Professor John Gray FBA
- Fellow type
- UK Fellow
- Year elected
- 2000
- Subjects
- Education, Sociology
Summary
John Gray is an Emeritus Professor of Education at Cambridge University and sometime Vice-Principal of Homerton College. A quantitatively-oriented researcher with a background in Sociology, Politics and Policy Analysis he has published on a wide range of factors affecting schooling for the educationally disadvantaged including: the influence of social class, gender and ethnicity on educational outcomes; comprehensive schooling and educational reform; truancy and school discipline; and school expenditure,
Research Activities
His focus on the quality of schooling experienced by disadvantaged youngsters stretches back to the mid-1970s, He was involved in the early development of statistically advanced approaches to judging pupil progress and so-called ‘value added’. He has been interested in the dynamics of school effectiveness. This has led him in turn to study strategies for school improvement, particularly in relation to schools deemed to be ‘failing’. He has also conducted some of the very first research on the methodologies and impact of school inspection.
He started his career at Edinburgh’s Centre for Educational Sociology and is a co-author of a major study of Scottish schooling since the War. He was a founding parent of the long-running Youth Cohort Study of England & Wales which has been widely used by policy-makers to influence policies on 16-19 education and training. His work on pupil progress and value-added approaches, in combination with his critiques of school inspection, have helped transform the ways in which schools serving disadvantaged communities are now judged and held accountable.
He has served on many of the ESRC’s committees concerned with Education, chaired their first enquiry into the state of educational research, and also chaired their subsequent Teaching and Learning Initiative. He has frequently advised the Department for Education on research matters, led the research for the Elton Committee of Enquiry into Discipline in Schools, facilitated the discussions of the newly-formed Northern Ireland Assembly on post-primary reorganization and acted as Special Adviser to the Parliamentary Select Committee on School Accountability. He was on the Boards of the Teacher Training Agency and Cambridge Assessment and also worked with many LEAs. Elected to the British Academy in 2000, he has chaired Section S4 and played a major part over the years in building the case for a dedicated Education Section.
Current post
Emeritus Professor of Education, University of Cambridge
Past appointments
University of Cambridge Emeritus Professor of Education
2016 -
University of Cambridge Professor of Education
2001 -
Homerton College University of Cambridge Director of Research
1994 - 2001
The University of Sheffield Lecturer, Professor of Education
1979 - 1994
University of Edinburgh Research Fellow, Centre for Educational Sociology
1975 - 1979
Publications
Reconstructions of Secondary Education
John Gray, Andrew McPherson, David Raffe - Published in 2011 by Routledge
The Supportive School
John Gray, Maurice Galton, Colleen McLaughlin, Barbie Clarke, Jennifer Symonds - Published in 2011 by Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Improving Schools: Performance and Potential
John Gray, David Hopkins, David Reynolds, Brian Wilcox, Shaun Farrell, David Jesson - Published in 1999 by Open University Press
Other Fellows of the British Academy
Professor Leon P Tikly FBA
Leon P Tikly's research interests focus on education for just and sustainable futures; Initiatives to improve the quality of education for disadvantaged learners in Africa; Race, ethnicity, language and education; and Global education policy.
Professor Carey Jewitt FBA
The social implications and impact of digitally mediated interaction, communication and learning; emergent technologies, digital touch and digital futures; multimodal and sensory communication; multimodal theory and method development; interdisciplinary research.
