In the first instance, education is broadly reproductive, albeit to
different degrees in different countries (OECD, 2002). What
happens in education is that social inequalities of class, gender,
race/ethnicity, ability and sexuality are reconfigured as educational
inequalities. Education is thus, among others, a form of
institutionalised systemic discrimination. Sociological research
illuminates this systemic discrimination within and across
educational phases with regard to patterns of socially/educationally
differentiated institutions, potential achievements and actual
outcomes, and subsequent occupational destinations (Green et al,
2006; Ball, 2008)
More importantly, perhaps, this systemic discrimination is actually
fully embedded in the right to education itself. Firstly, education
should to be free in order to be economically universally
accessible. However, it is not: public and private institutions co-
exist and, in lower income countries, secondary education is more
likely to be fee-paying (Tomasevski, 2003; 2006). Moreover,
education carries hidden costs, ranging from the loss of income
brought about by reducing or abolishing children’s economic
participation, vital in many lower income countries, to
expected/required financial outlay on clothing, additional materials
and resources and so on. So although the right is a universal one,
access to education still remains at the level of a formal right,
defined as absence of legal barriers, rather than a substantive one,
addressing the material barriers. Secondly, the right to education
actively promotes a system of secondary education which is
diversified on the basis of curricula - academic and vocational.
The academic/vocational division is imbricated with long-standing