Positive Discrimination in Education: A Review of the British Experience
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Almost a decade has passed since the Plowden Report recommended positive discrimination in favour of the educationally disadvantaged. In the meantime efforts to secure its implementation have met with limited enthusiasm. The initial optimism with which programmes were launched has been quickly dampened by waves of pessimistic conclusions from American research. The lack of directly relevant British evidence has permitted a measure of optimism but, in general, the publication of the Educational Priority Area (EPA) reports has tended to confirm the American findings. The projects had little consistent effect on children’s educational performance.
In consequence the EPAs have been dismissed as ‘failures’. The present article argues that this is too narrow a view of their contribution to the improvement of strategies for positive discrimination. Their ‘failure’ cannot be analysed in isolation from the more general process of educational decision-making upon whose assumptions they were perched. The various reports underline the weaknesses and contradictions in those assumptions. Against this background the EPAs represent an effective instrument for policy development, especially when compared with other, existing, more institutionalized forms. The article concludes by indicating the qualitative improvements that must be secured before any quantitative increase in resources can be expected to bring about effective strategies for positive discrimination.
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