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Researching grant‐maintained schools 1
David Halpin,John Fitz +1 more
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The 1988 Education Reform Act allows schools to opt out of LEA control and become 'grant-maintained' by central government as discussed by the authors, which has provoked considerable controversy.Abstract:
The 1988 Education Reform Act allows schools to ‘opt out’ of LEA control and become ‘grant‐maintained’ by central government. This measure has provoked considerable controversy. Its supporters claim that it will increase parental choice and improve standards; its critics say that it will further fragment the education service and reintroduce selection. This paper examines the background to the measure and discusses five research tasks for those, like the authors, who are concerned to assess its significance and monitor and evaluate its effects. 1. This paper was first presented at an Education Reform Act Research Network Seminar held in the Faculty of Education, Bristol Polytechnic, on Thursday 30 November 1989. Parts of the paper draw on the authors’ research proposal to the Economic and Social Research Council, J. Fitz and D. Halpin (1989), and work subsequently supported by one of its grants (Award No. R0000231899). A number of colleagues, including Geoff Whitty, Len Barton, Gill Crozier, Paul Croll, I...read more
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The ‘Policy Cycle’: A Ball by Ball Account
Richard Hatcher,Barry Troyna +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the efficacy of Ball's theoretical eclecticism, highlighting the incompatibility in his readings, and application, of certain social and political theorists, and reappraising some of his own research findings.
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Implementation research and education policy: Practice and prospects
TL;DR: In this paper, a brief guide to implementation research and some of the conceptual and methodological issues raised by the 1988 Education Reform Act is presented. But it does not consider the issues posed for education policy studies in a context where the "centre" is connected to a dispersed and differentiated periphery.
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Researching politics and the politics of research: recent qualitative studies in the UK
Meg Maguire,Stephen J. Ball +1 more
TL;DR: A review of recent qualitative studies in the UK can be found in this paper, where the authors highlight the tensions involved in the contemporary setting and highlight that the insertion of a market ideology into educational matters has resulted in specific policy outcomes with damaging consequences for the welfare state.
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Researching the impact of education policy: difficulties and discontinuities
TL;DR: In this article, a number of empirical investigations and critical analyses of the effects of such policies at ground-level are presented, and the authors argue that they contain a series of difficulties, both in themselves and in relation to existing explorations and explanations within the sociology of education.
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From a ‘Sketchy Policy’ to a ‘Workable Scheme’: the DES and grant‐maintained schools
John Fitz,David Halpin +1 more
TL;DR: This article examined how initial proposals for grant-maintained (GM) schools were developed by the Department of Education and Science (DES) as it took them forward into legislation and concluded that these have to be interpreted in light of the government's ideological commitment to bring "market principles" to the education service.
References
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Book
Governing Education: A Sociology of Policy Since 1945
Andrew McPherson,Charles D. Raab +1 more
TL;DR: This article described the government's attempts to control educational changes since 1945 and the resulting implications for contemporary explanations of schooling and the state in Britain, and the winner of the SCSE Best Education Book award of that year.