What next for equity in education? A call for action

Inclusion has long been promoted as a central educational value in the United Kingdom, yet the conditions that shape it have altered in ways that create profound tensions. As equity is unsettled by widening socio-economic divides, increasing pressures on the SEND system, intensified accountability structures and polarised public discourse, inclusion is asked to carry expectations that often exceed the realities of practice. Although policy language continues to present inclusion as a route towards fairness and opportunity, the everyday landscape is marked by rising exclusions, persistent absenteeism, fragmented support systems and the further stratification of learners. This unsettles the relationship between inclusion and equity and raises questions about what forms of participation are possible for different groups of children, young people and adults.

In this context the concepts of inclusion and equity operate in uncertain and sometimes conflicting ways. Inclusion can be interpreted as access, rights, personalisation, behaviour regulation, belonging or social justice, while equity can signify parity of outcomes, redistribution of resources or recognition of structural disadvantage. These varied interpretations influence educational work in complex ways, and they often place families, educators and students in situations where they must reconcile competing expectations. At the same time many practitioners and communities continue to devise ways of sustaining belonging, connection and support within increasingly constrained environments, which raises the larger question of what more equitable forms of inclusion might require in contemporary conditions.

This session invites analytical, empirical and practice-based contributions that examine how inclusion and equity are being reshaped across educational, community, political and cultural settings. Submissions may explore how everyday practices of participation and belonging are negotiated in environments marked by austerity and increased digitalisation, how intersecting experiences of disability, race, class, gender and faith complicate claims to inclusion and equity, how systems of classification, accountability and resource allocation influence access and support, and how families, communities and young people generate alternative possibilities for more equitable forms of inclusion.

The session aims to create a space for participants to map the drivers of these shifts and to consider how inclusion might be reconceptualised in ways that align more closely with substantive equity and with educational practices oriented towards justice, interdependence and collective flourishing.

Format for the session (90 mins)

• Mapping how equity and inclusion are converging, diverging or being reconfigured (FP and JA)
• Paper/work presentation: Representing inclusion and equity across past, present and imagined futures.
• Identifying conceptual, practical and policy shifts needed to enact more equitable forms of inclusion (Plenary).

Racism continues to be one of the most entrenched barriers to achieving equity in education globally. Despite decades of advocacy and reform, intersecting racialised inequalities persist across policy, practice, and institutional cultures, and they shape access, participation, outcomes, and trajectories for learners and educators.

In recent years, however, the landscape has shifted in complex and often contradictory ways. On one end of the spectrum, racisms have been downplayed or obscured by dominant discourses of Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) —frameworks that, while well-intentioned, often bureaucratize and dilute the transformative potential of anti-racist work, reducing structural change to performative compliance. On the other end, communities, education practitioners, researchers and activists are navigating increasingly restricted terrains for resistance, contending with policy environments and public narratives that oscillate between recognition and denial of systemic racism.

At a moment when hostility towards immigration, faith and ethnic minorities has intensified, and when geopolitical conflict reverberates through classrooms and communities, understanding racism requires attention to its historical continuities, contemporary mutations and everyday manifestations. We recognise racism as dynamic and adaptive, taking new forms in response to political shifts, technological change and resistance movements.

This cluster invites contributions that critically interrogate these tensions and explore how multifaceted, shifting and increasingly normalised forms of racism continue to shape contemporary educational and social landscapes. That may include studies of: the intentions and effects of EDI frameworks; how anti-racist endeavours are enacted and resisted the framing of racisms in policy and practice; the experiences of intersectional forms of racisms in classrooms, on campuses and within digital learning spaces; and how global crises such as migration, austerity and political polarisation are reshaping racial justice agendas in education.

We want particularly to identify innovative strategies—pedagogical, policy-based, art- work, or activism— of resistance and solidarity among educators, students and communities, and ways of challenging racisms when equity is under siege. We also encourage visual arts, performance and storytelling as creative interventions to challenge racism and reimagine equity.

Format for the session (90 mins)

• Understanding normalised racisms in ‘inclusive’ institutions (IR)
• Paper/work presentation: critically interrogating racisms in contemporary educational and social landscapes.
• Identifying innovative strategies and creative responses (Plenary).

During the 21^st century, UK higher education has moved definitively to a system of mass participation. This reflects increasing participation worldwide and the transition of many systems from small scale elite to mass and near universal. It has resulted in much more diverse cohorts studying for higher education qualifications in comparison to previous generations. As governments have encouraged, rhetorically as well as through policy, greater access and widening participation to graduate status, more challenging questions have been raised about the benefits of higher education access, graduates and universities.

21^st century political rhetoric has described gaining access to university education as meritocratic and shaping individuals to be socially mobile. This trajectory has been depicted as a linear move to the graduate class. It depicts the individual as being shaped by the university to participate socially, culturally and economically in the world. Incentives for universities have resulted in a singular and elite isomorphism as a hegemonic approach to an undergraduate degree – academic, three or four years, full-time, on campus, and residential, yielding entry to a normative social and economic conception of ‘graduateness’. Claims of cultural formation by the university require the student to change to fit in and achieve a feeling of belonging at university and as part of a graduate class.

UK higher education is now at a critical juncture. Financial sustainability and political and public scepticism towards universities is casting doubt on continued expansion. Increased numbers entering the graduate class has not resulted in the promised economic benefits for individuals, regions or nation states. A social, cultural and political divide has emerged between graduates and non-graduates in electoral voting patterns. Those deciding to enter higher education appear increasingly likely to reject the normative mobile and residential university experience, influenced by cost pressures but also personal attachments and preferences.

This session will explore the causes and characteristics of these changes during the 21^st century to date, then engage participants in considering how to conceptualise and put into effect the multifaced and non-linear higher education systems that we think are needed to serve a diverse and mass population.

Format for the session (90 mins)

• What just happened?: UK higher education in the 21^st century (CM and AM)
• Paper/work presentation: Representing change: picturing UK higher education in 2000, 2025 and 2050
• Putting policy into practice: identifying what should and could change, and how (Plenary)

In England, educational disengagement is growing and takes multiple forms, including school exclusion, persistent absence and broader disconnection from learning linked to social, personal and mental health challenges. Alongside this is a widening range of exclusionary practices within and around mainstream schooling, such as classroom removals, internal isolation, alternative provision and home education. School is increasingly a place that many young people are unable or unwilling to attend regularly and/or within which they struggle to thrive.

The diverse pathways of disengagement and exclusion have long-lasting consequences for young people’s lives, including increased risk of becoming NEET (not in education, employment or training), entering precarious work without access to training, and experiencing wider negative life outcomes. Crucially, disengagement is closely bound with enduring patterns of inequality. Risk factors include socio-economic disadvantage, racially minoritised backgrounds, and special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).

However, at the margins of the formal education system, significant work is taking place to reverse disengagement and interrupt such pathways of educational and social exclusion. This is a space of alternative, semi-formal or informal education, which may include alternative provision, charity sector programmes, youth initiatives and community action.

This cluster shifts the focus from documenting disengagement and exclusion to interrogating how they might be disrupted. It seeks to shed light on significant yet marginal spaces of educational provision, asking how alternative, semi-formal and community-based approaches create possibilities for young people to thrive beyond mainstream schooling. We welcome contributions that critically examine current practices aimed at disrupting exclusion and fostering re-engagement and that think expansively about what more equitable educational futures might look like when we begin from young people’s lives, needs and aspirations, rather than from the limits of existing systems.

We want to re-imagine education through youth-led and practitioner-led perspectives and practices, based on exploration of issues such as: how informal educators, youth workers and community practitioners work to re-engage young people in learning, belonging and collective life beyond mainstream schooling; the possibilities, tensions and risks of alternative provision, semi-formal education and community‑based learning; the shape of workforce that disrupts exclusionary pathways: who does this work, how do they come to it, and their training, resources and support needs; youth-led explorations of exclusion, absence and resistance in formal education; and family perspectives on exclusion, absence and disengagement including how these are experienced by young people and families at the intersections of race, class, disability, gender and mental health.

Format for the session (90 mins)

• Understanding Disengagement from Education (ES and JP)
• Paper/work presentation: exploring marginal spaces and practitioner action
• Re-imagining education through youth-led and practitioner perspectives (Plenary)