The politics of aspiration: neo-liberal education policy, ‘low’ parental aspirations, and primary school Extended Services in disadvantaged communities

Geographical research on education has grown rapidly in both volume and scope during the decade of the twenty-first century, and one relatively new theme to emerge from this literature is that of education and aspiration. Much of the nascent interest in concerns access to quality schooling and University education. In this paper by we highlight the importance of studying the ways aspirations are (re)produced within school community. Our empirical focus is on low-income England under New Labour. we pursue a two-fold approach: firstly examining how education professionals define aspirations for primary-aged children as low; before secondly considering their understandings of appropriate aspirations and the practices through which they to promote these, both in school and through the use of Extended Services for parents children. In conclusion we highlight the importance of inward and outward geographies education which ‘recouple’ schools with their social context, and discuss the moral and political ambiguities involved in practices designed to raise aspirations.