Patrick Ainley and Martin Allen The Blob Strikes Back! A review of Schools at Risk! Gove’s School Revolution Scrutinised edited by Trevor Fisher for the Socialist Education Association Gove has characterised his critics in ‘the academic educational establishment’ as ‘The Blob’. If there is an academic educational establishment, some of the authors of this pamphlet … Continue reading The Blob Strikes Back! →

Patrick Ainley                                 http://publicuniversity.org.uk/2013/04/09/review-of-books-focused-on-the-public-university/ Andrew McGettigan (2013) The Great University Gamble, Money, Markets and the Future of Higher Education, London: Pluto, pp.209, £16.99, 978-0-7453-3293-2 Roger Brown with Helen Carasso (2013)  Everything for Sale? The marketization of UK higher education, London: Routledge and the Society for Research into Higher Education, pp.235, £26.99, 978-0-415-80980-1 These two books … Continue reading CAMPAIGN FOR THE PUBLIC UNIVERSITY BOOK REVIEWS →

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/536390455 The election of the Conservative-Lib Dem Coalition in 2010 brought about a relentless series of attacks on English education (devolution means that the situation is different in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland). For the most part these attacks are understood as the commodification and marketisation of education. While Allen & Ainley do not dispute … Continue reading Review of The Great Reversal →

Patrick Ainley reviews Dead Man Working                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   Carl Cederstrom, Peter Fleming                                                                                                                                                                             Zero Books, Winchester, 2012. 76pp., £9.99 pb                                                                      http://marxandphilosophy.org.uk/reviewofbooks/reviews/2013/709 '.....Cederstrom and Fleming accept a post-ideological reality in which there is no alternative to a capitalism that has outstripped any useful or progressive function it once had and yet is ‘more powerful and influential than ever’. Thus, … Continue reading Book Review →

Patrick Ainley  reviews  New thinking about the future of higher education reveals only paralysis in response to the New Order being imposed on higher education  Forthcoming in next issue of  ‘POST-16 EDUCATOR’  http://www.post16educator.org.uk/ Introduction Engels – or was it Lenin? – says somewhere that the presentation of many different views on the same subject quickly … Continue reading More Blue Skies →

Patrick Ainley FORTHCOMING IN HIGHER EDUCATION REVIEW The Consumer Experience of Higher Education, The Rise of Capsule Education by Deirdre McArdle-Clinton, Continuum 978-1-4411-7919-7 (pbk), £27.99 I read this book as a treat after two week’s marking. At this point I should stop because the state of higher education in Ireland so presciently described by Deirdre … Continue reading Book Review: ‘Capsule Education’ →

                                                                       Patrick Ainley  reviews Peter Latham's The State and Local Government: Towards a New Basis for 'Local Democracy'  and the Defeat of Big Business Control                        http://marxandphilosophy.org.uk/reviewofbooks/reviews/2012/541#.T80czA5BSdQ.email

Book reviews for Post-16 Educator  by Patrick Ainley  'A Manifesto for the Public University’ John Holmwood (ed.)  (2011) London Bloomsbury ‘The Assault on Universities, A Manifesto for Resistance'  Michael Bailey  and Des Freedman (eds) (2011) London, Pluto Where are we? As Andrew McGettigan asked on his Critical Education blog at the end of 2011, noting ' the government’s strategy … Continue reading Two Manifestos for the fight against fees →

Martin Allen   Education Review  Volume 24. N0 1 Remaking the Curriculum; re-engaging young people in the secondary school.   Martin Fautley, Richard Hatcher and Elaine Millard.  Trentham Books 2011, ISBN: 978-1-85856-471-5 The very title of this book should be enough to entice secondary practitioners stuck in a daily grind; where teaching has become focussed on preparing for the … Continue reading Book Review: Remaking the Curriculum; re-engaging young people in the secondary school →