Spoilt for Choice’: the working classes and educational markets

Abstract

Drawing on data from an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded study of market forces in secondary education, this paper explores the ambivalence displayed by many working‐class parents in the research to the idea of choice of school. School is frequently associated with powerful memories and images of personal failure. The authors argue: that for working‐class parents choice can sometimes involve complex and powerful accommodations to the idea of ‘school’ and is very different in kind from middle‐class choice making; that social class remains a potent differentiating category in the analysis of home‐school relations; and that choice is a new social device through which social class differences are rendered into educational inequality. Extracts from interview data are quoted to support and illustrate these arguments.