Originally published 1987 Schooling Ordinary Kids looks at the ‘invisible majority’ of ordinary working-class pupils. The book explains why these pupils are now at the centre of a major educational crisis surrounding the soaring rates of youth unemployment. The book is a timely examination of educational inequalities, unemployment, and the new vocationalism. Drawing extensively the study of schools in the urban centre of South Wales the book highlights the need for an alternative politics of education, if we were to meet the educational challenge of the late-twentieth century. The new vocationalism is revealed here as a policy for inequality both politically and in the classroom.