Misunderstood, Misinterpreted and Mismanaged

In reflecting on my own time in schools and my many fabulous colleagues, I can see different things for different colleagues within this work – the beginner teacher contemplating the diversity of their students; the experienced classroom teacher delving deeper into engagement for every student; the teaching assistant, mentor or special needs teacher always keen to develop a greater understanding and empathy for their students; the middle or senior leader looking for wider departmental or school strategy ideas to embed greater equality. That is not to say that a novice teacher may not be drawn to theory, to strategy or to policy implications. Each reader will decide for themselves whether or not to read every aspect with equal diligence or to skim over elements with which they are already familiar or which are of less bearing at that moment.

I wish to facilitate such a range of readings. Indeed I believe I would have approached reading this book differently myself – at differing points within my own professional history. With this in mind, I have structured this book so as to enable several different approaches to reading. I have broken it up so that the reader can choose their own route through, returning – or not – to sections skimmed over or omitted at a later date should the mood strike them or interests, priorities or circumstances change.

The introduction draws from a range of other educational research to set the scene; touching on the current state of educational inequality in secondary schooling in England and research outlining thinking on how it is that such educational inequality may come about or be exacerbated. Readers already familiar with such ideas or simply those eager to hear what this research has to add may choose to set this aside initially.

In terms of the heart of the work, the findings indicate that there is a range of factors, which students perceive as fuelling their marginalisation within the secondary education system. Some of these factors are associated with system structures, issues of transition, settings and separations onto different pathways. Others stem from their experience in the classroom or relate to labelling and issues of identity. The results chapters are sequenced so as to begin with the wider systemic factors and then to progressively zoom in, firstly to the scale of the classroom and then to consider more individual level factors. Findings are presented under four umbrella categories, each of which forms a result chapter here: transition; sets, selections and separations; the effective classroom; and barriers to learning. Within each of these chapters the voices of the marginalised students are laid bare to support the case being presented. Findings sub-sections are interwoven with sub-sections where the student experiences and stories are set against current research, theory and policy. These are clearly entitled ‘situating the accounts’ or ‘situating the findings’. The reason for this separating out of accounts and findings from attempts to situate them, is twofold: firstly, to keep the students’ voices to the fore and secondly to facilitate different reading routes through the book. Readers may choose to omit or only skim particular sub-sections where the findings are situated within wider thinking. This may be because they feel sufficiently well versed in the current academic thinking. Alternatively, it may be as their motivation lies substantially in practice as opposed to theory. Nevertheless, the material is there to return to should contextualisation be sought, a desire for pointers to other research in a particular area of interest arise, or a taster of a more academic pathway appeal.

Significantly Increasing Competition in the School Market Place

With the recent explosion in the number of converter academies, the already fragmented secondary school system is fracturing still further. The education market place is being made more complex and fuzzy by the proliferation of schools with greater autonomy and of greater diversity and in some parts of the country competition between providers is rife.

For decades now the secondary school sector has had a variety of schools, not only those over-seen by the Local Education Authority (LEA), the Community and Voluntary-Aided Schools, but also the Foundation, Specialist and Grant-Maintained Schools. There are Local Authorities where selection by ability remains in the form of Grammar schools and, as ever there is the small but persistent independent sector. More recently the Sponsored Academies were established under Labour and provided a springboard for the Coalition’s dramatic introduction of Converter Academies, as well as Free Schools, University Technical Colleges and Studio Schools.

Evidence in support of the argument that rising inequality results from increasing choice and competition between schools is plentiful. I will briefly draw on some diverse sources to substantiate the argument that increasing the diversity of provision, just as the expansion of the academies programme is doing at this very moment, invariably seems to lead to greater inequality and more instances of marginalisation.

Market Policies Leaving an Opening for an Increase in Inequalities

In the broadest sense, Ball reminds us that market policies, while they may not directly decrease equality, certainly do not prioritise such concerns.