"This book is an extremely useful tool for understanding the ways in which discrimination within education are realised, as well as the issues and policies that facilitate it."
Children & Young People Now

• How successful has Britain been in accommodating racial, religious and cultural diversity in the education system?
• Have there been contradictory policies that have encouraged migrant labour, while urging immigration control?
• Has the introduction of market principles to education created further problems for ethnic minorities?

Race and Education: Policy and Politics in Britain describes how over the decades schools, teachers, parents, local communities and local authorities have worked towards the incorporation of minority children into the education system. It asserts that negative and contradictory policies by governments and a continued climate of hostility to those variously labelled as immigrant, ethnic minority, or non-white has made this extremely difficult.

The book sets educational issues and events within a wider social and political context, taking account of national and global influences, and changing political beliefs and actions over the years. Sally Tomlinson argues that debates needs to focus less on dress and more on the educational, housing and employment problems, symptomatic of the continued poverty in many minority areas that works against social cohesion.

Race and Education: Policy and Politics in Britain is an invaluable resource for all those concerned with education and social policy, especially students and professionals working in education, sociology and social policy.

Assimilation aspirations (1960–1970)
Post-imperial anxieties (1970–1980)
Race, riots and markets (1980–1990)
The absent presence (1990–1997)
Race education and New Labour (1997–2003)
Community cohesion, war and education (2003–2007)
Conclusions

Appendix: Territories of the British Empire
Bibliography
Index