ENGINES OF SOCIAL MOBILITY? NAVIGATING MERITOCRATIC EDUCATION DISCOURSE IN AN UNEQUAL SOCIETY

ABSTRACT

Contemporary meritocratic education discourse in England positions schools as ‘engines of social mobility’, responsible for enabling students’ educational ‘success’ regardless of their circumstances. Building on critiques that characterise meritocracy as a neoliberal cultural motif that legitimates inequalities, and the capabilities approach, this paper investigates the challenges of navigating meritocratic expectations in practice by drawing on qualitative and photovoice interviews conducted with teachers and students at a highly rated London school serving a disadvantaged community. While many participants endorsed meritocratic narratives, all expressed doubts that the school could ‘make up for’ the significant structural disadvantages faced by many students. This led our participants to describe challenges associated with meritocratic discourse, including: the stresses of meeting these expectations; uncertainty about attributing responsibility for ‘failure’; and questions about what could and should be done in practice to enable disadvantaged students to ‘succeed’. We argue that meritocratic rhetoric imposes significant burdens on students, teachers and schools by holding them responsible while obscuring the role that social inequalities play in shaping students’ educational opportunities. Greater critical discussion in schools could help students and staff to challenge meritocratic education discourse and to negotiate its expectations.

Keywords:

• capabilities approach
• education
• inequality
• meritocracy
• opportunities
• responsibility
• social justice
• social mobility

7. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We are grateful to our participants for their contributions to this study. We would also like to thank Nuala Burgess, Alan Cribb, Pat Mahony and members of the ECS writing group, as well as the anonymous peer reviewers, for advice and feedback on drafts of this paper.

8. DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.