A rich literature has argued that so-called aspiration-raising policies tend to individualize structural conditions and thereby reproduce forms of inequality through young people's aspirations. This paper explores how aspiration-raising policy discourses are lived in ways that both accentuate but that might also contest their terms. Drawing on…

Promoting social mobility seems to be simple common sense. However, the solutions proposed in the UK under successive governments reflect a problematic individualism that is not about helping all of the poorest children, but about encouraging the poor to become as ruthless and competitive as the middle and upper classes. This article shows how the…

Since the 2000s, successive governments in the United Kingdom and elsewhere have embraced the idea of "raising aspiration" among young people as a solution to persisting educational and socio-economic inequalities. Previous analyses have argued that these policies tend to individualise structural disadvantage and promote a…

This study provides a critical exploration of the way teachers' attachment to notions of professionalism may facilitate a process whereby teachers find themselves obliged to enact centralised and local education policies that they do not believe in but are required to implement. The study argues that professionalism involves an entanglement of…

This paper contributes to conversations about school, post-compulsory and further education policy by reporting findings from a three-year study with disaffected students who have been referred to special "behaviour"schools. Contrary to popular opinion, our research finds that these "ignorant yobs" do value education and know…

This paper addresses the vexed educational policy aspects of area-based "interventions (ABIs) in neighbourhoods designated as "disadvantaged" in an Australian context. We find that the way in which the policy of ABIs is supposed to operate and impact education is highly problematic. What we present instead in this paper is a much…

The drive to expand access to higher education (HE) in the UK assumes that it is a desirable option that will benefit both the individual and his or her wider community. There is also an assumption that low aspirations and low achievements present a barrier to increasing participation rates. Based upon a recent qualitative study of young people in…