ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the pursuit of liberal policies promoting equality of opportunity can be a mere distraction from the business of equality in a more substantive sense. It attempts to locate liberal educational thought within the context of the equality framework devised at the Equality Studies Centre in University College Dublin. Liberal equal opportunities policies have dominated public policy-making especially in the field of education. Liberalism is primarily concerned with protecting equal formal rights and ensuring equality of access: ‘once the rules governing admissions to places of education, appointments to jobs and promotions are fair, a society is an equal opportunity society’. Both the weak and the strong versions of liberal equal opportunities policies fit in comfortably with the interests of the dominant educational, economic and social order. Liberal equal opportunities policies in education are very much about selecting out members of marginalised or disadvantaged groups to become socially mobile within the existing system.
