#006 – Prof. Geoff Whitty: Realities of evidence-informed education policy (part 1)

14th July 2017

In this episode of the LKMco podcast, Iesha talks to Professor Geoff Whitty. Geoff is Professor for Equity in Education at the University of Newcastle, Australia and a former director of the Institute of Education, University of London.

They discuss evidence based educational policy and what Geoff has learnt from a varied career tackling educational disadvantage in a variety of ways. This is the first of a two -part conversation. The second part is in episode #007

In this episode Iesha and Geoff discuss

  • How Geoff’s exposure to social inequality in his local area at 18 affected his outlook as a young teacher and throughout his career
  • Why education research and policy is harmful if it doesn’t take account of wider social forces
  • Would investing money in fighting poverty rather than the national literacy strategy have improved literacy levels more effectively?
  • How positions of institutional leadership can be used to tackle disadvantage
  • Why Geoff feels evidence based education policy is consistently oversold in the UK
  • Why Geoff believes less than 10% of education policy is evidence-informed
  • Two well-known examples in education that were policies driven by politics rather than evidence
  • Why researchers need to capture the public imagination as well as have the ear of policy makers in order to initiate change.
  • And much, much more

Resources/people featured or mentioned

  • Sociological imagination by C. Wright Mills
  • Sir Fred Clarke
  • Lord Adonis
  • Institute of Education
  • Basil Bernstein
  • Research and policy in education by Prof. Geoff Whitty
  • Knowledge and the study of education by Prof Geoff Whitty
  • Sir Michael Barber

Show notes and links for this episode can be found at cfey.dev/podcast

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Music Credits:  ‘Oui’ by Simon Mathewson from  and ‘Jump for joy’ by Scott Holmes both from  http://freemusicarchive.org

Want to contact us?

[email protected]  or @ieshasmall