Diversity,Choice,and Selection in England and Wales

Over the last decade, England and Wales have experienced a variety of changes in education policy that have been introduced and justified in terms of developing a greater diversity of schools from which families can choose. These changes include: the development of City Technology Colleges from 1986, the introduction of grant-maintained schools in 1988, the encouragement of "specialist schools" in 1993, and the 1993 Act's even greater emphasis on choice and diversity with technology colleges and new forms of sponsored, grant-maintained schools. This article explores the changing ways in which the concept of diversity has been used, and argues that it has been appropriated by the political Right to develop and deepen a policy of selection and elitism. Rather than being associated with issues of equity, in England and Wales, the concept has become linked with a discourse that favours selectivity and privilege.