2. Education Policy and British Values

About this Lecture

Lecture

In this lecture, we think about the promotion of British values in education policy, focusing in particular on: (i) the emergence of the British values debates within education policy following the 7/7 bombings in 2005 and Tony Blair’s subsequent speech which argued that integration into British culture was necessary to counter radicalisation; (ii) The Casey Review, commissioned by David Cameron in 2015, which argued that schools should “attach more weight to British values, laws and history” in order to improve integration and create a shared set of values; (iii) the British values identified by the Casey Review and the legal commitment for schools to promote these in education since 2015.

Course

In this course, Dr Shaun Best (University of Winchester) explores the role of British values in education in both sociological theory and policy. In the first lecture, we think about different theoretical perspectives on values and their role in education, focusing especially on the ideas of Émile Durkheim. In the second lecture, we consider education policy around the promotion of British values in schools. In the third lecture, we turn to the Prevent strategy and the duty since 2015 on schools to promote British identity as a means of countering terrorism. Next, we think about the ideas of Michael Foucault within sociology. In the fifth an final lecture, we think about how they can be used to understand the role of values in education.

Lecturer

Dr Shaun Best is Senior Lecturer in Education Studies at the University of Winchester. He researches and teaches on social theory, particularly the work of Zygmunt Bauman, and the sociology of education. His recent publications include The Emerald Guide to Zygmunt Bauman (2020), Zygmunt Bauman on Education in Liquid Modernity (2019), and Talcott Parsons: Despair and Modernity (2016).