Research and policy in education: evidence, ideology and impact - 46

The OECD tells us that 90 per cent of education reforms are not properly evaluated.

So it seems that governments have not lived up to their own ideals of evidence-informed policymaking.Research and Policy in Education argues that education policy is as often driven by political ideologies as by solid research evidence.

It explores this claim with case studies of:- the Coalition government's reform of teacher training towards a school-led approach;- the use of evidence in international policy borrowing and the rhetoric of 'what works';- the deployment of policies that aim to narrow the social class achievement and participation gap.The book concludes with a plea for more discipline-based research on education, and a reassertion of the importance of the sociology of education as an essential resource for making sense of contemporary education policy.