This article examines the ways in which education and educational policy impact upon the likelihood and dynamics of violent conflict. It argues that education is rarely directly implicated in the incidence of violent conflict but identifies three main mechanisms through which education can indirectly accentuate or mitigate the risk of conflict: through the creation and maintenance of socio-economic divisions, including horizontal inequalities between ethnic groups; through processes of political inclusion and exclusion; and through accommodation of cultural diversity. It further suggests that designing conflict-sensitive education systems is particularly problematic because the implications of these three principal mechanisms often pull in different directions.