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Although the majority of Britain's disabled people are also older people, there has been relatively little exchange between policy making in the areas of disability and old age. This article highlights some significant similarities and differences in the social claims made by groups representing older people and disabled people in policy debates under New Labour. Using recent policy examples, the analysis focuses on the claims being made by older and disabled people and the discourses, representations and strategies used to make them. The article suggests that there are considerable areas of common ground on which political alliances and common voice could be built, but there is also evidence of a tactical or discursive distancing between the two groups. These difficulties are interpreted with reference to the centrality of independence and paid employment within policy debates under New Labour.

Community Care reforms have revived interest in service quality. It is argued that the definition of service quality is value-led and that domi nant ideologies have contributed to the continued oppression of disabled people. The design of quality assurance systems is considered and it is suggested that organisations controlled by disabled people have a central role to play in providing disablement services. Two conclusions are drawn. First, service quality cannot on its own be a sufficient condition for disabled people's emancipation. Second, 'quality' has been used as a policy substitute for the necessary con dition of 'equality'.

In the context of profound social, political and technological changes, recent global trends in education have included the emergence of new forms of curriculum policy. Addressing a gap in the literature, this book investigates the ways in which curriculum policy is influenced, formulated, and enacted in a number of countries-cases in Europe

This book provides a socio-historical account of the changing treatment of disabled people in Britain from the 1940s to the present day. It asks whether life has really changed for disabled people and shows the value of using biographical methods in new and critical ways to examine social and historical change over time

This book provides a socio-historical account of the changing treatment of disabled people in Britain from the 1940s to the present day. It asks whether life has really changed for disabled people and shows the value of using biographical methods in new and critical ways to examine social and historical change over time.

Background: The measurement of equality is often difficult for groups who are weakly defined or poorly represented in official datasets. Social statistics are an essential component in rights recognition and advocacy because they make protected groups of persons visible and reveal the extent of their inequalities in comparison with population norms.
Aims and objectives: This paper examines how disabled persons have been included, or not, in EU statistics used for evidenced-based policy – for example in the European Semester process concerning Member States' employment and social policies, or in monitoring compliance with international human rights standards under the UN CRPD.
Methods: Over a period of a decade we mapped and disaggregated disability data from the main European social surveys, examining the availability and limitations of different sources to answer various policy questions.
Findings: The analysis produced indicators revealing stark inequalities between disabled and non-disabled persons but raised challenging questions about data quality, reliability and comparability. This revealed tensions in engaging the trust of policymakers in less familiar, or less reliable, data concerning minority groups.
Discussion and conclusions: Despite limitations of precision, imperfect statistics often retain a strong expressive function in human rights promotion. Greater investment is needed from governments and statistical authorities to strengthen disability equality data and indicators concerning marginalised rights holders.

This chapter examines curriculum reform in Scotland, showing how the ambitious aspirations of its flagship policy, Curriculum for Excellence, were subject to a complex array of global, national and local pressures and had to take account of political and cultural circumstances that posed particular challenges. Both the Scottish Government's management of the reform programme and the teaching profession's response to it are subject to detailed scrutiny. The discussion pays particular attention to the discourse used in promoting the policy, the shifting nature of the official narrative as the recommendations of international agencies were taken on board, and the issues that arose as the policy moved from intention to enactment. Drawing on the notion of 'curriculum making', which serves as a conceptual thread for all the contributions to this volume, the analysis highlights both evidence of progress and sites of continuing debate.