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This concluding chapter begins by noting that education is called upon to deliver a range of individual and social outcomes, not just democratic competences. Education has to balance these competing demands and the often-unrealistic expectations accompanying them. Schools cannot be assumed to solve all problems in society, such as the steady erosion of public support for democracy – whether real or perceived. We are also still a long way off from knowing exactly how education can foster democratic competences and which strategies are most effective in this respect. Nonetheless, the contributions to this Handbook do allow us to draw some conclusions with a fair degree of certainty. One is that the evidence presented points to participatory pedagogies as the most effective amongst these strategies in promoting a wide range of democratic competences. Another encouraging finding is that there are many more indications of civic learning arrangements reducing social and ethnic inequalities in democratic competences than of such arrangements enhancing them.

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