Dimensions of Exclusion

In this volume, the author analyses the processes of exclusion alive in British schools. His starting point is the 12,500 young people "permanently excluded" from the school system during the year 1997-98. Each case contains its own real educational and human tragedy, yet these students are also symbols of the ways in which many thousands of children experience other basic forms of exclusion in their school lives. Through "national curricuum" prescription, school ethos, codes of "conduct" and "morality", through the absence in their schools of a cognitive base and affirmation of their languages, histories, religions and the cultures of the communities upon which much of their lives are founded - they are effectively excluded even while they attend school on a daily basis. However there is still hope for the future, and the final section of the book outlines the possible features of an "inclusive" school, which maintains comprehensive principles, while creating an alternative to the market system of education and the structures based around exclusion and rejection which stem from it.