This paper empirically re(dis)covers a moment of conjuncture within Leicester when an opportunity opened up through multicultural/anti-racist education for schools and colleges to develop their 'multicultural capital'. It does this through the thematic analysis of the key proximate document "Report of the Working Party on Multicultural…

This article is a critical poststructuralist analysis of Conservative led free school policy in England focussing on claims made by the New Schools Network and in the 2010 White Paper that free school provision promotes social justice. The article presents an empirical study of an alternative provision free school as a lens through which these…

This article aims to interpret how different policies of priority education deal with the notions of "educational needs" and "educational inequalities." Indeed, it is the processes and mechanisms embedded in the deployment of such policies that ultimately model a category of educational need that goes beyond the…

The paper draws on data and theorising from the Knowledge Production in Educational Leadership (KPEL) Project where we have investigated New Labour's education policy and investment in headteachers as school leaders in England. New Labour took up office in May 1997 with a modernisation agenda and the leadership of schools is central to this…

The article explores the limitations of applied drama interventions promising integration and inclusion against the material realities of urban disenfranchisement and misrecognition. Through reflection on a participatory theatre project facilitated with young women in an urban secondary school in London, social and moral agendas emerge which…

Further education (FE) has traditionally been a rather unspectacular activity. Lacking the visibility of schools or the prestige of universities, for the vast majority of its existence FE has had a relatively low profile on the margins of English education. Over recent years this situation has altered significantly and further education has…