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‘Narrowing the gap’ and addressing low educational achievement of specific social class and ethnic groups has long been an expressed government concern. This paper considers the links between poverty, ethnicity and gender and school attainment and the interrelations of these factors using national data sets and other quantitative data. The limitations of single-theme analyses and their potentially misleading implications are explored. Related to this, the failures of social and educational policies to bring about greater equality are examined. Competing perspectives on low attainment and their positions are critiqued. The paper argues that ethnic and class discrimination stems from the same structural arrangements contrived for the advantage of more affluent sectors of society. Theoretical development is needed to bring together class, race and other discriminatory features and construct more sophisticated causal analyses that relate to the web of economic, status and power regimes and the negative processes of ‘racialisation’.