Urban schools : Performance, competition and collaboration

This chapter briefly sets current educational policy on urban education in England in the context of policy developments over the past 25 years, highlighting certain continuities and disjunctures in the journey from Thatcherism to contemporary New Labour. (For a broader discussion of the history of education in the UK, see McCulloch, 2007.) It then examines approaches to urban education through a consideration of competition and collaboration as interlinked dimensions of the Department for Education and Skill’s (DfES’s) diversity policy. Discussion is illustrated by reference to specific programs tried or currently in operation.