This paper traces the dramatic proliferation of leadership roles in English primary and secondar schools, due mainly to central government education policy of the past two decades. This has transformed schools from relatively simple to highly complex organizations and has impacted on the working conditions of, and demands on, teachers, together with many aspects of schooling. These changes are illustrated with typical examples of schools' leadership structures and their functioning. Interview data provide teachers' views on, and reactions to, the changes in school leadership. The paper also reviews the ways in which teacher education institutions have responded in terms of providing initial and in‐service education and training to equip the profession for this new and developing challenge. It examines the reception of such programmes by teachers and the reported impact on schools' management and the role of leadership within it.

Teachers obviously serve as the medium for causing the result of policy as they carry it into schools and classrooms and deliver it to pupils. They mediate between education policy and practice. Knowledge of the exact nature and effects of this vital role is limited. Drawing on a range of research and evaluation of both national and local policy in practice, carried out by the authors in England, this paper illustrates how teachers mediate policy and the resulting outcomes. Further, it proposes a typology of teacher adaptation to education policy. The paper argues that as yet the appropriate professional role for teachers within policy-making and implementation has not been achieved, and outlines what this might be. Finally, it outlines some implications for teacher education.

Against the backdrop of a long-standing British ‘binge and brawl’ pattern of alcohol-based weekend leisure and concomitant recurrent anxieties in the media surrounding youth and young adults at play, this article considers the cultural distinctions of contemporary British leisure and the evidence for a ‘new’ culture of intoxication. Four key changes are identified which together, the authors argue, suggest significant change is underway in respect of patterns of alcohol consumption in the UK. Presenting empirical data for the first time, the article considers how one might assess the evidence for a new culture of intoxication which embraces both legal and illicit drugs and which encompasses a broad social spectrum of young people. The study concludes that the pursuit of altered states of intoxication must be positioned in late modern society as behaviour which is a vehicle for consumer and criminal justice discourses, both encouraged by economic deregulation and constrained by legislative change, indicative of the ambiguities at the heart of British alcohol policy.

This paper illustrates some of the tensions and contradictions in schools' attempts to develop parental and family involvement through a case study of parental involvement in an Education Action Zone. It focuses on how schools constructed parental involvement, the kinds of work they engaged in, the issues raised in managing and resourcing parental involvement projects, the perceived benefits of running the projects and the likelihood of the projects being sustainable. It is argued that the models of parental involvement that schools developed had important consequences for the role parents were allowed to play. Varying roles impose different kinds of demands on schools and parents and require different kinds of relationship between schools, parents and the local community. The more expansive the view of parental involvement, the greater the costs in running such projects and, hence, particularly in poor areas, the less chance of them being sustainable. Moreover, there were evident contradictions between the standards and inclusion dimensions of parental involvement projects. In particular, there was, and is, an evident tension for the schools around constructing parents as a resource for schools to tap into in the drive to raise standards and constructing the school as a resource for parents and the wider community to tap into in the drive to promote local regeneration and inclusion. This is being resolved in favour of the standards agenda.

Education Action Zones (EAZs) were launched in the United Kingdom in 1998 as 'the standard bearers in a new crusade … to modernize education in areas of social deprivation, and hailed as a third way in education.' In the light of the authors ' ongoing evaluation of a single EAZ, the article examines the extent to which the ambitious claims made by government have been realised. It assesses the extent to which EAZs can be viewed as part of the British twentieth-century theme in education of tackling inequality. It demonstrates that EAZ policy was riddled with tensions and paradoxes arising out of the eccentric mix of neo-liberal, social democratic and Third Way approaches to addressing educational inequality. The article concludes that EAZs suffered from three types of error: concept, process and outcomes, and hence were a mission impossible. The authors argue that EAZs may, hopefully, be a lesson in making the vision of resolving education inequality possible.

A significant minority of 1990s youth are drinking more alcohol, smoking more tobacco and/or using more illicit drugs despite a decade of major political and policy initiatives ranging from prevention/education to enforcement, regulation and Âzero tolerance'. These behavioural changes in youthful Âdrug' use have been effectively quantified but not well explained or understood. This paper offers an Âappreciative' analysis whereby young people's licit/illicit drug use is framed as they perceive it as consumption rather than Âabuse'. It is based on a combination of quantitative (confidential self-report questionnaire to 721 13-16-year-olds) and qualitative methods (extensive observational fieldwork with three street drinking networks and 55 semi-structured interviews with young drinkers) in one region of north-west England. It focuses on the accounts of young people as to what, where and why they drink and the impact of the drink industry's marketing of strong, smooth-tasting, image-laden designer drinks, including alcopops. This study, in line with others, found that the heaviest young drinkers were also very likely to use readily available illicit drugs and tobacco as part of a psycho-active repertoire. Young people in this study purposely sought a Âbuzz' (intoxication) from these psyco-active repertoires which they framed as a consumption decision. With this profile of apparent hedonistic/functional consumption now being found far beyond a small delinquent or damaged core of adolescents and thus in otherwise conventional, conforming youth, it is argued that policy initiatives as well as theoretical explanations should adjust to Âpost-modernity' so that such consumption can be better socially managed.