There has been a growing amount of research on low-fee private schools in less economically developed countries, but much less on low-fee private schools in developed countries. Yet, low-fee private schools have also been a recent feature of the educational landscape in countries such as Canada, the USA, Australia and Great Britain. This paper…

Recent UK policy has emphasised both the development of socially mixed communities and the creation of balanced school intakes. In this paper, we use a case study of an area of mixed tenure in eastern England to explore policy in practice and the extent to which mechanisms of segregation impact on both the creation of socially mixed neighbourhoods…

This paper addresses some particular aspects of the complex intersections between race and social class. It is based upon data collected as part of a two-year Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded project exploring the "Educational Strategies of the Black Middle Classes" (BMC). ("The Educational Strategies of the Black…

The creation of multiple academies and the introduction of free schools across England is a policy-borrowing initiative that has had much debate from various actors in society. Many criticisms have been levelled at the government's plans and many individuals and organisations have called for them not to come on stream, but instead for the…

This article presents a review on three books that have been published from positions of considerable authority on educational developments in the USA and England over the past two decades. All of the authors have considerable knowledge, not only of policy making at the top but also of the ways in which this interacts with and impacts upon…

Research into parents' secondary-school choices suggests that many middle-class parents are keen to secure a middle-class peer group for their children. This article reports the findings of a small-scale, qualitative study into whether a similar phenomenon exists at primary-school level and, if so, why. In-depth interviews were conducted with 56…

This paper aims to examine the experiences of pupils and professionals who are affected by actual or threatened permanent exclusion (what used to be called "being expelled") from school. An ethnographic study based on the writer's employment within secondary schools and the Children's Services department of an urban local authority in…

This article restates the needs for a comprehensive system of education to be intolerant of "ability"-thinking, and wonders why so few government ministers are prepared to reveal the type of school to which they send their children.

Since articles on school choice naturally tend to concentrate on outcomes from various "initiatives," they tend to offer little by way of theoretical advance in the manner in which choice policy is understood or in the way school choice is actualized within families and how students are thought to benefit from it. Against a political…

Our purpose is to document convergences and divergences in the mode of institutional regulation of the education systems in five European countries (Belgium, England, France, Hungary and Portugal). On the national level, partially convergent policies create, to varying degrees and with different temporal rhythms, variants of a post-bureaucratic…

This article is a contribution to the debate in England about the Coalition Government's policy to encourage interested parties to set up Swedish inspired Free Schools. The article argues, that in order to understand how Free Schools in Sweden operate, it is important to see them in the context of the Swedish school system. The article presents…

The level of fee remissions offered by private schools bears upon the scope for relying on private schools to provide public benefit. Analyses of education voucher systems have generally ignored the possibility that they will partially crowd out school-financed fee remissions. Moreover, variation in fee remissions between private schools may be…

This paper explores the introduction of market-oriented reforms into school-based education in England and Finland. The contexts into which reforms were introduced differed, with a fully comprehensive system being in place in Finland but not in England; the motives were also different; and different trajectories have since been followed. Whilst…

In this paper, we study a high profile case--the introduction of academy schools into the English secondary school sector--that has allowed schools to gain more autonomy and flexible governance by changing their school structure. We consider the impact of an academy school conversion on their pupil intake and pupil performance and possible…

Parental choice of secondary schools is central to the Labour Government's education agenda. This article draws on work from an Economic and Social Research Council funded study considering teachers' and students' perspectives and experiences of choice in two locales. Two distinct ways in which choice operates are identified: overt choice, which…