This study examines the issue of school choice in the context of Free Schools in England. It focuses on three different aspects, each one related the Free Schools policy from a social justice and equity perspective. First, the admissions arrangements of secondary Free Schools, are explored. Second, the reasons and strategies that parents reported when choosing a school are considered. Finally, the student compositions of the schools are analysed. The study as a whole takes a multi-method approach, using Annual School Census data, parent questionnaires and interviews and a documentary analysis of admissions policies. The findings show a complex picture, reflecting the heterogeneous and diverse nature of Free Schools. Disadvantaged pupils are under-represented in the majority of Free Schools, but not in all. The admissions policies also suggest that the majority of Free Schools are using similar methods for allocating places as those used by other schools in their area. Parents that had chosen Free Schools tended to report looking for similar features but had taken different routes and encountered varying circumstances during the decision-making process. Many were attracted to the Free School by its promise of quality and used a range of proxy features to determine this, including factors relating to the social composition, comparisons with other school types and a focus on a traditional approach to schooling. Recommendations for how the Free Schools policy (and education policy more widely) could be used to encourage equity of access and opportunity are included at the end of the study.

This study explored the use of MacDonald and O’Hara’s Ten Element Map as an audit tool to elicit the views of staff and pupils with regard to what they felt promoted and demoted their mental health. It was used with fourteen schools and 361 staff members and 219 pupils were involved in the research. Staff members and focus groups of pupils were asked to consider each element of the map, with regards to the factors that promoted and demoted their mental health in school and comments were analysed using thematic analysis. Top promotion themes for staff included the staffroom, visual appearance, receiving positive feedback, support from colleagues and informal opportunities to socialise. In comparison, the top demotion themes were; a lack of space, a lack of appreciation or praise, feeling undervalued, time pressures, workload, poor toilet facilities and a lack of communication. For pupils key promotion themes included; specific areas within the school site, rewards, the use of reward systems and praise. They also identified the importance of talking to members of staff, staff providing support as well as socialising through clubs and school related events. Conversely, the key demotion themes were the toilets and peers being unkind.

Considerable resources are spent on school leavers’ and graduates’ information systems (SLGIS) in numerous European countries, but it is not clear what happens to the results. This research investigates how school leavers’ and graduates’ data are produced and to what extent the data are then applied in educational policy planning, institutional decision-making and informing students. This investigation categorises the currently available SLGIS in Europe using documentary data, analysis of which leads to a typology and the selection of three distinct cases. These cases - England, Finland and the Netherlands – are explored based on 15 élite interviews in each country, and further documentary data. The reported uses of SLGIS are broadly similar across the different case study countries, despite the clear differences in the design of their SGLIS. This suggests that the ‘value’ might not be intrinsic to the data itself but it depends on the judgement of the society. On the other hand, their uses are contrasted in terms of data-production and data-utilisation based on the interplay of data-needs of the different actors regarding the SLGIS. The data-needs of the policy and the institutional levels differ substantially. For example, whereas policy is largely content with a national picture, institutions require more detailed information at the level of educational programmes. Findings like these suggest that national and international investment in SLGIS could be made more efficient.

The ‘Academies Programme’ has been the subject of limited research and virtually none focusing on their ‘entrepreneurial’ nature. As an inaugural piece of research, the research methodology was that of a survey, based upon semi-structured interviews of Senior Leaders in academies. The theoretical basis of the research is drawn from the modelling work published by Woods et al (2007). Emerging from the research are a number findings about entrepreneurism in academies based on the perceptions of Senior Leaders. These relate to: the entrepreneurial differences between earlier and recent ‘convertor’ academies; the impact of ‘chain’ academies; and the almost unanimous perception by those interviewed that academies are primarily focused on ‘social entrepreneurism’. From an initial review of the Woods et al (2007) ‘Lens Model’, the findings lead to a revision of the model to express the apparent predominant perception of social entrepreneurism in academies and the postulation of additional conceptual models. With the number of academies already standing at over fifteen hundred it is now apposite to consider the implications of the findings of this thesis, This thesis will be of interest to current and future academy Senior Leaders, new academies, researchers wishing to take forward the limited historical research, and policy makers for whom there are some major challenges to be faced in re-defining the nature of the ‘academy movement’.

This study investigates issues of subject choice at 14. Geography is a popular optional subject choice in England and Wales at age 14 but between 1996 and 2010 numbers entering for the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) examination declined by 35.6% although total entries for GCSE had increased. This study sought to help the geography subject community better understand the reasons for this decline. The research has used NPD/PLASC data to investigate patterns of entry for geography at the national level. This secondary data analysis was developed further through a study of five schools which investigated curriculum diversity and competition between subjects at the school level. A conceptual model of the option choice system is used as the framework for analysis. The results showed there was segregation in entry patterns with high attaining students and students in less deprived rural counties being more likely to study geography. Government policy had both direct and indirect influences on geography entries through curriculum decisions made by schools. Teachers and their pedagogy played a significant part in student choice but their influence on numbers choosing the subject can be constrained by whole school curriculum and option choice systems.

This study focused on school non-attendance, from the perspective of young people (YP) whose families were supported by a Local authority (LA) family intervention team (FIT). Detailed case studies allowed YP to reflect on their lived experience of non-attendance and share this with the researcher. To achieve this, the School Refusal Assessment Scale (SRAS) was used with a semi-structured interview schedule - specially devised to allow YP and the researcher to gain a deeper understanding of their non-attendance. Further data collection with key workers (KW), using semi-structured interviews, sought to gain an insight into the context in which school non-attendance was occurring and how future research may be made more accessible to this population. It was evident that YP value school and recognise the importance of it in achieving future aspirations. Social relationships were highly important, but influenced each YP in a different way. KW noted the importance of trust in both encouraging YP to engage in research and in maintaining relationships to work with and support YP. It was concluded that giving YP the opportunity to explore their perceptions and understanding of non-attendance was necessary in both understanding and supporting improvement in attendance.

This study investigates the representations of sexuality within a unique corpus of sex education manuals for British teenagers, published between the years 1950 and 2014. It brings together a disparate set of linguistic and multimodal analyses under the aegis of Queer Linguistics, which takes as its focus the way writers and speakers orient themselves and others to social and sexual normativities. Queer Linguistics is an emerging discipline, and it is hoped that the present study will contribute to the field by demonstrating its applicability to a wide range of linguistic perspectives and approaches. The study draws upon the SexEd corpus, which comprises a unique collection of 88 sex education manuals published in Britain. It represents the only longitudinal body of texts of its type, and the only such body to be subjected to rigorous linguistic analyses.

The concern at the heart of this research is that students are not always able to make informed decisions in relation to course and college choices in the transition from school as evidenced by both the drop-out rates and numbers of students expressing dissatisfaction with their choice of college or course. This study was motivated by a personal and professional need to understand the influences that are brought to bear on the decision-making process for these young people so that I might be able to help them make more informed decisions as part of my practice as a career guidance counsellor. Central to this study were semi-structured interviews with three groups: five students in the midst of the decision-making process; five students returning from college at Christmas, and five teachers closely involved in advising and helping the students, comprising careers advisors, subject teachers and a year head. During the interviews, aspects of the students’ lives, their experiences, their perceptions of education and how each of these impinged on their choices, unfolded through the ‘stories’ they share. A consideration of historical and policy particularities impacting on the development of education, including the provision of career guidance, advice and information in Ireland sets the scene here for the analysis and discussions of these narratives. The term stories or narratives are not used as they would be in an ethnographic study, where the stories of the participants are used to describe the culture of a group in a detailed and complex manner (Punch 2009). This research project is quite specific and the term stories or narratives are used in relation to the students’ experiences of the decision-making process as told by the students themselves. The resulting dissertation thus blends career guidance theory, research and policy in the area and an interpretation of the realities as experienced by the students and from the perspectives of the teachers who have responsibilities for helping the students decide on their next pathway. A grounded theory methodology is used to interpret data from the interviews and a questionnaire was used to inform the questions asked as part of the interview process. Career guidance, advice and information is often seen as a matching process supporting the criticism frequently levelled at ‘trait and factor’ approaches that they are an over simplification of a complex process. This study explains the importance of influences such as the family, peers, socio-economic factors, school and geographical location. The research methodology highlights the different ways in which students experience the decision-making process. A constructivist approach is taken to interpret individual realities for students as they make choices in the transition from school. A social constructivist approach to practice is proposed where career advisors and students actively participate together to make more informed choices. From an interpretation of the findings from this study, analysis of professional knowledge in relation to career guidance, and reflections on my own practice, implications and recommendations for a different modified provision of career guidance, advice and information are presented.

The prevalence of children and young people with mental health needs is of national and local concern. Changes in legislation have explicitly made the identification and support of pupil mental health needs a role for schools. Research indicates the identification of pupil mental health needs has a multitude of barriers meaning said needs are frequently unidentified. This is of concern given it is estimated that half of mental health needs have their onset during adolescence and are related to negative outcomes such as poor educational attainment and in some cases, suicide. School staff are tasked with performing a Tier 1 (Universal Services) mental health professional role. However, there is considerable variation in the support school staff receive when performing this pastoral role and routine pastoral care has received little attention in the literature. The purpose of this research was to explore the lived experiences of lead pastoral staff identifying and supporting adolescent pupil mental health needs in mainstream secondary schools. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with four purposively selected members of secondary school staff performing lead pastoral roles. The interview transcripts were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) and the following four overarching themes were found to be relevant for all participants: Multiple Conceptualisations of Role, A Myriad of Emotion, Constraints and Conflict, and Remit. These findings are discussed in the context of existing literature and the limitations of this research are considered. Implications for educational psychology practice are proposed, relating to the different levels at which educational psychologists work: individual, group and organisational. Suggestions for future research related to pastoral leads identifying and supporting adolescent pupil mental health needs are provided.

This thesis investigates how secondary school history teachers at the start of their teaching careers view the nature and purposes of their subject and how they think these views impact on their practice. Data were collected through in depth individual qualitative interviews with eleven teachers completing their initial training. These focused on: how these beginning teachers conceived of the nature of their discipline; the rationale they presented for the purposes of their subject in the school curriculum; the origins of their views on the nature and purposes of history; and how they are manifest in what and how they teach. In order to maintain coherence and to represent the richness and complexity of each teacher's own story these were written, analysed and presented as narrative accounts. A summary is given of each the accounts with three presented in full. The accounts show these beginning history teachers' views on the nature of history as reflecting the dominant discourse that characterises history as an academic subject, being largely Constructionist and emphasising the objective analysis of historical evidence. The teachers' rationales for the purpose of history emphasised broader educational, social and moral purposes. More postmodern perspectives are apparent in the emphasis given to the importance of historical interpretations. Family background, lived experiences, literature and the media are significant influences on the teachers' beliefs about the nature and purposes of history. These beliefs seem to impact on classroom practice and pupil learning in the subject. They influence teaching style, choice of learning activities and the areas of historical understanding emphasised, with, for example, views of the past as an uncontested body of knowledge leading to a pedagogy dominated by the transmission of substantive knowledge; and views which emphasise the more constructed nature of history leading to more pupil centred skills based approaches. Teachers' views on the nature and purpose of the subject are a significant influence on their mediation of the National Curriculum. The National Curriculum for History has increasingly provided opportunities for interpretations more sympathetic to the postmodern orientation but research and inspection evidence suggest that these opportunities are often poorly realised in schools. One reason for this is proposed as history teachers' lack of engagement with postmodern perspectives on history. It is important for teachers to engage with such approaches as without further consideration of their implications history teachers are unable to teach aspects of secondary History. Teachers also need to recognise and make explicit different orientations towards history in order to facilitate pupil learning, to engage pupils and to provide them with the skills necessary to be critical consumers of the range of histories presented to them in society. The research has implications for history teaching, pupil learning and the initial training and professional development of teachers. The case is made for further consideration being given to postmodern perspectives on the nature of history in initial and continuing teacher education in order to improve teaching and learning. The initial teacher education of history teachers needs to ensure that those on programmes have the syntactical knowledge necessary to develop effective teaching strategies and approaches, to enable pupil learning, and to develop their own subject knowledge and ability to reflect on their own practice and development. This research also emphasises the need for all those involved in training to critically engage with subject orientations as where beginning teachers' beliefs conflict with the dominant discourse of history teaching this can lead to problematic experiences of teaching and of teacher training.