Introduction

Abstract

This chapter provides a picture of UK education at the time of writing and sets out the premise for the chapters that follow. It is suggested that the current policy context is characterised by an exaggerated view of teacher agency which tends to ‘write out’ some of the realities of the lives of disadvantaged children and families, both in the sense of the ways they manifest in the classroom and in the sense of their impact on educational outcomes. Simultaneously the tools on offer to teachers to ‘fix the problem’ are very limited, and in this respect they arguably restrict their agency, at the same time as rendering less visible a wider range of structural factors that frame teachers’ work and the extent to which they can transform pupils’ lives. The book offers one response to this situation as we see it.