ABSTRACT
Access to power, relative prosperity, effective participation in political, social and economic life — what might be called full citizenship — is heavily dependent on education. For ethnic minority communities this is especially true in what is now termed a learning society. Without a reasonable level of education they face the double jeopardy of poor qualifications and discrimination. This will leave them particularly vulnerable to long-term unemployment, given the difficulty of being recruited for ever scarcer semiskilled and unskilled jobs. Those who leave school at the first opportunity, and then fail to obtain further education or training, risk being left on the margins of society with potentially damaging implications for race relations in which stereotypes about blacks and Asians at the ‘bottom of the pile’ are reinforced.
