14 May  2012 : Professor  Ida Juul, Aarhus University, Denmark; Committee Room 3, 3.00 pm.

 “Parity of Esteem – possibility or utopia? Negotiating equilibrium in Danish upper secondary education”

 23 May 2012: Martin Weale, National Institute of Economic and Social Research; Room 828, 3.00 pm

“Education and its effects on income, health and survival for those aged sixty-five and over”
12 June 2012: Professor Nikos Papadakis, University of Crete; Room 537, 3.00 pm

“’….and for all my sins they gave me a mission’: Recession, Skills, Lifelong Learning and Employability within the EU 2020 agenda and ET2020 strategy.”
 27 June 2012: Professor Francis Green & Dr Tarek Mostafa, Institute of Education; Room 642, 3.00 pm

 “The Dispersion of Job Quality in Europe”         

Places at these seminars should be booked via llakesevents@ioe.ac.uk.

Their title is: “Where is the STEM in Apprenticeship?”

Geoff Mason, of NIESR, will be presenting at the same event. His title is:

“Science, Engineering and Technology (SET) Technicians in the UK Economy: what mix of skills is required?”.

Professor Ka Ho Mok, Hong Kong Institute of Education

Tuesday 13 March 2012, 3.00 pm, Room 642, Institute of Education

Over the past few decades, the Chinese government has concentrated on promoting rapid economic growth to improve the livelihoods of its people. During this period, policy issues relating to social development and human well-being received less attention, though attempts were made to impose neo-liberal ideas and practices on social services, with costs in these areas being transferred from the State and on to individuals.

After three decades of privatising and marketising Higher Education, questions have been raised as to the increasingly heavy financial burdens being imposed by these policies on the Chinese people. This seminar will address the social and political consequences of the privatisation of Higher Education in China; and it will also assess the strategies that the Chinese government has adopted recently to restore partially the role of the State in provisioning and funding Higher Education, in response to the perceived negative consequences of privatisation.

Ka Ho Mok is Professor of Comparative Policy, and Director of the Centre for Greater China Studies, at the Hong Kong Institute of Education. He has worked previously at the University of Hong Kong; and he established the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Bristol. He has published extensively in the field of social development in contemporary China and East Asia, and is a founding editor of the Journal of Asian Public Policy.

Attendance at the seminar is free, but places should be booked in advance via llakesevents@ioe.ac.uk

Briefing documents are now available for the following LLAKES research papers, by Dr Germ Janmaat:

Paper 4: Classroom Diversity and its Relation to Tolerance, Trust and Participation in England, Sweden and German

Paper 5: School Systems, Segregation and Civic Competences among Adolescents

Thursday 1 March 2012, 3.00 pm, Committee Room 1, Institute of Education

 Integration of Muslim children and young people in the UK has been a contested issue. Debates around the construction of young Muslims’ identities and their educational experiences have been disputed even more. Some scholars and policymakers argue that the failure of mainstream state schools in meeting the needs of Muslim pupils has posed problems for integration; while others see such schools as an instrument for improving race relations.  On the other hand, some researchers envisage a strong role for Muslim faith-based schools in ‘socializing’ young Muslims and constructing their ‘British Muslim’ identity. Others, more sceptically, regard Muslim schools as being divisive, reproducing gender inequalities and threatening the harmony of multi-ethnic British society.

Interestingly, amidst all these controversies, only limited attention has been paid to the voices of young Muslims themselves. Similarly, little effort has been made to understand how, and to what extent, the curriculum in Muslim schools address the educational, religious or cultural needs of Muslim pupils; and how it leads to the construction of their multiple or contested identities. 

Based on an ethnographic research conducted in a secondary Muslim girls’ school in England, this seminar will highlight the complexity of multiple factors that have led to the establishment of Muslim faith schools in the UK. It will analyze three different forms of curricula (Islamic, National and Islamicized) being used in the school, and the diversity of young Muslims’ experiences as a result of a complex interplay of individual, familial, educational, ethnic and religious factors. The seminar will recognize the agency of young girls in the process of their own socialization, and will suggest that, despite variations in their experiences, the girls are involved actively in creating and recreating their identities and in negotiating, choosing or abandoning what they perceive as ‘cultural’ rather than ‘religious’.  This finding challenges the dominant discourses that regard Muslim girls as ‘oppressed’ in the perceived patriarchal systems and that consider them as a homogenous category. The seminar aims to inform the contested debates around the socialization, identity and integration of young Muslims, which have largely ignored their voices and aspirations. 

Dr Sadaf Rizvi is a Research Officer at the Institute of Education. Her specific areas of interest are anthropology of education, childhood ethnography and education and social cohesion. Prior to working at the IoE, Sadaf worked at Brunel University, London and the Aga Khan University – Institute for Educational Development in Pakistan. She also taught at the Open University, UK on ‘Islam in the West’ and ‘Childhood’ courses. Her recently edited book, Multidisciplinary approaches to educational research: Case studies from Europe and the developing world’ compares the use diverse educational approaches in undertaking research with children and young people in diverse settings.

 Attendance at the seminar is free, but places should be reserved in advance via llakesevents@ioe.ac.uk

Professor Catherine Casey, University of Leicester

Wednesday 15 February 2012, 3.00-4.30 pm, Committee Room 2

Abstract

Policy-favoured macroeconomic models of knowledge-based, learning economies propose that a general improvement in education and skill levels generates increased productivity and disperses knowledge-intensive production across all industry sectors and labour markets in society. The knowledge-based economy is assumed as generating constant innovation, continually requiring higher levels of education and skills development across the population. Labour markets, it is projected, will comprise predominantly high productivity sectors requiring high levels of skills which successfully displace low productivity sectors and low levels of skills. Any gaps on this path to a generalised knowledge economy are assumed to be due to structural inertia and other behavioural hindrances to optimal labour market equilibrium.

However, close examination of the application of these models at the organizational level of the labour market reveals critical discrepancies and contradictions. The firm, in pursuit of its interest maximization and corresponding forms of organization, plays a powerful role. The firm’s organizational behaviour rationally utilizes employees’ education and skills in pursuit of its corporate interests. Its actions impede or contradict the optimal dispersion and development of higher order knowledge and skills assumed in knowledge-based economy and learning society models.

 The firm’s role in generating discrepant educational outcomes, as well as its interests in influencing educational activity and lifelong learning policy in society, is notably under-addressed in both labour market studies and education, including lifelong learning, studies. This paper principally addresses the role and behaviour of the firm in regard to the demand for and utilisation of higher levels of education and skills. It raises critical dilemmas for lifelong learning, and for institutions of work.

 Catherine Casey is Professor of Organization and Society at the University of Leicester. Her research addresses critical questions in economy and society, with a main focus on work, organizations and institutions, labour markets and employment relations, and education and lifelong learning. Her current book, Economy, Work and Education: Critical Connections, (Routledge, 2011) is a sociological exploration of critical concerns arising from policies of knowledge-based economies in neo-liberal conditions.

 Formerly working at the School of Business and Economics at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, she has held visiting fellowships at a number of institutes, including Trinity College, Dublin, and the European University Institute, Florence. She has served in advisory capacities to the New Zealand Ministry of Education, and the Ministry of Research and Science, the European Commission, and the UK Economic and Social Research Council. She is Senior Editor of Organization Studies.

Attendance at the seminar is free; please register in advance via llakesevents@ioe.ac.uk.

Research Seminar, Institute of Education, 25 January 2012, Room 642

New policies needed if government is to meet its objective to improve social mobility

The Government has stated that its primary social policy objective is to increase social mobility. Both academics and policy-makers agree that the single most important policy lever is education, broadly defined. Yet there is little consensus on the impact on social mobility of changes, past and future, to the education system. At a research seminar on 25 January 2012, organised by the Centre for Learning and Life Chances in Knowledge Economies and Societies (LLAKES), Jonathan Portes, Director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR), discussed the current state of research on education, inequality and social mobility, and the implications for policy.

Portes said that both the UK and international evidence suggests a clear link between income inequality, social immobility, and the socio-economic gradient of education (the extent to which the children of the better off achieve better educational outcomes). Although the precise patterns of causality – and the time lags – are unclear, it is reasonable to assume that reducing socio-economic gradient would over time improve social mobility. Research suggests that the fall in social mobility seen in recent decades reflects both the sharp rise in income inequality seen in the 1980s and increased educational inequality in 1980s and 1990s, in particular in progression to higher education. However, in the short term there might be some cause for optimism; inequality, especially at the bottom end, stabilised in the 2000s, while the socio-economic gradient of educational attainment had fallen in recent years, at least for some age groups.

Looking to the medium term, though, he was less optimistic. Income inequality is likely to rise, both as a result of austerity measures and wider labour market trends; both current levels of youth unemployment, and wage stagnation for lower-middle income workers, are likely to have a damaging impact. The focus of government policies to increase social mobility, however, is the reduction of educational attainment gaps, and over the long term, at least, this seems appropriate. Portes said, however, that it is far from clear that policies implemented so far will have an overall positive effect:

- To the extent that structural reforms to the school system increase selection (and/or socio-economic segregation), this is likely to reduce social mobility. International evidence strongly suggests that selection increases socio-economic attainment gaps without improving outcomes; and UK evidence suggests that grammar schools were at best neutral for social mobility;

- The Educational Maintenance Allowance (EMA) clearly reduced socio-economic attainment gaps, so its abolition is likely to reduce social mobility. This will be counteracted by the introduction of the pupil premium; but plausible quantitative estimates, based on the research literature, suggest that, even with optimistic assumptions about impact, this is unlikely to do more than reverse the negative effect of the abolition of EMA.

Portes concluded that, while welcome, it is not plausible to assume that the pupil premium will do more than mitigate the impact of other government policies. The government will need to take more considerably more aggressive policy action, in education and other policy areas, if it really wants to make social mobility its “overriding social policy objective”.

A copy of the presentation is available here: Jonathan Portes – LLAKES January 2012

Notes for editors:

Mr Portes’ talk is based in part on his article “Poverty and Inequality: An Introduction”, National Institute Economic Review, October 2011.

The Centre for Learning and Life Chances in Knowledge Economies and Societies (LLAKES) is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), and is hosted by the Institute of Education, University of London. (Further details of the LLAKES research programme are available at www.llakes.org or via Richard Arnold at 0207 911 5464 or r.arnold@ioe.ac.uk.)

Ka Ho Mok, The Hong Kong Institute of Education, Hong Kong & Zhejiang University, China 

Tuesday 13 March,  Room 642, 15.00 to 17.00.

 Abstract

 In the last few decades, the Chinese government has concentrated on promoting rapid economic growth to improve the livelihood of its people in order that the political legitimacy could be restored, especially when the post-Mao leadership confronted the three faith crises and unstable political environment after the Cultural Revolution in 1977. Being instrumental about economic growth, the whole country has engaged in rapid economic growth along the line of classical market economic approach, while social development and human well-being issues had received less attention. Before the Hu-Wen leadership was formally installed, the previous administration under Jiang-Zhu’s leadership had tried to adopt ideas and practices along the line of neo-liberalism to reform the social service delivery mode and social policy provision. It is against this policy context that major social policy areas like health, education and housing have been going through the processes of marketization and privatization, thereby people have to bear heavy financial burden for meeting these welfare and social policy needs. After privatizing and marketizing education for a few decades, the Chinese government has repeatedly confronted with criticisms for the government in failing to tackle the problems related to ‘new three mountains phenomenon’ (namely heavy financial burdens for meeting health, education and housing needs) in recent years.

This presentation outlines briefly the wider policy context, and examines the social and political consequences after education is privatized and marketized. The speaker also discusses what major policies and strategies that the Chinese government has recently adopted to bring back the state in education provision and financing in order to address the negative consequences of the privatization of education. Moreover, this presenation also critically examines major policy implications throughout the processes of major reforms taken place in higher education in mainland China.

Ka Ho Mok is Chair Professor of Comparative Policy, and Associate Vice President (External Relations), Dean, Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Director, Centre for Greater China Studies of the Hong Kong Institute of Education (HKIEd). Before joining the HKIEd, he was Associate Dean and Professor of Social Policy, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Hong Kong (HKU). Being appointed as founding Chair Professor in East Asian Studies, Professor Mok established the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Bristol, UK before taking the position at HKU. Professor Mok is no narrow disciplinary specialist but has worked creatively across the academic worlds of sociology, political science and public and social policy while building up his wide knowledge of China and the region. Professor Mok has published extensively in the fields of comparative education policy, comparative development and policy studies, and social development in contemporary China and East Asia. In particular, he has contributed to the field of social change and education a variety of additional ways not the least, of which has been his leadership and entrepreneurial approach to the organization of the field. He has been awarded the First Annual CIES (Comparative and International Education Society) Higher Education SIG Best Article for the academic year 2008-2009. His membership on numerous editorial boards, commissions, in key scholarly societies all contribute to the recognition that he is among the best in his field. He is a founding editor of Journal of Asian Public Policy, Journal of Asian Education and Development Studies and Comparative Development and Policy in Asia Book Series (published by London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group). In the past few years, Professor Mok has also worked closely with the World Bank and UNICEF as International Consultant for comparative development and policy studies projects. Since January 2010, he has been appointed by the Ministry of Education of China as Changjiang Chair Professor and served at Zhejiang University, China to promote internationalization and regional collaborations.

Attendance at this seminar is free, but places should be reserved in advance via llakesevents@ioe.ac.uk