Introduction

A research project in a secondary school in England enabled discussions with children who identified that they attend a good school where they know that their aspirations will be recognised, enhanced and supported, but who asked: “Why do they keep testing us?” Such a glimpse into the world of children displays their trapped location in biopolitical distinctiveness regarding how they are required to learn to labour rather than act, to fit rather than present uniqueness, to deliver rather than do something new. Where the outcome of promises made is a binary of success or failure, and where responsibility and judgement are about producing the numbers to enable transformational elite adults in and outside of school to furnish the correct standards to the media. Consequently, complex forms of discrimination are developing within and external to schools: within-school segregation is happening through the use of data to determine particular curriculum pathways and ability grouping of children; between-schools segregation through the use of data to determine high-status academic schools in comparison with ‘sink’ schools; and beyond schools, where children are separating themselves from school through absence and parents are making proactive decisions to home school. I intend examining the construction of this fragmented and chaotic ‘system’, where I consider the possibilities for reconciliation through examining Arendt's work on forgiving. After all, ‘forgiving is among the greatest of human virtues’ (Arendt 2005, p58), and is necessary if humans are to enter and take action politically in the public realm. The deployment of the Education Policy Knowledgeable Polity (EPKP) to the reforms to public services commons education puts the focus on a form of depoliticisation by privatism where the opportunity and capacity for forgiveness is in peril. Globally networked ideas and practices underpinning segregation do not recognise forgiving as a necessity, because the outcomes of a segregated education system are not a problem but are to be welcomed. I identify that the corollary of segregation is the disposability of children, and I argue that those who are doing this cannot be forgiven.

Common commons?

The development of a commons – or the sense that humans as ‘we’ are custodians of common resources – and the taking of a common approach to what ‘we’ decide is common, is integral to what are known as public services.