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Abstract
This paper draws on a research study into the existence and use of different forms of capital – including social, cultural and physical capital – in three independent schools in Scotland. We were interested in understanding how these forms of capital work to produce and reproduce advantage and privilege. Analysis is framed by a multiple capitals approach drawing on and developing the work of Putnam and especially Bourdieu. We suggest that sport plays a role with important effects for strong bonding and for the production of symbolic capital in the form of branding by each school.
Notes
1. ‘Public’, ‘private’ or ‘independent’ schools are alternative names for the schools we investigated. We will refer to them mainly as ‘independent’ although some citations refer to ‘public schools’ and thus should be considered as interchangeable terms in this context.
2. This is not to deny the diversity of the middle class as consumers for fee-paying education and the heterogeneity of the independent school sector. At the time of the research there were 57 Scottish independent schools, with just over 4% of pupils in Scotland attending them. Independent schools are unevenly distributed – with the largest number of schools and percentages of attendance in Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Glasgow. The majority of schools (48) are co-educational and some single-sex schools have mixed provision in early years or at senior levels. Schools range in size from over 2000 pupils to fewer than 50, but the majority have between 300 and 1000 pupils. Schools’ fee rates varied and we categorized them into three bands – high (over £20,000 per year for boarding), medium (more than £15,000), and low (around £12,000). The schools in our project were all non-denominational and their fees were in the high band.
3. That is, embodied cultural capital, not simply ‘tools’ or ‘physical objects’ as in Putnam’s formulation (Putnam Citation2000, 18–19).
4. The historical development of girls’ education and specifically girls’ physical education from the late nineteenth century onward had a different trajectory; see Fletcher (Citation1984) and Mangan and Park (Citation1987). Space limitations prevent a full discussion here.
5. As de S. Honey (1975, 27–31) noted, by 1902 there was a relatively close community of 64 boys’ schools that interacted with each other in two or more activities including rowing, athletics, gymnastics, rifle shooting, cricket, rugby, association football, racquets and fencing. Interaction in activities with differential prestige attached to them created different social levels of schools: schools such as Rugby and Harrow, Eton and Winchester, for example, were in a leading group of 22; Hurstpierpoint, Lancing and Merchant Taylors’ schools in a second cluster of eight schools; Edinburgh Academy, Fettes, Loretto and Merchiston Castle were in a third group of 20 schools.
6. Yet in some schools it was accompanied by more than simple athleticism. Headmasters such as Almond of Loretto School were interested in moral and physical health as well as sport. Almond ‘inaugurated a ‘Sparto-Christian’ ideal of temperance, courage and esprit de corps supported by a regimen of all-weather exercise, cleanliness, comfortably informal dress and fresh air’ (Mangan Citation2000, 77). For further discussion of the role of the reformed public schools in the reproduction ‘of gentry-class power’ (Wilkinson Citation1964, ix) in the nineteenth century, see Wilkinson (Citation1964), Arnstein (Citation1975), and Gruneau (Citation1981 355).
7. In the USA, Howard (Citation2008, 189) has found differential valorization of involvement in sports by the parents of African American students attending elite schools.
8. Whilst several specialist sports academies have been developing in the state-maintained sector in England, in Scotland at the time of research there was only one ‘school of sport’, at Bellahouston Academy in Glasgow.
9. This downplaying of the centrality of sport and physical activities can be read as a form of negotiation with, if not resistance to, the structures of gender associated with girls’ physical education identified by Scraton (Citation1992).
10. The Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference represents the head teachers of about 250 independent schools in the United Kingdom and Ireland.
11. In total in one season there were 293 rugby fixtures and 18 rugby teams operating at Balfour.
12. Although at Charteris, amongst the investment, improvements and updating of sports and other facilities, we also found some evidence of dilapidation and relative discomfort and the apparent privileging of boys’ over girls’ sports.