Introduction

This book is based on research undertaken in three contrasting schools in one city in the South of England during the academic year 2014/2015. The research was mixed-methods combining an initial survey of pupils in years 7, 9 and 11 in each school, with subsequent semi-structured qualitative interviews with a sample of pupils and careers advisors (n=60) alongside field observations. This chapter introduces the three case study schools: Grand Hill Grammar (an independent fee-paying school), Einstein High (a ‘high performing’ state school in a wealthy part of the city) and Eagles Academy (an ‘under-performing’ state school in a deprived part of the city). The schools were selected as they enabled me to speak to young people from different socioeconomic backgrounds as well as presenting different contexts to observe the workings of distinctive classed practices and dispositions (or habitus).

This chapter begins by presenting the 2015 General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) results of each school (see Table 2.1), thus positioning them in line with political convention from ‘top of the league’ to ‘bottom of the league’. Public and governmental attention is often given to GCSE results, which are ‘misrecognised’ as markers in and of themselves of ‘a good school’ (James, 2015b). While assessment outcomes are a simplistic way to rank schools, GCSEs remain crucial as they are illustrative of the different political pressures and opportunities facing each school and the young people within them. In this chapter I challenge this simplistic notion of educational institutions and their ability to educate through contextualising each of the schools and their GCSE results within their history and the political challenges or pressures they may be facing. Following this I explore what lies beneath these headline results through presenting a brief overview of each school's history, governance structure, location and cohort information. Official school data is limited in what it can tell us about the demographics of the pupils attending. The second part of this chapter then draws on pupil responses from the survey to provide a more detailed look at the family backgrounds of the young people attending each school.