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Are the Sustainable Development Goals sustainable?

Agreed in 2015 by the member states of the United Nations, the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are the primary international instrument ‘to end poverty in all its forms everywhere’....

The role of sustainability-focused degrees: Embodying interdisciplinarity & the development of generalism as specialism?

It feels like I’m about to be controversial: I’m going to make the case for educating generalists. At least this seems controversial in a world where traditional disciplines and specialism are...

Geographies of elite higher education participation: An urban ‘escalator’ effect

There is increasing attention on geographic inequalities in access to higher education (HE). This blog summarises a recently published article (Davies, Donnelly, & Sandoval-Hernandez, 2021)...

The great algorithm fiasco

When A-level examinations were cancelled in March 2020, the government instructed the Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation (Ofqual) to instead issue ‘calculated grades’ based...

Little fish, big streams: Early in-class maths ‘ability’ groups, early teacher judgements & primary schoolchildren’s later maths self-concept

Maths self-concept is important, not only for children’s experiences within education but because it is strongly related to subject choice, attainment and adult careers (Hansen & Henderson,...

Interrogating the notion of the seaside idyll in the context of initial teacher training

The prevalence of disadvantage in remote, economically depressed coastal areas of England is reflected in government initiatives aimed at turning around education in certain regions such as the...

Social-emotional competences: Conceptualisation, childhood inequalities and predictive value for socioeconomic attainment in adulthood

The development of social and emotional competences is increasingly being recognised as essential for children’s adaptive development in school as well as in other settings and later life (OECD,...

Why we need a manifesto on education for environmental sustainability

Our research commission, recently announced by BERA, will bring teachers and young people together to co-produce a manifesto on education for environmental sustainability. The manifesto will...

Access to education in a time of pan(dem)ic in Jamaica: Rural and urban primary schools’ experience

Education & Covid-19: BERA Small Grants Fund research reports

As the scale of the Covid-19 pandemic became clear, on 14 March 2020 the Jamaican government moved teaching and learning online and primary schools remained closed for the remainder of the school...

The free school meal voucher scheme & children’s access to food during the Covid-19 crisis

Education & Covid-19: BERA Small Grants Fund research reports

With schools closed in the UK in response to the Covid-19 crisis, children who would normally receive free school meals were at an elevated risk of food insecurity. However, the voucher scheme...

The problems with resilience thinking

The Covid-19 pandemic has given new currency to the idea of resilience, in terms of adapting to and recovering from adversity. However, in recent years the discourse of resilience has become...

We need an evidence-based expert approach to the post-pandemic recovery of young people

In December 2020, the Westminster government promised to set up an expert group to consider solutions to the huge variability of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on pupils’ educational...