ABSTRACT
Relations between families and schools obviously underpin any education system. This chapter takes a feminist perspective to be to make sexual divisions visible and to analyse some from the 'standpoint of women', as well as men or apparently genderless people. The ideology that has informed the organisation of state secondary education, since it origins in the 1944 Education Act, has been that of equality of educational opportunity. In any event the original view of the parental role revolved around a 'political' and 'economic' theory of parents as citizens, around their rights and duties towards their own children. Comprehensive secondary education developed by the Labour government was another attempt to achieve equality of educational opportunity, by means of delaying the point at which parents and children are chosen for particular kinds of education. The Swann report argues, nevertheless, that 'parents' fears are allayed if education is provided for all and if ethnic minority parents are able to influence policy developments.
