ABSTRACT
Excellence in Cities . . . tackles the particular problems facing children in our cities . . . it aims to raise the aspirations and achievements of pupils and to tackle disaffection, social exclusion, truancy and indiscipline and improve parents’ confi dence in cities. (Department for Education and Skills 2003b)
After being elected in 1997, the Blair Labour government introduced a number of area-based initiatives across social and urban policy realms. These initiatives were policy interventions aimed at redressing social and spatial exclusion in deprived areas (Cochrane 2007, Lupton 2009). Excellence in Cities was one such initiative in education, introduced in 1999 and discontinued in 2006, which the Department for Education and Skills (DfES)1
proposed to address long-term educational disadvantage and underachievement in schools in deprived urban areas (DfES 2003b, Stoney et al. 2002). Excellence in Cities was intended to complement other urban programmes, including the Single Regeneration Budget, New Deal for Communities, and the Neighbourhood Regeneration Strategy (Offi ce for Standards in Education 2003a).
