Social exclusion, and educational opportunity: the case of British education policies within a European Union contextFootnote1

In this article the ‘blanket’ term ‘British’ is used to describe the New Labour policies in relation to education and social exclusion. We need to acknowledge however, the great differences that exist amongst the different countries of the UK. In particular, the ‘modernising agenda’ of New Labour has played out very differently in Scotland and England (Alexiadou & Ozga, Citation2002) and, similarly, the discourses of social exclusion have been interpreted differently by the political elites of the two countries (Ozga, Citation1999). ‘British’ is here used as a term of convenience, since due to restrictions of space it was not possible to take these differences into account.

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