ABSTRACT
This book examines the relationship between education policy and inequalities in education, in the early years of primary education. Drawing on ethnographic accounts of two Reception classes of children aged four and five, I explore the relationships between assessment practices, children's identities as learners and the reproduction of disparities in attainment in terms of ‘race’, class and gender. It is a story, to put it simply, of how policy changes what teachers do, what they think is important and how they judge children as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ learners. It is a story of how some children, aged four or five, will spend their first year in school being talked about and assessed as having become successful learners and some will not, and of how who they are – in terms of ‘race’, class and gender, among others – will affect this. It is also a story of the inner city school, where government schemes and media representations encourage low expectations, and where teachers feel they have to change children's results so that they make sense within these ideas about urban schools.
