This research explored the attitudes and experiences of 10 primary school parent governors whose schools (for pupils aged 5 to 11) were located in a disadvantaged South Wales Valley community to understand how they developed strategies to mitigate the effect of socioeconomic disadvantage and identify the benefits that accrue from a close…

Recent work suggests that young children develop strong intuitions about inequitable resource distribution when it arises due to fair and unfair procedures (merit, structural, or random chance). Here, we investigated an understudied form of inequality: one that arises due to a single suboptimal choice (referred to as self-inflicted inequality).…

Permanent school exclusions continue to be a topic of keen interest to UK schools and policymakers. The debate over the practice has recently intensified owing to the perceived negative outcomes directly resulting from the exclusion event. Research has indeed shown that pupils who have been permanently excluded are at a greater risk for a variety…

This study investigated the long-term impact of the science writing heuristic (SWH) approach on students' science achievement, focusing on differences between low and high socioeconomic status (SES) groups. Through a longitudinal design, students were divided into control and treatment (at least 1 year of SWH) groups. Polynomial growth mixed…

Integrating drone and geospatial technologies with participatory techniques offers a promising approach to culturally responsive STEM education. However, these areas are rarely combined in existing literature. Drone and geospatial education for youth generally focuses on technical skills, while participatory methods in youth-led initiatives often…

The Foundation Phase is a pioneering early years education reform that was introduced across Wales in 2008. Based on a progressive, child-centred design, this reform aimed to improve educational outcomes in Wales and reduce achievement gaps for young learners. This paper reports a number of findings from a mixed-methods study that assessed the…

South African communities may be viewed in three categories -- rural, semi-urban and urban. These communities are unequal in terms of infrastructure and economic opportunities, among other things. The inequities among the communities extend to schools as microcosms of communities. Schools in urban areas enjoy inter alia better infrastructure,…

Despite a large earnings premium for bachelor's degree completion in general, graduates from low-income families earn substantially less than graduates from high-income families. While prior research has documented the role of college quality and major choice in explaining these gaps, we examine undermatching on a different margin: the first…

Substantial shares of college students, and especially those from minoritized and marginalized backgrounds, struggle to meet their daily material needs, hindering their well-being and ability to attain college success. In response, colleges have implemented an array of campus basic needs services. However, prior research is fragmented and tends to…

Over the last few decades global attention on and access to early childhood education and care (ECEC) has surged. In England, successive governments have expanded funded ECEC based on evidence of its positive effects on children's development. The Study of Early Education and Development (SEED) is a longitudinal survey which tracked nearly 6,000…

The EdTech sector has seen rapid growth in the past decade, further catalysed by the Covid-19 pandemic that required many teachers and schools to turn to technology-based solutions to support learning over periods of school closures (Karboul, 2020). Since the 2020s, over two-thirds of schools in England have increased their use of technology,…

Employability agendas now pervade the higher education landscape of many Western nations. In Australia, employability as both a discourse and related set of practices has recently reached fever-pitch as a result of the "Job-ready graduates" policy reforms, which have generated an image of an 'ideal' job-ready graduate who selects a…

This study investigates intervention strategies aimed at enhancing student participation in blended learning and teaching, particularly in low-resource environments. With the increasing adoption of blended learning methodologies, many students face challenges related to access and affordability of technological resources, which can hinder their…

In 2011, the Australian Government embarked on an equitybadged, 'needs-based' school funding reform accompanied by national school autonomy reforms devolving decisions about resourcing, staffing and service design and delivery to school principals. In the second of three articles examining national policy impacts on English as an additional…

This study sought to gain insight into teacher perceptions of their ability to improve a high poverty urban school. The school selected for this study came from a purposive sampling of urban schools that had exited from improvement required status and had then demonstrated gains in student academic performance in subsequent years. Four teachers…