Richard Riddell

Government policy, stratification and urban schools: a commentary on the Five‐year strategy for children and learners

The DfES’s Five‐year strategy for children and learners sets out the intentions of the Labour Government for its third term. Where necessary, its provisions will be subject to legislation in 2005. This article argues that the Five‐year strategy, like much education policy since 1997, ignores important reasons for inequality of educational outcome in urban areas. Moreover, it may make matters worse. And its prime emphasis on school improvement measures will ensure that staff will be blamed if their schools falter.The DfES’s Five‐year strategy for children and learners sets out the intentions of the Labour Government for its third term. Where necessary, its provisions will be subject to legislation in 2005. This article argues that the Five‐year strategy, like much education policy since 1997, ignores important reasons for inequality of educational outcome in urban areas. Moreover, it may make matters worse. And its prime emphasis on school improvement measures will ensure that staff will be blamed if their schools falter.

Changing Policy Levers under the Neoliberal State: Realising Coalition Policy on Education and Social Mobility.

Taking recent policy on education and social mobility as a working example, this article examines developments in the mechanisms for realising policy over the past ten years, as indicative of changes in the neoliberal state. This initial analysis suggests that, despite similarities in the process of policy formation before and after the General Election of 2010, the changing nature of the policy levers chosen by the Coalition Government represents a move from a rationalist, directing state towards a more hybrid but nevertheless neoliberal model. The Government still intends to ‘steer’ the education system through data, however, but in a more developed market system with little supervision, its effects will be less predictable.

Special Educational Needs and Disabilities reforms 2014: SENCos’ perspectives of the first six months

The Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) reforms have been reported as the most significant reforms of their kind for over 30 years. Through the Children and Families Act 2014 the Government is seeking to effect cultural change regarding SEND. The SENCo is responsible for the operational and strategic aspects related to SEND provision within the school and as such could be considered a key implementer of the reforms. This article forms part of a PhD research project which is developing research within the area of SEND policy reform, through exploring and analysing the in-depth experience of the SENCo as a policy implementer during the first academic year post-reform. This article discusses the emerging themes from one of the wider data sets which sought to gather the views of SENCos six months after the introduction of SEND reforms and the SEND Code of Practice.

The curriculum and pedagogy of bottom strata schools

It is especially important that the classroom and school context are designed to enable these children to feel comfortable and to prepare them adequately for learning. The signs, symbois, rituals and significant rhythms of family and community life are likely to be quite different from those automatically assumed in the context of the school. In some bottom strata schools, there will be tens of different home languages, parts of the population will be transient and there will be significant numbers of children from what nationally are ethnic and religious minorities. In some of these schools, especially by the secondary phase, several minorities will often be represented. Even if there are no differences by ethnicity or religion, there will be differences by class and its associated expectations. These signs and symbols will be diverse, therefore, and for the children to make an effective mental transition from their lives outside school to learning inside, because they will be different, they will need to be carefully researched.

Is There a Need To Develop an Urban Pedagogy

As an urban educator, I feel that the debate about excellence in urban schools needs to be shifted from the compensatory to the developmental, with a focus on the strategies, skills and attributes that successful teachers bring to their work. This article therefore raises questions about whether there is a need to construct a specific pedagogy for the urban classroom and, correspondingly, whether there need to be specific characteristics of urban education leadership. It sets out a speculative agenda both for comment and as the basis for possible future research. It is based on my own professional experience as Director of Education in Bristol, an urban LEA whose schools’ performance is now fully ‘exposed’ to public scrutiny since the breaking up of the former County of Avon three years