When compared with educational systems around the world, Britain is notable for directing a high degree of ‘policy churn’ (that is, new initiatives emerging from central government) towards education. Our understanding of this revolving pattern of change is particularly well developed in the context of higher education catalogued in reports by the Institute for Government (2018; this infographic is especially helpful) and articles by Cristina Donovan (2018), among others.
For the scholar of British educational policymaking, policy churn is useful in that it delivers plentiful source material for investigating the motivation and influences behind educational reform. Recent decades have seen ubiquitous mention by government ministers when introducing new educational policies of an educational speech given by then Prime Minister James Callaghan on 18 October 1976 at Ruskin College, Oxford: Andrew (now Lord) Adonis, for example, arguing in 2006 that Callaghan’s Ruskin speech was the inspiration for educational reform pursued by New Labour governments, while 10 years later Nick Gibb citing Callaghan’s Ruskin speech in support of the retained importance of a national curriculum, are just two education ministers who have invoked memories of the speech.
The Ruskin Speech was the topic of our recent journal article published in the British Educational Research Journal (see Silverwood & Wolstencroft, 2023), the first in a series of articles and events we plan to celebrate the upcoming 50th anniversary of the speech. Its purpose was to re-investigate the original motivation for why Callaghan rose to speak at Ruskin College in October 1976.
