A range of changes, in politics and economics internationally as well as in thought about learning and society, now make the time right for a re-think of inclusive education, a re-think that ceases to employ the constructs and cliches of the past in explaining students' difficulties at school. There exists new discourse on difference, which throws fresh light on the ways that students at school are disadvantaged--there is a new psychology of difference emerging from work in varied social scientific fields that gives insights into the mechanisms by which inequality, relative poverty and contrastive judgment construct difficulty and closure on learning. In this review, both a history and a hope, I argue that no time has been better for such understandings to make themselves realized in policy and practice.