Disadvantaging the Disadvantaged: Bangladeshis and education in Tower Hamlets

This article describes the way in which policies in a local education authority actually worked to disadvantage a group of children already suffering gross disadvantages. During the 1980's 1LEA was unable to provide sufficient school places for children in Tower Hamlets, 95% of the resulting ‘out‐of‐school’ children being of Bangladeshi origin. The article records the efforts of the Tower Hamlets Law Centre to register a complaint on behalf of the children, and the way in which the local and central education authorities avoided their responsibilities to these children. It is suggested that such a situation would never have been tolerated in a white, middle‐class area. The article represents a contribution to the sociology of disadvantage in that it indicates the tendency of policy‐makers to ignore the economic and social structures which create disadvantage, and to focus on individual or family ‘pathology’ as a major cause of disadvantage.