Stop treating education like a political football! Think long term! Follow the evidence!

Calls like these echo across society. Yet governments continue to swerve, u-turn and spit decisions out as if at random. Policy-making therefore remains an impenetrable black box to those who live with the consequences.

This book opens up that black box. It shows how policy really gets made — not in tidy theories or ministerial press lines, but in time-pressured collisions between convictions, evidence and conflicting demands. Each chapter takes a real episode from the last four decades of education reform — from grammar schools and academisation, to curriculum and funding — and uses it to uncover one of the funnels or forces that pushes policy down a particular track.

Combining anecdotes from the corridors of power with academic theory, and extensive interviews with senior policy-makers and former ministers, this book offers an engaging but rigorous account of how ideas become decisions.

'How Policy Happens: Understanding the decisions that shape our education system' will be an eye-opening read for anyone interested in how government's cogs turn, and is an essential guide for professionals working in the education and policy sectors including teachers, civil servants, politicians and academics.