Private School and Education Inequality. Author: Emily Brown

In recent years private schools have come under particular scrutiny, with the implementation of a 20% rate of VAT on school fees used by Keir Starmer as a headline policy in the 2024 general election (Weale, 2024).  The majority of the public backed this idea (Walker, 2024), with many believing that private schools ‘reinforce privilege and social divisions […] and undermine the state school system’ (Reeves and Friedman, 2025). However, is it possible that such a strong focus on private schools diverts our attention from another pressing issue: the stark inequalities within the state school system? Criticism of private schools is often rooted in ideas of inequality, but when we examine state schools we find an alternative from of segregated education infused with class values (Reay, 2017: p.140, p.76) in which there are ‘stark SES gradients at each stage of education’ (Crawford et al. 2017: p.96). In reducing the number of children attending private schools we also run the risk of attributing middle-class children’s success to meritocratic accomplishment rather than unfair advantage (Littler, 2017: p.8). Annette Lareau contests that middle-class parents consider the concerted cultivation of their children ‘an essential aspect of good parenting’, whereas working class parents are more likely ‘to facilitate the accomplishment of natural growth’ (2011: p.3). Without placing blame on working-class parents who undoubtedly also want the best for their children (Irwin and Elley, 2011: p.481), Lareau’s concept can illuminate some of the factors of the state sector inequalities.

Working-class children’s challenges in education and the subsequent attainment gap are often linked to the perceived ‘failings’ of parents (Ball, 2021: p.166) but this is a problematic notion which reinforces inequalities (Major and Machin, 2018: p.88). One possible factor in lower academic achievement of disadvantaged students is that it is substantially harder for them to access the best schools (which often have the best teachers), with the percentage of eFSM (eligible for Free School Meals) pupils in top schools continuing to decrease (Van Den Brande et al., 2019; Major and Machin, 2018: p.189). Children from disadvantaged backgrounds are less likely to get into the highest achieving schools regardless of whether they have one in their local area or not (Van Der Brande et al., 2019). When these top schools are selective, the desire to carefully cultivate their children means middle-class parents are much more likely to use their economic capital to hire a private tutor to help prepare their child for admissions tests (Lareau, 2011; Reay, 2017: p.67; Major and Machin, 2018: p.90; Sutton Trust, 2014). However, even when the top schools are not selective working-class families are still disadvantaged in the admissions process because local school success increases house prices in surrounding areas and makes living in the catchment area financially inaccessible (Major and Machin, 2018: p.89).

Although differences in attainment are less pronounced when working and middle-class children attend the same school (Crawford et al. 2017: p.101) they are still visible. What explains the difference in performance of children attending the same school? Despite evidence suggesting there is no benefit to setting and streaming (Education Endowment Foundation, 2021), non-selective state schools often still have selective processes in which children are separated into different ability groupings/ sets; this frequently correlates to class-based segregation between sets (Reay, 2017: p.140). This is not because middle-class children are naturally more intelligent but because the deliberate concerted cultivation of them by their parents provides them with the resources and skills necessary to be recognised as academically superior to their working-class peers (Lareau, 2011: p.4, p.6; Wilson and Worsley, 2021: p.773). In a neoliberal education system which has been reduced to the sole aim of academic test success (Major and Machin, 2018: p.184), the values of working-class parents fostering the accomplishment of natural growth and the objectives of schools are fundamentally misaligned (Wilson and Worsley, 2021: p774; Lareau, 2011: p.3, p.140). Working-class children are not used to reasoning with adults as their parents tend to use directives when speaking to them, creating a clear boundary between child and adult. It is therefore difficult for working-class children to navigate the systems of the school and to advocate for themselves whereas the cultivated middle-class children feel they are entitled to be heard and respected by teachers to ensure that they are benefitted (Lareau, 2011: p.139, pp.6-7). Ultimately, this leads to the working-class children being ‘positioned within the education system as an unknowing […] mass from which the middle-class draw their distinction’ (Reay, 2017: p.140). The middle-class children therefore find themselves in the higher sets, often with the better teachers (Reay, 2017: p.140; Major and Machlin, 2018: p.189); this intensifies academic disparities between middle and working-class students and ‘allows inequalities at home to turn into differences in home achievement’ (Tahir, 2022). Importantly, their position in high sets is seen as the result of hard work and natural ability rather than as the result of successfully navigating the system, reflecting and resulting from ideas of a meritocratic system (Reay, 2017: p.122, p.188). This leads working-class students who perform badly at school ‘to feel the pressures of inequality as, overwhelmingly, a personal failing’ (Littler, 2017: p.51)

If we are critiquing the fairness of private schools, we should also look at the education of 93% of schoolchildren in the country. We must not assume that unlike private schools, state schooling is an education system which provides all children in the UK with an equal chance to succeed. We must move beyond these criticisms of working-class parents and children and encourage a more complex interrogation of state school inequalities. It is vital to ensure we question the taken-for-granted ‘inherent’ intelligence of middle-class children (Reay, 2017: p.141) and to avoid meritocratic viewpoints of state schooling, instead recognising that it is a system which reflects middle-class values and that through the concerted cultivation of their children, middle-class parents are able ‘to ensure that their children have a better chance of a fair chance’ at academic success (Reay, 2013: p.666). Increasing awareness of the inequalities in education won’t eradicate them but it is surely a good and realistic place to start.

References

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