ABSTRACT
This chapter examines a number of the ideologies in education that have most influenced education policy and debate in England and Wales, from the Second World War to New Labour.
As political positions differ on the desirability of social and economic equality, so they differ on the need for equality and the equality of opportunity within education. Consequently, the policies that more or less flow from the different ideas and values that compose these ideologies are often explicitly framed in terms of their intention to promote either equality and equality of opportunity, or elitism and an unequal hierarchy of schooling.
