This paper focuses on school choice and diversity in the UK (England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland) in historical context. Drawing on primary and secondary documentary sources it assesses continuity, change and divergence, before addressing existing diversity and school choice, and academic outcomes. The 1944 Education Act and associated…

"The Oxford Dictionary of English" defines authoritarianism as the enforcement or advocacy of strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom, as well as a lack of concern for the wishes or opinions of others. In this paper I argue that there are growing signs of a move towards more authoritarian practices and structures…

The Happiness Curriculum is made up of compulsory 45-minute daily lessons with the aim of developing mindfulness, critical thinking, reflection, and social-emotional skills among students in more than 1,000 government-run schools in Delhi, India. Three units--Exploring Happiness through Learning and Awareness; Experiencing Happiness in…

When a third-generation, British-born young Muslim student in a British state school says to researcher "I am a Muslim "first" …," it makes one think. What are the factors underpinning this statement? In a highly diverse multi-faith, multiethnic, multicultural society such as Britain, why does a young British Muslim student…

Schooling has been a site of harm for Indigenous people in settler colonial contexts, as a tool of dispossession, assimilation and separation from country and kin. However, schools have simultaneously been sites to work against this and build alternatives to settler colonial systems that nourish Indigenous futures. This article centers the…

O'Neill argues that the standard social democratic narrative of state schooling as a consensual, whole-of-society commitment to reduce educational inequalities across the system as a whole, for the collective well being of all, has been displaced by marketplace or commodity progressivism. He takes the position that reducing educational…

Teleconsultation is being increasingly used in schools to support children with disabilities; however, further evaluation of the impact of this practice is needed. This study describes a teleconsultation model used to provide educational support for students with visual impairments being educated in their local school districts and examines the…

The sign "institute" is the source of a family of ASL signs that are used to refer to residential schools for deaf children and to other institutions. The members of the "institute" sign family--although initialized--are well-established within the Deaf community and, importantly, are used to refer to highly-valued aspects of Deaf culture. This is…

This article explores the entanglement of gender, education and empire in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Habsburg period throughout the analysis of a unique institution: Sarajevo's Muslim Female School. Established at the very end of the nineteenth century, this pedagogical institution was the only school in Austria-Hungary specifically devoted…

This study examines the experiences of Latinas in state residential academies of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). Goals of this project focused on understanding their experiences and identifying factors leading to the decision to enroll, along with issues contributing to retention. These schools represent powerful opportunities…

In this article I will argue that New Zealand's Special Education 2000 (SE2000) policy demonstrates the way in which seemingly just and fair policies can lead to occurrences of injustice and unfairness towards some of those whom they impact. What this debate turns on is the justice of a policy which takes as its starting point the unquestioned…

In this paper, I estimate the effect of state school inputs on labor market returns to schooling. The method follows Card and Krueger (1992) and Heckman et al. (1996), but I extend their analysis in two ways. First, I correct state-level returns to schooling for selective migration, adapting a method from Dahl (2002). Second, I use more recent…

A common history curriculum was introduced for the first time in Northern Ireland schools in 1991, which attempted to bridge the longstanding gap between Catholic and state schools in this field. This paper outlines the various aspects of the crucial role played by a number of historians from all the major universities in Ireland, North and South,…

This contribution is an edited version of the "Alumni Lecture" organised by the Department of Education of the University of Oxford at Lady Margaret Hall on 15th September 2011. The article reviews the drift towards the centralisation of power in the way the schooling system is run, the conflict between a desire for equity in education…

This paper considers the potential role of schools and teachers in the character development of pupils aged 10-19. It is based largely on the views of 5207 pupils in England, drawn from 25 state schools, including five primaries. Data include document contents, interviews and surveys with pupils and their teachers. Pupil accounts suggest that…