Changes over time in social-class inequality of educational attainment have been shown by previous research to depend on whether attainment is measured absolutely or relatively. The pioneering work in this respect by Bukodi and Goldthorpe found that inequality has fallen when attainment is measured absolutely (for example, as the percentage…

This paper reflects on tensions and challenges in encouraging and enabling students to foreground their personal emotional material in the learning process, while this process itself remains embedded in the neoliberal subjectivities of the university, wider social contexts and the individual selves. We explore our teaching on a final year…

The UK continues to face a huge adult-literacy challenge, with a sizeable percentage of the UK adult population having very low literacy skills. In addition to highlighting the literacy challenge in the UK, this report shows these individuals experience negative impacts on personal relationships, wellbeing, health, and education, as well as a…

In this article we make an argument for the importance of embodied cultural capital in the generation of class advantage through private school students' access to Oxbridge. Private schools in England continue to reproduce advantage (Variyan 2019), however, establishing exactly how students are advantaged through private schooling is not…

This qualitative study explored the university experiences of 13 students from Gypsy, Roma, and Traveller (GRT) communities in England and Scotland. Using conceptual tools, informed by the work of Bourdieu, such as racialised habitus and racialised cultural capital, as well as Elias's work on established-outsider figurations we show that GRT…

We use detailed survey data linked to administrative records from secondary schools in England to investigate potential channels contributing to the socio-economic gap in post-compulsory educational aspirations. We investigate the role of experiences and attitudes including the provision of information, advice and guidance (IAG), bullying…

The accessibility of new media combined with emerging patterns of migration are challenging current definitions of community as we see a shift from close-knit face-to-face interactions to more diverse 'glocalized' networks that defines community as a social rather than a spatial dimension. These changes mean that social connections, and…

The COVID-19 pandemic not only affected the health of millions of people across the country, but the accompanying disruption to economic life had impacts on the financial wellbeing of many households. This has been compounded by an ensuing cost of living crisis, with energy bills and food prices rising rapidly. This briefing, analysing survey…

On average, groups of autistic individuals are more likely than groups of non-autistic individuals to exhibit unconventional conversational behaviours. We examined autistic and non-autistic children's social impressions of unconventional responding, as well as actual conversational behaviours in the same participants. Across two studies, 36…

Global education policy discourse is based on an unshakable belief that more and improved skills will promote economic prosperity, global competitiveness and social inclusion. In England, the Further Education and Skills sector (FES) has emerged as the vehicle to deliver these skills. However, the portrayal of FES as focusing primarily on…

A worldwide trend towards high levels of participation in higher education, paired with concerns about the post-university destinations of an increasing pool of graduates, have brought about two parallel phenomena: a process of sharp stratification in higher education and the growing relevance of postgraduate education as undergraduate study…

Forty years ago, leading communist educationalist and "FORUM" editor Brian Simon wrote a chapter entitled 'Why No Pedagogy in England?' In it, he argued that English education had failed to develop a science of learning, due to its class-divided history, and that the time was ripe for the development of such a science. This article…

This paper explores how, in what ways, and with what outcomes, deep structural transformations have reconstituted higher education in England, and are deeply implicated in the rise of authoritarian populism. We focus particularly on the ways in which our understandings and lived experiences of class, social mobility, meritocracy, social…

Brighton People's Theatre and Slung Low are at the forefront of the contemporary people's theatre movement in the United Kingdom. I examine these companies and the broader utility of a people's theatre, historically concerned with working class representation and/or performances of civic unity, in the context of economic austerity and inequality.…

Much research on adults in higher education has focused on issues of access and participation. As a result little is known about what happens to working-class students after leaving university even though employability is high on the agenda HE research on this topic in relation to such students is sparse. This research focuses on the voices of…