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Wealth, Inequalities and ‘Hidden Injuries’ in the Global City: Educational Policy in London

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Second International Handbook of Urban Education

Part of the book series: Springer International Handbooks of Education ((SIHE))

Abstract

Austerity measures in the English public sector are fragmenting and eroding welfare provision such as health, social services and education and adding to the stark disparity that already exists between the rich and poor. The politics of austerity are being managed in part through the production of neo-liberal discourses of individualisation deployed to erase any recognition of the structural impacts of the economic imperatives of globalisation. In these harsh economic times, economic policy is bound into a rhetoric of individual aspiration and social mobility that subordinates and displaces materiality. All this is made most visible in the global city.

London’s schools have moved from being regarded as ‘failing’ to being repositioned as ‘outperforming’ those in all other parts of the country. This rise in achievement in the global city works to sustain the myth of the transformative effects of education and the role and impact of individualism as trumping material and structural contextual factors. In this chapter, the central argument is that while there may be some educational improvements, any gains in credentials may not of themselves lead to significant changes in life chances for many young people. These gains may have very little to do with education policy and practice and may be more to do with the populations of London’s schools in a period of hyper-diversity. Thus, the focus on reforming what some schools can do for some students, may mask the ways in which the tactics being deployed may continue to replicate the ‘divided city’ in its ‘divided classrooms’.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Education & Professional Studies, Faculty of Social Science & Public Policy, King’s College London, 2/3 Waterloo Bridge Wing, Waterloo Road, London, SE1 9NH, UK

    Meg Maguire

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  1. Dept. of Educational Policy & Lead'ship, Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA

    William T. Pink

  2. School of Education, Uni. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA

    George W. Noblit

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Maguire, M. (2017). Wealth, Inequalities and ‘Hidden Injuries’ in the Global City: Educational Policy in London. In: Pink, W., Noblit, G. (eds) Second International Handbook of Urban Education. Springer International Handbooks of Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40317-5_55

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