Postgraduate Course: Education Policy (PGSP11439)
Course Outline
| School | School of Social and Political Science | 
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences | 
 
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) | 
Availability | Available to all students | 
 
| SCQF Credits | 20 | 
ECTS Credits | 10 | 
 
 
| Summary | This course has changed its name to  Education Policy and Governance for the 2023/24 academic session  
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Education has gone through several enormous transformations in the last half century, in common with public services more generally. This course investigates key trends in education policy within the UK and from a comparative perspective, the political debates which have accompanied them and the impact educational policy has had on individuals and society. We will engage with perennial questions in education policy debates: the interplay between education, the economy and democracy; the relationship between educational opportunity, social diversity and inequality; the role of the state, the market and the individual within new forms of educational governance; and the future of national education policy within an increasingly international policy field. | 
 
| Course description | 
    
    Course content 
 
What is education for?  
Education and equality of opportunity: moral and philosophical perspectives 
Education and intersectional inequalities 
Education and social mobility: international comparative perspectives 
Globalisation and education policy 
Education governance and the OECD 
Curriculum debates 
Professionals and policy making in education 
Education, democracy and populism 
Reflections: education policy during a pandemic 
 
Student Learning 
 
Each of the topics is dealt with through a lecture and a seminar discussion. 
 
    
    
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites | 
 | 
Co-requisites |  | 
 
| Prohibited Combinations |  | 
Other requirements |  None | 
 
 
Information for Visiting Students 
| Pre-requisites | None | 
 
		| High Demand Course? | 
		Yes | 
     
 
Course Delivery Information
| Not being delivered |   
Learning Outcomes 
    On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
    
        - Critically evaluate the nature of education as a social institution
 - analyse objectively the deeply controversial issues that provoke debates about educational policy by engaging with different points of view and empirical evidence;
 - critically assess the importance of power in the governance of and practice of education;
 - seek systematically to understand the relationship between education and social diversity;
 - conceptualise the relationship between education and democracy.
 
     
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Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills | 
Not entered | 
 
| Keywords | Not entered | 
 
 
Contacts 
| Course organiser | Prof Lindsay Paterson 
Tel: (0131 6)51 6380 
Email: Lindsay.Paterson@ed.ac.uk | 
Course secretary | Mrs Casey Behringer 
Tel: (0131 6)50 2456 
Email: Casey.behringer@ed.ac.uk | 
   
 
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