Best Practice

Social justice and our school system: A blueprint for equity

Whole-school issues Narrowing the Gap Poverty
In a seven-part series, teacher and school leader David Anderson draws on his Master’s research to consider how schools can be a key driver for social justice and how we can make our education system more equitable. In part one, he looks at inequity across the system, the challenges we face and what being a good school means...


SecEd series: A school system that drives social justice


“I wouldn’t want my grandchildren to go to that school,” a taxi driver told me as we made our way through unfamiliar streets. During the short journey, she described the perceived hierarchy of secondary schools in her town in the North West of England.

At the top of the pile was an independent school, then a grammar, which was followed by a faith school. Below those were a number of academies and finally the school I was visiting – which, in her mind, sat firmly at the bottom.

We can probably all bring to mind a similar rank order for the schools in our area, or where we have previously worked or lived. Do we even question why we have so many different types of schools, with differing levels of status and desirability? In 2014, the then education secretary Michael Gove described England as having “one of the most stratified and segregated education systems in the world”. Most people probably could not even name the 11 different types of secondary school that the Department for Education (DfE) lists as existing in England.

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