Social class and the classroom : a reflection on the role of schooling and mothering in the production and reproduction of disadvantage and privilege

Contemporaneously, social theorists and commentators tend to see education as an avenue for either producing and reproducing disadvantage and privilege or reducing inequalities (Marks & McMillan, 2003). The relationship between inequalities and education is therefore widely recognised, but it is also a complicated and vexing issue on which there is no agreement; disadvantage grows without any wide-ranging established solutions. There are, however, frequently used terms and concepts that give reference to educational inequality across academic, popular and political arenas; and, for the most part, the relationship between education and inequality has been understood via the concept 'socio-economic status'. This is a concept that recognises stratification in the education system but tends to sidestep the role of identity and culture. The popularity of this concept is due to a widely held contention that social class is a 'living dead' or 'zombie' category, a category that still circulates but is no longer relevant (Beck, 2001). This 'end of class' thesis is the notion, prominent in individualisation theories, that class culture is irrelevant in a neoliberal society where students are increasingly framed as 'individuals', 'customers' and 'competitors', and where students' learning outcomes are seen as the responsibility of parents. This 'classless society' thesis is frequently taken up in political discourse and this means that other markers of social inequality, such as race, ethnicity and rurality, or the more generic concept 'social exclusion', tend to be the focus of education policy (Reay, 2010, p. 397).