Primary schools and early years settings shape children’s lives immensely, but there are huge differences in how teachers teach and organise their time. Policy is a major influence on practices, but often changes. At the same time, there are significant disparities in attainment by social class and ‘race’, and differences in how children from different groups experience education.

In this lecture, Professor Bradbury will outline her work on the intersection of policy and inequality in primary and early years education since the late 2000s, focusing on how reforms have engendered cultures of accountability and datafication which may work to reproduce inequalities. She will explore how projects on assessments, practices during Covid and on schools’ support during the cost-of-living crisis cohere to form a picture of a sector faced with serious challenges in the last 15 years. Taking a policy sociology approach, she will reflect on this work and discuss how underlying dominant discourses such as the idea of ability as fixed work to reproduce inequalities in schools. Understanding why teachers do what they do, and how school leaders make decisions involves exploring both how schools are responsive to policy but also to what extent they resist and reshape policy reforms.

Speaker

Professor Alice Bradbury

Alice Bradbury is Professor of Sociology of Education in the Department of Education, Practice and Society at UCL, and Co-Director of the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Pedagogy (0-11 years), a leading research centre focused on primary and early years education. Her work explores the relationships between policy, practice and inequalities.

Respondent

Professor Carol Vincent

Carol Vincent is an Emeritus Professor of Sociology of Education at IOE, UCL's Faculty of Education and Society. She has written and researched extensively on parents' relationships with schools and how these are shaped by class, race and gender; analyses of parenting, especially mothering; education policy and how policy works out in schools and classrooms; and individual and institutional attitudes towards diversity and citizenship.

Chair

Professor Lynn Ang

Lynn Ang is Pro-Director of Research and Development at IOE, UCL's Faculty of Education and Society. Her research interests include the interdisciplinary fields of early childhood and international development, and early childhood across cultures, particularly in South East Asia and the Asia-Pacific region. She is interested in the social, cultural and policy influences on children's development and early learning in a range of formal and informal contexts such as preschool and home-based settings. Lynn is Fellow of the Academy of Social Science and Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. She serves on the editorial board of the International Journal of Early Years Education and chairs the board of London Review of Education.

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Schools, Policy and Inequality