City schools, especially those attended by working class and ethnic minority pupils are teh catalysts of many significant issues in educational debate and policy making. They bring into sharp focus questions to do with class, gender and race relations in education; concepts of equality of opportunity and of social justice; and controversies about the wider political economic and social context of mass schooling.

America, Western Europe and Australia have all taken a keen interest in the problems of urban schooling. The contributors to this collection  of original essays all share a concern about these problems, although they approach them from a wide range of theoretical and ideological positions.

Gerald Grace and his contributors criticis the current limitations of urban education as a field of study and they present a foundation for a more historically located and critically informed inquiry into problems, conflicts and contradictions in urban schooling. Part I presents contributions on theories of the urban. Part II focuses upon the history of urban education both in Britain and the USA. Part III discusses contemporary policy and practice with essays relating to education in inner city London and in New York City.

This book was first published in 1984.