As part of our 50th anniversary celebrations, BERA has collected together a set of 50 landmark studies that have had a significant impact on educational policy, practice, research methodology and/or theory over the past 50 years.

Themes, terms and titles to enter the educational lexicon during BERA’s fourth decade included Free Schools, Floor Targets, System Leadership and, at the end of the period, the Research Excellence Framework. Those to leave the lexicon included Connexions, the National Strategies and the Research Assessment Exercise. During this period the education community was to lose the influential voice of former BERA President Ted Wragg and to gain the reforming zeal of the Coalition Government’s first Education Secretary, Michael Gove.

The UK-wide constitutional settlement promised in the wake of the fiercely contested Scottish independence referendum of September 2014 points to further distinctiveness between the UK’s four education systems as BERA moves into its fifth decade. As such, it may encourage a renewed and extended interest in comparative educational research across the UK. In any case, it will open up new opportunities and challenges for the Association and its members.

Read more about the studies chosen from the fourth decade of BERA’s history in the document below.