A level Physics: the rhetoric and reality of educational reform

This thesis examines the reform of A level qualifications in England that took place between 2012 and 2015. It examines how a complex, political, and contested reform process was carried out, and tracks the reform from its initial nucleation points to the first teaching of a reformed qualification.

Utilising concepts of power and power relations during this educational reform, this work examines the key figures and organisations that emerge and how they shape the discourse. The interplay between macro- and micro-scale policy reform processes and impacts are analysed in detail through steadily narrowing the focus to one subject, Physics, using it as a lens through which key tensions and discourses are examined.

Immersion within both the reform process and Physics results in a study that utilises multiple methods, from document and policy analyses, interviews with physicists and secondary school pupils, and an autoethnographic element to tell the story of this period of educational reform and the power of the Secretary of State for Education who initiated it.