School Wars tells the story of the struggle for Britain's education system. Established during the 1960s and based on the progressive ideal of good schools for all, the comprehensive system has over the past decades come under sustained attack from successive governments. From the poorest comprehensives to the most well-resourced independent schools, School Wars takes a forensic look at the inequalities of our current system, the damaging impact of spending cuts, the rise of "free schools" and the growth of the private sector in education. Melissa Benn explores, too, the dangerous example of US education reform, where privatization, punitive accountability and the rise of charter schools have intensified social, economic and ethnic divisions. The policies of successive British governments have been muddled and confused, but one thing is clear: that the relentless application of market principles signals a fundamental shift from the ideal of quality education as a public good, to education as market-controlled commodity. Benn ends by outlining some key principles for restoring strong educational values within a fair, non-selective public education system.

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School Wars tells the story of the struggle for Britain’s education system. Established during the 1960s and based on the progressive ideal of good schools for all, the comprehensive system has over the past decades come under sustained attack from successive governments. Now, with the growing inequalities of our current system, the damaging impact of spending cuts, the rise of “free schools” and the growth of the private sector in education, the values embodied in the comprehensive ideal are under threat. The situation is expertly anatomized by journalist and educational campaigner Melissa Benn, who explores the dangerous example of US education reform, where privatization, punitive accountability and the rise of charter schools have intensified social, economic and ethnic divisions. The policies of successive British governments have been muddled and confused, but one thing is clear: that the relentless application of market principles signals a fundamental shift from the ideal of quality education as a public good, to education as market-controlled commodity. Benn ends by outlining some key principles for restoring strong educational values within a fair, non-selective public education system.

An incisive, comparative study of the development of Post-World War II progressive politics in Britain, France, and the United States Toward the end of World War II, the three democracies faced a common choice: return to the civic order of prewar normalcy or embark instead on a path of progressive transformation. In this ambitious and original work, Isser Woloch assesses the progressive agendas that crystallized in each of the allied democracies: their roots in the interwar decades, their development during wartime, the struggles to enact them in the early postwar years, and the mixed outcomes in each country. The Postwar Moment examines three progressive postwar manifestos that reveal a common agenda in the three nations. The issues at stake included priorities for reconstruction or reconversion; "full employment" via economic planning; price controls; the roles of trade unions; expansion of social security; national health care; public housing; and educational reform. A highly regarded scholar of European history, Woloch persuasively adds the United States to a discussion that is usually focused solely on Europe.

Ask any moderately interested Briton to name a black intellectual and chances are the response will be an American name: Malcolm X or Barack Obama, Toni Morrison or Cornel West. Yet Britain has its own robust black intellectual traditions and its own master teachers, among them C.L.R. James, Claudia Jones, Ambalavaner Sivanandan, Stuart Hall and Paul Gilroy. However, while in the USA black public intellectuals are an embedded, if often embattled, feature of national life, black British thinkers remain routinely marginalized. Black British Intellectuals and Education counters this neglect by exploring histories of race, education and social justice through the work of black British public intellectuals: academics, educators and campaigners. The book provides a critical history of diverse currents in black British intellectual production, from the eighteenth century, through post-war migration and into the ‘post-multicultural’ present, focusing on the sometimes hidden impacts of black thinkers on education and social justice. Firstly, it argues that black British thinkers have helped fundamentally to shape educational policy, practice and philosophy, particularly in the post-war period. Secondly, it suggests that education has been one of the key spaces in which the mass consciousness of being black and British has emerged, and a key site in which black British intellectual positions have been defined and differentiated. Chapters explore: • the early development of black British intellectual life, from the slave narratives to the anti-colonial movements of the early twentieth century • how African-Caribbean and Asian communities began to organize against racial inequalities in schooling in the post-Windrush era of the 1950s and 60s • how, from out of these grassroots struggles, black intellectuals and activists of the 1970s, 80s and 90s developed radical critiques of education, youth and structural racism • the influence of multiculturalism, black cultural studies and black feminism on education • current developments in black British educational work, including ‘post-racial’ approaches, Critical Race Theory and black social conservatism. Black British Intellectuals and Education will be of key relevance to undergraduates, postgraduates and academics engaged in research on race, ethnicity, education, social justice and cultural studies.

Autonomy, Accountability and Social Justice provides an account of recent developments in English state education, with a particular focus on the ‘academisation’ of schooling. It examines how head teachers, teachers and others working in diverse education settings navigate the current policy environment. The authors provide readers with insight into the complex decision-making processes that shape school responses to current educational agendas and examine the social justice implications of these responses. The book draws on Nancy Fraser’s social justice framework and her theorising of neoliberalism to explore current tensions associated with moves towards both greater autonomy for and accountability of state schooling. These tensions are presented through four case studies that centre upon 1) a group of local authority primary schools, 2) an academy ‘chain’, 3) a co-operative secondary school and 4) an alternative education setting. The book identifies the ‘emancipatory’ possibilities of these approaches amid the complex demands of autonomy and accountability seizing English schools. Informed by a consideration of market parameters and social protectionist ideals, this examination provides rich insights into how English schools have emancipatory capacity. Autonomy, Accountability and Social Justice makes a major theoretical contribution to understandings of how the market is working alongside the regulation of schooling and the implications of this for social justice. By drawing on the experiences of those working in schools, it demonstrates that the tensions associated with autonomy and accountability within the current education policy environment can be both productive and unproductive for social justice.

Specially commissioned to mark the 40th Anniversary of History of Education, and containing articles from leading international scholars, this is a unique and important volume. Over the past forty years, scholars working in the history of education have engaged with histories of religion, gender, science and culture, and have developed comparative research on areas such as education, race and class. This volume demonstrates the richness of such work, bringing together some of the leading international scholars writing in the field of history of education today, and providing readers with original and theoretically informed research. Each author draws on the wealth of material that has appeared in the leading SSCI-indexed journal History of Education, over the past forty years, providing readers with not only incisive studies of major themes, but delivering invaluable research bibliographies. A ‘must have’ for university libraries and a ‘must own’ for historians. This book was originally published as a special issue of History of Education.