Since the passing of the 1988 Education Reform Act British education, particularly at a secondary level, has been transformed. The changes enacted in this and subsequent legislation have opened up state-provided education to a market-oriented system which is led more by the preferences of parents than the dictation of local or national planners. This means that local authorities and other providers of education have been left in a situation where they are relatively powerless to provide adequate schooling in a proactive manner. It is also the case that there is a danger of a 'two-tier' education system developing whereby the better-informed middle classes are served by high achieving schools and less advantaged pupils are left to fill inner city 'sink' schools which cannot provide them with the same educational chances due to lower resource levels. This thesis presents a feasibility study of a variety of techniques drawn from academic and applied geography which can be utilised by such planners in order to better target the resources available to them and improve their reactions to the vagaries of the market. These tools concentrate on geographical information systems (GIS) and spatial modelling techniques. Although both of these sets of techniques have for many years been applied in other areas, including within local Government, they have yet to permeate to a decision-making level in education planning. Thus the time is ripe for their wider dissemination and application in this area. Several examples of the possible uses of GIS are given, using real data for Leeds schools and pupils. Various types of spatial model are described and the most appropriate are calibrated and applied using the same Leeds data. The thesis concludes that the benefits of modelling techniques for planners at all scales, from individual schools to national Government, could be enormous. Through the application of these tools planners will be better placed to provide an education service which caters for all pupils within it. However, there are caveats regarding the requirement for further research into improving model performance and ensuring that output is sufficiently user-friendly.

Thesis advisor: Peter H. Weiler / In 1997, New Labor embraced an ideal of multiculturalism in an attempt to foster a particular brand of open communication and respectful cooperation among different individuals and cultural groups. This MA thesis investigates the background to one aspect of this multiculturalism, New Labor's education policies. The thesis shows how New Labor's current multicultural ideal originated in the 1960s in Labor's attempts to combat racial discrimination. As its attempts proved inadequate, Labor expanded its understanding of what was necessary to create a tolerant society, including educational policies that fostered tolerance, respect for different cultural groups, and personal responsibility. During eighteen years spent in opposition to a Conservative majority government, Labor refined its ideal of multiculturalism in debates, forging a path from the idealistic and radical reforms of the 1960s and 1970s toward New Labor's middle way. This thesis describes how New Labor utilized a variety of tools to achieve the goal of a tolerant, cooperative, multicultural society, including repurposing Conservatives' policies. This thesis defends multiculturalism as an appropriate response to a changing political environment, one that attempted to deal with the exigent circumstances presented by racial discrimination, class and cultural based underachievement, and underlying cultural tensions. / Thesis (MA) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: History.

An ethnographic case study of a Year 6 (5th grade) classroom in Southwest England was conducted in order to explore factors that contribute to academic self-efficacy in British education, specifically in this classroom. Data was collected through qualitative observations, a teacher interview, and student questionnaires to determine the level of academic self-efficacy in the classroom. The class consisted of 14 female students and 9 male students, ranging from ten to eleven years old. Of the total number of students, parental consent was received to allow 9 boys and 7 girls to complete questionnaires. Data was analyzed by examining critical issues and comparing anecdotal records to a teacher interview and student questionnaires. Recurrent themes that materialized were: bullying, uniforms, discipline, competition, assessment, and exceptional students. Results showed that these core issues contributed to positive academic self-efficacy among students in this classroom in the context of the British educational system.

This thesis is a cultural history of the early Fabian Society, focusing on the decades between 1884, the Society’s inaugural year, and 1914. The canonical view is that ‘Fabianism,’ which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as the ‘doctrine and principles of the Fabian Society,’ is synonymous with State socialism and bureaucratic ‘efficiency.’ By bringing the methods of cultural history to bear on the Society’s founding members and decades, this thesis reveals that ‘Fabianism’ was in fact used as a dynamic metonymy, not a fixed doctrine, which signified a range of cultural, and even literary, meanings for British commentators in the 1890s and 1900s (Part 1). Further, by expanding the scope of traditional histories of the Fabian Society, which conventionally operate within political and economic sub-fields and focus on the Society’s ‘official’ literature, to include a close examination of the broader discursive context in which ‘Fabianism’ came into being, this thesis sets out to recover the symbolic aspects of the Fabians’ efforts to negotiate what ‘Fabianism’ meant to the English reading public. The Fabians’ conspicuous leadership in the modern education debates and the liberal fight for a ‘free stage,’ and their solidarity with the international political émigrés living in London at the turn of the twentieth century all contribute to this revised perspective on who the founding Fabians were, what they saw themselves as trying to achieve, and where the Fabian Society belonged—and was perceived to belong—in relation to British politics, culture, and society (Part 2). The original contribution of this thesis is the argument that the Fabians explicitly and implicitly evoked Matthew Arnold as a precursor in their efforts to articulate a kind of Fabian—latterly social-democratic—liberalism and a public vocation that balanced English liberties and the duty of the State to provide the ‘best’ for its citizens in education and in culture, as in politics.