The long term implications of devolution and localism for FE in England

Podcast Description

For the last 30 years English education has been subject to a process of delocalisation, centralisation and nationalisation. Since 2010 there has been a revival of interest in devolution of power back to localities, and in education this means control over the adult skills budget for those aged 19+ and engaged in learning outside universities. The project explored the implications of these developments, with research conducted in a number of locations, and via interviews, focus groups, conference sessions and other meetings, with further education (FE) college staff, governors, local stakeholders and national government and agencies.
The lecture will locate debates about the localisation of education within broader academic and policy discourses concerning devolution, governance and economic development. It will explore how actors make sense of localism, and how they identify and develop strategies to support more devolved governance and funding.
The conceptual backbone of the project was the concept of ‘metis’ or localised, practice-based knowledge. One of the key research questions was whether devolution allows metis to be deployed in conditions of trust between central government and localities, and between local actors and stakeholders, and the lecture will explore the considerable tensions between: rhetoric and reality concerning the scale and meaning attached to devolution by different parties; what central government was willing to contemplate and what localities aspired to; different localities’ capacity to assume new responsibilities; the levels of resources available and the potential scale of calls on these funds; and models based on systems and markets. How these tensions and divergences will be resolved is as yet unclear. The lecture discusses what actors can do to develop a compelling vision for localisation, and help metis to flourish.
Professor Ewart Keep holds a chair in Education, Training and Skills at the Department of Education, Oxford University.

More from this series

    Podcast
    Government statistics indicate that children and young people with special educational needs are five times more likely to be excluded from secondary schools, and account for just under half of excluded pupils.
    25 February 2020
    Discover More
    Podcast
    The House of Commons’ Education Committee (2019) criticised the education system’s treatment of children with disabilities on the following terms: “[C]hildren and parents are not ‘in the know’ and for some the law may not even appear to exist.
    13 February 2020
    Discover More
    Podcast
    This talk will discuss the latest understanding of mental health needs in adolescent populations in the UK and the potential role that mental health services in schools can play.
    13 February 2020
    Discover More
    Podcast
    This seminar is part of our public seminar series on ‘Exclusion from School and its Consequences’, led by the Department of Education and convened by Harry Daniels (Professor of Education) and Ian Thompson (Associate Professor of English Education & Director of PGCE).
    4 February 2020
    Discover More
    Podcast
    There are great differences in the rates of permanent school exclusion in different parts of the UK with numbers rising rapidly in England but remaining relatively low or falling in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.
    20 January 2020
    Discover More
    Podcast
    The use of expert panels to advise governments is a favoured form of policy inquiry process.
    19 November 2019
    Discover More