Paper short abstract:

The paper explores how the everyday practices of teachers in state schools might sometimes work against policies aiming at improving educational equality and social justice in Chile.

Paper long abstract:

In 2006 and 2011 massive student protests in Chile demanded free and quality public education that would tackle the country's high level of inequality. From 2015, the left-centre government started an Educational Reform, a series of policies aiming at improving educational equality and social justice by offering more opportunities to the most disadvantaged groups. One of the most controversial of them was the "Inclusion Law", which prohibited state schools from selecting and expelling students based on their academic or behavioural performance. The law generated mixed feelings amongst state-school teachers, some thinking this could decrease the quality of the education provided under the trope of "a rotten apple spoils the rest". This paper shows how the daily work of teachers (intendedly and unintendedly) force disruptive or with low-school-performance young people and their families to take in their hands the decision of moving to another school or dropping out altogether by means of repeated punishment such as detention and suspension, and impeding them from receiving benefits. Teachers then often question the ethics of their actions and mobilise rewards and punishments sometimes for the sake of the individual, sometimes for what it is seen as the greater good for the group. The competitiveness essential to modern school systems either way reproduces inequality on a daily basis by pushing some students out of the system.