SP432      Half Unit
Education Policy, Reform and Financing

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

Availability

This course considers education policy, reform and financing across a diverse range of countries. It uses concepts and tools from a number of academic disciplines – social policy, sociology, economics, politics and philosophy – to scrutinise education. Throughout the course, there is a particular focus on equity, social justice and the distribution of resources.

Issues to be addressed include: the aims of education systems; the impact of social characteristics on educational outcomes (e.g. socio-economic status, gender, race and ethnicity) and related policy reforms; accountability and market-oriented reforms in education; privatisation; power and the politics of educational policy making; global policy transfer in education; early years education; school-based education; vocational and higher education. Not all of these issues are covered as separate weekly topics – some are ‘cross-cutting’ and will be discussed throughout the course.

15 hours of seminars and 15 hours of lectures in the Autumn Term.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Autumn Term.

All teaching will be in accordance with the LSE Academic Code which specifies a minimum of two hours taught contact time per week when the course is running in the Autumn Term (AT) and/or Winter Term (WT). Social Policy courses are predominantly taught through a combination of in-person lectures and In person classes/seminars. Further information will be provided by the Course Convenor in the first lecture of the course. 

Essay in Autumn Term Week 9

One formative essay in AT.

Specialist lists for each topic will be provided. The following books are recommended as a general introduction to the course content:

• Apple, M.W., Ball, S.J., Gandin, L.A. (2010) The Routledge International Handbook of the Sociology of Education. Abingdon: Routledge. 
• Ball, S.J. (2021) The Education Debate - Fourth Edition. Bristol: Policy Press. 
• Grek, S., Maroy, C., Verger, A. (2021) World Yearbook of Education 2021: Accountability and Datafication in the Governance of Education. Abingdon: Routledge. 
• Hogan, A., Thompson, G. (eds) (2021) Privatisation and Commercialisation in Public Education: How the Nature of Public Schooling is Changing. Abingdon: Routledge.
• McGrath, S. Gu, Q. (eds) (2015) Routledge Handbook of International Education and Development. London: Routledge.
• Mundy, K., Green, A,. Lingard, B., Verger, A. (eds) (2016) The Handbook of Global Education Policy. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell.
• Wolf, A. (2002) Does Education Matter? Myths about Education and Economic Growth. Penguin.

Exam (100%), duration: 180 Minutes in the Spring exam period

Students will sit a 3 hour in-person Exam in the Spring term. Students must answer 2 questions from a choice of questions. The recommended word count is 2400 (approximately 1200 per question).