The continuing school exclusion scandal in England

The deregulated and marketised education system is failing large numbers of the most vulnerable children in society, with system ‘gaming’ often the motivation behind school exclusions. This article sets out the multiple ways in which students can find themselves outside the formal school system, and identifies several of the systemic pressures that drive the statistics provided

Social justice, race and class in education in England: competing perspectives

‘Narrowing the gap’ and addressing low educational achievement of specific social class and ethnic groups has long been an expressed government concern. This paper considers the links between poverty, ethnicity and gender and school attainment and the interrelations of these factors using national data sets and other quantitative data. The limitations of single-theme analyses and their potentially misleading implications are explored. Related to this, the failures of social and educational policies to bring about greater equality are examined. Competing perspectives on low attainment and their positions are critiqued. The paper argues that ethnic and class discrimination stems from the same structural arrangements contrived for the advantage of more affluent sectors of society. Theoretical development is needed to bring together class, race and other discriminatory features and construct more sophisticated causal analyses that relate to the web of economic, status and power regimes and the negative processes of ‘racialisation’

Ethnicity, disadvantage and other variables in the analysis of Birmingham longitudinal school attainment datasets

Explaining and responding to inequalities in attainment are significant educational policy challenges in England as elsewhere. Data on four cohorts of Birmingham Local Education Authority (LEA) pupils, each approximately 13,000, were analysed by ethnicity, deprivation, gender and other relevant individual pupil variables. For the four successive cohorts of children, aged five in 1997–2001, analysis shows the attainment trajectory of each ethnic group from Baseline/Foundation Stage Profile (age 5) to GCSE (age 16). The relative constancy over time, the changes from one key stage to the next and the differences within broad ethnic categories argue against simplistic explanations. The ethnicity variable accounts for a relatively small amount of variance in pupil achievement, with the same ethnic subgroups recurrently low attainers. Considering explanatory perspectives on educational inequalities and ethnicity in the light of these data, we conclude that a structuralist perspective offers the best explanation recognising economic exploitation, dominance and oppression at the national and local levels. Notions of institutional racism and Critical Race Theory (CRT) are considered to be inadequate and counter-productive, in part shown by their inability to accommodate the range of attainment levels and educational experience of different ethnic groups. More tellingly, they lack causal explanations relevant to the United Kingdom and deflect attention from the need for sustained effort to reduce poverty and disadvantage as it affects children

The Illinois State University Trombone Choir

Kemr Recital Hall Saturday Afternoon February 14, 1998 2:00p.m