following the introduction of the academies policy and the subsequent mass conversion of secondary schools to academies. In this article we address two issues arising from this process of academisation, namely equality of opportunity and local democratic accountability, both of which…

Fleshing out the definition of comprehensive education to include vital issues related to the act of teaching, this article considers reforms to be undertaken by practitioners alongside the political legislation required to achieve a fully comprehensive system of secondary schools. The effects of selection, such as the widening attainment gap, the…

A detailed analysis of "Hansard" transcripts was undertaken to explore the dialogue used in parliamentary debates and committee meetings where reference was made to grammar schools between October 2015 to March 2019. During this period, the first new grammar school for fifty years had been approved, along with the establishment of the…

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…

One of the least recorded and analysed aspects of English and Welsh education is the personal experience of millions of people attending secondary modern schools following the 1944 Education Act. Since 2012, Emma-Louise Williams and Michael Rosen have hosted a moderated blog for self-selecting personal testimony from anyone involved. So far, some…

As moves grow once more to expand selective education in the United Kingdom, this is a short report of two lively and well-attended debates at the universities of Manchester and Cambridge in the early part of 2015. Both debates were resoundingly won by those arguing against a return to a divisive system based on the 11+. Instead, audiences…

Scores of articles in "FORUM" have engaged for almost sixty years with a range of substantive issues relating to the grammar/secondary modern school divide, and to the movement for comprehensive reform. These articles constitute an invaluable resource for campaigners and historians. Highlighted and introduced here are half a dozen such…

Since September 2015 the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted) has introduced major changes to its inspection procedures and expectations. These are embodied in its handbook for school inspection. Ofsted claims more than it can deliver; in particular it makes impossible demands on its inspectors--in terms of applying both evaluation criteria…

This article, an extract from the author's book "Head on the Block," describes how the purpose of the school examination system has changed such that now it is to evaluate the performance of teachers rather than the performance of their students. It highlights some of the negative effects of school league tables--in particular, how the…

This article argues that secondary school improvement in England, when viewed as a system, has become an impossible endeavour. This arises from the conflation of improvement with effectiveness, judged by a narrow range of outcome measures and driven by demands that all schools should somehow be above average. The expectation of comparable…