No abstract

No abstract

A continuing challenge for the education system is how to evaluate the wider outcomes of schools. Wider measures of success – such as citizenship or lifelong learning – influence each other and emerge over time from complex interactions between students, teachers and leaders, and the wider community. Unless methods are found to evaluate these broader outcomes, which are able to do justice to learning and achievement as emergent properties of the learner’s engagement with his or her world the education system will continue to focus on narrow measures of school effectiveness which do not properly account for complexity. In this article we describe the rationale and methodology underpinning a pilot research project that applied hierarchical process modelling to a group of schools as complex living systems, using software developed by engineers at the University of Bristol, called Perimeta. The aim was to generate a stakeholder owned systems design which was better able to account for the full range of outcomes valued by each school, and for the complex processes which facilitate or inhibit them, thus providing a more nuanced leadership decision-making analytic. The project involved three academies in the UK.

Raises questions about the research degree examination and in particular the apparent reluctance on the part of institutions and both regulatory and funding agencies to develop a common and transparent approach. Research degree examining is discussed as a quality issue in which the absence of norms adopted for taught programmes is questioned. What results is a confusing and muddled picture of assessment of the highest award of UK universities. The editorial reviews issues arising from candidates’ perceptions of the process of examination, including the viva, prior to the event, the choice of examiners and the approach adopted by the examiners. Examining the criteria employed in the examination and the approach taken, the paper highlights the enormous diversity of practice. The resulting discussion highlights the need for national guidelines and points to the lack of clear direction in the recent joint funding councils’ report.

Urban policy initiatives are a characteristic of most European countries. These initiatives have developed within the context of existing legislative frameworks, particularly relating to public administration and land use. The Contrat de Ville, recently introduced as a mechanism for urban policy coordination and implementation, has developed within an administrative structure based on 36,000 communes, Schémas Directeur and Plans d'Occupation des Sols. This article outlines the development of urban policy and describes the existing structures before questioning the constraints which these may pose for urban policy development. Using the case of the Contrat de Ville for Lille, it then assesses how far these structures have constrained the development of the Contrat.