ABSTRACT
Community workers do not usually assume that situations occur ‘naturally’, but they rarely examine local school allocation and other educational policies for evidence of structural inequality around which people could organise to achieve change. The education system is particularly well-adapted to mystification; for parents the hierarchy goes from the child’s teacher(s) through the school’s structures to the head teacher, with professional partnerships operating which seem to exclude parents’ and pupils’ interests. In 1978, Berkshire County Council introduced a new scheme to allocate Reading children from primary to secondary schools. The scheme created several zones linking groups of primary schools to secondary schools. The role of Education Department’s multi-racial adviser appeared initially to be used to control the channels of communication, to divert discussion on to a narrow view of multi-cultural education and attitude and curriculum change, rather than the promotion of structural changes within the education system.
