ABSTRACT
A number of issues have been reserved until this chapter, though they should resonate with and amplify points of theory and history in Chapters 1 and 3. Chapters 4 to 8 reported data and interpretations on school exclusions and Chapter 9 dealt with a particular set of policy proposals currently popular. Education is a public institution and any perceived failure in its functioning needs to be examined within a socio-political context, a historical context and an economic context-not that these are in any way independent of each other. To that end this chapter examines the political values which have informed education and welfare policy, the language through which it is expressed, the construction of youth, their transitions to full citizenship,1 the limitations placed on their social rights and the place of education and other agencies in these transitions. The topography and causality of disadvantage which this language entails and the policy architecture within which the values and language are contained are discussed. Consideration is given to education and welfare futures informed by another set of values and with a different set of strategic and practical responses to ‘difficult’ and vulnerable young people; in this final section, social exclusion and school exclusion are drawn together.
