Dr Barry Dufour is a part-time visiting professor in the Education Studies Department. He has taught undergraduates and higher degree students at De Montfort since 2003 and previously taught on PGCE and general undergraduate and higher degree courses at the University of Leicester and Loughborough University. He has been a writer and researcher for many decades, with a Wikipedia profile running into 8 pages and his own 40-page website (both soon to go live, with updates).
When joining ÃÛÌÒÖ±²¥, within a short time, he created several new courses: the first year undergraduate course, The History of Education, as a foundation introduction to education; the second year course, The Politics of Education; and a new MA course, Current and Emergent Issues in Education.
He has had a significant pioneering impact on UK education in several ways: by setting up in the late 1960s, the ATSS (The Association for the Teaching of the Social Sciences) with the late Professor Denis Lawton, an organisation to promote the then emerging presence of the social sciences in the school curriculum, while also conducting pioneering teaching, from 1966-1970, at the Cressex Community College, in High Wycombe, teaching 11-16 year old secondary modern pupils, basic ideas from sociology, anthropology, economics and political science. Committed to progressive education, he became a founder member/teacher in 1970, teaching for half the week at Countesthorpe College, a 14-19 upper school in the Leicestershire Plan for Comprehensive Education, seen as the most radical state school in the UK, for its teaching and organisation. With the other half the week, he ran a PGCE course at the University of Leicester School of Education, training teachers to teach the social sciences in schools. This was a joint appointment created by Professor Brian Simon, the eminent education historian and advocate of comprehensive education. He held these positions for 13 years, again a pioneer and possibly the only educationist in the UK who has ever undertaken this kind of dual role for an extended period.
He graduated from the University of Hull with a degree in the social sciences having been taught by outstanding academics, Professor Peter Worsley (sociology and anthropology) and Professor John Saville (history) before going on to a PGCE course at the University of Birmingham School of Education, where his tutor allowed him extra time to research 19th and 20th century civics and citizenship courses and devise pioneering proposals for school-based social sciences courses. He received a distinction for his teaching practice.
After years of teaching at three universities and publishing articles and books, the president of the ATSS and Vice Chancellor of the University of Leicester, Sir Robert Burgess, encouraged him to present himself for a doctorate by publication, which he did successfully at the University of Hull in 2012, with the chair of the viva committee saying that it was an honour to spend an hour talking with a true scholar.
From 1983 – 1993, he stepped outside the university sector to become, in succession, an adviser on multicultural education with Leicestershire local education authority (till 1989), county inspector for humanities in Dorset (1989-1991), and senior adviser in education for High Peak and Derbyshire Dales (1991 – 1993), in charge of a large team of advisory teachers and advisers. In 1993/94, Professor Ivan Reid of Loughborough University, invited him to return to the university world to run a PGCE History course at Loughborough and to lecture to hundreds of undergraduate students on the subject of disruptive behaviour in schools. While at Loughborough, he formed a close relationship with Beth Shalom (the National Holocaust Centre and Museum, in Laxton, Nottinghamshire) when it opened in 1995, and regularly took his History PGCE students there for lectures and to meet Survivors – and to meet the Smith family who had created the centre.
From 1983 to 2006, he combined local government advisory work and university teaching with running in-service courses on school management and excellent teaching. He was one of the first to train as an Ofsted inspector but after 36 inspections resigned over doubts about the theory and practice of Ofsted. He also became a consultant to a number of schools, in Leicester, Coventry and London, as a ‘friendly advisor’, helping them to prepare for forthcoming inspections. His most enjoyable role was in the year 2000, appointed by John Dunford, the then general secretary of the Secondary Heads Association (now ASCL), to run Ofsted-instigated courses for headteachers on how to evaluate their own schools, when Ofsted moved to a partnership model that he very much supported.
He has also had long-term involvement in two other main areas. During the Blair years, he became active in promoting the new course of Citizenship that entered the school National Curriculum in 2000 (although as non-statutory in primary schools) and he worked closely with the ATSS but especially the Citizenship Foundation in London whose chief executive was Dr Tony Breslin, an ex-PGCE student of Barry’s, a close friend and the chief executive of the Foundation. They edited together, Developing Citizens: An Introduction to Effective Citizenship Education in the Secondary School (Hodder, 2006) that included chapters by Tony and Barry but many chapters by eminent specialists in various curriculum areas. The book was praised in the House of Lords by Lord Andrew Adonis.
The other area has been his continuing service on the Education Committee of the Royal Anthropological Institute (RAI) from 2004, with the committee set up and chaired by Hilary Callan, the director of the RAI, and now by Dr David Shankland, the current director of the RAI. After spending years developing the UK’s first Advanced Level GCE in Anthropology, it was accepted by AQA (Assessment and Qualifications Alliance), taught for several years in many schools but then abolished by AQA on cost grounds arguing that insufficient candidates were entering to make it cost effective. This was a blow but the committee has now gone on to develop online courses, work closely with the International Baccalaureate (whose chief examiner for anthropology is on the committee) and to develop successful courses in Scotland.
Between 2013 to 2016, he compiled a 155,000 word book on disruptive behaviour in schools for a major publisher but the publication was cancelled, after 6 months of editing, due to editorial differences. He then spent till 2020 researching music education in schools – and its decline – which was published as the first monograph for the new ÃÛÌÒÖ±²¥ Press: B.Dufour, ‘Not Enough Music’: a critique of music education in schools in England, 2020, Leicester, ÃÛÌÒÖ±²¥ Press. 100 copies were sent to relevant people and organisations, with warm compliments received from HRH Prince Charles and Professor Julian Lloyd Webber. Also available online on the ÃÛÌÒÖ±²¥ website as a free download.