Maguire, Meg; Wooldridge, Tim; & Pratt-Adams, Simon. (2006). The Urban Primary School. Reviewed by Joseph Mintz, London South Bank University

Maguire, Meg; Wooldridge, Tim; & Pratt-Adams, Simon. (2006). The Urban Primary School. London: Open University Press. Pp. 280     ISBN-10 0335201776 Reviewed by Joseph Mintz London South Bank University September 15, 2007 The Urban Primary School focuses on the UK context, but part of the strength of this book derives from the comparisons made throughout to the education system in the United States. The authors have created a book that also has relevance to those in other countries who are also interested in the tensions between policy initiatives and issues of equity and social justice that this book explores. Having said that, the book is written by UK authors with the expectation that the readers will have some familiarity with developments in UK education policy within the last two decades, such as the introduction of a National Curriculum in 1988 and programmes designed to increase the emphasis in primary schools on literacy and numeracy (the National Literacy and Numeracy Strategies) from 1997. The authors draw on a wide range of sources and the ideas presented are well embedded in the existing literature, particularly in respect of social policy and education. Tomlinson and Gerwitz are extensively quoted, with references as well to ideas from Cox, Whitty and Bernstein. There is also some consideration of authors looking at social policy in a wider context such as Will Hutton, who is one of the leading thinkers on social democracy in the UK. The authors attempt to link trends in education policy to the actual experience of urban primary education, whether as a teacher, headteacher, parent or child. This is an ambitious aim and although the breadth of their project means that they sometimes fail to analyse some issues in enough depth, in general they raise a number of key issues that are of importance to those engaged with primary education. The authors define the urban primary school as being one that is faced by a number of challenges to do with the general level of affluence of the school intake and surrounding area. Although they concede that such schools can be found in both rural and urban areas, it is in cities that they predominate and it is clear that the main interest of the authors is on primary schools in the inner city. The early chapters cover a consideration of how to theorize the urban context, covering the historical processes related to urbanization. More recent trends such as white flight, gentrification and city polarization between classes are also considered concisely, and much of the subsequent discussions on links between policy and social policy are based on the ideas introduced here. They identify urban schools as forming part of a popular discourse where urban equals difficulty and failure, which if one reads the tabloid press in the UK is easy to recognise. They are careful here to develop one of their main themes - that issues around poverty - housing, healthcare, employment and power relationships based around class are a key reason why urban schools underperform. In later chapters they specifically challenge the notion put forward by right wing policy advocates to the effect that the exceptions - schools faced with urban problems who succeed against the odds, point towards teaching quality as the key issue in such underperformance. This is, though, a contested area of debate, and the authors fail to cover ideas put forward often cogently by writers such as Chris Woodhead (see Sunday Times (London), June 3rd 2007) that it is clear lines of accountability and an emphasis on good teaching that gets results in these "exceptional" schools. As with the analysis of other policy arguments in this book, the right's viewpoint is presented only as forethought to its demolition, whereas a more in depth critique of its ideas may have led to a more rounded view of the policy issues raised by the authors. Chris Woodhead, of course, was both the old Conservative government's last and the New Labour administration's first Chief Inspector of Schools. As a book mainly focused on the UK, there is some in depth consideration of how New Labour policy on education developed, which may be difficult to interpret for readers not familiar with the context. It is though, generally not difficult, to see resonances with other countries such as the US where policy has as well been driven by a desire to set standards and to use tests and assessment as a driver for school improvement. One can hear the authors' unspoken assertion that policy developments by New Labour and Tony Blair could often be classified as right wing. In Chapter 2, issues stemming from economic deprivation as considered in Chapter 1 are explored further. In addition, other typically urban issues are considered, such as the challenges of providing for significant numbers of children with English as an additional language without adequate resources, problems faced by refugee children, including the need for additional emotional support for those who have suffered trauma and dislocation and key problems around teacher recruitment and retention. The authors give an authentic account of the interplay between these and other factors, which as they portray are often the stuff of urban primary school life. In Chapters 3 and 4, the focus moves to a review of some small scale research carried out by the authors on the views of primary teachers and headteachers on their experience of working in the urban primary school. Although perhaps slightly tangential to the main thrust of the book on debates around social policy, the research gives a slightly more upbeat tone to the discussion, indicating the often positive attitude of teachers to the challenges of the urban context and their desire to make a difference. Chapter 5 focuses on parents and it is here that we begin to see flesh develop on the key idea of the book - namely how (often right wing) macro education policies often mask of ignore the realities of class based and race based inequalities on the ground. Drawing on work by Gerwitz, the authors argue that "the rhetoric of partnership can sometimes mask uncomfortable dilemmas". For example, they point out how some parents can find themselves inevitably drawn in to conflicts where teachers are middle class and parents are working class - power relationships implicit in this class analysis often distorting the whole idea of partnership. In Chapter 6 "Supporting Diversity", there is a consideration of the trend in sociology to challenge uni-dimensional analysis of issues in terms of, for example, race or class. Drawing on writers such as Shane and Hall, they consider how the "lived lives" of the players in the urban primary school and its community are often more complex and offer numerous potential intersections between varied trajectories of race, class and gender. As they point out, "being from Manchester and/ or being gay might be equally, if not more important, to an individual who might be described as Afro-Caribbean.." They point out the danger that, for example, a continued unidimensional focus on ethnicity opens up the risky possibility that it could be used by some as a reason for underachievement and may "distract attention away from what schools actually offer to working class students". It is interesting to note, however, that they do not throughout the rest of the book apply this analysis with much conviction, and in particular do not explore its consequences for their largely class based critiques in other areas. For example, in Chapter 5 they use Gerwitz's ideas to consider how some policy initiatives (such as Sure Start in the UK) could be conceptualized as an attempt to eradicate class differences by making working class parents in to vocal, well-informed, well-behaved middle class parents, reflecting a deficit approach in which the values and cultural capital of working class families are marginalised. One feels bound to ask, though, especially given their analysis in Chapter 6, whether this class based analysis is really accurate when applied to the complexities of urban life in the 21st century. Is it really true that parents from a range of backgrounds can only conceptualize themselves in one dimension? Even is we must agree that some of these possible trajectories will be harder to access due to educational outcomes and income inequalities, is the neat distinction in to working and middle class really the clearest way to conceptualized these ideas? In Chapter 7 the analysis based on class in further developed, and related ideas are introduced in Chapter 9 on Social Justice. "State schooling in the UK has always been a classed project", state the authors, drawing support for this assertion from work by Williams and Ball, considering evidence on how the middle classes deploy strategies to achieve better educational outcomes for their children, for example by manipulating physical space by buying properties in "good" school catchment areas. The authors point out how policies aimed at introducing choice/competition in to education consumption has led to greater opportunities for the middle classes to intervene in the market to their own advantage. They also concisely explore the effects of such choice mechanisms in practice for urban schools - for example how reducing rolls of perceived "bad" schools can lead to an unavoidable cycle of an increased intake of children perhaps with emotional and behavioural difficulties, subsequent problems with staff recruitment and demonization exacerbated by market mechanisms and distortion by local and national media. In Chapter 9, although the authors admirably attempt a definition of social justice, drawing on work by Harvey, Runciman, Cribb and Gerwitz, the reader is still left with the feeling of trying to get a purchase on this essentially slippery concept. They do, however, manage to incisively point out how New Labour's approach to social justice has been confused by their simultaneous appeal to market forces and their inability or refusal to truly challenge established power structures. Yet this issue perhaps lies at the heart of the definitional problem - we might feel that social justice is up there as an ideal with motherhood and apple pie - but it is much less clear whether social democratic, Marxist or right wing policies are a better choice for practically achieving the ideals of social justice. Again, the argument of this book that poverty is an inescapable factor in educational failure does not in itself tell us what social or economic policies will best lead to alleviation of that poverty - an analytical gap that is brushed over by the authors. What is of more interest in Chapter 9 are the case studies on how policy issues get translated on the ground in individual primary schools and classes. For example, the authors consider the situation of a school being asked to focus Gifted and Talented Funding (a UK initiative to focus resources on stretching more able children) on particular children when they know that a broader range of children could potentially benefit from these resources. They then carefully explore the potential conflicts that this creates for the teaching staff in the school. In Chapter 10, the authors expand on the interesting early references in earlier chapters to comparisons between UK and US perspectives. For UK and no doubt other readers, the summary of recent developments in American Education Policy will be of interest. The authors further focus on what the authors view as successful interventions, which have had more of a grass roots development path in the US, such as the charter schools movement and the State University of New York Education Teacher Centre (SUTEC) - an initiative to provide a broad supportive environment to student teachers working in urban primary schools. The authors make it clear that they have more faith in such organic, bottom up approaches to make a real difference to the urban primary school than the top-down policy initiatives that the critique earlier in the book. Conclusion In this book the authors clearly and authoritatively explore the challenges facing urban primary education, focusing on the UK but with the addition of a thought provoking international perspective. They summarize key ideas in the literature on the relationship between social education policy and typical discourses around class, race, gender, urban space and cultural capital. This analysis is, at times limited, and one could have hoped that the authors would have given more consideration to the complexities of political debate that inevitably arise from their identification of poverty as a key factor in educational attainment. Nevertheless, there is a refreshing emphasis on local and practical issues which are often given less prominence, such as urban problems with teacher recruitment and retention. In particular, the case study approach employed in Chapters 9 and 10 brings to life how some of the theoretical clashes between policy and lived realities actually play out for specific schools and teachers. This book will serve well as an introduction to social policy issues in urban education and teachers working in urban and other settings should be aware of the complex factors affecting their working lives that it explores. As such, trainee teachers, teacher educators and indeed school governors would also find this book of interest. About the Reviewer Joseph Mintz Senior Lecturer in Education Department of Education London South Bank University 103 Borough Road London SE1 0AA Joseph Mintz is Senior Lecturer in Education at London South Bank University. He tutors on initial teacher training and masters level programmes which support teachers in working in the inner city context. His research interests focus on approaches to helping children with barriers to learning. He also has an interest in the use of E-learning to develop teaching strategies in Higher Education