The socially just school: Transforming young lives

This chapter aims to provide a concrete antidote to the global educational reform trajectory and that has the underlying premise that there is no alternative to the neoliberal rationality of competitive individualism, market-based forms of regulation, and privatized mentalities of educational provision. The chapter also aims to robustly contest the dangerous and fallacious proclamation derivative of Margaret Thatcher in UK, that "there is no alternative" to capitalism - often know by its acronym TINA. It helps to disrupt and supplant the dominant and paralyzing neoliberal ideology of schooling, with an approach that is more concerned with “problematization” and that is permissive of the kind of questions posed by Diane Reay. The chapter considers a different social imaginary based upon a heuristic called the socially just school. It addresses the shortcoming identified by Francis and Mills that "sociological work in education has been extremely effective in identifying social injustice" but less adroit in "proposing alternative models".