This study aims to explore the potential and reality of parental involvement at the secondary school level in Malaysia by investigating the experiences and perceptions of parents, students and teachers. In particular, it seeks to understand parental involvement in enhancing students' academic skills and performance, their social and emotional development and the impact of parental involvement on parents, students and teachers. Participants' perceptions and experiences on barriers to parental involvement at home and at school, and their perceptions of the ways to improve the relationship between the families and schools are also explored. A mixed method approach was used in relation to specific research questions to collect and analyze different forms of data, integrate the findings, and draw inferences, adopting the framework 'sequential inter-method mixing' . The research instruments used include survey questionnaires, semi-structured interviews and reviews of school documents. Two secondary schools in the Petaling District of the state of Selangor were identified to participate in this study, in which 333 Form Four (16 years old) students, 62 parents, and 88 teachers participated as respondents. The documents reviewed were the schools' websites and PTA AGM minutes. Findings showed that: parents' involvement at home and at school can be viewed based on the financial investment and support towards their children's education and the school; parents are more actively involved at home as well as behind the scenes in supporting their children's activities at school; there is a need to improve the interaction between parents and teachers in relation to discussing student progress and performance, and behaviour; and the need for school leadership and the PTA to advocate for working in partnerships with all parents. The findings of this study also suggest that school leadership, effective communication and sharing of information, improving the role of the PTA, promoting student voices, improving on activities to discuss student performance, and realigning school activities to include the parents and their children are key elements for a successful family-school relationship. In line with the initiatives outlined in the new Malaysian Education Blueprint (2013-2025), to promote parents as active partners in education, this study provides original evidence to support this approach and advocates that policymakers and practitioners should be aware that where families and the school context are concerned, a one-size-fits-all parental involvement policy may not be helpful.

The study is an attempt to assess the intricacies of the leaving-age question during the period from 1870 to 1947. The approach is mainly chronological. Chapter 1 is concerned with the background and consequences of the 1870 Act and the events up to 1880. Chapter 2 examines the 1880 Act, the spread of compulsory education and the significance of the Cross Commission, the Berlin Conference and the Free Education Act. Chapter 3 analyses both the causes and consequences of the 1893, 1899 and 1900 Education Acts. Chapter 4 considers the 1902 Act, the influence of official investigations and attempted legislation in the period up to 1914. Chapter 5 evaluates the effects of the First World War and discusses the 1918 Act and the difficulties of its implementation. Chapter 6 assesses differing policies on the leaving-age question from the 1924 Labour administration until the 1936 Education Act. Chapter 1 studies the impact of the Second World War and the 1944 Act. The conclusion appraises the most important aspects of development and makes some suggestions for future research.

Through an exploratory study undertaken in one ’elite’ University in India, this thesis attempts to illuminate the experiences of a small set of students and faculty who are members of the Dalit caste - the so-called ’untouchables’, who are relatively ’successful’ in that they attend or are academics at this prestigious University. The first part of the thesis provides a background to the study; the role of caste and its enduring influence on social relations in all aspects of life; family, education, occupation, marriage, are explored and explained. The first part of the thesis also reviews one major policy designed to challenge some of the debilitating effects of caste. The Quota System policy was designed in the 1950s as an early form of affirmative action to ensure that higher education institutions retained fifteen percent of their places for Dalit students; the same proportion of faculty was also expected to come from this background. The study then moves to a critical account of the current experiences of Dalit students and faculty in one setting; the University of Shah Jahan (pseudonym). Drawing on a set of in-depth semi-structured interviews, the empirical study that is at the centre of this thesis explores the perceptions of staff and students in relation to the Quota policy and their experiences of living, working and studying in this elite setting. The data chapters are organised in such a way as to first explore the faculty views. The experiences of students are then examined; there is a focus on the way in which their caste is still an everyday part of how they are sometimes ’othered’. There is also a focus on the experiences of Dalit female students; an under researched cohort. Finally, the thesis turns to another under-researched matter. The Dalit are not a homogenous social group; indeed, as a consequence of the small gains made by affirmative legislation over time, such as the Quota policy, there is a new fraction of middle class Dalit that is emerging, the so-called ’creamy layer’. The final data chapter explores the complexity involved for this relatively privileged group of Dalit in using the Quota policy to ensure access into an elite university while sometimes ’passing’ as not being a Dalit in order to ensure positive social relations at the University. Finally, the study considers the impact and influence of the Quota policy in terms of social justice issues and offers suggestions for further research in the area.

This interdisciplinary research examines the intersectional relationship between the domains of space, gender and education. It aims, first, to understand the spatio-educational experience of Emirati female learners; and second, to make it possible to enhance their learning experience by exploring the role of space in learning in a single gender context. This thesis addresses the lack of literature on women’s spatiality and space in learning, specifically in relation to Arab women’s learning in the Gulf region. The research is based on social theories of space including the social construction of space and Lefebvre’s triad of “perceived”, “conceived” and “lived” space, which offers a structure to organise and understand the female students’ spaces, with a focus on how spaces shape and construct the educational milieu while being constructed and appropriated by its users. Methodologically, it follows an interpretivist/constructivist-postmodernist paradigm, applying a unique ethnographic (instrumental case study) qualitative inquiry that incorporates multiple data collection techniques and a ‘multi-zones’ approach to explore in depth the spatial experiences across a network of zones. It also acknowledges the unique positioning of the researcher as both an insider and outsider. Applying thematic analysis with some analysis of spatial positioning led to the emergence of four mega themes and several subthemes that constitute students’ spatiality. Spatiality here is manifested through the combination of: the unique ways Emirati females engaged with and appropriated space, constructing their own private spaces (cocoons) within the public campus space; the ways they perceive and experience the university ‘gendered’ space, including their agency in contesting and negotiating such space; and their rhythms, revealing the types of spaces that emerged under Lefebvre’s triad with specific focus on the emergence of ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ spaces. Such spatial themes were strongly influenced by the Emirati females’ unique identity and grounded in their cultural formations.

As a result of the political events in the mid-1990s, the compulsory schooling in Turkey was extended to 8 from 5 years. Cohorts who were at the fourth grade or lower had to continue 8 years of compulsory education. This reform generated a natural experiment, and therefore, enables researchers to obtain endogeneity-robust estimates of market and non-market returns of education. In this thesis, I used this reform to investigate some nonmarket returns of education. Chapter 2 is the first study to investigate the causal impact of maternal schooling on childhood immunisation rates. I used the exposure to the Compulsory Education Law (CEL), enacted in Turkey in 1997, by date of birth and the differentiation in its implementation across regions as an instrument for the schooling of young mothers. CEL generated an exogenous change in compulsory education from 5 to 8 years for women born after 1986. Using the CEL as an instrument, this chapter finds that an increase in the education of mothers significantly increases the coverage of the third (full) dose of DPT and Hepatitis B for their children. Furthermore, the chapter investigates the causality between maternal education and a range of channels affecting immunisation rates suggested in the literature. I find that education increases the age of first marriage and birth, changes women`s and their spouse`s labour market status and significantly effects women`s attitude towards spousal violence against women and gender discrimination in a manner that empowers women. Chapter 3 provides empirical evidence regarding the causality between education and mental health in the context of a large emerging economy, Turkey. I exploit differentiation in the exposure to the Compulsory Education Law (CEL) change by the date of birth as an instrument for schooling of young women. When the CEL is used as an instrument for schooling of women, I find that schooling increases the incidence of some mental health disorders. These findings seem quite robust to alterations in the regression definitions and to the inclusion of additional individual-level control variables such as having one`s own income, employment status, marital status, occupation, domestic abuse history in the family, and rural/urban status. I also find a heterogeneous effect of the CEL on educational attainment of women depending on residence status and whether their birth mother had been abused by her partner. Moreover, heterogeneous effect tests also indicate that the effect of education differs by personal income and labour market status of women. Chapter 4 is the first study to investigate the causal effect of the husband`s education on violent and abusive behaviour against their wife. To do this, I use a natural experiment, an education reform increasing compulsory schooling from five to eight years in Turkey, as an instrument to obtain endogeneity-robust estimates. I find that the husband`s education lowers the probability of suffering physical, emotional and economic violence as well as experiencing socially unacceptable behaviour. The only aspect of violence not affected by the spouse`s education is sexual violence. I also find that women whose mothers or whose husbands’ mothers experienced domestic violence are more likely to suffer violence themselves.

Changes in English education policy since the late 1980s have resulted in a greater emphasis on diversity in educational provision and parental 'choice' of secondary schools. Recent education policies have also seen a growth in academies and free schools, which have their own system of allocating places other than local catchment areas. These changes have contributed to the fact that more young people of secondary school age are travelling longer distances to school. Based on a total of 44 qualitative interviews with 26 young people aged between 12 and 17, 12 parents and six education professionals, this thesis is about the experiences of young people who travel outside their local areas to school and explores whether these experiences affect their social lives outside school and levels of connectedness with their local neighbourhoods. The topic of school choice is also considered from the point of view of both young people and their parents. The study is framed by sociological theories of children and childhood and takes a generational and relational approach. The thesis draws on social theories of Pierre Bourdieu, notably his concepts of field, capital and habitus and Foucault's notions of power relating to disciplinary power and surveillance and power exercised through knowledge and the discourse. The thesis argues that young people who travel outside their local areas to school are constrained by a number of powerful forces, such as intergenerational relations, both familial and extra-familial, educational policy, transport, habitus and by varying forms of capital. Yet the picture is not clear-cut: the thesis also shows how some young people are able to resist the constraints placed upon them and that, for some of the young people, their experiences of travelling to school outside their local areas have provided them with greater opportunities than constraints. The thesis thereby contributes to on-going sociological debates about the nature of agency and structure and draws links between sociological thinking about childhood, children's geographies and the sociology of education.

This thesis is an inquiry into whether the compulsory education of children is justifiable, and it considers arguments relating to education for both the good of the individual and the good of others. I begin with a discussion of paternalism and proceed from an examination of previous attempts at formulating an acceptable understanding of it to the construction of a view which I believe overcomes the shortcomings existing accounts are seen to possess. Following this, theories purporting to justify paternalism are inspected and a start is made on the task of identifying versions of pa te rnalist action and the justifications they require. In an effort to delve closer into just what individual well-being might comprise, this task is interrupted by an investigation into the post-reflective desire-satisfaction theories of John Rawls and J. P. White, and the view of an individual's good each defends. This line of thought in turn develops into a discussion of education for the good of those other than the individual and a resolution is suggested for the problem of weighing the individual's against others' good. This part of the debate borrows from and adapts Peter Singer's argument concerning an obligation to assist those in absolute poverty. It is useful because people living in poverty make demands upon our time, energy, and resources which must be ranked against any alternative preferred use of them in other outlets, including some education. A revised argument is presented and defended and linked to the earlier debate on paternalism to furnish simultaneously an overriding condition to be met by all justifiable paternalist activity, together with a means thought to be defensible of locating some compulsory education in efforts to combat absolute poverty throughout the world.

Although a unifying view of literacy development is already implicit within several studies, much of the knowledge is still fragmented. Hence, practitioners lack a comprehensive theoretical framework within which to articulate their practice. This thesis contributes to this framework by investigating whether children's conceptions of the alphabetic system: 1) determine the quality of their orthographic representations and their ability to make inferences about graph-phonetic segments, 2) are affected by adults' explanations of how scripts represent speech and by the characteristics of the particular orthography that children are trying to learn. Sixty two monolingual Brazilian children (mean age 6 years) and 28 bilingual Portuguese children attending two schools in London (mean age 6:7 years), participated in this study, which involved a brief intervention (20 daily sessions). The findings suggested that children's full understanding of the alphabetic principle is not affected by orthographic transparency and that it is the result of a process involving two levels of conceptual change: 1) The characteristics of written words are not related to their meaning - letters represent sub-lexical phonological units. This allows children to detect phonological identity of the initial syllable and to produce syllabic spellings by collating letters that represent syllables. Explicit information about letter-sound correspondences is not essential for this understanding. 2) Adding up the sounds of letters does not produce a word - letters within words or syllables do not sound the same as in isolation. This discovery triggers the use of partial phonological recoding, the production of syllabicalphabetic spellings, the use of analogies and the detection of phonological identity based on articulatory cues. Explicit information about the role of the letters within words may facilitate this understanding and enables the children to work out the grapheme-phoneme correspondence, which is the last step towards grasping the alphabetic principle.

This study is a philosophical conceptualisation of educational equality in relation to provision for disabled students and students with Special Educational Needs. Its theoretical core is the outline of a principled framework for a just distribution of educational opportunities to these students. Situated within liberal egalitarianism, this conceptualisation relates principles of justice as fairness (as developed by John Rawls) and the capability approach (as developed by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum) to the areas of disability studies and special and inclusive education. Current perspectives on disability, and in particular the social model of disability, and positions on Special Educational Needs, as well as related policies, present theoretical and operational limits not only in relation to the achievement of inclusion, but also in addressing the equal entitlement of children to education. These limits derive primarily from the absence of clear principles, and relate specifically to the understandings of disability and special educational needs informing these perspectives. This conceptualisation of educational equality operationalises the capability approach with reference both to issues of definitions and of provision. The capability approach is a normative framework where equality is evaluated within the space of the actual freedoms - or capabilities - people have to pursue their ends and to convert resources into functionings they value. In connecting capability to the demands of justice, this approach contributes important insights to the theorisation of a principled framework for resource distribution. The framework theorised entails principles of justice as fairness informed by a capability metric, which is sensitive to the interests of disabled students and students with learning difficulties, and underpinned by definitions of disability and Special Educational Needs reconsidered in terms of functionings and capabilities. Whilst re-establishing the centrality of educational equality, this study reconceptualises disability and Special Educational Needs within a framework of justice.

In 1960-61 most of the independent schools in Sri Lanka were nationallsed without compensation. It was widely belleved that this was another phase of Sinhalese-Buddhist nationalism which sought to remove the vestiges of Christian colonialism, but the government represented its action as part of a movement to equalise educational opportunity. However, the legislation did not include the categories of school at the extremes of the socio-economic scale, and they could continue much as before. This dissertation is a case study in comparative perspective of the events which led to the nationallsation policy being adopted. The first part identifies and examines the problem to which the legislation was proposed as a solution. Using Gaetano Mosca's theory of elites an explanation Is offered for the social change which occurred in Sri Lanka after 1956 and which introduced SinhaleseBuddhist norms of social Justice into the political arena. The normative change Is measured, and it Is suggested that In the context of a plural society the shift was towards 'welfarlsm' rather than towards 'egalitarianism'. By relating the normative change to a relative no-change In the school system, the educational problem is more clearl y defined. The second part of the study is an analysis of the formulation and adoption of the pollcy solution. In examining the conflicting aims and interests of the protagonists In the Sri Lankan democratic context, it is posited that though the government was obliged to take account of the demands of its supporters, it none the less sought to protect the interests of its own class. The conclusion reached is that the nationalisation pollcy can be interpreted as an elitist solution in the Sinhalese-Buddhist tradition, and unlikely to have achieved the government's stated egalltarian aims.