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This overview of policy and policy implementation is based on three individual papers presented in November 2001, and on their discussion by Fellows of the Centre for Social Policy at Dartington. It critically examines the challenge of ‘joined‐up’ working, and calls for better engagement of parents and children in action to promote social inclusion and improve opportunity. After a detailed general review by Peter Mittler, who led the seminar, specific consideration to the education of children in care is given by Sonia Jackson, and to the prospects for evidence‐based inter‐agency developments by Judy Sebba, who was a guest contributor.

This paper aims to provide useful insights into educational under‐achievement among Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel (PAI), investigating the perceptions of local educational administrators (LEAs) towards the education system and its modus vivendi, to uncover difficulties and suggest directions to improve the processes and achievements of the PAI education system.

Qualitative interviews were conducted with 16 stakeholders in local education (mayors, education department managers; school principals and parents’ representatives) in four Arab local governments in Israel to elucidate attitudes toward education.

The small random sample cannot claim to be representative however worrying problems were revealed: deficient resources in comparison to the Jewish education system; an ineffective political culture in local government; inferior status and problematic functioning of Arab education department heads and lack of inclusion of professionals and parents in decision‐making. These factors negatively impact the education system and its products.

The paper suggests local government should determine appropriate local policy, positioning education as a high priority with efficient education departments, more professional staff, and suitable education programs. Additionally state government should provide equal resources for the Arab education system, to lever Arab education in Israel.

A successful multi‐level intervention in a high crime low income, innercity Brussels neighbourhood, with a large minority ethnic community, has important implications for how educational and community safety initiatives might be brought together to achieve the goals set out in Every Child Matters, Youth Matters and Narrowing the Justice Gap.

The purpose of this article is to explore whether the concept of social capital is helpful in explaining the educational underachievement of looked after children.

Analysis of data on educational achievement and social care in a cohort of 1,407 children over the age of 15 who left care in two Scottish local authorities between 2000 and 2005.

The educational attainments of children do reflect key factors in their backgrounds before entry to care but their characteristics also lead them to be placed in specific placements that have differing abilities for promoting social capital. An examination of evidence on bonding social capital, bridging social capital, and linking social capital and trust, shows that social capital theory helps to theoretically interpret the low educational achievements of looked after children.

The large and comprehensive data set permits a factor analysis of background and care variables, thus clarifying the significance of each in explaining children's educational attainments and assessing the value of a social capital perspective.

The paper focuses on the auditing and accountancy paradigm which has dominated educational measurement of pupil performance for the last 20 years in England. The advocates of this minimum competency paradigm do not take account of the results of its dominance. These results include ignorance of the heterogeneous complexity of groups within societies which exist now internationally and the reduction in pedagogy and curriculum experience to a ‘one size fits all’ model of teaching concentrated on the tested subjects. This is complemented by the ‘recitation script’ style of pedagogy in schools based on coverage, delivery, completion and measurement rather than interpretation and analysis to support the complexity and diversity of individual learning needs.

Increasingly the world is becoming aware of adult illiteracy. Its extent may still surprise many people—in 1970 there were 783 million illiterate adults throughout the world, at least one million of whom were living in the United Kingdom—but what should really give us reason to pause are the social and economic implications of the problem.

It is a rare challenge in academia to be asked to write about yourself, and rarer still to engage with the multiple (social, spatial, political, embodied and private) selves that impact on our practice. In this chapter I consider how who we are in academia is not simply a matter of adopting a professional role but rather involves identity management and negotiation practices to obscure, perform or disclose identities in professional contexts. This chapter is informed by my first ethnographic research project at a non-profit youth media centre in New York City; a study exploring innovative visual pedagogies for investigating how pre-service student-teachers articulate their views about the effects of poverty on educational attainment and my practices as a teacher educator on the MSc Transformative Learning and Teaching: a two-year, initial teacher education programme designed from a social justice perspective and working to produce graduates who position themselves as activist teachers. In this autoethnography I explore the complex temporalities of my academic identities, arguing the need for a critical spatial practice.

There is considerable public and private attention directed toward the current social, political and economic status of African American males in the United States. As a group, African American males place last on most positive indicators and first on most negative indicators. These facts, at first glance, might be alarming on their own, though first and last are expected parameters in descriptive statistics. What is highly alarming is the size of the gap between African American males and other groups on various indicators, and the consistency in which African American males are in a negative position and the painfully slow progress that we as a nation are making toward correcting the situation, and “correcting” is used loosely. The status of African American males is considered from an education economics point of view and a strategy for reversing disturbing trends for this group is presented. Significantly, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines are long-standing contributors to the economic development of the nation. Although some African American males are educationally and professionally successful in STEM careers, African American males' proportions pale in comparison with other groups. Effective mentoring strategies are offered as a means for increasing the success rate in these rigorous fields and ultimately reversing the current trends regarding the condition of African American males in the United States.

Educators who work in K-12 educational settings have only begun to make sense of the many consequences the COVID-19 pandemic has had for students. Months of remote teaching and learning have made one thing quite clear; the academic, physical, and mental health benefits of in-person schooling are difficult to replicate through online learning. The COVID-19 pandemic has elevated the importance of social emotional learning (SEL) as children have experienced substantial reductions in social contact with peers while attending school remotely. Given the profound impact this past year has had on children’s social emotional (SE) health, it has never been more important for educators, parents, and caregivers to support student’s SE health. While it may be tempting to put student’ SE well-being on the back burner as we scramble to make up for lost learning; we stand at a crossroad. We can radically weave SEL into the school day to ensure students continue to develop critical SE skills in a socially distanced world or we can fall back on business as usual.