Researching a controversial policy

Abstract

The author's investigations of the Assisted Places Scheme and the City Technology College initiative provide a basis for examining some difficulties in researching controversial policies. He considers the objectivity and usefulness of such studies in the context of government suspicion of most educational research as being subversive, and comments on what research into the allocation and take‐up of assisted places may have contributed to the image of the Scheme. Finally, the difficulty is noted of whether and how to reveal the ‘deeper’ significance of particular policy initiatives by placing them in the context of a broad strategy of educational reform.