I examine the dynamics of implementing at-scale reforms to provide meaningful educational opportunities to disadvantaged students in Mexico. To effectively reduce social inequality and exclusion, education policies need a mix of system-wide and targeted efforts that are implemented at scale and sustained long enough to become institutionalized. The resiliency of those policies requires an elusive balance between system-wide and targeted efforts, alignment between federal and state initiatives, and supportive politics. However, the politics of implementing system-wide reforms are more contentious than those involving targeted efforts because they disrupt entrenched interests, making such efforts harder to sustain. Targeted policies, while easier to implement, reinforce the segregation of students into different educational tracks of varying quality.

In this essay, I introduce how and why minority groups and educational equity are understood and approached differently in Mainland China and Hong Kong. I describe how in the past few decades, China and Hong Kong have reformed their education systems to increase educational equity and I summarize the progress achieved. I also discuss the cultural, political, and social issues and challenges that contribute to the complexity surrounding educational equity in China and Hong Kong, elaborate on how educational equity remains a tricky issue in schools, and how different factors intersect to affect students’ access to educational goods. Finally, I argue that schools in China and Hong Kong should continue both to reform their education systems to enhance the academic achievement and social development of marginalized students and to put more effort into empowering teachers and students to recognize and address the long-standing systemic and institutional obstacles.

Australia’s migration history has produced one of the most ethnically diverse nations in the world, but this has presented challenges for educational equity. The introduction of multiculturalism in the 1970s coincided with an increasing focus on structural inequities in education. In this essay, we examine the context of changing educational policies and programs over the last half century, arguing that there has not been a steady process of reform involving measures redressing various inequalities but a period of policy turbulence. We consider the impact of the competing logics of multiculturalism—incorporation, recognition, civility—upon educational policy and practice to argue that, together with the consequences of neoliberal reforms, the equitable delivery of multiculturalism in schools has proved challenging. We conclude that multicultural education must refocus on the critical capacities that teachers and students alike need to understand the cultural complexities of a globalized world.