There has been a recent burgeoning of interest in the power of elite private schools in the UK. However, little attention has been paid to the propulsive power of the mechanisms in place within such schools that enable and support the mobilisation of valued forms of cultural capital such as 'ease'. Here, we draw upon unprecedented access to two…

England and Wales have a sizeable fee-paying private school sector including well-resourced elite schools conferring considerable advantage on their students. The majority have charitable status, yielding substantial tax breaks. This significant source of funding for the sector has attracted comparatively little attention from educational…

Turnover in middle management can be very expensive for a school, not just financially, but also in terms of providing continuity of leadership, sustainability of management practices, and quality student experiences. Therefore, a rigorous understanding of why middle managers in schools are thinking of leaving post can provide senior leaders an…

Early education provision in the state-maintained sector has historically played an important role in ensuring equitable access to high-quality early education in England. These settings have higher qualification requirements than other providers, and as they have been concentrated in areas of higher disadvantage, children from lower income…

Gerald Grace (2002. "Catholic Schools: Mission, Markets and Morality." London: Routledge), borrowing from the sociological constructs of Pierre Bourdieu, speaks of the significance of the spiritual and cultural capital of religious orders in providing a substantial catalyst in the development of Catholic education in England and Wales.…

There have been significant increases in the number of children sent to non-maintained special schools in recent years. To assess the extent of this trend and its probable consequences, Freedom of Information requests about spending on private special schools were sent to a stratified sample of 24 local authorities in England. The responses…

Using rich longitudinal data from the UK's Millennium Cohort Study (MCS), the authors compare the performance of private and state school pupils in age 16 national examinations (GCSEs) in England, where private schools are particularly well resourced by international standards. Performance among pupils attending private secondary schools is…

This cross-comparative study examines the personal transitions of the leadership from academies in England with the leadership of independent and charter schools in the United States. Findings from this qualitative study revealed the many similarities in how principals from both the U.S. and England processed personal transitions and how those…

In England and Wales, fee-charging independent schools can be legally classified as charities and, therefore, receive associated benefits, the most obvious being taxation advantages. The high fees charged by many of these schools create financial exclusivity, which, it will be seen, confers significant social and cultural capital to those who can…

Teachers in Lady Agatha's Boarding School (Lady Agatha's) find teaching Sex and Relationships Education (RSE) uncomfortable. This paper investigates one aspect of the discomfort that they feel, namely the impact RSE has on their professional status as teachers. I use focus group data to reflect on the professional and personal location of teachers…

This article considers the wartime evacuation of English public schools as a result of enemy bombing as well as the commandeering of school buildings for government and military purposes. It looks at the way evacuation was privately organised by public school authorities often relying on the 'old school tie', while also taking financial…

The purpose of the study was to understand the relationship between secondary schooling and employability skills attainment from the perspective of employed graduates using a quantitative correlation with a qualitative triangulation. Participants included 141 individuals who had finished secondary school, were employed and had been employed for a…

English education has a long-standing parallel but unequal school system. State-maintained schools are free of charge for attendees; independent schools are free from state control and funded largely by fees. Most independent schools hold charitable status which benefits them in relation to taxation although they cater largely for socially…

In this article we make an argument for the importance of embodied cultural capital in the generation of class advantage through private school students' access to Oxbridge. Private schools in England continue to reproduce advantage (Variyan 2019), however, establishing exactly how students are advantaged through private schooling is not…

This paper compares the professional role and identity of teachers in private and state schools. It brings together theory within the sociology of the professions and approaches influenced by Basil Bernstein. It utilises his work on recontextualisation to identify the nature of teachers' professional "role"; and Beck and Young's (2010)…