Social Class and Education

Social Class and Education

A Class-Ridden Society?

Michele, a 22-year-old from Hong Kong, recounts her experience with class discrimination in the UK, particularly concerning social or council housing. She notes the stigma attached to living in such housing and the surprise at how openly and frequently class is discussed. She observed that people from different classes tend not to mix, with international students often assumed to be from a higher class.

The Frost Report, a classic comedy sketch, humorously portrays class divisions through the sketch "I know my place" (1966).

Margaret Thatcher, in 1992, stated, "Class is a communist concept. Underclass? Socialist claptrap!" and "The more you talk about class…. ….the more you fix the idea in people's minds."

Tony Blair, during the Labour Party Conference in September 1999, mentioned that "My friends, class war is over".

Owen Jones, the author of Chavs, reflected on Selina Todd's book The People, observing that most British people still identify as working class.

John Major, in November 1990, expressed the aspiration to make Britain a genuinely classless society. He reiterated this view in an interview for The Rest is Politics in 2023.

Kate Fox, in Watching the English (2004), discusses class-denial, noting that the British are acutely class-conscious but often embarrassed to admit it. She highlights the euphemisms used by the middle classes to avoid the term 'working class,' such as 'low-income groups', 'less privileged', 'ordinary people', 'less educated', 'the man in the street', 'tabloid readers', 'blue collar', 'state school', 'council estate', 'popular'.

Cannadine (Class in Britain, 1998) observes that Britain's peculiarity lies not in the existence of the class system but in its class psychology: the preoccupation with class, the belief in class, and the symbols of class in manners, dress, and language.

Three modes of social description include:

• Hierarchical: individuals graded according to status and dignity.

• Triadic: individuals divided into three collective groups (upper/middle/working class) based on wealth and occupation.

• Dichotomous: adversarial picture of ‘us’ vs ‘them’.

The study of social class from a Marxist perspective involves using labels to classify sharp social divisions after the Industrial Revolution. Economic change is considered the key to social change. After the 1960s, there was criticism of grand linear narratives, with a shift towards handling class in cultural terms.

In 1963, it was argued that class entails a distinctive “world picture” and ethos, with different classes inhabiting different worlds of traditions and value systems.

Recent studies indicate that class exists beyond people's heads, significantly impacting life chances based on 'capital' (Bourdieu). The hierarchical view of class remains relevant, where capital encompasses all means available to secure proactive rights to the future.

The Great British Class Survey

The Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC) at Manchester, led by Mike Savage (LSE) & Fiona Devine (University of Manchester), conducted the largest survey of class in the UK in collaboration with the BBC in 2011. The survey defines class in terms of three types of capital (Pierre Bourdieu, 1983):

• Economic: finances.

• Social: social connections, organized groups.

• Cultural: interests, education.

This reveals that class is a multidimensional social space.

The GBCS major conclusions:

• Polarisation between top and bottom.

• Fracturing of the middle group.

The seven social groups identified are:

• Elite (6%): wealthiest and most privileged, high scores across all factors, often privately educated and from elite universities, predominantly in London and home counties, high homeownership (97%).

• Established Middle Class (25%).

• Technical Middle Class (6%).

• New Affluent Workers (15%): sociable, high cultural interests, economically secure, high engagement with emerging culture (sports, gigs, social media), often from working-class backgrounds, located in old manufacturing centers.

• Traditional Working Class (14%).

• Emergent Service Workers (19%).

• Precariat (15%): poorest and most deprived, low scores across all factors, limited social mixing, jobs include cleaner, van driver, and care worker, narrow cultural interests, live in old industrial areas, predominantly rent their homes (over 80%).

Lynsey Hanley's review (2015) of Mike Savage's book (2015) on the GBCS results emphasizes the emotional impact of class and the need for new categories to reflect the complexity of society and the growing disparity between the elite and the precariat. The old distinctions between upper, middle, and working class no longer hold true, necessitating a range of new intermediate groups that reflect the reality of social mobility for an enlarged lower-to-upper-middle class.

Savage estimates that a super-wealthy class now represents about 6% of the population, with an average household income of £89,000 boosted, he notes, by attendance at Oxford and one or two other super-elite universities.

University rankings for 2025:

1. Oxford

2. St Andrews

3. Cambridge

4. London School of Economics

5. Imperial College

6. Durham

7. Bath

8. Warwick

9. University College London

10. Loughborough

A "poly" refers to a former polytechnic, an institute of higher education that combined academic and vocational degrees and gained university status since 1992. The Russell Group is an association of 24 of the top research universities in the UK.

Matt Lucas's portrayal of Vicky Pollard in Little Britain exemplifies a gross caricature and highlights the “rough/respectable divide” exemplified by the “deserving/undeserving poor”.

The experience of feeling out of place due to one's accent and class is illustrated by an anecdote from Savage (2015, p. 379), where someone felt distinctly uncomfortable in an Edinburgh pub because their received-pronunciation (RP) accent immediately identified them as an outsider. As the author wrote,

Class conversation codes, as identified by anthropologist Kate Fox, include seven “infallible shibboleths” of class:

| Lower or Middle-Upper | | |
| :---------------------- | :-: | :----- |
| pardon | | what |
| toilet | | lavatory |
| serviette | | napkin |
| dinner | | lunch |
| settee | | sofa |
| lounge | | sitting room |
| sweet | | pudding |

Instances of the Middleton family being negatively portrayed in the press after Kate's break-up with William included allegations that Kate's mother had chewed gum at William's passing-out parade and had used the words "toilet" and "pardon" in front of the Queen.

Emma Beddington notes that old rules about whether to say sofa or settee, loo or toilet, are disappearing. New research (2024) at Nottingham Trent University and the University of Sussex challenges Ross's claims that certain words distinguish the upper class. For example, while napkin and sofa were more common than serviette or settee, toilet was more common than loo. The research investigated the use of words that Ross and others have identified as indicators of class: the supposedly upper-class words loo, napkin, and sofa, with their supposedly non-upper-class counterparts, toilet, serviette, and settee. In the first study, spot-the-difference tasks were used to prompt 80 participants of different ages, genders, and social classes to say these words.

Despite the shifting vocabulary, accent and dialect discrimination remain prevalent in contemporary British English.

LSE hosted an event on does class inequality still matter? The Great British Class Survey ten years on.

Social Inequality and Education

Figure 6.1 illustrates the differences in income inequality across OECD countries using the Gini coefficient. The Gini coefficient is a measure of statistical dispersion intended to represent the income inequality or wealth inequality within a nation or any other group of people. The Gini coefficient ranges from 0 to 1, with 0 representing perfect equality and 1 representing maximal inequality. $Gini = \frac{\sum<em>{i=1}^{n} (2i - n - 1)x</em>i}{n^2 \bar{x}}$, where $x_i$ is an income and $\bar{x}$ is the average income. It also uses the S90/S10 income decile share, representing the ratio of the average income of the richest 10% to the poorest 10%.

A North/South divide exists, with London boroughs and Home Counties having the most promising prospects for young people according to the Social Mobility Commission's State of the Nation 2024 report.

A new study highlights significant pay disparities between the north and south of the UK, with southern cities like London and Cambridge having much higher wages due to the concentration of high-tech industries. However, some northern cities like Leeds, Edinburgh, and Aberdeen have wages above the UK average, as reported by the Centre for Cities Outlook 2025.

The UK Equality and Human Rights Commission (2023) addresses 'postcode poverty,' noting that 'left behind areas' needing 'levelling up' are primarily in the Midlands, the North of England, the West of Scotland, the South of Wales, post-industrial towns on the periphery of large urban areas, and coastal towns.

Social mobility is defined as the improvement or decline of a person's socio-economic situation relative to their parents or throughout their lifetime, measured by earnings, income, social class, and well-being dimensions like health and education.

The Social Mobility Commission's State of the Nation 2024 highlights:

• The attainment gap between pupils eligible for free school meals (FSM) and those not eligible remains largely unchanged.

• The UK performs at or above the OECD average in PISA for mathematics, reading, and science, although 2022 scores show decreases across the world.

• There appears to be a closing of the socio-economic background (SEB) gap in university enrolment between 2014 and 2022.

Structure of education:

• State-funded (ca. 93%):

  • 5-7: infant school

  • 7-11: junior school

  • 11+: optional examination

  • 11-16: comprehensive school or grammar school (if 11+ passed)

  • GCSE

  • 16-18: sixth form college

  • A Levels

• Fee-paying private (ca. 7%):

  • 4-7/8: pre-preparatory school

  • 8-11/13: preparatory school (entrance examination)

  • 11/13-18: independent day-school or public (boarding) school

  • GCSE

  • A Levels

Selection exists in the state sector via grammar schools.

There are 163 grammar schools in England with 167,000 pupils. Around 5% of secondary pupils in England attend a grammar school.
Wealthier pupils are more likely to pass the 11-plus, even when poorer pupils have the same attainment levels. This is likely because wealthier parents are more likely to seek a grammar school education for their child and can afford tutors and practice papers.

Private education:

• Academically challenging.

• Creates group identity via subunits like 'houses' and inter-house competitions.

• Reinforces insider/outsider perspectives.

• Builds character (self-confidence, resilience, networking).

• Facilitates access to the 'old boys' network' or 'old school tie'.

The most prestigious independent schools are public schools (boarding institutions), mainly in England, such as Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Winchester, Westminster, Shrewsbury, Sherborne, Charterhouse, and Saint Paul’s. Independent school fees can exceed £10,000 a year. Eton's 2024-25 fee is £52,749 per annum.

Benefits of private schools (UCL Institute of Education, 2015):

• Development of attributes like self-confidence and aspirations.

• Access to real social networks.

• Delivery of better academic performance.

Figures revealing the impact of quality education (Huffington Post, 2014):

• 36% of UK Cabinet ministers attended private schools vs. 7% of the public.

• 59% of UK Cabinet ministers attended Oxford or Cambridge vs. less than 1% of the public.

Starmer's state-schooled cabinet is unusually reflective of Britain (Jack Brown, 11 July 2024). Only 8% of current cabinet members were primarily privately educated, close to the national average, contrasting sharply with the higher percentages in previous cabinets and parliamentarians overall.

Private school education confers cultural capital. Friedman & Laurison (The Class Ceiling, 2020) illustrate this with an example of two candidates (Sophie, privately educated; Martin, working-class background) being interviewed for a television career position.