Kathleen Lynch is Head of Research at the Equality Studies Centre, National University of Ireland, University College, Dublin. Anne Lodge is a Lecturer in Sociology of Education at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth.

• Part 1 Setting the scene; Chapter 1 The equality debates; Chapter 2 The design of the study and a profile of the schools; Part 2 Issues of redistribution; Chapter 3 The Class Act; Chapter 4 The grouping process; Part 3 Issues of recognition and multivalent identities; Chapter 5 Girls’ schools; Chapter 6 Boys’ schools; Chapter 7 The complex cultures of co-educational schools; Chapter 8 The diversity deficit; Part 4 Discipline and power; Chapter 9 Regimes of power and resistance; Chapter 10 Vertical and horizontal power; Chapter 11 Inequality and the 3Rs—redistribution, recognition and representation;

'Equality and power in Schools is very well written in an accessible style that successfully brings together academics', policy makers' and teachers' concerns. This is a highly original book that finely shows the scholarly strengths of politically committed writers. The authors hope that the book will not only stimulate debate about the multiple and interlocking ways in which schools operate to promote different types of inequality, of a distributive, recognition and representational kind, but that it will also encourage and promote egalitarian change. I have little doubt that it will achieve both. It deserves the widest audience both in Ireland and internationally.' - Martin Mac an Ghaill, University of Newcastle Upon Tyne