Alternative Provision: A Logic for Social Justice

This chapter draws attention to ironic policy developments and their implications for young people at risk of social and educational marginalisation. It contends that the proposed expansion of the alternative provision (AP) sector in England serves to perpetuate eugenic logics, and is reliant on concepts of convenience such as ‘belonging’. Such concepts are mobilised to conceal both the exclusionary import of AP expansion and the refusal of policy makers to effect radical systemic or structural change in the education system. Hence, this proposed expansion will take place despite UNESCO calls in 1994 and, more recently, in 2020 for education systems that are desegregated, where inclusive education means education for all and requires a very different approach to difference. The chapter theorises such ironic policy developments through Foucault’s concept of hiddenness, whereby exclusionary practices have been mediated through political, socio-cultural and professional discourses that continue to evoke and promote sedimented assumptions around student ability and behaviour, along with their associated organisational principles: meritocratic selection, competitive individualism, and normative models of student behaviour. A radical alternative conceptualisation is proposed, based on Foucault’s preface to a text by Deleuze and Guattari in which the ‘logic of the and’ displaces the binary and eugenic logics linked to ableism, classism and racism. This conceptualisation implies that the contribution of AP would become unnecessary were the mainstream sector to undergo a fundamental overhaul.