The paper focuses on the importance of Internationalisation at Home, access and support mechanisms which are provided and co-created by students and university departments to encourage sanctuary scholarship. The paper gives particular attention to activities that encourage meaningful interaction with local communities and widen international…

This paper systematically identifies, maps and evaluates specific types of provision for autistic students published on university websites at 120 institutions throughout the UK. Within these data we identify trends in relation to geographical region, university group, and the Teaching Excellence Framework rating. We employ Nancy Fraser's theory…

This paper aims to provide a tentative roadmap for ensuring that higher education policy makers and practitioners are apprised of what might be done to advance a concept of socially just assessment praxis. It extends current thinking around the notion of social justice approaches to assessment by further developing the conceptual framework…

This paper explores how Norah Fry's concerns of 100 years ago have been relevant to the work of the Norah Fry Research Centre. In 1898, Norah Fry began to investigate the social conditions and educational needs of people with learning disabilities living in Bristol and Somerset. In reporting her findings to a Royal Commission in 1905, she set out…

The paper draws on the Wolf (2015) report ("Heading for the Precipice: Can Further and Higher Education Funding Policies Be Sustained?") and other quantitative data, specifically that derived from HEFCE's Participation of Local Area (POLAR) classifications. In addition it explores key literature and debates that associate higher…

Since the neoliberal reforms to British education in the 1980s, education debates have been saturated with claims to the efficacy of the market as a mechanism for improving the content and delivery of state education. In recent decades with the expansion and "massification" of higher education, widening participation (WP) has acquired an…

In the UK, as elsewhere, the use of "contextual" data has been strongly advocated in order to inform undergraduate admissions decision-making. More than a third of UK universities currently take the socioeconomic or other background context of undergraduate applicants' attainment into account when deciding whom to shortlist, interview,…

Comparisons with other parts of the United Kingdom have played an important role in justifying decisions made in relation to student funding in Scotland since devolution. This article considers first what comparative claims have been made for the content of student funding policy in four areas: fees, debt, total living cost support and…

Marketisation and standards-based reforms are the two policy levers that have been promoted in education systems across much of the world in the past quarter of a century. The claim that is made on their behalf is that these mechanisms are the means whereby longstanding inequalities in the access to educational goods can be ameliorated. This paper…

This paper explores the social justice implications of two, "linked", governance developments which have been instrumental in reshaping many education systems throughout the world: the "privatising" and "globalising" of education (Klees, Stromquist, & Samoff, 2012). We argue that such education governance…

This paper first draws on the political philosophy of R.H. Tawney to outline some universal principles for the provision of socially just education. It then moves onto a more pragmatic approach, analysing where the injustices lie in contemporary British education and outlining policies and practices that are socially just, not in an instrumental…

Massification of higher education has not been able to solve societal issues in the UK to the extent originally envisaged. Whilst universities have achieved increased student numbers and widened participation from various societal groups, those coming from socially disadvantaged groups can still often have a very different experience of university…

There has been renewed policy interest in intergenerational social mobility as a route to a fairer society, but in ignoring the sociological evidence this article will argue that the current policy agenda will fail to achieve its goal. Based on an analysis of "social congestion", "social exclusion", and "social…

Zero exclusion schools are possible. More realistically, clusters of schools, with support, coordination and brokering by the local authority (LA) or through local partnerships, can organise and sustain an inclusive educational community. Exclusion from school is a quiet mockery of "Every Child Matters." Even with the coalition…

Economic inequality is high and rising in a number of developed countries, including in the United Kingdom and the United States. There are growing concerns that this may have negative implications for equality of opportunity, and the extent to which social disadvantage is transmitted across generations. It is widely believed that providing…