The Reparative Futures of Education (Repair-Ed) project explores the geographic production of injustices in primary school education in the city of Bristol, England. We consider how ‘geographic arguments for reparation’ (see Inwood et al., 2021) can contribute to research on educational inequalities.

Repair-Ed is a five-year research project (selected and funded by the European Research Council and UK Research and Innovation, respectively) that is being conducted with 10 primary schools and their surrounding communities in Bristol. Like many urban centres across the country, Bristol is a divided city – a place of both great wealth and significant poverty. As these maps show, contiguous neighbourhoods are starkly different in terms of their infrastructures, socioeconomic demographics and education provision. Inequities in school provision are deepening in the city: government schools, already squeezed by decades of funding cuts, are facing large budget deficits, while Bristol has a high concentration of private school places.

‘Inequities in school provision are deepening in Bristol: government schools, already squeezed by decades of funding cuts, are facing large budget deficits, while Bristol has a high concentration of private school places.’

It is important to understand the geographies of inequality in Bristol with respect to its history. As a port city and centre of the transatlantic slave trade, the concentration of Bristol’s wealth today is inextricably tied to the enduring histories of dispossession and exploitation of Black people. The production of racial and class inequality interlock and education continues to be steeped in these dynamics of racial capitalism (Gerrard et al., 2022).

The idea of reparative justice requires us to understand the interconnections between past, present and future in both the formation of educational inequality and its repair. Until injustices are actively addressed, they can endure in social institutions – such as education – which also shape lives-to-come. Our project explores the contribution of reparative justice to educational research: What sorts of futures of education can emerge from taking seriously the righting of past and present educational wrongs?

Our preliminary analysis of research conducted with primary head teachers in Bristol explores histories of school funding and resourcing; geographic disparities in terms of access to socio-educational opportunities; and material infrastructures for learning. Through this research we examine how histories and geographies of place are central to understanding inequalities within educational systems. Through headteachers’ perspectives, our research maps the uneven ‘geographies of opportunity’ (see Tate, 2008) across Bristol and explores the ‘spatial injustices’ (see Soja, 2010) of the schooling system, with an attention to racial and classed inequalities. These findings show how primary aged children’s educational outcomes are influenced by the ‘spatial geographies’ (see Shedd, 2015) they inherit. What does a just primary education system in Bristol look like? We use this data to consider the possibilities and forms of city-scale educational redress.

The Repair-Ed project is developing creative place-based methods for researching with wider communities and neighbourhoods (such as local service organisations and youth groups). Our project explores how such methods can co-generate insight into the social, temporal and affective experiences of place, and deepen our understandings of the ‘spatial-economies’ (see Morrison et al., 2017) of deprivation and advantage. These creative place-based methodologies also help make visible the spatial dynamics of individual and collective resistance to education injustices, offering generative potential for redress-oriented research.

Three of the Repair-Ed project team are researcher-practitioners – teachers and school leaders who have had extensive experience of working in Bristol’s schools. Our project continually draws on practitioner reflections on the hopes, challenges and ethical considerations of conducting research on educational injustices and repair – particularly the methodological challenges of participatory, community-focused research.

This blog post relates to a symposium presented at the BERA Conference 2024 and WERA Focal Meeting on Tuesday 10 September at 11:15am. Find out more by searching the conference programme here.

References

Gerrard, J., Sriprakash, A., & Rudolph, S. (2022). Education and racial capitalism. Race Ethnicity and Education, 25(3), 425–442. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2021.2001449

Inwood, J. F. J., Brand, A. L., & Quinn, E. A. (2021). Racial capital, abolition, and a geographic argument for reparations. Antipode, 53(4), 1083–1103. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12704

Morrison, D., Annamma, S. A., & Jackson, D. D. (Eds.). (2017). Critical race spatial analysis: Mapping to understand and address educational inequity (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003443896  

Shedd, C. (2015). Unequal city: Race, schools, and perceptions of injustice. Russell Sage Foundation.

Soja, E. W. (2010). Seeking spatial justice. University of Minnesota Press.

Tate, W. F. (2008). ‘Geography of opportunity’: Poverty, place, and educational outcomes. Educational Researcher, 37(7), 397–411. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X08326409