In this brief review I relate my own work on poverty, exclusion and education to Francisca Ashurst and Couze Venn's book Inequality, Poverty, Education. I also have a number of personal connections, as well as examining Francisca's PhD which the book is based on, I worked for 10 years in the ILEA running a pupil referral unit for children who were excluded or at imminent risk of being excluded from school. I have also been able to proudly identify myself as part of Michael Gove's2 Blob - He has described the Blob as those inert dinosaurs, both academics and educational establishment, who are trying to hold on to progressive child-centred policies and prevent the tidal wave of change he is attempting to drown our educational system in. Well if he gets his way the sort of children I was teaching, and Ashurst and Venn have been writing about, will be found in militarised penal schools, staffed by ex-soldiers with a 12-hour-a-day learning schedule that is 90 per cent basic reading, writing and arithmetic with a bit of IT and PE thrown in for good behaviour. I jest not.
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