Young peoples' experiences of highly stratified school settings

It is clear that school systems in developed countries are stratified to greater or less extents, with young people having similar characteristics more likely to be clustered together. Thus, children from poorer families, of certain faith or ethnic origins, or with particular first languages, are encouraged to be educated together through a variety of mechanisms including residential segregation, school allocation procedures, parental choice, and the kinds of schools provided by the state. My work and that of others has made the patterns and mechanisms reasonably clear. What is not so clear is the impact of this segregation on young people passing through the system - an impact most likely to be damaging, but also potentially beneficial.

This project is to investigate young peoples' experiences of stratified school settings (in comparison to comprehensive settings), and begin to catalogue the impact on individual trajectory, aspiration and sense of justice. The design and precise methods involved remain to be decided but the project is likely to involve simple re-analysis of existing large-scale datasets, dcoumentary analysis, observation, and a variety of interviews within a new political arithmetic design.