Author: genderanded

GEA are devastated by the UK’s decision to leave the EU. Here, executive member, Professor Andrea Peto shares her views on the referendum results and what it may mean for education.

We are sitting in Brussels in one of the hopelessly grey and spiritless conference rooms of the European Commission. ‘We’ is a group of international gender experts who were invited to provide strategic advice to the European Commission on its research agenda for the coming years. The language of the discussion is of course English. The topic is how to ensure that gender knowledge is produced and disseminated and how Europe can be turned into a model of fair society. During the coffee break the topic of Brexit comes up and the gender experts share their concerns about this possibility. By today it is clear that our concerns were justified. The UK voted to leave the European Union.

The United Kingdom has not only produced a moderately mainstreamed film about the suffragettes but it has also pioneered the institutionalisation of women`s studies as a discipline and has contributed to the development of national and international organizations and societies supporting a dream. This dream is equality in education. Educational institutions reproduce inequalities based on class, gender, race more than any other institutions. In Brussels, during the advisory group meeting mentioned above, different European educational programs were mentioned. Many of these programmes aim, among other things, to support the development of a fairer European Union. The list is long from Erasmus, to Marie Curie Sklodowska Programs to Leonardo, all programmes which have attracted many students and scholars from the continent to Britain, and their UK counterparts to the continent. The number of international students involved in this programme has increased steadily over the years with, remarkably, men and women equally represented. These programs together with Erasmus Mundus channeled funding into the very hierarchical UK educational system.

Leaving the EU also means leaving the European Educational Arena. The internationalisation of the curriculum in the UK would not have been possible without EU funding bringing in people and knowledge. European education means strong support for gender equality, equal opportunities and social and geographical mobility. The benefits are mutual. For example, students and scholars have come to the UK from the continent, bringing along language skills at times when British universities talked of closing down their language departments. European Union funding was also crucial for the institutionalisation of women`s studies. As gender scholars, when getting into difficult discussion with university managers about budget issues, we could promise the steady flow of excellence based European money for research and for teaching. Most likely, leaving the European Educational Arena will also transform the curriculum.

Education is also a business: an increasingly influential and profit generating business. Leaving the European Educational Arena will not only mean the ‘provincialization’ of educational material and of teaching staff, but also increasing costs and decreasing access and opportunities. The benefits have been mutual. It was the UK which supported the Racial Equality Directive challenging the concept of Europe as a White continent. If the continent is losing that pressure we also risk losing an important aspect of the fight against inequalities. When we are discussing Brexit from the point of view of education we are discussing losing programs, networks and pedagogical content. As we agreed in Brussels during our meeting, we are all losing in the long run as internationally educated minds can play a key role in bringing equality and freedom.

Following on from the success of our fantastic conference hosted at Konsert & Kongress in Linköping, Sweden, we are now considering proposals for our next host venue.

The GEA executive committee welcome proposals to host the biennial conference from higher education institutions across national contexts and from conference teams spanning a variety of academic disciplines, theoretical backgrounds and fields.

The deadline for submission will be 28^th September 2016.

Please see the attached document for details

Biennial 2017 CfP

Is a new wave of feminism developing in schools? Hanna Retallack discusses how students are responding to issues of gender and sexuality to challenge the status quo.

In April this year, the Women and Equalities Committee launched the first parliamentary inquiry into an issue that feminist academics and campaigners have been researching for some time: sexual harassment and sexual violence in schools.

Prior to this inquiry, research had already found that the scale of sexism in schools was disproportionally affecting the well-being and mental health of teenage girls. In 2015 Girl Guiding UK [PDF] reported that 75% of girls and young women experienced anxiety over potential sexual harassment and a 2010 YouGov poll of 16-18 year olds found 29% of girls experienced unwanted sexual touching at school with a further 71% stating that they heard sexual name-calling (such as ‘slag’ or ‘slut’)  towards girls at school either daily or a few times per week. Perhaps most shockingly,data published by the BBC in September 2015 showed that 5,500 sexual offences were recorded in UK schools over a three year period, including 600 rapes.

“75% of girls and young women experienced anxiety over potential sexual harassment.”

Without any compulsory and regulated Personal, Social and Health Education in the UK, the teaching of sexuality in schools seems dangerously outmoded and fails to address issues related to gender, social media, sexualised bullying, pornography, consent and female sexual pleasure.

While this government inquiry is gathering evidence to establish the scale and effect of sexual violence and harassment in schools, it is the work that teenagers in schools are already doing to shake up school systems that concerns my on-going PhD research at the UCL Institute of Education into school-based feminist groups.

This research is conducted in the light of theories that we are witnessing a ‘fourth wave’ of feminism in which there is a resurgence in young people’s engagement with issues related to gender and sexuality. Despite previous research pointing towards a de-politicization of feminist projects in favour of individualized projects of the self, there is increasing evidence that a renewed and collectivised feminism has re-entered political and civic life.

“We are witnessing a ‘fourth wave’ of feminism in which there is a resurgence in young people’s engagement with issues of gender and sexuality.”

Neoliberal narratives tend to equate exam results with gender equality and so posit schoolgirls as ‘successful’ and as no longer needing feminism. However, we are seeing girls actively transgressing these post-feminist assumptions of equality by forming a new wave of feminist collectives within their schools.

Feminist groups meet up on the school grounds outside of lesson time and are made up of teenagers who want to discuss the issues denied to them by the curriculum, including the intersectional inequalities that lie at the root of sexual violence and harassment, as well as the structural injustices affecting them both personally and politically.

While different groups in different schools all identify as feminist, this does not mean they have the same agenda. I took part in the UK wide project Feminism in Schools: Mapping impact in practice, co-ordinated by Professor Jessica Ringrose (UCL Institute of Education) and Professor Emma Renold(Cardiff University). We researched feminist clubs in seven highly diverse secondary schools across England and Wales, including mixed, single sex and fee-paying institutions and with young people from a range of religious, ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds.

“Neoliberal narratives tend to equate exam results with gender equality and so posit schoolgirls as ‘successful’ and as no longer needing feminism.”

What this project made clear was that the primary focus of these feminist groups varies hugely. It was often the context in which the school was situated that accounted for this difference. What connects the groups, however, is that they all provide spaces for young people to discuss and campaign about issues relating to feminism – from LGBTQ rights to #sayhername to everyday sexism to body positivity. They also all work to spread awareness of the topic throughout the school through peer-to-peer support or through whole-school assemblies.

Groups like these are situated within a history of consciousness-raising groups that originated partly in the second wave feminist movement in the US. Through meeting together and talking, women discovered their shared oppression. With a space to give what Adrienne Rich terms “definition and form” to what had previously been experienced as personal problems, they began to address patriarchal political institutions.

“Teenagers are engaging in collective consciousness-raising practices in their schools.”

A 2013 report by #FemFuture reported that while small consciousness-raising groups were the backbone of second wave feminism, online feminist blogs and forums are the consciousness-raising groups of the 21st century. What I would argue, however, is that we are also witnessing more direct versions of the second wave approach being taken on within schools, in which teenagers are engaging in collective consciousness-raising practices within the institutional context of their schools.

Being a secondary school teacher as well as a researcher, I am also interested in helping schools become more gender equal and supporting school students with their feminist activism. I co-foundedGELS (Gender Equality Leadership in Schools) which aims to assist with developing and running school-based activities such as student-led feminist clubs that provide young people with spaces to discuss and campaign around gender inequalities. GELS also helps connect up schools with non-governmental organisations who are working to promote gender equalities in education across England and Wales including The Great Men Project, Fearless Futures, UK Feminista and The Advocacy Academy, who in a range of ways, expertly open up discussion around power, privilege, gender, sexuality, social justice and the possibilities of advocating for change.

Ultimately, it is feminist work in schools that can enable a wider social movement toward gender equality for all. Teenagers are at the forefront of the fourth wave movement.

Hanna Retallack is a PhD student at the UCL Institute of Education where she is researching feminist groups in schools. Alongside her academic work, Hanna teaches secondary school English Literature and a feminist course in a London school as well as delivering feminist workshops in schools and community spaces.

Toby Greany and Melanie Ehren.

The schools white paper brings together recent announcements from the budget and thefunding consultation as well as the provisions in the Education and Adoption Act to set out the next phase of school reform. The strategy is undoubtedly ambitious – in particular the aim to make all schools into academies by 2022 and the move to a National Funding Formula by 2019-20 – but is broadly consistent with the direction of travel towards a ‘self-improving’ systemsince 2010.

Given that direction of travel, many of the specific proposals in the white paper are focused on trying to address some of the acknowledged weaknesses of the existing system: for example through a concerted focus on building capacity in areas where school-led approaches are currently weak, to clarify a very different but still meaningful oversight role for Local Authorities, and to remove some of the perverse incentives in the accountability system.

What is the evidence that making every school an academy will make a positive difference to children’s outcomes? The changes since 2010 have been so rapid that it’s hard to say anything conclusive in relation to academies specifically; for example, NfER’s recent review highlights the complexity of comparing outcomes across the different academy types and phases, and while there is some evidence of improvement in sponsored academies and those in chains it is far from consistent or compelling so far. Looking at the wider evidence base, there is strongcorrelational evidence that school autonomy coupled with accountability can make a positive difference in school systems where school leadership and capacity are well developed.

The great weakness of policies premised on autonomous schools competing with each other for students and resources is that they make it harder to develop the high quality teachers and leaders that are key to effective schools. If schools compete with each other then teachers are not encouraged to share practice or spend time learning from their peers in other schools. To be fair, policy since 2010 seems to have recognised this weakness and encouraged schools to collaborate, primarily through the voluntary Teaching School Alliances and the hard governance Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs). Thirty-two per cent of all schools were part of a Teaching School Alliance by October 2014, while around 1 in 4 schools is now an academy and around 58% of all academies are in a MAT.

So the focus on building lateral networks to enable school to school support and collaborative professional development has potential, even if the current evidence of impact remains thin. The challenge is that while many confident schools seem to thrive on the school-led approach, others are at risk of becoming isolated, potentially leading to a two-tier system. For example, relatively few of England’s 5700 primaries with fewer than 200 pupils appear to have had the time or capacity to engage with the Teaching Schools so far and there are very few examples of such schools coming together to form viable MATs; so the white paper’s requirement that all small schools academise as part of a MAT may remain wishful thinking.

What can we learn from other school systems that have adopted England’s approach? Interestingly, the one OECD school system that has higher rates of school autonomy than England is the Netherlands, which is also relatively high performing in PISA international comparisons. Dutch schools face a similar accountability framework to England: for example with national tests and external inspections. What is particularly interesting is that School Boards, or federations, have developed to oversee groups of primary schools in Holland. These Boards have strong similarities to MATs: they are legally responsible for their constituent schools, overseeing areas such as pedagogy, curriculum, HR, budgets and school improvement (Education policy outlook 2014: Netherlands, OECD). School leaders are appointed by and accountable to the Board while larger federations employ a CEO or Superintendent to oversee strategic and operational development. There has been a gradual increase in the size and scale of the Boards over time, with 1,138 operating in total by 2013, many governing twenty or more schools (Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, 2013).

It is always important to avoid simplistic cross-cultural comparisons between education systems, but Holland’s School Boards do indicate two particular issues to consider as we develop a MAT-led system in England:

• Weak financial management is associated with weak performance in Dutch Boards: The2012-13 Chief Inspector’s report notes that “the number of school boards that have been placed under special financial supervision has risen slightly” and that “risks in the financial sphere are often an indication of quality problems”. It seems that these Boards had often not predicted their pupil numbers accurately, an issue that could become increasingly difficult for MATs that straddle different Local Authority areas. Given the DfE’s recent difficulties in processing academy accounts and the growing number of MATs being given a Financial Notice to Improve, this seems something to watch.

• School boards have not sustained their legitimacy in the eyes of staff and wider society. The2013-14 annual report makes a remarkably trenchant point here, almost worthy of Sir Michael Wilshaw! It quotes the Education Council, an official advisory body, which stated that ‘the local anchors of the education boards had been weighed’. The Dutch Chief Inspector herself concludes that ‘anchoring is exactly what is needed for.. legitimacy. This requires an active dialogue with the parties most closely involved, starting with the staff’.Waslander (2010) explores the issue of Dutch School Board legitimacy in more depth and finds that they have essentially had too few governance mechanisms for engaging the views of staff and parents in decision making.

Legitimacy for publicly funded schools has traditionally stemmed from the government’s democratic mandate but, as Dan Gibton has observed, this becomes increasingly confusing once England’s academies are run by MATs that are independent charitable companies commissioned by the Secretary of State via a funding agreement. Imagine a future scenario in which a significant group of parents in an area come to feel that their local academies are not meeting their needs: they will not be able to turn to the Local Authority or the school’s Local Governing Body for meaningful action, while the Regional Schools Commissioner may feel distant in both geographical and relational terms. Let’s imagine that the staff in one of these academies come to feel equally dissatisfied: they too may feel too far removed from the Board and CEO of their MAT to feel able to influence change. Meanwhile, the very current issues of fast rising CEO salaries and significant conflicts of interest are already raising concerns and a level of cynicism. The removal of the need for consultations with parents when a coasting school is moved into a MAT via the new Education and Adoption Act just seems likely to increase such legitimacy concerns.

The white paper does recognise these legitimacy concerns, particularly given that it will also remove the requirement for parent governors. It states that MATs will be required to ‘listen to the views and needs of all parents’ (para 4.55) but this feels a somewhat thin response when boards are equally trying to manage so many other competing priorities, not least a tightening budget situation for most schools.

Policy in England since the 1988 Education Reform Act has been largely focused on ensuring that individual schools succeed, founded on a quasi-market model of parental choice and competition between schools. The unit of analysis now needs to move from the individual school to the school group, represented by the Multi-Academy Trust. If the government’s ambitions come to fruition, the school system in the 2020s might resemble the retail sector today: national and regional chains offering standardised quality and choice, but with smaller boutique providers still continuing to offer something more unique. Of course, choosing where to buy your groceries is significantly less high risk than choosing a school for your child: let’s hope that the quasi-supermarket education system works out.

*originally posted on the UCL IOE blog 

*this is a guest post written by Sara Adkisson and originally posted on the UCL IOE blog 

GEA are thrilled to have Lucy Rycroft-Smith write this exclusive post on sexism in education for our site.

Lucy Rycroft-Smith is a freelance writer and ex-teacher of ten years. She writes for the Guardian, the TES and various other publications on education, parenting and feminism. She blogs at www.introvertedteacher.co.uk and tweets at @honeypisquared

Author; William Locke. 

The growing pressures faced by universities have had an impact on academic careers. Changes to academic roles, contracts and career paths, along with increasing workloads, have created new challenges. Yet in today’s competitive global environment, academic career opportunities are key to universities’ future success.

A report for the Higher Education Academy (HEA) by Celia Whitchurch, Holly Smith, Anna Mazenod and me investigates these challenges and proposes a number of solutions.

The total number of academic staff in the UK grew by nearly 4.5 per cent between 2012/13 and 2013/14 according to Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) data. This is a huge jump compared to previous years, particularly given the economic crisis and the reduction of government funding for higher education.

However, the picture is more complicated than it seems. ‘Traditional’ academic roles involving both teaching and research actually slightly declined in number and, for the first time, constituted a minority. Instead it was the rise of teaching-only and research-only contracts that accounted for the growth.

Teaching-only and research-only contracts may seem attractive to universities for a number of reasons. Universities face increasing pressure to achieve high Research Excellence Framework (REF) rankings. There has also been a growing focus on teaching standards and the student experience, particularly with the imminent introduction of the Teaching Excellence Framework. An ‘academic workforce’ divided into specialist roles might promise more focused results, and help meet demands for improved efficiency.

Yet such changes have implications for academic careers and the professional development of staff. There is a perception that career options and opportunities are less important for those not in traditional teaching and research roles.

Furthermore, the advance of remote working in higher education has affected work-life patterns, and academic workloads are perceived to have substantially increased in the last 10-15 years. The most significant barrier to engaging with professional development opportunities faced by academics is a lack of time, and this problem is more acute for those on specialist contracts.

Academic career paths are also changing, and are far less stable than in the past. Early career academics often struggle to find secure employment and so are forced to take on fixed-term or part-time contracts (usually in specialist roles). Opportunities for career progression vary across different disciplines and universities. As a result, academics are increasingly moving to new positions – often to new subject areas – during the course of their careers. They are also moving into and out of jobs outside academia.

It is important for universities to understand these challenges and to adopt a holistic approach. Academic promotion should be seen to be based on wider criteria (including, for example, education, knowledge exchange and academic citizenship) to counter perceptions that universities focus principally on research and REF outputs.

The opportunities available to academics must also reflect the increasing diversity of academic roles. Equal recognition and reward are key. A ‘universal’ academic contract accommodating a number of different roles would allow more freedom. Academics would no longer be forced to follow a specialised career path but would instead have the opportunity to gain new experience and change direction.

A broader conception of academic career development could include informal and peer learning. Universities should also focus on building trust between managers and their staff to encourage feedback and use this to inform policy and practice.

Policy makers and sector bodies should consider how policies and funding arrangements will affect the career opportunities of academics. Will academia continue to be regarded as an attractive or viable career? The creation of a Concordat for teaching roles, such as the existing Concordat for researchers, could create more parity between teaching and research.

The Higher Education Academy is the national body at the centre of professional development for academics who teach. It will continue to review the UK Professional Standards Framework (UKPSF), the nationally recognised framework for benchmarking success within higher education teaching and learning support, to ensure it reflects the diversity of academic roles and complements other professional frameworks. The report also recommends that the HEA should continue to develop its engagement with university HR departments and Universities Human Resources (UHR). It is currently running a strategic enhancement programme with a group of HEIs looking at career progression and staff transitions.

Academics themselves need to recognise that a linear career progression is no longer the norm. They should make the most of career development opportunities when they are available. Early career academics should consider whether a teaching-only or research-only role will provide the opportunities they seek to develop their research activity or gain teaching experience.

Meeting these challenges is at the core of universities’ ability to survive and flourish, not just in a national system but, increasingly, in a global environment, where pressures and demands are even more complex.

*This post was originally posted on January 13th 2016 on The UCL IOE Blog