ABSTRACT
Like many other areas of social life, education is an area replete with issues pertinent to discrimination. Here I am interested in dimensions of education which give rise to questions of discrimination in ways that are of particular import in that domain. Those questions include whether and what kind of discrimination is implicated in the different ways students are assessed in education; in respect of the academic standards according to which students are admitted to educational institutions; and in the grouping of students on the basis of non-academic criteria. 1 With that in mind the focus in the following is on two different ways in which students are differentiated in the context of education. First, through the use of academic tests and qualifications that are both administered by educational institutions, say by having students sit exams and grading them accordingly, and also used by educational institutions to inform decisions as to how opportunities for education are distributed, for instance in the context of competitive admissions processes for positions in higher education. Second, differentiation on explicitly non-academic grounds, including on the basis of fees, gender, 2 and faith. Given that the moralized character of ‘discrimination’ as a term is contested, I will endeavor to avoid conceptual confusion and controversy by often using the language of ‘differentiating’, ‘selecting’ or ‘grouping’ when referring to the descriptive, non-moralized sense of discrimination and often using the language of ‘wrongful discrimination’ when referring to the sense of discrimination with that thick moral import (cf. Introduction).
