ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the role of school in this respect, with particular emphasis on Britain. The schools tend, in a variety of ways, to 'ignore', 'underestimate' or even 'disparage' the school potential of immigrants. Despite exceptions, British schools have in general been slow to respond to the presence in classrooms of increasing numbers of immigrant children, although the situation may well have improved somewhat in the last year or two, so that it should not be imagined that schools and related agencies are doing nothing. Measures focused primarily on immigrants can, again for ease of analysis, also be treated as having two thrusts which can be discussed separately, although once again they are not always mutually exclusive or contradictory. However, when one considers the fate of the Schools Council-sponsored project Multiracial education: Curriculum and context, possibly the most celebrated curriculum development in this direction, there are grounds for a certain pessimism.
