The Creative Art of Troublemaking in Education

<p>Drawing on a lifetime’s experience and research in education, Frank Coffield brings together some of his previously published papers to assess the impact of a wide range of national educational policies and to examine the role of the state in public education.</p><p>He concludes that damage has been done to education by political parties of both right and left and that damage will not be reversed until: further, vocational and adult education receive the same levels of commitment and resource as other sectors; serious steps are taken to tackle Britain’s unacceptable levels of poverty; and the powers of the state are reduced.</p><p>Among the unresolved challenges highlighted are the plight of young people from deprived estates; their tactics in dealing with unemployment; the task of improving learning, schools, inspection, and system governance; the failure to increase productivity being blamed solely on education; and the dysfunctional and undemocratic political framework on which education reform is forced to depend.</p><p>An essential read for anyone in education, this provocative criticism of our past and current educational ''system'' provides an accessible as well as a humorous critique of educational policy and politics.</p>