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This chapter examines how educational attainment in East London, England is differentiated by geography, social class, and ethnicity. It explains that London overall has a history of low educational attainment that poses problems for many parents who wish to see their children in a high-attaining school, and there is a wide variation in General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) attainment levels across London by borough and by school. The findings indicate that while there are major variations in attainment by both ethnic origin and residential area, class is slightly more important than ethnic origin.

This chapter considers the reasons why modern languages continue to be seen as more of an undergraduate subject than many other humanities disciplines. It considers the associated risks faced by modern languages, specifically by French Studies, as a result of various practicalities: as with other humanities subjects, the potential for grant capture among modern linguists can never compete with STEM areas; unlike many other humanities disciplines, modern languages have declined at GCSE and A Level; and practitioners in the field are challenged, moreover, to be particularly innovative when it comes to attracting overseas students who are more inclined to study in countries where target languages are spoken and where fees are often a fraction of those charged in the English-speaking world.

This chapter analyses spending, outputs and outcomes in relation to schools in England between 2007/8 and 2014/15. Schools were relatively protected from the public spending cuts made by the Coalition government from 2010 onwards, while rapid and extensive reforms were made in almost every aspect of policy. Moves towards a broader vision of schooling under the Labour government from 2007 to 2010 were rapidly overturned by the Coalition, which introduced an increasingly ‘rigorous’ academic curriculum and assessment regime. Major steps were made towards school an autonomous school system, with 61% of secondary schools becoming Academies. Teacher training was radically reformed. Early indications suggest that there are substantial challenges in managing the new system and that despite efforts to support disadvantaged students through a new ‘Pupil Premium’, socio-economic inequalities remain wide and may be even be exacerbated by some of the Coalitions other reforms.

This chapter reflects on the increasingly influential links drawn between literary reading and cultural formation in state education at the end of the century. Building on the implementation of multicultural initiatives under Thatcher, it focuses on the emergence of literary categories distinguishing the ‘English literary heritage’ from ‘other cultures and traditions’. It begins by locating these ideas in the mind of the cosmopolitan poet and state English advisor C.B. Cox before turning to their codification in the NEAB GCSE Anthology (1996, 1998), a school reader that introduced a new contemporary canon of postcolonial poetry. The chapter concludes with detailed readings of three anthologized poems by Sujata Bhatt, Kamau Brathwaite, and Tatamkhulu Afrika, demonstrating how we might reimagine the Anthology’s ideas of organic language, culture, and representative ethnic identity.