Policies and practices for equality and inclusion in and through education

Since 1994, the European Commission has funded a considerable number of transnational research projects addressing issues of education and training. These collaborative research activities – some of them currently in progress– have produced important insights for policy formulation and have laid the foundations for significant research co-operation across Europe in this field.

This study reviews the findings of 20 such projects funded under the Sixth and Seventh European Framework Programmes for Research and Development (FP6 and FP7) that address education inequalities, their consequences and strategies to prevent or overcome them. It highlights concrete policies and practices that work to disrupt or prevent educational disadvantage and exclusion. It distils precious lessons for policy and practice from these research endeavours and sets out the supporting evidence.