The potential link between educational ‘failure’ and offending is often debated. Discussions frequently focus on the community, cultural or family backgrounds from which the children who ‘fail’ come, and/or on more adequate provision for those ‘at risk’ of school and social exclusion. These discussions often prioritise the apparent significance of race, class and gender, indicated by the over-representation of poor, male, Black students in punitive school disciplinary processes and a parallel disproportionality in the criminal justice system. However, many of these approaches assume educational systems to be intrinsically good and consider cases of educational failure to be anomalies that require ironing out. This session will consider a different view. Drawing on classic sociological theories of education it will introduce the connections between social control and education. It will also ask us to consider what an exploration of the school-to-prison pipeline can tell us about the entire education system.

• Bowles, S. and Gintis, H. (2002) Schooling in Capitalist America Revisited. Sociology of Education, 75(1): 1-18.

• Biopower – Global Social Theory website

1. What is the myth of meritocracy in education and how might it link to wider social inequalities?