Primary schooling has always been a key focus/subject in/of educational research, but comparatively little has been written specifically on the politics of primary education, and it is rarely analysed as a political institution.

Over the last half-century perceptions of primary education have changed dramatically. A globalised economy and complex demographic and cultural change has radically altered the context for education and at the same time, research on child development has generated an emphasis on the early years of schooling as the phase in which the foundations of...