This paper examines the extent to which parents have absorbed New Right ideas about education and acted accordingly. What emerges is that their commitment to the rhetoric of school choice is strong. However, concepts such as the market and competition are viewed less favourably. An important theme here is the avoidance by parents of any collective agenda in discussing education policy, a factor that may thwart those who attempt to predict their responses to government policy for schools.

This paper examines the extent to which parents have absorbed New Right ideas about education and acted accordingly. What emerges is that their commitment to the rhetoric of school choice is strong. However, concepts such as the market and competition are viewed less favourably. An important theme here is the avoidance by parents of any collective agenda in discussing education policy, a factor that may thwart those who attempt to predict their responses to government policy for schools.

This article analyses how child victims of abuse may be subjected to hermeneutical injustice. I start by explaining how child victims are hermeneutically marginalised by adults’ social and epistemic authority, and the stigma around child abuse. In understanding their abuse, I highlight two epistemic obstacles child victims may face: (i) lack of access to concepts of child abuse, thereby causing victims not to know what abuse is; and (ii) myths of child abuse causing misunderstandings of abuse. When these epistemic obstacles (...) cause the child victims to fail to see themselves as being abused and/or to get adults to recognise that they are being abused, I argue that this constitutes hermeneutical injustice. While some may justify obstructing epistemic access to concepts of abuse on the grounds of parental rights and protection of children’s innocence, I reply that both grounds are unjust in light of children’s basic rights and the fact that children can easily be taught such concepts in a child-appropriate manner. The case of child abuse prompts important reflections on existing epistemic injustice literature, particularly on the ways in which hermeneutical injustice materialises, the epistemic responsibilities of institutional bodies and individuals, and the interrelationship between testimonial and hermeneutical injustice. (shrink)

This paper focuses on school choice and the extent to which admissions to publicly-funded secondary schools in England address issues of equity and social justice. It argues that schools with responsibility for their own admissions are more likely than others to act in their own self interest by 'selecting in' or 'creaming' particular pupils and 'selecting out' others. Given this, it is argued that individual schools should not be responsible for admissions. Instead, admissions should be the responsibility of a local (...) authority (or non-partisan body); this body should make decisions about who should be allocated to which school on the basis of the expressed wishes of the parents, and the admissions criteria of the school in question. Admissions criteria should be objective, clear and fair and the admissions system itself should address issues of equity and social justice. It is argued that systems where there are some 'controls' on the choice process should be facilitated to address equity and social justice considerations which can benefit individuals and communities. (shrink)

This paper explores the apparently forgotten area of community education. It examines the dominant modes of community education practice, dubbed the status reform model, and concludes that one of the key explanations of its failure to change practice was its reluctance to tackle professional domination of existing power structures in education. The article also examines New Right definitions of appropriate parental roles, of citizenship, and of community. The article concludes by identifying some possible strategies to expand and enhance the roles (...) offered by the education system to lay actors. (shrink)

This paper explores the apparently forgotten area of community education. It examines the dominant modes of community education practice, dubbed the status reform model, and concludes that one of the key explanations of its failure to change practice was its reluctance to tackle professional domination of existing power structures in education. The article also examines New Right definitions of appropriate parental roles, of citizenship, and of community. The article concludes by identifying some possible strategies to expand and enhance the roles (...) offered by the education system to lay actors. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to demonstrate the respects in which private schools are unfair, and why they pose a threat to the well-being of not only those who are excluded on financial grounds, but to democratic equality and social cohesion in general. The shortcomings associated with relying on a form of educational provision that is merely ‘adequate’ are rendered explicit, and the article concludes with a consideration of a variety of measures that might go some way towards nullifying (...) the harmful effects of private schools, the objections to which are sufficiently strong as to warrant a prima facie case for the abolition of such schools. (shrink)

Legitimate parental interests need to be distinguished from any putative rights parents qua parents may be said to possess. Parents have no right to insulate their children from conceptions of the good at variance with those of their own. Claims to the right to faith schools, private schools, home-schooling or to withdraw a child from any aspect of the curriculum designed to enhance a child’s capacity for autonomous decision-making, are refuted.

(1991). Grant‐maintained schools: Making a difference without being really different 1 . British Journal of Educational Studies: Vol. 39, No. 4, pp. 409-424.