The class structure of Britain has changed considerably since the 1970s. The gap between the rich and poor has grown, and many individuals can no longer be classified into traditional middle- and working-class categories. Despite polarisation and fragmentation, however, social class has continued to shapes individuals’ daily lives and life-chances. There are distinct class inequalities in education and leisure that appear to be resistant to intervention. Governments and other public organisations have invested considerable funds and deployed various policies, but individuals from affluent backgrounds continue to do better in the education system and be more active in their leisure time than individuals from deprived backgrounds. Academics have also turned their attention to class inequalities in education and leisure, especially of late. Research indicates that such inequalities emerge during early childhood and remain through youth and into adulthood. This, along with evidence of the limited effectiveness of interventions delivered through schools, has made one thing clear: to explain the production and reproduction of class inequalities in education and leisure and do something about them through policy, researchers and governments must look to the family. The ways in which parents from different social classes are involved and invest in their children’s education and leisure have been researched quite extensively. However, the findings in many of the studies are un-integrated and de-contextualised. In addition, much of the research is deductive – academics have tended to test theories and the significance particular family variables and processes. This thesis, therefore, set out to produce a grounded theory of class-specific patterns of parenting in relation to children’s education and leisure. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with a case study of parents and children from a small city in the north-west of England. Two main social classes emerged out of the case study, a group tentatively described as an ‘under-class’ and a middle-class divided into fractions. It was found that social class impacted upon several areas of family life, and differences in these areas of family life clustered together to form class-specific patterns of parenting. The under-class pattern of parenting was conceptualised as ‘essential assistance’. It conveys the present-centred and basic involvement of the parents – they did not think a great deal about the future but did what was necessary to keep their children up with their peers on a day-to-day basis. The middle-class pattern of parenting was conceptualised as ‘concerted cultivation’. It conveys the forward-thinking and deliberate nature of the parents’ involvement. Also, the meticulous lengths to which the parents went – every aspect of their children’s development was open to pruning. The middle-class parents were involved in their children’s education and leisure in similar ways, but to different degrees. Thus, concerted cultivation can be regarded as gradational. Class-specific patterns of parenting can be linked to the production of class-related patterns of inequality. Through essential assistance and concerted cultivation, under-class and middle-class parents condition their children to think and act in particular ways. More specifically, they furnish their children with different skills, preferences and mentalities. A detailed discussion of the theoretical and policy implications of these patterns of parenting is provided in the conclusion to the thesis.

Despite a mass expansion of the higher education sector in the UK since the 1960s, young people from disadvantaged backgrounds remain less likely to enter university (and in particular elite institutions) than their advantaged counterparts. Governmental approaches to narrowing this gap have tended to revolve around the provision of greater information and a raising of aspirations. This thesis contributes to sociological knowledge through exploring young people’s aspirations and opportunities in light of this context, paying close attention to how these are shaped through interactions with the institution of education. It does so through a focus on three schools in one city in England. Grand Hill Grammar (an independent fee paying school), Einstein High (a state-maintained school in a wealthy area) and Eagles Academy (a state-maintained school in a disadvantaged area). The fieldwork included a survey of over 800 pupils in years 7, 9 and 11 in each school, semi-structured interviews with 6-8 pupils per year per school and one careers advisor per school (n=60). Overall, whilst there were notable differences in the expression of occupational and educational aspirations across the three schools, my findings question a direct causal relationship between social class and aspiration. I found many young people in all schools aspiring to attend university and get a ‘good job’. Nevertheless, this thesis highlights the everyday institutional structures and practices at play which were powerfully rendering young people more or less able to pursue a desired pathway. This was largely manifest in the differential structures of GCSE and A Level options alongside variations in the practices of careers advisors in each school. In this thesis I offer a critique of the dominant political conception of ‘aspiration’, offering instead a Bourdieusian account which considers the role of what I call institutional concerted cultivation in the reproduction of social class inequality.

Current cries for accountability nearly always result in some form of testing. For critical race theorists, most of the standardised tests that poorer-blacker children experience in schools inevitably legitimise their so-called ‘deficiencies’. Critical race theorists contend that the high stakes testing game is more accurately an endorsement of the dominant culture’s superiority, and policies such as the No Child Left Behind Act continue to instantiate inequity and validate white supremacy, despite well-published claims to the contrary. The empirical data reported in this study were collected during a mixed- method in-depth case study in one diverse high school in Florida (2010- 2011). This study’s findings suggest that far from being a relic of the past, segregation by race in schools is alive. Permissive segregation of poorer- blacker ‘mainstreamed’ students and wealthier-whiter ‘magnet’ students, under the veneer of meritocracy and ‘magnet schooling’, was based almost exclusively on a student’s performance on standardised tests. This study also claims that magnet students as group have significantly benefitted from the induction of NCLB, with black students controversially loosing ground since its inception. The Social Studies curriculum, said to be a multicultural intervention through which issues of racial inequality could be challenged, was found to be fundamentally Eurocentric in approach; offering only ‘legitimate’ and ‘privileged’ white narratives as the ‘official knowledge’. Finally, this study finds limited support for ‘oppositional culture theory’. Although black students did recognise the value of education, it was usually in a theoretical sense, as black students were conscious of the white hegemonic barriers they faced in school. Although traditional methods of analysis could translate the black group’s rejection of traditional scholastic rewards as being ‘oppositional’, critical race theory contends that black students more accurately utilised their Afrocentric agency to resist, survive and succeed within and beyond the institutionally racist climate of schooling in ‘post-racial’ America.

Strict enforcement of copyright in least developed countries like Uganda would negatively affect realisation of the right to education which is both intrinsic and instrumental to realisation of economic development goals including the Millennium Development Goals. The right to education is recognised internationally, regionally and by the Constitution of the Republic of Uganda 1995. Universal access to copyrighted educational materials is needed if education in less developed countries is to serve its purposes. However, to stimulate creation of materials for the future, copyright restricts both access and use of copyrighted materials which negatively affects realisation of the right to education in less developed countries. Unfortunately, exceptions as copyright’s tool for enabling access and use are unclear and narrowly construed. For TRIPS compliance, Uganda enacted the Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Act, 2006 without optimally transposing exceptions. Moreover, under the current international framework, even the most maximalist approach to exceptions would not serve less developed country needs. Accordingly, the Berne Appendix for developing countries, though procedurally complex, should be used. This thesis undertakes a critical comparative analysis of relevant international and national copyright provisions. While referencing legislation from selected countries, Uganda’s commendable fair use provisions are nevertheless not optimal for supporting education for economic development. Various doctrinal issues arise from the exceptions and Uganda’s Berne Union ‘absentee’ status. Pending international reforms, maximally transposing and utilising available exceptions is imperative. Key recommendations include: incorporating the human right to education among fair use factors and joining the Berne Union. Classical utilitarianism is used to justify maximising exceptions within the current international copyright framework to promote quality education. Arguably, maximally transposing and using exceptions to support education is the way to facilitate economic development as the ‘greatest good’ for the world’s greatest number living in poverty in less developed countries in an era of globalisation.

This thesis considers the role of parents, teachers and peers in the school decision making processes of children at the end of compulsory education in England. This stage represents, in fact, the first and most important school transition when pupils will have to choose whether to enter post-secondary education or not, and in cases where they do, whether to choose an academic course or a vocational one, knowing that this will affect their next transition at the age of 18. This thesis is amongst the ones to most fully analyse the role of significant others in children’s education. All the quantitative analyses in this thesis are done using the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England (LSYPE). Most of the statistical modelling of this data is done using multivariate regression analysis. Some of the results are also based on evidence from qualitative interviews with children in their last year of GCSEs in two comprehensive schools in England and children attending an apprenticeship scheme in the London area. With regards to educational aspirations, minority students are those who show the highest and most stable aspirations during years 9 to 11, while White English working class students, especially boys, have lower and unstable aspirations. Among the explanatory factors for these results, along with social class and ethnicity, parental aspirations, friends’ plans and individual attitude to education have the strongest correlation with the intentions to stay on in school after year 11. Moreover, parental aspirations did not appear to differ with regards to social class, suggesting a different mechanism than the one indicated by Breen and Goldthorpe (B&G) (2000). Also, the fact that minority students have very high aspirations (and are high achievers), do not confirm the principles of the relative risk aversion theory by B&G. Among the types of parental involvement in children’s education, participation in school-related activities and feelings towards school and supervision of children’s school work seemed to have a positive impact on children’s entering A-levels in year 12, although the results did not highlight differences with regards to social class and ethnicity. Evidence from the qualitative interviews showed different results with regards to helping with homework - only educated parents do that – and with regards to supporting and encouraging their children’s aspirations, which is more effective with minority and middle class parents. Considering peer relationships, the evidence from qualitative interviews suggested a very small influence of peers, especially schoolmates, in children’s school decision processes; peers are, in fact, perceived as someone to share plans and common interests with, but not as well-informed and trustworthy sources such as family. Moreover, interviews suggest that school choices are not the results of long-term plans, and children treat school transitions as separate stages. This does not support Morgan’s model of prefigurative and preparatory commitment.

There is a widespread sense that Britain is an unfair society with an unfair education system, and that this ought to change. Yet the prescribed panacea of 'equality of opportunity' is bound up with new extensions of middle-class privilege. In an attempt to historicise the social basis of that paradox, this thesis offers the 'educational afterworld' as a theoretical framework for prising open the determinations formal schooling exerts in adult British society. It is written from a Marxist perspective and treats the Blairite mantra of 'Education, Education, Education' as part of an ideological history in which structural inequality has been reproduced through the three-tier school system that emerged in the late Victorian period. As a point of entry into the educational afterworld, this project explores long-established categories of culture as they were articulated at key moments in this unfolding history. The legacies of three major Kulturkritikers - Matthew Arnold, F.R. Leavis and Richard Hoggart - and their preoccupations - class, politics, race, the city and commodified life - entered the 80s as a repertoire of motifs, patterns and axioms. I am interested in how these cultural co-ordinates were reconfigured by critiques of and collusions with the mercurial socio-political changes of the period on which I focus. Moving through the 80s and 90s, and with periodic glances back to earlier episodes of British life, the chapters map 'high' and 'low' culture onto the hierarchy of educational institutions that continues to produce the gulf between exquisite prose and 'underclass' illiteracy. A focus on sexuality is a notable feature of each chapter, honing discussion of these educational afterworlds through consideration of the ways in which gay male sexuality and an emboldened female sexuality mediate social status and distinction (in Bourdieu's sense). For these reasons, the texts selected are Alan Hollinghurst's The Swimming-Pool Library (1988) and The Line of Beauty (2004), the BBC2 drama serial This Life (1996-97) and, with his BBC sitcom Gimme Gimme Gimme (1999-2001), Jonathan Harvey's 'feel-good' play Beautiful Thing (1993).

In Developmental Work Research and its Change Laboratory methodology, development is understood as being when a group of people collaboratively change their material object. This study argues that this understanding ignores personal zones of proximal development and personal history as a beginning, and functional concepts as an outcome. Perceiving the subject of an activity as a homogenous group, I claim, is tantamount to an assimilation model of integration. Integration models that aim at homogenization rely on abstract concepts of others and require retooling in order to be more empathetic and expansive. Switzerland in 1998 adopted an acculturation model of assimilation that was thought to be the only possible solution for the maintenance of national unity. The model has been referred to as a national capitalistic ‘steamroller’ based on homogenization and exclusion. Under this perspective, migrant and refugee parents are categorised by mainstream educators as desisting from their children’s formal education, and national parents represent the perfect model. The empirical work was carried out within a home-school project in a French-speaking canton in Switzerland. The project was designed by a group of special education teachers. The study explores the potential of Developmental Work Research and Change Laboratory methodology, as developed by Engeström (1987), to produce radical and sustained organisational change in a social context. Through the inclusion of an analysis of subject positioning, the findings show that Change Laboratory offers a solid background for retooling new concepts of immigrant people to one that is more empathetic and expansive. The conflicts that ensued within the Change Laboratory sessions opened a developmental zone in which the concepts of being a national or a foreigner were reconstructed. The study suggests ways of improving Change Laboratory methodology for better understanding of subject positioning.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the educational disadvantage currently being suffered by Roma children in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia, and to identify the most appropriate human rights mechanism with which to remedy the situation. Education is vitally important for oppressed minorities such as the Roma since, without it, individuals will be unable to fully access the complete range of their fundamental rights and so will be unable to challenge the disadvantage and discrimination that they suffer. This thesis first submits, therefore, that the traditional liberal democratic model of governance as featured in contemporary Europe is insufficient to adequately address the needs of minorities. To address this insufficiency, states must recognise a version of multiculturalism that both embraces critical pluralism and is compatible with liberal theory. Secondly, this thesis suggests that the individualistic focus of rights protection should be enhanced through an increased recognition of children’s rights so that the individual child is firmly entrenched as an autonomous rights holder. The type of education system that would exist in such a rights environment should serve to develop the autonomy and competence of individual children but also to facilitate their security within their own culture. This type of multicultural education can only be achieved if the various international instruments concerning the right to education can be required to place a more onerous burden on states parties when it comes to minority accommodation. At a domestic level, this thesis suggests that the most appropriate means by which to accommodate the Roma within the national education systems of the four countries would be through a culturally sensitive mainstreaming approach adapted from that used in England.

In the last few decades, educational research has largely demonstrated the effects of the socio-economic background on academic performance. Traditionally, researchers have used the so-called contextualised value-added (CVA) concept, implemented via multilevel statistical models, to assess variation in learning outcomes arising from schools and pupils. Depending on the stakeholders they intend to inform, two basic types of CVA models can be defined: models for school accountability and models for school choice. School accountability models can be further distinguished according to the ‘recipient’ of the information: internal models provide information for school authorities to improve their own practices, while external models provide information for government officials to assess school performance for policy-making purposes. Despite the evidence in favour of the use of more complex models for school accountability, government practice in Chile has been restricted to the use of raw school averages in standardised tests as indicators of effectiveness, which have been used indiscriminately for the purposes of school accountability and school choice. Using data from the Chilean National Pupil Database (SIMCE 2004-2006), this thesis demonstrates how the traditional CVA (2-level) models fall short in addressing the complex phenomenon of academic performance, especially in the context of a developing and highly unequal country, such as Chile. The novelty of the CVA modelling in this thesis is that it extends and improves the traditional models insofar as they explicitly assess the variation between pupils, classrooms, primary schools, secondary schools and local authorities, as well as the correlation between Mathematics and Spanish Language at all levels. This is done by implementing two univariate 4-level CVA models for progress in Mathematics and Spanish fitted separately via maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) and a bivariate 5-level cross-classified CVA model for progress in both subjects fitted via Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) estimation. External school accountability measures were derived from the extended univariate and multivariate models and compared to measures derived from a model akin to the traditional approach. A number of key differences were found, leading to the conclusion that further adjustments to the traditional CVA models are not negligible. The univariate 4-level CVA models provide more insight into school accountability than the traditional approach in a straightforward fashion, while the bivariate 5-level model encompasses a more reliable and ultimately comprehensive view on school performance. With regard to internal school accountability, further models were specified with the purpose of analysing pupils' heterogeneity to inform school improvement processes. The concept of "cultural capital" (Bourdieu, 1977) was chosen to shed light on the matter. Since cultural capital is essentially immeasurable, a latent variable was constructed from a group of manifest variables related to access and use of reading materials. From a substantive point of view, this thesis shows how access to all sorts of reading materials and reading habits can have not only a relevant impact on pupils' progress in Language, but also in Mathematics. Finally, this thesis concludes around three main ideas: firstly, school value-added models for school accountability, either external or internal, need to take into account the complexity of influences affecting pupils' academic progress as thoroughly as possible, in order to make a fair assessment of schools' performance and/or to inform school improvement policies. Secondly, school effectiveness is not a unidimensional process, which implies that school value-added models should ideally (when there are available data) reflect upon the multidimensionality of the phenomenon and take into consideration the relationship between different subjects, as well as non-academic outcomes. Thirdly, CVA models can also be used to inform internal school accountability by analysing the effects of meaningful modifiable factors and potentially serve as drivers of school improvement policies.