Introduction

Social class is a relational concept in which working-class experiences do not make sense unless they are contextualised within the wider class hierarchy. We cannot understand working-class experiences of education without looking at how both the upper and middle classes are positioned within education, their educational practices and how these in turn impact on working-class students. This chapter is divided into three sections. The first looks at the ‘elite’ middle and upper classes who send their children to private school, while the second section examines the middle classes who send their children to predominantly working-class, urban schools; in both cases, the upper- and middle-class understandings of their relationships with their ‘class’ others are foregrounded. In the last section I return to the consequences for the working classes of middle- and upper-class attitudes and actions at university level. A specific focus within the chapter is the status of the middle classes as ‘the ideal normative class’ within state education, and the consequences for the working classes. The conclusion argues that although the upper and middle classes benefit from an educational system that historically has been set up to serve their interests, they are also, to an extent, damaged by the invidious workings of an inequitable system that emphasises divisions and hierarchy at the expense of commonalities and what different groups in society share.

The narratives of the privileged class groups reveal both potent defences and a sense of superiority, but also the power of emotions. All these elements are explored through a number of case studies that highlight complex moral and ethical dimensions of upper- and middle-class identity and, in particular, emotional responses to the class ‘other’ that both feed into and arise from ‘principled’ and ‘not so principled’ choices. Upper- and middle-class relationships to those in other class and racial groups are central to their class identities, and the chapter examines the powerful affective work that both relationships and representations do in the formation of upper- and middle-class identities.

The upper classes and the certainties of privilege

In this section I draw on data to show the implicit, taken-for-granted elements of elite middle- and upper-class choice. In a research project on higher education choice 28 students who attended two elite private schools and 15 of their parents were interviewed.