The impact of State policy to combat educational disadvantage with two iterations of DEIS supports has had a positive influence the patterns of achievement among all social groups with some notable improvements across a range of indicators for students in DEIS schools. Notwithstanding these improvements, research and evaluations continue to…

This paper draws on a three-year critical ethnography which interrogated intersections of social class, school and identity in an urban Irish community. The focus here is on the psycho-spatial disidentifications, inscriptions and class fractioning enacted throughout the school and community of Portown by a cohort of succeeding students from this…

Young people in Irish schools are required to choose whether to sit secondary exam subjects at higher or ordinary level. This paper draws on a mixed methods longitudinal study of students in 12 case-study schools to trace the factors influencing take-up of higher level subjects within lower secondary education. School organisation and process are…

This paper explores the social class-differentiated behaviours of access and traditional-entry students, based on a three-year constructivist grounded theory study with 45 undergraduates at an Irish university. The participant groups behaved significantly differently within the socio-relational realm, engaging in various forms of distancing…

The prestige accorded to standard language varieties, particularly within the field of education, together with language management role of schools with respect to the variety and the extent to which linguistic differences construct discontinuous relationships between the school and specific social groups provide the rationale for this paper. This…

The recent decision by the Department of Education and Science in the Republic of Ireland to introduce the mandatory testing of children in Irish primary schools provides the broad context for this paper. This decision has particular implications for schools designated as disadvantaged. The main focus of this study is on identifying the strategies…

Explores the dilemmas posed by the analysis of working class issues in education by professional sociologists. Questions whether the inequalities experienced in the educational system by working class people have been "colonized" by middle class academics for their own professional purposes. (CFR)