The link between disadvantage and poor educational attainments is an enduring one. Educational policy over the last 40 years or so has tended to respond to educational inequality in predominately one of two ways – attempts to raise standards across the system as a whole and attempts to redistribute resourcesto families, schools and neighbourhoods in mainly poor urban contexts to help improve educational outcomes. Over time these later compensatory educational policies and interventions have become known as area-based initiatives (ABIs). The paper categorises and documents these important initiatives and provides evidence of impact. The key finding is that although there have been improvements in attainments linked to these interventions, there continues to be an enduring link between disadvantage and educational outcomes. In an attempt to conceptualise why this is the case, the paper uses  Fraser’s  social justice ideas of redistribution and recognition. The analysis suggests that the vast majority of ABIs have focused on meso level affirmative or ameliorative notions of redistribution that provide limited scope for dealing with the impacts of structural economic disadvantage on young people’s engagement with education. In addition ABIs appear to have almost completely disregarded the cultural diversity of disadvantaged young people and the politics of recognition, both of which would provide a more appropriate foundation for designing and implementing educational reform. The paper then suggests practical ways in which educational ABIs might be informed by a politics of recognition, recognising at the same time, however, that a simultaneous scaled transformative redistribution of resources need to be applied if ABIs are to have the desired impact on educational equity. In the concluding section, the paper reflects on the extent to which the pendulum has truly swung in relation to current policy proposals attempts to deal with disadvantage and educational equity.

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