Primary schools and early years settings shape children’s lives immensely, but there are huge differences in how teachers teach and organise their time. Policy is a major influence on practices, but often changes. At the same time, there are significant disparities in attainment by social class and ‘race’, and differences in how children from different groups experience education. Alice will explore how projects on assessments, practices during Covid, and on schools’ support during the cost-of-living crisis cohere to form a picture of a sector faced with serious challenges in the last 15 years. Taking a policy sociology approach, she will reflect on this work and discuss how underlying dominant discourses such as the idea of ability as fixed work to reproduce inequalities in schools. Understanding why teachers do what they do, and how school leaders make decisions involves exploring both how schools are responsive to policy but also to what extent they resist and reshape policy reform

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3/24/2025

Alice Bradbury is Co-Director of the HHCP and Professor of Sociology of Education at IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society. Prof Bradbury specialises in research on the impact of education policy on classroom practices and inequalities, with a particular focus on issues of assessment in early years and primary schools. Her work has included studies on the impact of the Phonics Screening Check, reading policies, and Ofsted inspection.

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12/18/2023