Official discourse in the United Kingdom and many other OECD countries emphasises education and training as a vehicle for social inclusion and economic growth. Accordingly, those who do not participate are seen to be at risk of long-term exclusion. However, interventions aimed at re-engaging young people not in education, employment or training…

This paper problematises the official discourse of economic competitiveness and social inclusion used by the 2007 Education and Skills Bill to justify the proposal to extend compulsory participation in education and training in England to the age of 18. Comparisons are drawn between this attempt to raise the age of compulsion and previous…

Further education (FE) colleges have long been regarded as the "Cinderella service" of English education. From their origins in the technical institutes of the nineteenth century, through the years of haphazard growth in the early twentieth century, and for most of the era of local authority control from 1944 until the early 1990s, FE…

This article examines the circumstances affecting creative teaching and learning within the specific context of English further education (FE)--a sector which has proved to be particularly fertile ground for performativity. Beginning with an analysis of notions of creativity in education and a description of the peculiar history and policy context…