Parental social class and GCSE attainment: re-reading the role of ‘cultural capital’

Publication type

Journal Article

Authors

Publication date

March 13, 2022

Summary:

This paper examines the roles of parental social class and cultural capital in inequalities in English school qualifications. The analytical focus is the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE). Integral to Bourdieu’s theory of cultural reproduction is the conception that inequalities in cultural capital explain the unequal scholastic achievements of pupils from different social class backgrounds. This paper is a novel investigation using data from Understanding Society and linked administrative education records from the National Pupil Database. The central empirical findings do not support the Bourdiuesian position, and there is no evidence that the substantial parental social class inequalities that are observed in school GCSE outcomes can be explained by inequalities in cultural capital. Engagement in reading related activities are mildly influential, but engagement in highbrow cultural activities are not influential. This is an important finding as the concept of cultural capital has become more prominent in Government education policy.

Published in

British Journal of Sociology of Education

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2022.2045185

ISSN

1425692

Subjects

Notes

© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Open Access

Online Early

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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