20:20 vision – will “Plan B” (for Balls and Brown) deliver a world class childhood?
Our Children’s Services Editor, Chris Waterman, offers a critical analysis of the Children’s Plan: Building brighter futures and the reactions to it.

Meeting the challenge of ICT by improving e-learning
Jane Williams, Executive Director of Further Education and Regeneration at Becta, explains why schools and colleges need to exploit the full range of ICT
opportunities for learning.

School closures
Our Wales editor, Professor Ken Reid, warns that the strategy of closing small primary schools in Wales in an attempt to save money may spread to secondary
schools and further education.

Higher ground
John Izbicki looks at a Cambridge medical graduate’s memories of the suffering he witnessed at a Nazi concentration camp, lack of enthusiasm for HE, PhD completion rates and the university for vegans.

Best Practices...?
Our children’s services editor, Chris Waterman, looks at the proposals in the Children and Young Persons Bill to introduce social work practices and criticises their comparison in the Bill with GP practices.

UK Youth and the Youth Achievement Awards
John Bateman, CEO of UK Youth, looks at alternative ways of helping young people achieve their potential.

Children’s Health
Health editor Arabella Hargreaves reports on a survey of sex education conducted by the UK Youth Parliament and on happiness among children. She writes about the report Under Ten and Under Pressure? published by the eating disorders charity, Beat.

Letter from Scotia
Our Scotland editor, John Dobie, on school closures and proposed changes to the inspection system.

International Supplement

To access or download the international supplement (without charge) please click here.

Introduction
In this supplement we bring you detailed reports on two of the three major international comparison research projects – PIRLS and PISA – as well as other international education news and research.

It’s all about the teachers
Mike Baker goes in search of the holy grail of educational standards and looks at the McKinsey report How the World’s Best-performing School Systems Come out on Top.

International comparisons in HE
John O’Leary writes about the OECD’s Education at a Glance 2007 report and asks why motivation to enter higher education in Britain is so low.

Media Watch
Why the media was wrong to claim that the results of the latest PISA study showed that standards had fallen dramatically since 2000.

PISA Global
We report on the global picture that the PISA survey of 400,000 students in 57 countries provides for UK policy makers.

PISA in the United Kingdom
Jenny Bradshaw, Principal Research Officer at NFER, presents UK findings from the latest research on 15-year-olds’ ability in reading, maths and science.

Australia, New Zealand and the USA
Brief reports on research from Australia, New Zealand and the USA.

Results from PIRLS 2006
Liz Twist, Principal Research Officer at NFER, presents findings from the latest international research on primary school children’s reading ability.

Academic success is not enough in China
Martin Rogers, Policy Consultant for the Children’s Services Network, LGiU, reports on the recent Shanghai Education Forum, with the theme ‘School Education in Urban Areas in the Perspective of Globalisation’.

General section

Conferences
Demitri Coryton reports on the parliamentary launch of the NUT’s document, A Good Local School for Every Child and Every Community. Ian Nash reports on the Association of Colleges annual conference in Birmingham. We also report on a debate at the RSA, the launch of the new University of York Institute for Effective Education at the House of Commons and an NFER seminar in London on personalised learning.

Opinion
John Izbicki on the performances at this year’s to the Schools Prom, which took place at the Royal Albert Hall.

Reference section

Document Reviews
Reviewed this month is Sustainable Schools: Are we building schools for the future?: Government’s response to the Committee’s Seventh Report of Session 2006–07 from the Education and Skills Select Committee.

Document Digest

Research section

Research Notes
Our research editor Michael Marshall writes about the primary review led by Professor Robin Alexander of Cambridge.

Participation – current work and future directions
Sue Rossiter, NFER Chief Executive, in the first of her regular columns for Education Journal, writes about how children and young people can have a greater role in educational research, evaluation and consultation.

NFER ongoing research
Subjects covered with brief reports are the impact of 14-to-16-year-olds on further education colleges, improving outcomes for traveller children, maximising the benefits of 14 to 19 provision, narrowing the gap in performance between vulnerable children and the rest, the role of the end-user in planning children’s services and the role of the lead member for children’s services.

Schools’ role in children’s social and emotional development
Susan Hallam of the University of London Institute of Education evaluates the impact of the Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning programme, developed as a result of work in schools taking part in the Primary National Strategy’s behaviour and attendance pilot.

PISA and PIRLS
The articles on PISA and PIRLS in the international supplement, written by Jenny Bradshaw and Liz Twist (see above), are research reports from NFER.

Parliament section

Children and Young Persons Bill
Our parliamentary editor, Nick Kent, reports on the Second Reading of the Children and Young Persons Bill in the House of Lords.

Ending selection in Northern Ireland
Arabella Hargreaves reports on Education Minister Caitriona Ruane’s statement on the Assembly’s vision for education.

Tackling child poverty in Wales
Helen Grimmett, editor of EPM Wales, reports on a Welsh Assembly statement on tackling child poverty.

Education Funding in Wales
We report on a Conservative Party opposition debate on education funding

Cutting primary class size in Scotland
Arabella Hargreaves, editor of EPM Scotland, reports on a statement from the Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning, Fiona Hyslop on class sizes.

Fostering and kinship care
We report on a Scottish Executive debate on fostering and kinship care.

Parliamentary Questions
The number of special educational needs maintained schools in England are listed by education authority. Answers to parliamentary questions in Scotland cover further and higher education. From the Welsh Assembly, there is guidance to schools on key stages 1 and 2.

Phoenix
Changes at the TES. The NFER Christmas party.