Educational advantage and employability of UK university graduates

In the UK, the majority of university students specialise and study just one subject at bachelor degree level, commonly known in the UK as a single honours degree. However, nearly all British universities will permit students if they wish to study two or even three subjects, so-called joint or combined honours degrees, internationally known as a double major. The purpose of this paper is to explore whether educational advantage, measured by the “Participation of Local Areas” (POLAR) classification, correlated with rates of graduate destinations for joint and single honours graduates. This study focused particularly on Russell Group and Post-92 Universities. The authors analysed the complete data set provided from the Higher Education Statistics Agency Destination of Leavers from the Higher Education survey, and combined this with data from the POLAR4 quintiles, which aggregate geographical regions across the UK based on the proportion of its young people that participate in higher education. The data were analysed to establish whether there was a difference in the highly skilled graduate employability of the joint honours students, focusing particularly on Russell Group and Post-92 Universities, in order to build on previous published work. Single honours and joint honours graduates from higher participation POLAR4 quintiles were more likely to be in a highly skilled destination. However at both the Russell Group and the Post-92 universities, respectively, there was no trend towards a smaller highly skilled destinations gap between the honours types for the higher quintiles. For the highest POLAR4 quintile, the proportion of joint honours graduates was substantially higher at the Russell Group than at Post-92 universities. Furthermore, in any quintile, there were proportionately more joint honours graduates from the Russell Group, compared with single honours graduates, and increasingly so the higher the quintile. This study focused on joint honours degrees in the UK where the two or three principal subjects fall into different Joint Academic Coding System (JACS) subject areas, i.e. the two or three subjects are necessarily diverse rather than academically cognate. This excluded the class of joint honours degrees where the principal subjects lie within the same JACS subject area, i.e. they may be closer academically, although still taught by different academic teams. However, the overall proportion of joint honours graduates identified using the classification was in line with the UCAS (2017) data on national rates of combined studies acceptances. All Russell Group graduates, irrespective of their POLAR4 quintile, were far more likely to be in a highly skilled destination than single or joint honours graduates of Post-92 universities. Even the lowest quintile graduates of the Russell Group had greater rates of highly skilled destination than the highest quintile from Post-92 universities, for both single and joint honours graduates. This demonstrated the positive impact that graduating from the Russell Group confers on both single and joint honours graduates. This study could not explain the much smaller gap in the highly skilled destinations between single honours and joint honours graduates found in the Russell Group, compared with the Post-92. Why do a higher proportion of joint honours graduates hail form the upper POLAR4 quintiles, the Russell Group joint honours graduates were more disproportionately from the upper POLAR4 quintiles and the joint honours upper POLAR4 quintiles represented such a larger proportion of the Russell Group overall undergraduate population? Other student characteristics such as tariff on entry, subjects studied, gender, age and ethnicity might all contribute to this finding. This study demonstrated that, averaged across all universities in the UK, there was a trend for both single honours and joint honours graduates from higher participation POLAR4 quintiles to be more likely to be in a highly skilled destination, i.e. the more educationally advantaged, were more likely to be in a highly skilled destination, as a proportion of the total from each honours type. This accorded with HESA (2018b) data, but expanded those findings to include direct consideration of joint honours graduates.N/

The evolution of school league tables in England 1992-2016:‘Contextual value-added’, ‘expected progress’ and ‘progress 8’

Since 1992, the UK Government has published so-called ‘school league tables’ summarising the average General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) ‘attainment’ and ‘progress’ made by pupils in each state-funded secondary school in England. While the headline measure of school attainment has remained the percentage of pupils achieving five or more good GCSEs, the headline measure of school progress has changed from ‘value-added’ (2002–2005) to ‘contextual valueadded’ (2006–2010) to ‘expected progress’ (2011–2015) to ‘progress 8’ (2016–). This paper charts this evolution with a critical eye. First, we describe the headline measures of school progress. Second, we question the Government’s justifications for scrapping contextual value-added. Third, we argue that the current expected progress measure suffers from fundamental design flaws. Fourth, we examine the stability of school rankings across contextual value-added and expected progress. Fifth, we discuss the extent to which progress 8 will address the weaknesses of expected progress. We conclude that all these progress measures and school league tables more generally should be viewed with far more scepticism and interpreted far more cautiously than they have often been to dat

Schools and civil society : corporate or community governance

School improvement depends upon mediating the cultural conditions of learning as young people journey between their parochial worlds and the public world of cosmopolitan society. Governing bodies have a crucial role in including or diminishing the representation of different cultural traditions and in enabling or frustrating the expression of voice and deliberation of differences whose resolution is central to the mediation of and responsiveness to learning needs. A recent study of governing bodies in England and Wales argues that the trend to corporatising school governance will diminish the capacity of schools to learn how they can understand cultural traditions and accommodate them in their curricula and teaching strategies. A democratic, stakeholder model remains crucial to the effective practice of governing schools. By deliberating and reconciling social and cultural differences, governance constitutes the practices for mediating particular and cosmopolitan worlds and thus the conditions for engaging young people in their learning, as well as in the preparation for citizenship in civil society

Invention and repair: disability and education after the UK Coalition Government

This short paper examines the extent to which the UK Coalition Government has been inventive or reparatory in their approach to policies governing the education of disabled children and young people. Of central concern here is the extent to which policies contribute to the invention of the disabled child by conceptualising their education as a constant process of reparation. I argue here that this landscape of policy proposals creates particular problems for the ways in which the pedagogic relationship can be conceptualised, reinforcing teaching as a complex negotiation of deficit and anxiety

The Self stepping into the shoes of the Other: Understanding and developing self-perceptions of empathy among prospective physical education teachers through a special school placement

Teachers who demonstrate a high degree of empathy are said to have more positive attitudes towards pupils with disabilities. Therefore, this article sought to explore the influence of a special school placement on prospective teachers’ self-perceptions of empathy. Thirty-two final year undergraduate students participated in focus group interviews and were selected because they aspired to be a physical education teacher and had attended a placement in a special school. Interview transcripts were analysed and the following themes constructed: Stepping into the shoes of the Other; Frustrated ‘for’ not ‘with’ pupils with disabilities; Empathy for planning inclusive lessons and ‘reading’ pupil body language; and Knowing when not to show empathy. All prospective teachers felt that: (a) they could empathise with pupils with disabilities; (b) situated learning experiences within the placement enabled them to reflect on the ways in which their empathy influences their teaching now and could continue to do so in the future; and (c) it was important that teachers demonstrated empathy. Thus, it is recommended that all prospective teachers gain some experience teaching in special schools. Our research also warns against teachers claiming the last, conclusive word about who children with disabilities are, what they think, how they feel and what they want, in myriad contexts and situations

Longitudinal study of local authority child and family social workers (wave 1) Findings from a 5 year study of local authority child and family social workers in England.

The longitudinal study investigates recruitment, retention and career progression in local authority child and family social work over 5 years. This is the first of 5 reports. It provides workforce information for employers and policy makers. Topics covered in this report include: •entry routes into local authority child and family social work •current employment and career history •workplace wellbeing •management, supervision and working environment •job satisfaction •career progression and future career plan

Pre-service teachers’ engagement in a cross-curricular television news project: impact on professional identity

This paper focuses on the impact of pre-service teachers’ engagement in the annual BBC News School Report project on their emerging professional identity and on the evidence they provide as part of the process of becoming qualified. The research reported on is drawn from three years of enquiry. Respondents included pre-service teachers themselves, their tutors as representatives of teacher education providers and their mentors as representatives of schools in which they were placed. The methodological approach was interpretative and phenomenological with qualitative and quantitative data being analysed for emergent themes. Two years of evaluations were followed by a third year in which a set of case studies were developed. The research showed that professional identity is enhanced through being in a leading role in respect of curriculum and working with other staff. Through engagement in such projects, this paper moots that preservice teachers develop richer evidence of emerging professionalism as defined by standards of initial teacher training. Moreover, self-perception of role was modified to one in which they saw themselves, and were seen, as equals to qualified staff rather than subservient to or dependent on them. A new more equal power relationship developed as they took on responsibility for the project. Preservice teachers’ move to become full members of the professional community for which they are training was accelerated

Cultural agents creating texts: a collaborative space adventure

This paper discusses the ways in which young children collaboratively use narrative play and the available space and materials around them in order to exert cultural agency. The collaborative creation of texts is asserted as central to this expression of agency. By presenting an illustrative vignette of a group of 5-year-old boys as they engage in literacy practices and create a range of meaningful texts within an early years compulsory education setting, the ways in which agency is expressed through the collaborative venture of text creation is explored. The vignette follows an episode of self-initiated dramatic play, fuelled by the children's desire to engage in peer culture and make meanings collaboratively. This play episode spurs the creation of a range of hybridised texts, which culminate in the production of a written narrative. Observations from this study are then used to add to a broader discussion, which raises concerns about the current policy in England, which views early writing development as a set of individual and predefined set of skills to be acquired, a view which could undervalue the experiences that children bring to early educational setting

Computer programming in the UK undergraduate mathematics curriculum

This paper reports a study which investigated the extent to which undergraduatemathematics students in the United Kingdom are currently taught to programme a computer as a core part of their mathematics degree programme. We undertook an online survey, with significant follow up correspondence, to gather data on current curricula and received replies from 46 (63%) of the departments who teach a BSc mathematics degree. We found that 78% of BSc degree courses in mathematics included computer programming in a compulsory module but 11% of mathematics degree programmes do not teach programming to all their undergraduate mathematics students. In 2016 programming is most commonly taught to undergraduate mathematics students through imperative languages, notably MATLAB, using numerical analysis as the underlying (or parallel) mathematical subject matter. Statistics is a very popular choice in optional courses, using the package R. Computer algebra systems appear to be significantly less popular for compulsory first year coursesthan a decade ago, and there was no mention of logic programming, functional programming or automatic theorem proving software. The modal form of assessment of computing modules is entirely by coursework (i.e. no examination)

Raising the participation age in historical perspective : Policy learning from the past?

The raising of the participation age (RPA) to 17 in 2013 and 18 in 2015 marks a historic expansion of compulsory education. Despite the tendency of New Labour governments to eschew historical understanding and explanation, RPA was conceived with the benefit of an analysis of previous attempts to extend compulsion in schooling. This paper assesses the value of a historical understanding of education policy. The period from inception to the projected implementation of RPA is an extended one which has crossed over the change of government, from Labour to Coalition, in 2010. The shifting emphases and meanings of RPA are not simply technical issues but connect to profound historical and social changes. An analysis of the history of the raising of the school leaving age reveals many points of comparison with the contemporary situation. In a number of key areas it is possible to gain insights into the ways in which the study of the past can help to comprehend the present: the role of human capital, the structures of education, in curriculum development and in terms of preparations for change