Social justice and school improvement: improving the quality of schooling in the poorest neighbourhoods.

Based on a qualitative study of four schools in the poorest neighbourhoods , this article explores links between the contexts in which they were operating and the quality of education provided. It concludes that high–poverty contexts exert downward pressures on quality, and that consistently high levels of quality in schools in the poorest neighbourhoods need to be assured by policy measures that alter their context or, through greater funding, improve their organisational capacity to respond. Social justice will not be achieved by managerialist policies that seek to improve schools by addressing the performance of managers and staff, without a recognition of the context in which this performance takes place