CES briefing: ‘Schools, Policy & Social Change’, Lindsay Paterson

This new Briefing by Lindsay Paterson, Professor of Education Policy in the School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh, is an 8-page summary of analysis carried out as part of his Leverhulme Trust funded research ‘Education and Society in Scotland’.. The Briefing can be accessed directly here, or via our ‘Briefings’ page, while the original papers the Briefing is based on can be found here and here (opens in new tab).

ABSTRACT: Education policy does not operate in a vacuum. It interacts with the legacies of schools to modify students’ experience and, indeed, the intentions of policy makers. It has seldom been possible to investigate the role of schools in mediating policy and social change. An internationally unique series of surveys in Scotland, however, allows these complex processes to be traced through the whole of the second half of the twentieth century. Institutional traditions can sometimes constrain change, but they can also help to bring it about.