In this chapter, we report on the experiences of learning English and identity negotiation of 14 Syrian adult Muslim refugees, both male and female and a variety of ages, recently arrived in the UK and enrolled at an ESOL college. Drawing on a range of data sources, we explore how the Syrian informants' religious identities acted both as a…

"Evaluating the relationship between physical education, sport and social inclusion", published in "Educational Review" in 2005 was concerned formally with an analysis of the potential role of sport and physical education (PE) within the social policy agenda of Blair's New Labour Government. It was also a contribution to a…

Teaching students aspiring to media work presents the educator with a fundamental dilemma. On the one hand, students require the knowledge and skills necessary to find and sustain employment within existing industry practices, systems and structures. On the other hand, students need to be prepared for the uncertain and shifting nature of media…

The broad aim of this paper is to track the evolution of adult literacy policy in the UK across three decades, highlighting convergences between policy phases and the promotion of democratic learning spaces. It is anchored onto the argument that, although it is generally accepted that democratic learning spaces are perceived as beneficial to adult…

This article examines the long-run effect of higher education, measured in average years of tertiary schooling, on the level and growth rate of national per capita income. It uses an improved dataset on educational attainments which not only reduces measurement error but also overcomes data comparability issues and allows us to estimate the…

This article provides evidence and insight on the demand-side of graduate employment and selection through an investigation of employers' conceptions of what constitutes hireable and employable graduates. Drawing on evidence from a qualitative study with a diverse range of employers in the UK, the article shows that employers understand graduates'…

Interest in higher education institutions (HEIs) as instruments for development has increased in recent years. The main objective of this paper is to address the contribution of HEIs to development through their missions, models, and challenges. With this purpose, we perform a historical analysis and characterise higher-education systems through…

The fundamental study of physics has played a crucial role in helping to understand natural phenomena and biological processes throughout history. However, physics as a discipline has not advanced at an equal pace around the globe. In sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), physics research faces major challenges including gaps in human capital, infrastructural…

This article explores the development of a comprehensive and systemic approach to entrepreneurship education at a research-intensive university in the United Kingdom. The exploration is based on two key conceptual challenges: (a) taking entrepreneurship to mean something more than new business creation and (b) differentiating between…

Exploiting information on foreign qualifications for the first time, we estimate the returns to obtaining UK higher degrees for foreign graduates who migrated to the UK in their 20s. Accounting for direct measures of foreign and UK qualifications and country-of-origin fixed effects, we find substantial returns to obtaining UK (higher) degrees on…

We quantify the returns to higher education for degree disciplines, namely 'professional' degrees, Medicine/Dentistry, Law, Accountancy and Psychology, within the UK from 2007 to 2015. We estimate the returns to education in the form of employment and wage premia associated with each subject. Our analysis contributes to the existing literature on…

The UK has experienced a sharp decline overall in the uptake of languages since 2004, as evidenced by the falling number of entries for GCSE and A Level examinations in languages. At a time when the UK government seeks to reset its global economic relationships as part of its vision of 'Global Britain', such a decline is likely to have negative…

To date research and scholarship on privatisation in education lacks critical depth and intensity. Many accounts have been largely descriptive, focusing on how privatisation takes places, or on the threat of privatisation, or its insertion within education systems. Furthermore, work on educational commodification has been substantially dissociated…

Performance-based funding (PBF) for public colleges and universities is increasingly prevalent worldwide, as a part of a broader pattern of marketisation in public education. This study focused on developing an empirical view of how, and in what contexts, policy makers use the concepts of neoliberal economics to design and support PerformanceBased…

The OECD Career Readiness project makes use of quantitative evidence to identify how teenage career-related activities and attitudes are linked with better adult employment outcomes. Review of multiple national longitudinal datasets confirms that teenage experiences of the workplace through part-time working and volunteering are routinely…