This paper attempts to provide some answers to two questions: What are the distinctive challenges of urban education (especially in London) and how can schools help to meet them? Using theoretical frameworks derived from the writings of two leading scholars of the urban, Manuel Castells and David Harvey, this paper argues that the challenges "in" urban education are especially manifest in inner-city communities and in inner-city schools and colleges. The challenges "for" urban education consist in trying to find effective, and above all, sustained ways of responding to those contradictions. (Contains 14 notes.)