Alumni Perspectives of Elite Education: Was It

Murdoch University

College of Science, Health, Engineering and Education

This thesis is presented for the degree of Masters of Education (Research)

Alumni perspectives of elite education: was it

worth it?

Jennifer Featch

February 2020

Declaration

I certify that this thesis is my own work, except where indicated by referencing, and the work presented in it has not been submitted in support of another degree or qualification from this or any other university.

______Jennifer Featch 28/02/2020

Acknowledgements

I respectfully acknowledge the unwavering guidance, support and advice given to me without judgement by my supervisors, Associate Professor Laura Perry and Dr Susan Ledger, for which I am very thankful. I would like to thank the Australian Government - Department of Education for the Research Training Program Fee Offset (RTP Scholarship). I also thank the participants of this study for their thoughtful contributions to this work; and Sian, for showing me that interviewing doesn’t have to be scary. My continued thanks go to Natalia, who believed without doubt that I could complete this study. I am especially grateful to my son, Nelson, whose relentless positivity lifted me from ground zero many times, and without whom I would never have lasted the distance.

Abstract

This project sought to establish whether elite alumni’s school experiences positively affected their post-school lives and what wider patterns or themes about elite education could be found. The study was guided by Bourdieu’s concepts of cultural and social capital, used to understand the benefits, limitations and opportunities afforded by attending elite private schools. In-depth interviews were conducted with eight participants, three male and five female, then audio transcripts were coded in Nvivo.

Preliminary results showed the long-term value of social capital first acquired at school differed by gender. Some participants credited their elite schooling with steering them away from drug-taking and poor decisions about sexual behaviour, and towards university; they felt this would have been reversed had they attended a public school.

The benefits of social capital that were found could easily be acquired at non-elite schools. Also, when compared with their parents, participants were either at about the same or of a slightly higher socio-economic status. Given these limited long-term benefits of elite schooling it could be timely to reconsider the utility of continued government subsidisation of private schools.

iii

Contents

Table of Contents Declaration ...... i

Acknowledgements ...... ii

Abstract ...... iii

Contents ...... iv

List of figures ...... ix

List of tables ...... x

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION...... 1

Aims and purpose ...... 6

Defining an elite school ...... 7

Background and positionality ...... 12

Structure of the thesis ...... 19

CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW ...... 21

Class, capital and education ...... 22

Social class ...... 22

Social class and education ...... 23

Bourdieu and Bernstein ...... 23

Schools and social mobility...... 25

Theory of capitals & connections to education ...... 27

Elite schools and what they do...... 30

Characteristics of elite schools ...... 30

Class-based curricula, specialisation and hierarchies ...... 31

Intergenerational and class closure acts as both an advantage and disadvantage .... 33

The effects of elite schooling ...... 35

Elite schools and advantage ...... 35

Elite schooling and academic achievements ...... 39

Elite schooling, incomes and occupations ...... 42

Health and personal benefits of attending elite schools ...... 45

Summary ...... 46

CHAPTER THREE: METHODOLOGY ...... 47

Theoretical framework...... 47

Method ...... 49

Research design ...... 50

Interpretative phenomenology, auto-ethnography, case study: the researcher as subject ...... 51

Participants ...... 54

Participant narratives ...... 57

Data collection ...... 60

Data analysis ...... 61

Ethics ...... 62

Limitations of the study ...... 63

CHAPTER FOUR: FINDINGS ...... 65

Findings ...... 65

Research question one: What were participants’ experiences at elite private schools? ...... 65

Research question two: What were participants’ perceptions of the benefits and disadvantages of attending an elite private school?...... 67

Research question three: How did attending an elite private school affect participants’ life opportunities? ...... 71

Research question four: What were participants’ opinions of the benefits and disadvantages of elite private schools for wider society? ...... 72

Summary ...... 74

Key themes ...... 74

Assuredness and entitlement ...... 74

Tapping into excellence – resources and opportunities ...... 75

Exclusion, othering, insulation, mixing with the ‘right’ people ...... 76

Insulation ...... 77

Avoiding the checkout chick jobs ...... 77

Class disavowal ...... 78

Mixing with a different, better crowd ...... 79

More morals, better discipline, less sex ...... 80

Summary ...... 82

CHAPTER FIVE: DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION ...... 84

Table 3: Tabulation of participants’ experiences and the 5Es of elite education

(Gaztambide-Fernandez, 2009b) ...... 84

Social capital perceptions were gendered and generational ...... 85

Private school effects were diffused when compared to US and UK ...... 87

Elite schools and wider society ...... 89

Findings and literature review: areas of alignment and non-alignment ...... 92

Adding to existing theoretical understandings ...... 93

Limitations ...... 94

Implications and recommendations ...... 96

Recommendation 1: ...... 96

Recommendation 2: ...... 97

Future Research ...... 97

Conclusion ...... 98

REFERENCES...... 101

Appendices ...... 109

Appendix A: Student enrolments by state or territory and sector, 2018 ...... 109

Appendix B...... 110

Elite private schools in Perth: school mottos, religious affiliations, tuition fees, confirmation fees, total annual cost...... 110

Appendix C ...... 113

Members of the Australian Commonwealth Government cabinet as at October

2019, secondary schools attended with tuition fees ...... 113

vii

viii

List of figures

1. Proportions of government funding and school sector 4

2. Map of educational advantage and disadvantage in Western Australia 11

3. Venn diagram of the relationships between the types of capital and 34

schooling

List of tables

1. Top 50 median ATAR scores and schools 46

2. Overview of participants 62

3. Links between participant experiences and the 5Es of elite education 92

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

Education continues to be a fundamental mechanism through which inequality is not only reproduced but justified. It is also the vehicle to which parents and children around the world pin their hopes and dreams for a better life than that experienced by the generation before them. The role of education in producing inequality as well as its critical role in producing advantage is blurred when researchers ignore the experiences of the elite (Benjamin et al., 2010). Yet questions can still be asked about whether we seek equality of opportunity and access, or equality of results across different demographics of students. Is it possible to achieve both? It is an important question given the tendency for education outcomes to be patterned by socio-economic status (Carbonaro, 2006; Carbonaro & Covay, 2010; Cassells,

Dockery, Duncan, & Seymour, 2017; Considine & Zappalà, 2002; OECD, nd; Polidano, Hanel, &

Buddelmeyer, 2013).

In Australia, research about elite schooling has focused on the mechanisms used by schools to maintain the privilege and status of their students (Connell, Ashenden, Kessler, &

Dowsett, 1982; Teese, 1998), the negative impacts of elite schooling on other schools and the education system more broadly (Germov, 2004; Kenway, 2013; Teese, 2005), and the policy causes and consequences of school stratification (Gonski, 2011) (Preston, 2013; Watson &

Ryan, 2010). This research sits within a larger concern about the causes and consequences of educational inequality in Australia (Cassells et al., 2017; Considine & Zappalà, 2002) (Germov,

2004; Gonski, 2011; Kenway, 2013).

Australia has one of the largest non-government school sectors in the world and attendance has grown for decades Preston (Preston, 2013). This is due partly to the growth of

Commonwealth funding for private schools (Watson & Ryan, 2010) and, it could be argued, the growing desire of middle class Australians searching for advantage. School enrolment data in

Australia from the 1990s-2004 show that government school enrolments have increased by 1.2 per cent compared to 22.3 per cent in non-government schools (Beavis, 2004), and over the last decade non-government enrolment figures have increased to 34.6%. The proportion is even higher in Perth, Western Australia, with almost 50% of secondary students enrolled in a private school (see Appendix A), well above the national average. These figures are starkly different to those of the United Kingdom (UK) and Canada, where only about 6% of students attend a private school (Frenette & Chan, 2015).

School segregation has been related to educational inequalities(Gonski, 2011). School socio-economic segregation has grown along with private school enrolments and is patterned by school sector (Preston, 2013; Watson & Ryan, 2010). Independent (non-Catholic) private schools educate twice as many high-income students as low-income students; conversely, public schools have twice as many low-income students as high-income students (Preston, 2013).

Researchers have shown how elite private schools contribute to educational inequality and that this is a long-standing and ‘seemingly intractable’ issue (Kenway, 2013). Government funding for elite schools may contribute to the growth and inevitability of elite private schools in Australia.

(Ball, 2016) suggests that some elite schools are more elite than others, and the scale of tuition fees can be used to establish this.

Elite private schools around the world covet, cultivate and maintain power that is unavailable to other classes in society (Kenway & Koh, 2015). In Australia, (Connell et al., 1982),

(Teese, 1998); (Teese & Polesel, 2003), among others, have documented the mechanisms by which elite schools reproduce class privilege across the generations. These are discussed at length in the literature review of this thesis, but one example is the way that elite private schools provide greater access than many public schools to high-status academic curricula, and these curriculum hierarchies in turn maintain social inequalities (Teese, 1998) in part because of the potential access they give students to high status university degrees. Also, in Australia, elite private schools use strategic advertising to publicise a thorough curriculum, usually focused on

2 university entrance and offering a wide range of experiences such as overseas trips as well as culturally ‘rich’ extra-curricular activities (McCandless, 2015). They also purport to offer outstanding pastoral care that endeavours to invest in, and produce, high quality individuals who are of great worth to society (Gaztambide-Fernandez, 2009; Proctor, 2011).

While Australian studies have examined the structures and processes that are used by elite private schools to reproduce social status and inequality, none have examined students’ lived experiences after graduating from these schools. No studies have examined the perspectives of elite school alumni about the value and disadvantages conferred upon them by an elite private education. Similarly, no studies have examined elite alumni perspectives about the value of elite private education for their children or the larger society. These questions have also been largely unanswered in the international literature. The research strategy of ‘studying up’ remains rare, as Howard & Kenway (2015) and Maxwell & Aggleton (2016) have found.

Zanten, Ball, & Darchy-Koechlin (2015) stated that education researchers must examine how elite alumni are granted certain privileges and the role their former schools play in maintaining that privilege. Many researchers focus their work in ways that divert from focusing on how elite education institutions covet, collect and continue to use strategies to maintain their power and advantage over others: “looking at the advantages of the rich and how they go about justifying and internalising these advantages is crucial” (Gaztambide-Fernandez & Howard, 2010, p. 4).

Saltmarsh (2016) points researchers of the elite to examine how elite schooling perpetuates inequality, echoing the urgings of Connell et al. (1982), Germov (2004), Brantlinger

(2003), Howard & Kenway (2015), Campbell (2010) and others, including how funding arrangements stratify class privilege in society. Elite schools charge high fees and can exacerbate educational inequalities – although these could be described as “disadvantages” of elite schools faced by individuals/families and the larger society. Given the large amount of public funding that is provided to high fee elite private schools in Australia, it is appropriate to examine the benefits and disadvantages that such schools provide to the individuals that attend them as so

3 little is known about these potential benefits. The figure below shows recent proportions of government funding to each school sector.

Figure 1: average government funding per student by sector in Australia

Research methodology and its complexities about social elites appear more frequently in human geography and anthropology work rather than education (Kenway & Howard, 2013), despite increasing attention on elite schooling. In their work on elite education, Benjamin et al.

(2010) noted how important it was to collect data about educational capital beyond schooling years so that researchers can gain a nuanced view of how and why certain educational practices influence social class and mobility: “it is not just how long and for what kind of degree someone attended post-secondary education, but where and what kind of educational capital one accumulates that makes a difference in the future success of offspring.” (p. 202). Given the high numbers of students enrolled in the private sector in Australia, it is more than timely that we collect data about this unique phenomenon in order to gain a deeper understanding of how education affects social class, life opportunities and social mobility in this country.

The question of ‘studying up’ – wherein the research gaze is cast upon the dominant and powerful in society, remains thorny, yet there is more than one way to understand privilege

4 and ‘eliteness’. It is possible to study down, that is to say, research those less fortunate than the researcher, by examining inequality and there is much research that examines this from the perspective of those who are disadvantaged. This is one method of understanding privilege and oftentimes those with privilege are not the focus (Howard, 2010), but we should be questioning why this is so: what about those who benefit the most from the system, and the parts of the system that actively work towards this goal? Wakeling & Savage (2015) suggested that even though there was more interest in elite formation, and a range of anecdotal interest in how elite education plays a part in the cementing of elite roles in wider life, elite education in

Australia has not been examined systematically. I was encouraged by Gaztambide-Fernández &

Howard (2012)’s urging of researchers to move past a simplistic notion of ‘studying up’, wherein academic researchers should be more vocal about how educational advantages are so often awarded to already privileged and influential groups and how this unfairness becomes explained away as a problem of the poor or marginalized.

Not only is this lack of attention and scrutiny of the affluent a gap in existing research but it also reveals a large gap in our conceptual understanding of inequality and social justice. If we cannot know and understand those with power in society, we cannot take steps to bring about equitable change for all. This underlying theme of social justice in studies of elite education is under-scrutinized (Howard & Kenway, 2015). Gaztambide-Fernandez, Cairns, &

Desai (2013) encouraged researchers of the elite to take risks and be willing to reveal aspects of the maintenance and production of ‘eliteness’.

While there is a developing body of research that examines the elite life in education and a smaller body that looks at the benefits and privileges such an experience affords its participants, it is minimal compared to the plethora of research that examines education of the

‘non-elite’ as a consequence or by-product of elite education. Howard (2008) posited that the existing research avoids “critical investigation of the processes of affluent schooling that reproduce and regenerate privilege.” (p. 22). Many education researchers examine social class

5 through economic phenomena and thusly focused on economic factors (Benjamin et al., 2010), which means that oftentimes the social and cultural aspects of class fall by the wayside. It is in this gap that this study is positioned. Indeed, Joseph Soares in Benjamin et al. (2010) highlighted the importance of collecting more data about educational capital beyond years of schooling – longer-term – to acquire an advanced understanding of the effects of elite schooling not just on its participants but upon wider society, and a greater knowledge of how elite experiences transfer privilege from one generation to another.

Aims and purpose

This study aimed to capture and examine the voice and perspective of elite private school graduates (alumni) to provide insight into the lived experience and impact of elite private schooling, as so little is known about this area of education. There is some research that analyses elite education as a means through which social class is cemented and stratified

(Connell et al., 1982; Cookson & Persell, 1985; Gaztambide-Fernandez, 2009; Howard, 2008;

Kenway & Koh, 2015). But scant research exists that analyses the Australian elite schooling experience from an alumni point of view and in which the long term, personal benefits and disadvantages of elite education are examined. My project seeks to examine the perspectives and experiences of Australian elite school alumni on the advantages, disadvantages and impact of their elite private schooling.

The following research questions were used in this study:

1. What were participants’ experiences at elite private schools?

2. What are participants’ perceptions of the benefits and disadvantages of attending an elite

private school?

3. How did attending an elite private school affect participants’ life opportunities?

4. What are participants’ opinions of the benefits and disadvantages of elite private schools for

wider society?

I used a qualitative research design based on case studies - my own and other alumni experiences - viewed through a phenomenological lens, to raise awareness and increase insight into a unique cohort of elite alumni. I collected data with in-depth interviews to examine alumni voices in response to the research questions. This included capturing perceptions of alumni experiences, advantages, disadvantages and value of elite private schooling for themselves, their children and the larger society. I chose a qualitative approach because I wanted to explore the lived experiences of my participants and gain a nuanced understanding of how elite schooling worked for individuals. Phenomenology affords the author a means by which we can explore a phenomenon that has not been overtly described or explained and give it in-depth meaning

(Smith, 2019). As each interview was unique, and took its own tangents, the qualitative approach allows for the development of new hypothesis and ideas for exploration in later studies. The findings from this study contribute to an under-researched area that will be further explored in future doctoral research.

Defining an elite school

Elite schools and private schools are not always one and the same. As this study examines elite schools, it is appropriate to consider a working definition of ‘elite schools’ and to differentiate between elite, private and independent schools in the Australian context.

In Australia, an elite school is almost exclusively an independent private school that charges significant tuition fees and self-selects its cohorts. A private school in the Australian context is either a Catholic systemic school operated and governed by the Catholic Education

Commission in each state or territory, or an independent school, which is not operated or controlled by a government authority and has a system of governance that is also independent of governmental authority. Independent schools often have religious affiliations other than with the Catholic Church (although some Catholic schools are classified as independent because they are not operated by the relevant Catholic Education Commission). All private schools

7 charge tuition fees, whether Catholic or independent. The schools control access via their admission policies and fees, reflecting the relationship between economic resources, privilege and inequalities (Gaztambide-Fernandez & Maudlin, 2016). Zanten (2016) set this out clearly and claimed that an educational institution can be considered elite if it conferred privilege and power to its students. In Maxwell & Aggleton (2016), Saltmarsh (2016) wrote that elite status is contingent on the success of those schools that are already known as elite. Kenway, Fahey, &

Koh (2013) posited that elite schools are “registers of social recognition and serve as spaces of collective capacity for their privileged clients … [they] have long been sites for the exercise of a form of affective agency by the wealthy and socially powerful (p. 15).”

In Perth, the site of this study, an elite school is almost always an independent (private) school that charges high fees. Not all private schools are elite – for example, Newman College and Iona College are both private (Catholic) schools but offer discounts on tuition fees to parents on pensions and charge significantly less than an elite, private school such as Wesley

College, which charges upward of $20,000 per year for tuition. A table of Perth’s most expensive non-government, elite schools is listed at Appendix B. Eight of the top ten most expensive schools are located in Perth’s western suburbs and many are close to the Indian

Ocean. Five of these schools are listed in the School Curriculum and Standards Authority

(SCSA)’s top ten of the first 50 median Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR) scores for

2018. The only public school to make the top ten is an academic select school, Perth Modern.

ATAR scores are used as a primary means of gaining access to university entrance.

For context, a BankWest report into education outcomes showed that the top ten most educationally disadvantaged areas are in very remote parts of the Northern Territory and

Western Australia. Similarly, Marks & McMillan (2003) found that students from the lowest achievement quartile had the lowest rates of participation in Year 12 and were far more likely to experience unsuccessful transitions from school to employment than other quartiles. The report showed that in Perth, the most advantaged areas are clustered around the Indian Ocean

8 coastline and western suburbs. A scan of SCSA data shows that seven of the top 20 places for

ATAR scores last year were held by elite private schools in the western suburbs (2017).

Figure 2: BCEC Map of educational disadvantage, Western Australia, Perth inset

‘Elites’ can be seen as those groups who have “attained a degree of financial affluence and who are able to mobilise economic, social and cultural resources in order to secure access to particular kinds of educational experiences.” (Benjamin et al., 2010, p. 196). Elite schools

‘inculcate and certify economically valued cultural capital’ (Ball, 2015, p. 234). As well, certainly for young women, their single sex schools have been modelled on those established in England in the latter part of the 19th century (Kenway, Langmead, & Epstein, 2015). Kenway et al. (2015)

9 posited further that elite girls’ schools claim to prepare their cohorts especially well for their post-school lives. Australian elite schools mimicked their older British counterparts: “the persistent reproduction of aspects of the English public schools and their emphases on discipline, personal cultivation and age-based hierarchies of entitlement, in Australia signifies traditional values associated with quality schooling” (Saltmarsh, 2016, p. 48).

Pearl Rock Kane, cited in Gaztambide-Fernandez (2009a), listed six attributes of elite schools: self-governance; self-support; self-defined curriculum; self-selected students and teaching staff; and small student population. These attributes married with Gaztambide-

Fernandez (2009a)’s definitions of elite schools, often referred to as the ‘5 Es’ of elite schooling:

• Exclusion: only some children are admitted

• Engagement: very wide range of resources, opportunities and sophisticated

classroom and learning experiences

• Excellence: using wealthy resources, low student-teacher ratios and a wide range of

subjects gives students plenty of opportunities to demonstrate excellence

• Entitlement: students and staff hold a deep-seated belief that they belong at the

school and that they can achieve anything they set their minds to

• Envisioning: students are actively encouraged to aim to occupy post-school elite

spaces and challenging ‘blue ribbon’ careers such as law or medicine

It is the cementing of these 5Es, secured through an elite education, that are ‘critical for the production and reproduction of elite trajectories’ (Zanten et al., 2015). Further,

Gaztambide-Fernandez (2009b) added that elite schools were:

• Historically elite – well-established through history (usually 70+ years in operation)

• Geographically elite – located near other elite schools, often in wealthier suburbs

• Demographically elite – although elite schools may claim to be inclusive, the high fee

structure limits the student cohort to those whose parents can pay

• Scholastically elite – by virtue of subjects and opportunities on offer

• Typologically elite – because they belong to the type of school typically considered elite

in the national context.

Gaztambide-Fernandez et al. (2013) posited that it is this sense of entitlement, that a student ‘belongs’ at their school, which, when combined with Carbonaro (1998)’s idea of intergenerational closure is cemented not only by economic boundaries but also through emotions and the varying embodiments of privilege, all of which conspire to produce the very best of outcomes for its participants. The mere act of belonging prescribes a level of privilege which becomes an integral part of the way elite school participants perceive themselves

(Gaztambide-Fernandez et al., 2013). This level of assumption and entitlement is apparent and expectations are that those who graduate will go on into positions of power. Kenway et al.

(2013, p. 18) concurred: “Elite schooling always involves exclusivity on grounds of wealth or merit and claims of superiority of some sort.” The myth of meritocracy is boundless where a student’s success is attributed to their hard work and dedication, rather than the system and resources that buoy up an already privileged cohort. This sense of entitlement to a high status career is articulated in the way [students] envision a future (Gaztambide-Fernandez et al.,

2013). They see no barriers to their post-school and career successes (Kenway et al., 2015).

Saltmarsh (2016) argued that elite education implied as “already English, already white, already superior, [and] hence called to enter the field of power” (p. 49). This hegemonic effect, a cocooning of students, wherein elite school participants socialise only with other elite school participants, meant that once school is finished, former students often have little sense of ‘life in wider society, let alone real life on the bottom rungs’ (Kenway et al., 2015).

Background and positionality

Although there is little literature on the diversity of students within elite private schools, my background provides first-hand experience and an auto-ethnographic case-study within the investigation. I attended an elite school in Perth between 1985-89 and although the school was elite, my experiences were not. I was not especially sporty, arty or musical. I was what

Gaztambide-Fernandez et al. (2013) described as an ‘affect alien’, an out of place student for whom the emotional experience of school was misaligned with the collective feeling rules. Like others who did not fit in at school, I focused the blame on the ‘social and cultural homogeneity of the students in their schools and the demand to conform to school culture’ (Courtois, 2018, p. 130).

When I was 13, my mother divorced and we moved to what was at the time considered to be a low socio-economic area, with two ‘rough’ government high schools or an elite, private school the only local options for secondary education. Teese and Polesel (2003) describes this as an 'illusion of choice' for secondary education. Our suburb contained high concentrations of social or public housing and rental properties. We lived among families whose parents were typically tradespeople including plumbers and hairdressers, stay at home parents or unemployed. At the time, I considered myself working class: I worked, as did my mother, which was how I defined working class. Somehow, I was able to attend the elite, private school option within the suburb, where most of my classmates did not work nor did their mothers.

I began working part time when I was 12, and my income helped to support my mother, who had taken a huge financial risk sending me to the school, securing a personal loan to ensure I completed my education there. When the school found out that my mother had divorced, they insisted that she provide, in effect, a business plan that would demonstrate how she planned to pay the school bills. If she was unable to somehow guarantee that she could pay for my education, I would be made to leave this elite school. Teese and Polesel (2003) said:

“Fees screen parents not only on financial lines. They favour, even if they do not always secure, parents with a commitment to academic success, parents whose values and attitudes will reinforce the instructional and cultural action of the school.” (p. 121)

My private school education was the bare bones version as we did not have the capacity for what Courtois (2018) called ‘prestige spending’ in addition to the costly tuition fees. My mother was a single parent with a hefty mortgage so our family struggled financially.

“The theory of capital suggests that schools recognise and build more effectively on the experiences of children from more affluent families” (Hayes, 2010, p. 14) and this was certainly true at my school. While I did receive, broadly speaking, an educational opportunity that many of my public high school friends did not, it was not an equal opportunity to that of my more privileged classmates. Because our economic resources were stretched so thinly, there was no money for extra-curricular activities such as cello lessons, horse riding or foreign exchange programmes. Our social and cultural capital was thin on the ground. I wore the clothes my mother made for me to school social events and brought my own lunch every day. I spent most of my lunch hours in the library, where I felt I would be safe from bullying and scrutiny.

On weekends, I worked, or studied. I based my post-schooling path almost solely on the fact that almost none of my classmates would be attending my university of choice. My experiences at school led me to believe that that university was the only choice.

By sending me to the school my mother was determined that whatever the cost, I would acquire social and cultural capital that could be used to my advantage beyond my schooling years. This concerted cultivation (Lareau, 2011) is an example of what Connell et al.

(1982, p. 74) described as an educational strategy, common to the middle classes: “Such strategies … are modified by parents' view of the future situations their children will face.

Family strategies are very much influenced by what parents think the education system can and cannot do for their children.” My mother's intention in sending me to the school was not just to provide a good education with inherent discipline but also to enable me to make a network

13 of connected and influential people. Through my troubled post-high school years whenever I frequently fell between career cracks, she would advise me to contact any girl from school who could get me work. This encapsulates Campbell (2010, p. 99)’s idea that “schooling … is a crucial element in the process of social mobility: hopefully upward movement into better work, a more comfortable life, another social class”. My mother's goals for my future aligned with

Campbell (2010), Teese (1989), Lareau (2011) and Brantlinger (2003a)’s findings that middle class families believe education is the most important element of success: “The proving of merit, and the idea that the meritorious should get the best and most influential jobs (meritocracy) is crucial to this thinking.” (Campbell, 2010, p. 118). My mother's choices for my education were also about, as Lareau (2011) and Campbell (2010) wrote, “positionality – which school and which university … became factors in the competition for secure and well-paid middle class employment, as well as the basic need to acquire a good qualification or credentials.” (p. 118).

In Years 11-12 at my school, there was a narrow focus on tertiary subjects leading to university entrance. In a class of 125 girls the majority went on to university, including me. I never stopped to question why. It was simply an accepted and assumed outcome. It thusly epitomised Gramsci’s cultural hegemony (Brown, 2013, p. 137) in which one group is dominant and its rules and power are seen as the norm, perceived as benefiting everybody, while really only benefiting those with more power or advantage than others. The school advocated a competitive academic curriculum: “... encouraging competition, not co-operation between students, ... elevating success in tests and exams above all other learning objectives and creating subject hierarchies that put … difficult subjects, such as pure mathematics, sciences and foreign languages, above other subjects that many students might be more likely to see as relevant and practical in their lives.”(Campbell, 2010, p. 107).

My time at high school was five continuous years of lessons in social class without it being specifically defined as such. The lessons I learned were about who belonged and who did not. I considered myself to be working class because I worked and so did my mother; that was

14 how I defined class back then and I was naïve to other understandings of class beyond how uncomfortable I felt at school. It wasn’t until I began teaching in impoverished schools that I really began to understand the benefits and disadvantages that social class can bring to a child or a family.

Despite Teese and Polesel (2003)’s claim that: “to ensure … the individual student comes close to the high level of achievement that can be expected on average from a high- status family ... requires favourable class sizes, greater individual attention and more highly trained teachers.” (p. 121), I was a distinctly average student – I never really stuck my intellectual head above any parapet. Could this have been because the “school curriculum

[was] imbued with the culture of the dominant (upper) class[, and s]tudents who are familiar with the culture of the dominant class do better at school because they already possess cultural capital – the 'linguistic styles, aesthetic preferences, styles of interaction' and beliefs essential for educational success” (Germov, 2004, p. 260)?

Bourdieu (1986a), Sullivan (2001), Tan (2015), Lareau (2015) and others have suggested that some groups of students do better at school than others because their home and cultural backgrounds align with that of their school. Until my final years at school it never occurred to me to question another student's background or home life; I had assumed on a rudimentary level that everyone was a bit like me. I didn't get invited to parties or to other girls' houses, so I didn't realise how wealthy their families were. Furthermore, I was never part of the conversations about family holidays to Europe or skiing trips. This could be interpreted as a type of ideological hegemony, which Gramsci says is based on the key assumptions “... that the economic power of the upper class leads to cultural dominance; and … that classes exhibit substantial differences in lifestyles and interests due to their economic position in society.”

(cited in Germov, 2004, p. 260).

Affective alignment is an emotional experience within the context of an elite educational institution, that both relies upon and produces privilege (Gaztambide-Fernandez et

15 al., 2013). This process of becoming aligned within the emotional world of an elite school that is necessary for internalising the sense of entitlement also requires an abject – the one who is effectively misaligned (Gaztambide-Fernandez et al., 2013). If the privileges of affective alignment are related to prior social, cultural and embodied resources - namely, if girls come to school and are already familiar with these resources that contribute to affective alignment wherein students feel included and welcomed without any struggle to do so; adapting to the rigours of elite school can be easy or difficult depending on resources at home - misalignment is also produced by cultural boundaries that shape not only access but also feelings (Gaztambide-

Fernandez et al., 2013). In a previous iteration of this body of work, I reflected on a schooling experience that affected me greatly, and came to realise that in this process of affective alignment, it was I who had become the abject:

“In my Year 11 English Literature class, we were asked to select a poem that we liked, set it to music and make a presentation to the class and explain our choices. We had a really old stereo at home, so I had to hold the microphone up to the speaker to record the music I wanted. The sound quality of my presentation was so poor, especially compared to the other students', and I failed the assignment. I felt so awkward, other, and “less than”, by comparison, presenting and playing that cheap recording to my classmates.”

I distinctly remember standing in front of the class and thinking that I was 'with them' in the literal sense of being in the class, in the classroom and enrolled in the school, but I was most definitely not 'of them'. According to Germov (2004), “the dominant culture curriculum demands that a student has the 'social and cultural skills of subtlety, nuance, taste and manner which some children acquire 'naturally' from their own cultural milieu'.” (p. 260). Thinking of that situation now I look back and think of Byron: “I stood/Among them, but not of them; in a shroud/Of thoughts which were not their thoughts”.” The irony of being able to quote Byron in a personal anecdote about being the outsider at an elite school is not lost on me.

The contradictions and ironies embedded within my experiences at an elite private school remain as deep and vivid memories. First, the hypocrisy of a Christian school with a

16 supposedly supportive, quality pastoral care threatening a newly divorced mother with ultimatums and demanding proof of payment else her daughter would be removed. Second, I continue to question my own decision to attend university all those years ago, mostly because I was not sure why I was going in the first place, or what I would do once I got there. These school experiences and the emotions associated with them have stayed with me for a long time.

I am conscious of ensuring that this work is situated within a larger context of power relationships in wider society. By studying the privileged, I should deconstruct my own sense of privilege (Gaztambide-Fernández & Howard, 2012). After all, the education of elites and the study of them has, in the past, focused on the transmission of privilege (Zanten et al., 2015) to the advantage of some and not others. My elite education has given me the confidence to approach a Masters level project about the very area that pushed me into adult life and post- graduate qualifications. I felt like an outsider then and was not one of the cool kids – this remains true today. But I am also an insider in the sense that I can use confidence, networks and my university education to find participants for this study and mine good data from qualitative interviews.

Rather than accept what the participants say at face value, the data analysis and conclusions to this study should show that a more critical approach has been applied to reveal underlying meaning and nuance about power and elites within Australian society. Part of this study means confronting my own privilege, which was uncomfortable for me after denying for many years that I had any. I once believed that by disavowing my schooling I could then disavow my own privilege. Yet it is my own privilege and accumulation of social and cultural capital that has meant I can do this research, which, once submitted, may improve my status as a scholar moving towards doctoral research and academic employment. As a parent, a student, a tutor, a former teacher and high school graduate, I am both a researcher and participant in this study. I provide more detail about my participation in the study in Chapter 3.

In Benjamin et al. (2010) Howard insisted that looking at the advantages of the rich and how they go about justifying those riches is crucial. Indeed, Kenway et al. (2013) theorised that the actions of privileged individuals, and the ways in which they justify and utilise that privilege, have wider collective consequences: “these help to determine broader social structures within the libidinal economy of the elite schools market, such as class structure.” (p. 16). However, it may not be sufficient to employ active self-reflection if the goal is to transform entrenched relations of power (Gaztambide-Fernandez et al., 2013) but to move beyond appeals to reason to interrupt affective processes through which entitlement and ‘eliteness’ is produced

(Gaztambide-Fernandez et al., 2013).

Having lived it myself, and having taught children who lived it, I understand the effects of things like hunger, economic scarcity, an inconstancy of employment, tumultuous home lives, drug abuse and domestic violence have on a child who already has little. Many other researchers understand this too (Ball, Bowe, & Gewirtz, 1996; Connell et al., 1982; Considine &

Zappalà, 2002; Gaztambide-Fernández & Howard, 2012; Germov, 2004; Howard, 2008). But what is much less known, understood, or analysed is how elite schooling and privilege work to advantage its participants. Even less is known about the opinions and perspectives of those participants. I began to wonder: did other girls in my year feel the same as me, even if their families possessed more economic, social and cultural capital than mine? What became of their lives? Did they follow similar trajectories? Were their investments in elite education worth it in the long run? As an elite school graduate, I continue to reflect on my schooling experiences and the privileges it brought to bear; many times I have questioned the benefits and disadvantages of attending such a school, and its effects on what came afterwards. I questioned whether the investment my mother made was actually worth it.

Through this study, I sought to establish whether other alumni’s school experiences were like mine and what, if any, wider patterns or themes about elite education can be found. I seek to understand the mechanisms that underly this sense of privilege. On a broader level, I

18 seek in some small way to redress the injustices that emerge from a system wherein those who already have ‘it’ keep getting more and those who don’t get less.

Structure of the thesis

The structure of the thesis is constructivist and reflective in design. It introduces the phenomenon under investigation, positions it within theory and literature, explains the methods used to capture and analyse the voices of the participants (including myself), presents the findings from the study and concludes by offering insight and future research related to ‘elite alumni’.

Chapter 1: In the introduction to the thesis, I provide an overview of the whole study. I outline the aims and purpose of the study, consider an appropriate definition of elite schools in the Australia context, introduce the theoretical and methodological choices embedded in the study and provide background and positionality to the project.

Chapter 2: In the literature review, I examine research that considers the effects of elite schooling on its participants, the processes that elite schools utilise to covet and maintain advantage, and the theoretical constructs that underpin these areas of research.

Chapter 3: The methodology chapter sets out the methodological approach and associated methods to achieve responses to the research aims and questions. It outlines the logistics for conducting the study by communicating the manner in which the data was collected, how the participants were acquired and how the data was analysed. I also consider the limitations and shortcomings of the study.

Chapter 4: In the findings chapter, I present the relevant findings from the study in response to the research questions and consider over-arching themes that emerged from the data analysis.

Chapter 5: In the discussions and conclusions chapter, I consider the deeper meaning of the findings and link these to the theoretical underpinnings and literature. Here I suggest

19 potential policy implications, as well as potential future research opportunities that have emerged from the study.

CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW

“Whether students can benefit from attending an elite school is one of the most important and controversial questions in education.” Song (2017)

The aim of this literature review is to examine existing literature about elite schools and the processes by which elite schools covet, maintain and confer advantage. I also consider the theoretical underpinnings of these areas of research.

Existing research tells us that there is no clear pattern of statistical correlation between school sector and academic outcomes or educational achievements (Carbonaro & Covay,

2010; Chesters, 2018; Gannicott, 2016; Lubienski & Lubienski, 2006; Marks, 2015). However, there was an emergent body of research that indicated elite school attendance can be linked to other types of benefits and disadvantages and it is into this bank of research literature that this study falls. Howard posited in his text, Learning privilege: lessons of power and identity in affluent schooling, that there was a silence in this area of research about how ‘practices and structures give advantages to affluent students’ (2008) and reinforced the disadvantages forced upon the non-affluent. However, very recent research by Sullivan, Parsons, Green, Wiggins, & Ploubidis

(2018) has suggested that secondary education is not as important a vehicle of advantage as it was often thought to be. They found that while the influence of childhood advantage was channelled by education there were no direct links between social origins and top-class destinations later in life. Their research showed that there was no clear stage of an educational career that accounted for access to the top social class in mid-life: “the type of secondary school attended matters on an individual level, but does very little to explain the link between social origins and adult top class destinations at the population level” (p. 793).

There is some research that analysed elite education as a means through which social class is cemented and stratified (Connell et al., 1982; Cookson & Persell, 1985; Gaztambide-

Fernandez, 2009a; Howard, 2008; Kenway & Koh, 2015). But scant research exists that has

21 analysed the Australian elite schooling experience from an alumni point of view and in which the long term, personal benefits and disadvantages of elite education are examined. Multiple authors have examined private or elite schooling, as institutions and as instruments of class stratification and advantage (Jane Kenway, Stephen Ball, Claire Maxwell, Adam Howard, Ruben

Gaztambide-Fernandez and Richard Teese), not always focused on Australian schools.

Class, capital and education

In this section I discuss social class, the types of capital and how these concepts relate to education.

Social class

In a 2015 Australian National University poll, 51.5% of respondents identified as middle class and only 2% as upper class (Sheppard & Biddle, 2017). Although the data revealed that while just over 50% of Australians identified as middle or upper class, it showed that there are now five discernible social classes: established affluent, emergent affluent, mobile middle, established middle and established working, moving away from the more traditional Marxist structure of upper, middle and working classes.

Traditionally, social class has been defined in a Marxist way as a structure of power, where advantage is either given, taken, protected or maintained (Sriprakash & Proctor, 2018).

Many researchers since referred to social class as being a fluid concept and process (Connell et al., 1982; Howard, 2008) or an amorphous and ambiguous construct (Brantlinger, 2003a), rather than a prescriptive and static set of attributes that a group of people possess.

Researchers described social class as encompassing day-to-day practices as well as social and cultural capital, and an occupation or income level. Social class could be considered as a series of relationships to several aspects of the process in society by which goods, services, and culture were produced (Anyon, 1981); “it is not what people are, or even what they own, so

22 much as what they do with their resources and their relationships that is central [to social class]” (Connell et al., 1982, p. 33). A person’s occupation and income level contributed to social class, but they did not define it. Contributing as well were a person’s relationships to the system of ownership of physical and cultural capital, to the structure of authority at work and in society, and to the content and process of a person’s own work (Anyon, 1981; Connell et al.,

1982). Also, a critical theorist might contend that it is the cultural constructs of social class such as these that are important as they ‘partially structure the class system’ (Stuber, 2010).

Social class and education

Social class can affect the education experience a student will have at school (Campbell,

2010; Robert, 2010). Indeed, parental background - construed as part of a social class or socio- economic status - still has a ‘very powerful influence’ on the academic progress of children (Ball,

2010). Schools are directly connected to social classes, especially when classes are considered clear-cut groups with ‘a strong sense of their own identity and when schools are directly attached to them’ (Connell et al., 1982, p94). Schools stratified class structure to mirror that of society (Brantlinger, 2003b). Children of different social classes were exposed to different types of curriculum or educational knowledge (Anyon, 1981; Brantlinger, 2003b; Carbonaro & Covay,

2010; Germov, 2004; Teese, 2005; Tranter, 2012). Social class differences in school were seen as key to the reproduction of unequal class structures (Anyon, 1981; Connell, 2002;

Gaztambide-Fernandez, 2009a) and to the solidarity of the upper classes (Kingston & Lewis,

1990).

Bourdieu and Bernstein

Theorists Pierre Bourdieu and Basil Bernstein spearheaded explanations of the relationships between education processes, social class and schools. Within the methodology chapter, the theoretical framework section of this thesis looks more deeply at the connections

23 between this study and these theorists, however a note should be made here about their contributions to the literature on education and social class. Bourdieu theorised that advantage and power was realised through the intersection and possession of three types of capital: economic, social and cultural. He defined the capitals as:

• Economic: property, money, financial assets

• Social: social connections, obligations and networks of people

• Cultural: cultural goods (art, books), academic qualifications, dispositions

(Bourdieu, 1986a, p. 30)

When the cultural and social capital of a school and its students were mis-aligned, or mis-matched, teaching and learning became more difficult. Much literature has suggested that schools are middle-class institutions (Ball, 2003b; Brantlinger, 2003a; Brown, Halsey, Lauder, &

Wells, 2003; Sriprakash & Proctor, 2018; Weis & Cipollone, 2013). It is therefore theoretically easier for children from the middle-class than for children from the working-class to achieve good outcomes at school and move on to prosperous and high-level careers since their cultural and social capital from typically align with their school’s (Bourdieu, 1986a; Sriprakash & Proctor,

2018).

In alignment with this theory, Bernstein (2003) argued that the relationship between school and social class could be framed by using codes of language. He posited that certain codes of language and culture were embedded within a school, so schools privileged certain codes and types of behaviour over others, and these were usually possessed by the middle and upper classes (Sriprakash & Proctor, 2018). There was a mismatch between the linguistic practices (the so-called ‘Bernstein argument’, wherein children use restricted and elaborated codes of language) and cultural environments of the non-elite, which made accessing the academic curriculum fraught (Vickers, 2010) for those students who were out of alignment with the dominant, academic culture. Laureau witnessed this in her 1987 study, Social class

24 differences in family-school relationships, and noted that although parents from middle- and working-class families shared similar desires for the success of their children, their social standing led them to construct very different pathways to realise that success (Lareau, 1987). However, questions could be asked about the value judgements of Bernstein’s classifications of these codes, which, broadly speaking, delineated middle and upper classes as using elaborated codes while working classes used restricted codes. By suggesting that working classes use only restricted codes it could be inferred that the working classes are less capable of developing sophisticated or elaborated codes of language and are therefore responsible for their own lack of educational achievement.

Schools and social mobility

Put bluntly, ‘Unequal schooling reproduces the social division of labour … both the amount and content of their education greatly facilitates their movement into positions similar to their parents.’’ (Bowles, 1977, p. 141). If schools are middle class institutions (Sriprakash &

Proctor, 2018) but children from all walks of life and social classes attend them, then it is very possible that not all children will respond the same way or achieve the same levels of educational outcomes. Yet parents from working and middle class families utilise schooling as a means of generational movement into ‘better work and a more comfortable life’ (Sriprakash &

Proctor, 2018, p. 99). Bourdieu and Passeron defined social reproduction (reproduction of relationships between groups or classes) as “reproduction of the structure of the relations of force between classes” (Reed-Danahay, 2004). It is posited in much research that secondary, elite boarding schools in America were central to the reproduction and solidarity of an upper class (Kingston & Lewis, 1990); wealthy white children were ‘inevitably advantaged’ (Brantlinger,

2003b). In Australia, it was Connell’s landmark study in the 1980s which claimed elite schools played a major part in organising and maintaining ‘class’ and privilege across the generations

(Connell et al., 1982).

Elite schools participate in the processes of social stratification such as legitimating types of knowledge, curricula preferences and class disavowal. Elite schools form part of an institutional dimension of this stratification, wherein the day to day actions of its participants result in a set idea of what is normal, acceptable and natural. The flipside to this is that those who sit outside this idea of what is normal, acceptable and natural have no control over this stratification. It is these processes and outcomes that support the reproduction of privilege

(Maxwell & Aggleton, 2013).

Children are socialised within their environments and this is true regardless of SES. In lived experiences at home and school children learn not just life-skills but also how to ‘be’ and how to conduct themselves, and this is observable even at kindergarten age (Henward &

Grace, 2016). Bourdieu (1986a) contended that all children internalise how to behave and acceptable ways to view the world around them., including in working class environments

(Considine & Zappalà, 2002; Willis, 1977). The point, however, is that particular environments socialise children to behave in particular ways.

Ball asserted that schools are class biased and work through infrastructural procedures and teacher expectations that differ among students (2010). The constructivist and progressive pedagogies often used in elite schools leant themselves to bias towards upper classes (Drew,

2013; Forbes & Lingard, 2015; Henward & Grace, 2016). This bias was seen as early as the

1940s, if not before – for example, in the monopoly of elite classes over high-status degrees like medicine and law (Campbell, 2010). If, as Ball suggested, that schools are class-biased, then it follows that the advantages afforded to those who already benefit from them will continue to reproduce social and economic advantage in the wider world, after school finishes.

Publications by Ball (2003a); Brantlinger (2003a); Crozier, Reay, & James (2011);

Demerath, Lynch, Milner, Peters, & Davidson (2010) and Weis & Cipollone (2013) suggested that it was more the middle classes that used the education market place to engineer social mobility, and upper classes who also utilised education to maintain their social standings. It

26 could be said that the truly elite do not need to engineer anything: their benefits are accrued and accumulated over generations of time and maintain their place in society as well as the education system. The Marxist, ideological framework of classes has moved on since the industrial revolution: as discussed above, class is now much more than just controlling the means of production. An entire ‘knowledge resource of production’ also exists, including for example, information technology, human resources management and data analyst work.

Theory of capitals & connections to education

Much research exists about the value and exchange of social and cultural capital. The consensus seemed to be that wealthy people purchase elite education, which carries with it social and cultural capital closely aligned with similar capitals that wealthy children already experience at home (Anderson, 1990; Gaztambide-Fernandez, 2009a; Howard, 2008; Kenway

& Koh, 2015). Some have suggested that students at elite schools benefit from an alignment of similar habitus at home and school, and of similar use of cultural capital in both locations

(Forbes & Lingard, 2015; Germov, 2004). Academic capital was guaranteed by a combination of cultural and social transmissions at home and at school in a very strategic landscape (Ball, 2010).

"A narrow group of schools and universities serve the interests of the ruling class, and continue to reinforce family habitus and develop the cultural capital required for class maintenance"

(Campbell, 2010, p. 125). Bourdieu went a step further in exploring and asserting the elite’s self-exclusion as complicit in the development of social and cultural capital – by avoiding places that aren’t for ‘people like us’ (Ball, 2010). Hence elites will cluster in areas that are for ‘people like them’ with elite schools being one of those places, where all types of capital align and mesh.

Bourdieu examined types of capital in his seminal work, Distinction: a social critique of the judgement of taste, first published in 1979. He theorised that capital could be extended past

Marx’s concepts to categories such as social, cultural, academic, financial and symbolic. Bourdieu defined social capital as the networks of relationships between which various other capitals and

27 resources could be exchanged. He defined cultural capital as the non-financial assets of a person or group (for example, styles of dress, vocabulary, level of education). Bourdieu’s theory of capitals has led many to view cultural capital as a resource that allows access to rewards, can be monopolized and can be transmitted from one generation to the next (Lareau & Weininger,

2003).

Bourdieu and Coleman theorised that the three main types of capital were intertwined and influenced each other. They examined how and why power is exerted in society through the types of capitals; both were concerned with how the concentration of power compromises equity in society (Marsden, 2005). The Coleman Report, released in 1966 and officially titled

Equality of Education Opportunity, focused on how the resources children bring to school

(inputs) affect their results (outputs) (Coleman, 1988). His later research concluded that aspects of social structure, such as cultural capital, both in and out of schools shape educational outcomes (Marsden, 2005). Connell stated that children don’t just passively bring cultural capital to school but rather, brought their parental relationships with education, as well as how to navigate the system of schooling (Connell et al., 1982). Further, they asserted categorically that privilege was not always passed on nor was under-privilege always perpetuated (Connell et al.,

1982).

The following section discusses the interconnections between the types of capitals and education (see figure 4 at the end of this section for a diagrammatic representation). Schooling influences human and academic capital (knowledge and skills); therefore the inverse could also be true. Schooling and academic capital can directly affect economic capital, graduating from high school can affect a student’s capacity to earn a salary and the monetary value of that salary.

Cultural capital can influence schooling, for example, a number of education sociologists posit that middle and upper class children are more likely to understand and work within the curricula and language of schooling than working class or children from low SES backgrounds

(Ball et al., 1996; Bernstein, 2003; Bourdieu, 1984; Coleman, 1988; Teese, 1998) . In turn,

28 schooling can provide cultural capital for children by means of exposure to sophisticated curricula, for example. More economic capital often leads to more valuable social capital such as expensive or exclusive sports club memberships or expensive cultural capital activities, such as such as cello lessons. Similarly, a symbiotic relationship exists between academic capital and cultural capital. Bourdieu (1986a) claimed that it was not enough to merely possess cultural capital– the possessor must also have the knowledge by which that cultural capital can be utilised. For example, a student could possess a cello, as an object of cultural capital, but without the knowledge to use it, or money for lessons, the cello is rendered useless. The cello could be used to also illustrate the mutual relationship between economic capital and cultural capital. A cello is unaffordable without economic capital. Human and social capital were also interconnected. Valuable human capital (such as academic qualifications) can come as a result of social capital – for example, knowing the right person to speak to at a preferred university.

Conversely, possessing valuable human capital (such as higher research degrees) can have a positive effect on the value of associated social capital, by means of associating with more highly educated colleagues.

Figure 3: Venn diagram representing how schooling and the types of capital interrelate. (created by the author)

Elite schools and what they do

In this section, I consider the characteristics of elite schools and the ways they create and maintain advantage.

Characteristics of elite schools

Many papers have attempted to cement or agree upon common characteristics of elite schools. (Gaztambide-Fernandez, 2009b) listed the ‘5 Es’ of elite schooling as exclusion, engagement, excellence, entitlement and envisioning, which are visible even in kindergartens

(Henward & Grace, 2016). Typically, elite schools were well resourced; self-selecting and high fee paying. Powerful, affluent and often famous alumni also featured heavily (Kenway & Fahey,

2014). Elite schools often boasted a type of geographical elitism - promoting age-old

30 architecture and vast grounds resplendent with rolling grass and cricket pitches, alongside a sophisticated curriculum drawing heavily on abstract thought and higher order thinking skills

(Courtois, 2018; Drew, 2013; Gaztambide-Fernandez, 2009a; Howard, 2008; Kenway & Koh,

2015). Elite schools placed strong emphasis on producing individualised, responsible and entrepreneurial students; coveted independence and high motivation; encouraged confidence in the self and the unwavering belief that its students are fully capable of achieving anything they set their minds to (Allan & Charles, 2014) – this could be seen as the fallacy of merit-based achievement. They espoused the importance of a university education (Maxwell & Aggleton,

2014) and often boasted demonstrable success at university entry exams and alumni successes.

In many elite schools there was public interaction with charity of varying kinds. Elite schools posed as 'doing good' not through increased access such as reduced fees but through outreach by the privileged who were already secure in their social and cultural boundaries -

'caring at a distance' (Allan & Charles, 2014; Windle & Stratton, 2013). Further, models of charitable service could often reinforce privileged ways of knowing and doing by enforcing certain unpleasant assumptions about people who are different to those providing the service

(Allan & Charles, 2014). Scholarships and bursaries were a means by which elite schools could simultaneously disavow their role in the reproduction of class and privilege and also reproduce it; the more cynical observer might suggest that scholarships were a way that elite schools cherry picked the students they wanted from the public system or those children who excelled in areas the school wished to focus upon (Kenway, 2017; Kenway & Fahey, 2015). A simple cost-benefit analysis would show that a scholarship does not cost an elite school very much, if anything at all, but it comes at considerable cost to the recipient’s family, especially if the scholarship does not cover 100% of tuition fees and other expenses such as expensive uniforms, text books and laptops.

Class-based curricula, specialisation and hierarchies

Some research asserted that access to academic curricula is socially discriminating, patterned by SES – maths is a good example of where this occurs (Carbonaro & Covay, 2010;

Teese, 2005). Upper middle class children were far more likely to take maths required for science, engineering, medicine and other prestigious university options and had a lower failure rate (Carbonaro & Covay, 2010; Teese, 2005) than publicly educated students. Conversely, students attending low SES schools were far less likely to access core subjects that were necessary for university entrance (Perry & Southwell, 2014). Private school students (including those at elite private schools) were more likely than their public school counterparts to enrol in high level maths courses, regardless of background (Carbonaro & Covay, 2010). The academic curriculum for secondary schooling was a privileged, culturally framed pedagogy: what was on offer emphasised core academics, including classical and modern foreign languages and privileges understanding of research and knowledge production (Forbes & Lingard, 2015).

Apple asserted that the academic curriculum, certainly for upper secondary students – the

‘hard’ option - transmitted the dominant culture, therefore reproduced class inequalities, promoted an ideological hegemony, skewed in favour of elite interests and values (Germov,

2004) and emphasised individual academic achievement (Perry & Southwell, 2014; Windle &

Stratton, 2013) .

Elite private schools offered privileged and purposeful secondary schooling curriculum to achieve their goals, however, Gaztambide-Fernandez and Howard (2010a) contend that

‘little attention has been paid to how the explicit curriculum itself is evidence of gross inequality’, and the research indicated an alignment with this view, although generally expressed differently. What the research showed was that elite schools tended to concentrate on ‘high stakes’ curricula and orient towards Western knowledge systems (Kenway & Koh, 2015). In their 2003 publication, Undemocratic schooling: Equity and quality in mass secondary education in

Australia, Teese & Polesel claimed that elite schools used their highly selective intake practices to concentrate on high status curricula and university entrance, thereby seeming to achieve

32 greater success than other schools. It could be said that elite students were being groomed for university and high-level professions such as medicine and law (Kenway & Fahey, 2014).

High school curricula in Australian schools was organised into a hierarchy of hard and soft (curriculum relegation) options – where even the least demanding options display social patterns of achievement (Carbonaro & Covay, 2010; Teese, 2005). It has been documented that some low SES public school children are exposed to a less advanced curriculum than non- government school children, for example, offered fewer ATAR subjects and more ‘hands on’ or vocational options. (Carbonaro & Covay, 2010; Germov, 2004). Johnston (1990) found curriculum inequity made a significant difference to the differences in education for children in his study, The sociocultural schism in Australian schooling. He showed that vocational studies were more frequently available in low SES school intakes whereas subject options for private school students were offered very few vocational subjects. His study of government and private schools also showed that the educational intent for post-schooling differed along class lines, with schools in working class areas providing school philosophies centred around career needs and specific subject choices. The private schools from the study boasted philosophy statements that focused on producing a well-rounded adults and community-minded people who would go out into the world to ‘serve and be responsible for others’ (p.30). Secondary school curriculum was imbued with the culture of the dominant, elite classes - students who were already familiar with this, as their home life was in cultural and social alignment with school, therefore found the curriculum easier to digest (Germov, 2004).

Intergenerational and class closure acts as both an advantage and disadvantage

It could be inferred that a disadvantage of coming from an elite background and attending an elite school is that the social networks in which alumni circulate are closed to a wider ethnic diversity or cultural diversity (Wiesel & Levin, 2018). Their very nature of being

33 exclusive means that the social circle remains homogenous, with circumstances reflected and mirrored across the network. Carbonaro (1998) discussed this in his paper, A little help from my friend’s parents: intergenerational closure and educational outcomes. He defined intergenerational closure as a situation where parents A and B of children A and B socialise together, often exclusively and set the norms and standards for that group and exchange services such as babysitting or collection from activities. Carbonaro drew on Coleman’s theory of social capital in his research to find that a higher level of intergenerational closure meant a student was less likely to drop out of high school and do better at maths than students with low levels of intergenerational closure, that is to say students whose parents do not socialise with the parents of the students’ peers.

Connell et al. (1982) found that ‘old boy’ and ‘old girl’ networks, domains of elite school alumni, are actively cultivated and made to function for the benefit of the school as a whole, rather than just students or alumni: the private school is the “shared space of parents, teachers and students”. Children from one elite school socialise with children from the same school or others in similar schools: “the ruling class school is a means of drawing social lines, of defining

‘us’ as against ‘them’.” (Connell et al., 1982). Deresiewicz (2008) concurred that while elite schools pride themselves on diversity, “but … with respect to class, these schools are largely - indeed increasingly - homogeneous.” (p. 2), an aspect of elite education that Deresiewicz saw as a disadvantage to its alumni. A lack of exposure to a range of types of families, personalities and lifestyles could lead to a narrow world view and wider understandings of the way the world works. If a student never meets, interacts or socialises with students from other types of schools, how will this homogeneity serve them in the workplace?

The Great British Class Survey of 2013 showed that, of any of the study’s seven identified classes, members of the elite had the lowest proportions of ethnic diversity (Savage et al., 2013); a finding discussed at length by an elite alumni, Deresiewicz (2008), in his opinion piece The disadvantages of an elite education. He cited a learned inabillity to speak and connect

34 with people outside of his elite world – the example he gave was trying to engage with a plumber in his house at aged 35: “I could carry on conversations with people from other countries, in other languages, but I couldn't talk to the man who was standing in my own house.” (p. 1). Also, if an elite school attendee is deemed to be ‘other’, post school social capital is lost, as that alumni is, in a sense, locked out of opportunities associated with powerful social capital that the more exclusive and connected alumni continue to enjoy.

Carbonaro (1998) used a quantitative methodology to find a strong correlation between levels of social capital and education outcomes. He found that children with high levels of intergenerational closure – an idea first posited by Coleman (1997) and defined earlier in this paper – were far better placed to achieve better education outcomes than children with low levels of closure, and that this was especially true for mathematics outcomes. Closure was not significantly associated with achievement in other subjects but it was positively associated with substantially decreased odds of not finishing high school.

The effects of elite schooling

In this section, I consider advantage and elite schools as well as the ‘elite schooling effect’ on academic outcomes (for current and former students) then examine the more specific effects of elite schooling on other areas of life such as earnings, health and occupational status.

Elite schools and advantage

In 2011, PISA published an analysis of the benefits and disadvantages of private education, including elite private schools. The analysis showed that proponents of private schools felt that they stimulated innovation and better school choice options for parents

(OECD, 2011). Conversely, the study also found that opponents of private schools felt that private schools contributed to social segregation and reinforced inequities in the education

35 system. Interestingly, the PISA study also found that countries with a large percentage of private school attendance do not perform better in PISA assessment than other countries (OECD,

2011). However the scope of the study did not extend to longer term benefits and disadvantages afforded to students beyond reaching university or further training after secondary school. Deresiewicz (2008) claimed, as an elite graduate, with certainty that: “The advantages of an elite education are indeed undeniable. You learn to think, at least in certain ways, and you make the contacts needed to launch yourself into a life rich in all of society's most cherished rewards.” (p. 1)

In 1992-93, Zweigenhaft published his landmark longitudinal studies that examined the accumulation of social and cultural capital of Yale and Harvard alumni. Although the subjects were university graduates, the study still has relevance to this thesis in that it demonstrates there are methods for measuring the accumulation of advantages that are conferred upon alumni and may show how that advantage continues to grow over time. One reason he chose to conduct this study was to learn ‘valuable things about the way the American elite functions to reproduce itself’ (Zweigenhaft, 1992); a goal that this project also aims to meet, although within an Australian context.

Zweigenhaft used an initial set of data of undergraduates then a second set of data taken from those undergraduates’ 25-year reunion class book. He examined some common life

‘markers’ – level of education, marriages, children, college of spouses and, interestingly, club memberships (Reeves, Friedman, Rahal, and Flemmen [2017] include club memberships as an advantage of elite education). A brief analysis of these markers could show that Zweigenhaft was looking for specific areas in which social and cultural capital are accumulated over time – education can be converted into economic capital and club memberships is a classic measure of social capital within a group of society.

Zweigenhaft’s data showed that public school alumni were more likely to perform better at higher education than private school counterparts. He tempered the results by also

36 saying that ‘the findings do not indicate that extensive advantages in the admissions process were given to students applying from all elite prep schools’ (Zweigenhaft, 1993, p. 217). From a gendered perspective, the data showed that if a woman attended an elite prep school, she was especially likely to marry a man who attended Harvard (whether this is of benefit or otherwise is up for debate). Tellingly, the reverse was not true.

What Zweigenhaft’s studies made clear was that the benefits of elite schooling were dependent on background – for those alumni who come from elite backgrounds, attending an elite school is normal and natural and continues an accumulation of social and cultural capital that is harmonious with school and home lives. Zweigenhaft (1993) showed that elite prep alumni were especially likely to indicate membership of elite or exclusive social clubs than non- elite prep alumni, that is to say, already possessing sufficient cultural capital because of their existing elite status, these alumni were more focused on ensuring the continuation and preservation of their social capital and networks.

Maxwell and Aggleton (2014) considered privilege and its advantages for young women within the private education system and their families in their 2014 study, The reproduction of privilege: young women, the family and private education. In alignment with a Reeves et al study, discussed later in this paper, the project is based in Britain and such schools in the United

Kingdom are usually referred to as public schools. In this qualitative study, three young women and their families expected a private school education to increase the potential for education, employment and social success (however the participants may have chosen to define success in those contexts). As participants within the elite school environment, the subjects demonstrated an understanding of the advantages conferred upon them as things like, confidence managing university interviews, making small talk at events where they didn’t know anyone, setting longer term goals such as employment beyond university, all taking place in an environment where such advantages were encouraged and worked upon. Also, common to all three interviewees was a sense of continuity of advantage: their families and boyfriends were also privately

37 educated at the same or similar schools so attending an elite school seemed quite normal and familiar, as did the notion of going on to study at elite universities or organisations such as the

National Youth Theatre program or auditioning for the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts.

There was never any question or doubt that they belong at their elite school or that other paths could have befallen them – the embodiment of one of Gaztambide-Fernandez’s 5 Es of elite education (Entitlement) highlighted by Deresiewicz (2008) who said: “the corollary is equally clear: you deserve everything your presence here is going to enable you to get. When people say that students at elite schools have a strong sense of entitlement, they mean that those students think they deserve more than other people.” (p. 3) Part of the underlying advantage of elite education for the young women in Maxwell’s study was economic security – there was continued economic privilege sourced from their parents that was assumed would continue beyond secondary school. Alongside this continued economic capital was continued social capital, in terms of the networks of other students and their families, as well as common locations outside of school and the home (a rowing club, for example). There was no economic or financial risk for themselves or their families in branching out into a new venture such as acting or fine art. Attending an elite school was not the investment as it might be to more middle class families. Economic security remained and this cannot be said as resolutely for non-elite students. This normative bias permeates the elite experience: “affluent people do not name the benefits of financial assets” (Brantlinger, 2003a, p. 5).

What was especially fascinating about Zweigenhaft’s study was the clear delineation between public and private school graduates academically. Without question, attending a non- elite prep school marked an alumni as far more likely to achieve higher degrees than any elite prep school alumni. Those participants were especially focused on doing well academically, which could be interpreted as focusing on acquiring previously non-existent or insufficient cultural and academic capital. It could be said that the risk of elite education is different, depending on background. An elite background, with its ease of financial future, could mean

38 that there is less risk in performing below par academically. However a ‘less-than’ elite background carries far greater risk for elite alumni. Perhaps parents have mortgaged a house or taken a personal loan to ensure their child gets the best of opportunities at an elite school then reaps the (financial) rewards later in life.

For those alumni who come from less than elite backgrounds it could be said that the benefits are more tangible: better access to resources, extra-curricular activities, university- focused curricula, as well as access to the social capital resources prevalent at such schools

(Beavis, 2004; Konstantinou, 2015). However, there was much research that indicated other values have been attributed by middle class parents to a private education (Campbell, Proctor,

& Sherington, 2009). Attending elite school was, arguably, a method of actualising social mobility, which was more likely to translate into higher education, better quality of employment and higher incomes. Further, as Connell and Howard both claimed, a person’s social class was about much more than what they possess: it was about the “lived, developing process that influences their ways of knowing and doing” (Howard, 2008). It could be inferred that attending an elite school as a ‘non-elite’ provides the benefit of access to those processes.

Elite schooling and academic achievements

Researchers have examined why it appears that elite private schools produce what appear to be outstanding academic achievements year on year, and why graduates from those schools often transition into ‘blue ribbon’ higher education routes such as medicine, law and engineering. For many years researchers have lamented the strong links between school level socio-economic status and education outcomes (Coleman, 1988; Connell et al., 1982; Germov,

2004). Brantlinger (2003a) stated that education researchers agreed that there was a correlation between social class and achievement but there were gaps when it came to establishing correlations between social class and longer term benefits and disadvantages. But it would appear that the research does show that the Australian elite class is educated almost

39 exclusively at elite private schools and this correlated to longer-term SES and life achievements, such as becoming a member of the elite upper classes by means of employment (for example, becoming a judge or Member of Parliament: a cursory glance over the Australian Federal

Government’ Cabinet members shows a strong bias towards elite or upper class, private schools - see Appendix C for details). As far as it is ascertainable, no current members of cabinet attended a catchment-zoned public school, although current Prime Minister Scott

Morrison attended an academically selective public high school. A cursory glance at Western

Australia’s school league tables featuring Year 12 examination results, produced at the end of each school year, could convince a reader that the private and elite school sectors produce consistently better outcomes than public schools. Almost all of Perth’s most expensive elite private schools appear in the top 20 of the highest median ATAR scores for 2018, as illustrated in the figure below.

Table 1: Top ATAR scoring schools in Perth Western Australia, 2018, most expensive schools highlighted in yellow (Authority, 2018).

Dronkers & Robert used nested multilevel models in 2008, with data from PISA, to show that private, government-dependent schools had higher achievement in reading than comparable public schools and that a favourable school climate - an aspect of Gaztambide-

Fernandez’s 5Es of elite schools- explained the better outcomes from private, government- dependent schools (Dronkers & Robert, 2008). Similar outcomes were evident in a study by

Coulson (2009) who found that in America, private schools significantly outperformed similar public schools.

Conversely, other research has shown that the school sector has little effect on achievement outcomes, once certain demographics have been controlled for: Lubienski and

Lubienski found in their hierarchical linear modelling of maths achievements across school sectors that after these differences were controlled for, private school advantage disappeared and even reversed in some cases (Lubienski & Lubienski, 2006). In 2008, to combat criticism of their 2006 study, the two researchers used longitudinal data to show that, as before, comparable public school students performed just as well as their private school counterparts

(Lubienski, Crane, & Lubienski, 2008). Additionally, Carbonaro and Covay (2010) found that nearly all of the advantages enjoyed by the private sector in terms of achievement can be explained by sector differences in course taking during secondary school. However they also noted that private schools in Australia benefit from exposure to a more rigorous academic content than their public school counterparts.

What was common across all these pieces of research was that the focus remained on end of secondary and immediate post-school outcomes such as successful entry to a university degree or grades in standardised testing. There is far less research that looks closely at a long- term measure of the effects of elite or private education.

Elite schooling, incomes and occupations

Limited research is available on alumni of elite private schools from around the globe, however, the few studies that can be found have primarily focussed on the life-markers of the graduates rather than in-depth investigations into their lived experiences. Clark & Del Bono,

Zweigenhaft, Reeves et al, Maxwell & Aggleton as well as Sullivan and Estrada & Gignoux all found that elite school attendance can have marked impacts on longer term life markers such as fertility, career and employment prospects and progression, numbers of marriages and even

Body Mass Index, without specifically detailing whether these are advantages or disadvantages for the alumni concerned.

A recent study by Chesters (2018) examined post-school outcomes at age 24 years to establish whether students who attended non-government schools had superior outcomes to those who attended government schools. They found that type of school attended was not associated with the likelihood of being employed in a high-status occupation at age 24, ‘net of other factors’. Attending a non-government school was not linked with an increased likelihood of being employed on a full-time basis, being employed as a manager or professional, or with higher earnings at age 24.

Clark and Del Bono conducted a quantitative study to measure the long-term impact of elite schooling on the children who attended such schools in Scotland. The researchers used causal effects to measure long term outcomes such as completed education, fertility and income. They found that elite schooling had large impacts on completed education (Clark &

Bono, 2016). The only significant effect from their study was the increase in female income. By far the biggest and most significant impact, however, was on female fertility. Attending an elite school, for women, meant that the probability of having children decreased significantly. Given the high opportunity cost of having children while working at better incomes, as a result of attending an elite school, this statistic is not hugely surprising.

Clark and del Bono found that on average, men and women who attended elite schools completed about three extra years of full-time education, a clear benefit to alumni of continued access to academic, cultural and social capital. Interestingly, attending an elite school made no difference to male income, wages or the probability of employment. The opposite was true for the women in the study, where elite school attendance generally added an extra 15% increase to income. They concluded by suggesting that elite school attendance has a short to medium term effect on outcomes such as graduate positions in the workforce and entering tertiary education, but not beyond that. In fact, their study showed that long-term, attending an elite school had no effect on a range of labour market outcomes.

The participants for this study were chosen from a 1950s cohort that went through the

United Kingdom ‘streaming’ system, whereby children sat a test at aged 11 to determine which type of secondary school they would attend. The participants were not attendees at fee-paying, elite secondary schools. To whit, the researchers admit: ‘some of our results may be specific to the time period studied.’ (Clark & Bono, 2016). The study is longitudinal and quantitative. At no time are the opinions and perspectives of the participants sought, recorded or included, nor are the results analysed as either being advantageous or disadvantageous.

Estrada and Gignoux (2017) demonstrated that, certainly the case of Mexico City, there was a clear and highly correlate relationship between elite school admission and future earnings of alumni. They found that the benefit of attending an elite school increased interactions with selected peers and “increases at the same time students’ skills, their college outcomes and the earnings they expect to obtain with a college education.” (Estrada & Gignoux, 2017, p. 193).

Attending an elite school gave its alumni greater odds of entering and completing higher education degrees that were more elite than others (such as engineering, medicine, law and veterinary science), giving alumni a clear economic benefit directly as a result of attending an elite school. It is against, or with, these odds, that middle class parents, looking to provide advantage to their children, enrol them in elite schools.

Reeves et al. (2017) found in their research project ‘The decline and persistence of the

Old Boy: private schools and elite recruitment’ that public schools (which in the United Kingdom are fee-paying, self-selecting private schools) are still very powerful institutions that produce

‘powerful channels’ of elite formation. For example, they cited that 67% of British Prime

Ministers had attended just one of nine elite schools (known as Clarendon schools) in the UK.

The researchers investigated the amount of power that is wielded to propel ‘old boys’ into elite, advantageous destinations such as law and politics. They used 120 years of data from

Who’s Who, a biographical dictionary of Britain’s elite that has been published every year since

1897. Half the entrants are included automatically when they reach a certain position in their career, eg, when they become a Member of Parliament, an Ambassador or Poet Laureate. The remaining entrants are chosen by a committee of ‘long-standing advisors’ – the identities of which remain a mystery and are subject to much media speculation. The data analysis produced by Reeves et al showed that the power and influence afforded by attending one of the top nine elite schools has declined significantly, but only when looking over a very long period of time

(from 20% in the 1840s to 8% at the time of the analysis).

However, over time, the power of these elite schools and the advantages they confer remain. Attending a Clarendon school still meant that an alumni was 94 times more likely to be a member of the British elite, with access to a great wealth of cultural and social capital. Also, graduates from those schools who went on to attend Oxford or Cambridge were twice as likely to become a member of the elite than Oxbridge students who arrive there via alternative pathways. This demonstrated that attending an elite secondary school conferred cumulative advantage to its alumni. Even if those alumni did not attend an elite university, they were ‘often very successful’ (although the authors do not go on to clarify what, exactly, this might look like).

The Reeves et al study showed there were distinct advantages to attending an elite school and that these advantages continued, cumulatively, throughout the life of the alumni.

Access to elite universities, to private members’ clubs and networks of individuals who already

44 occupy positions of power in society were just some of these advantages. Similar to the Clark and del Bono project, this study used quantitative methods to produce the data and no qualitative approaches were taken – imagine the depth of information that could mined from such a project if a mixed methods approach was taken – the great significance of interviewing participants within such a privileged system and using alternative methods of analysis to document how it benefits them.

Health and personal benefits of attending elite schools

There is very little research that examines other types of benefits and disadvantages of elite education, for example, against health markers. Sullivan, Ploubidis, Parsons, Bann, and

Hamer (2016) used data from almost 1000 participants of the British birth cohort study to track the correlation between schools and universities that were attended and health markers such as Body Mass Index (BMI), television consumption, rates of smoking, drinking and inactivity.

It should be noted that the participants self-reported against these markers. “Our findings suggest beneficial relations between elite education during schooling and university, with subsequent self-rated health and health-related behaviours in midlife.” (p. 300). Attending elite schools was associated with better (self-reported, overall) health, lower BMI, less television and less take-away food consumption than attending a non-elite school. Interestingly, childhood measures of BMI showed no correlation to school type. Also, attending a private (elite) school correlated strongly with higher rates of alcohol consumption. Alumni were also found to move to areas as adults that were known for favourable measures of population health.

Others have shown that attending an elite college increased mental stress and reduced students’ self-esteem and confidence (Song, 2017) and that this was especially true for those students whose entrance scores were marginally above the cut-off point for college entry. It should be noted that these effects were measured on participants in elite colleges rather than secondary schools.

Summary

In this chapter, I have examined research literature that considers the elite schooling effect on education outcomes and markers of socio-economic status such as occupational status, health, well-being and university qualifications, with a focus on secondary education where possible. The chapter also considers the connections between schooling and social and cultural capital, and how they can affect education outcomes. While some literature considered the elite schooling experience from the perspective of current students, and did so using qualitative methods, what was not found in the literature review was research that considered the lived experiences of older alumni and the benefits or disadvantages to their lives of their elite education.

CHAPTER THREE: METHODOLOGY

“The study of elites should be about the study of power and how power operates in societies.” Maxwell (2015)

In this chapter, I consider Bourdieu’s theory of capitals as a framework for this study. I also explain the methods used for the project, including the sampling approach, the rationale behind the choices for data collection and analysis, as well as an explanation of the research process.

Theoretical framework

The research gaze is often focused on how the elite creates and maintains itself and its advantages. It must be acknowledged that elite economic power is ‘shored up on the work of others’ (Howard & Kenway, 2015) - for every advantage given, a disadvantage is also given.

Connell et al. (1982) stressed that researchers need to move past a simplified social stratification framework of the elite to one in which the processes by which the elite produce social groupings. Excessive wealth is a common bedfellow of excessive power, the ‘power of’ and the ‘power to’: both are at the root of Bourdieu and Coleman’s theories.

Howard and Kenway (2015) have claimed that much research on elites and education is primarily affiliated with a class-based analysis or framework, in which Bourdieu is situated.

Indeed, in his earliest of works, The Inheritors, Bourdieu contends that the purpose of education is to produce a social hierarchy (Reed-Danahay, 2004), a sentiment echoed by Bowles (1977) and others. The underlying assumption of both Bourdieu and Coleman’s work is that those who have social and cultural capital have the power – the power of, the power to and the power over. But all groups in society possess cultural and social capital and there is a range of different outcomes associated with it (Coleman, 1997). Rather, it is that some groups’ possessions are considered more valuable than others.

Social reproduction theory becomes more crystallised when considering Bourdieu

(1986a)’s idea that all children internalise ways of seeing, doing and interpreting. Howard

(2008), Gaztambide-Fernandez (2009a) and others have asserted that the ideology of dominant groups is inculcated across society as normal and natural (Codd, Gordon, & Harker,

2010), so from the very beginning of life, elite children are taught that their place is assured and working class children theirs, too and it can be argued that this becomes true of schooling as well.

Cultural capital – the internalised ways of looking at the world, of moving and behaving

(Reed-Danahay, 2004) - was originally what Bourdieu (1986a) thought could explain unequal academic achievements between students of different social classes and that there was a correlation between the levels of profits in the academic market made by children from different classes: “the scholastic yield from educational action depends on the cultural capital previously invested by the family” (Bourdieu, 1986a, p. 48). Both Coleman (1997) and Lareau

(1987) found that it was the middle classes who made the most active and concerted effort to produce academic, and consequently, economic capital from their children’s schooling. In more recent times, Lareau and Weininger (2003)’s idea that cultural capital includes more than ‘high brow’ culture and should be extended to include technical and socio-behavioural skills has gained traction, so cultural capital became more of a ‘toolkit’ than merely attending highly valued, Western cultural events a few times a year. They contended that it was this expansion of cultural capital that helped to explain how socio-economic advantage translated into academic (and therefore economic) advantage. It could be argued that social capital is about relationships and less tangible than cultural capital. How much social capital a person has depends on the size of their networks of connections (Bourdieu, 1986a). Coleman (1997) contended that social capital was defined by its function, but that does not cover how much power or convertibility that social capital actually wields.

Coleman (1997), Considine and Zappalà (2002) and others contended that usually, family background is a key indicator of education achievement. But this can be separated into different elements, one of which is social capital, part of which is the relationships between the child and its adults, peers and networks (Coleman, 1997). Certainly, the effects of a lack of social capital within the family differ for different outcomes (Coleman, 1997).

My own elite schooling experience taught me that it is a combination of economic, cultural and social capitals that conspire to produce high achieving and content alumni. One of the reasons I wanted to conduct this research was to establish whether or not it would be possible to have a valuable elite schooling experience, one that was worth the investment, without one or more of Bourdieu’s capitals in the mix. I sought to find connections between long-term outcomes for my participants and their social and cultural capital. As the project continued into data analysis, it became evident that the social capital – ‘knowing who’ - was overtly present for some of the participants but not all; and that cultural capital – ‘knowing how’ was less prevalent.

While Coleman and Bourdieu take a multi-capitals approach the data that emerged during collection for this project lent itself to a focus on social capital, which allowed examination of friendships, othering and unacknowledged assuredness as emerging themes of how the privilege and entitlement produced at elite schools manifests itself – or not - into later life. Underlying this is an idea that education contributes to later privilege but may not specifically create it.

Method

As a story-teller and long-time writer, I believe the value and the skill of the written and spoken word cannot be underestimated. I knew that conducting surveys and collecting quantitative data would not work for this project, because I was interested in gathering the stories and capturing personal experiences of elite alumni and their time at school. In this

49 section, I discuss the design of the project, discuss how the participants came to be involved and talk about how the data was collected. I also discuss how the data was analysed and grouped into key themes for discussion.

Research design

While qualitative studies do not seek to test hypotheses, they are typically guided by prior theory and this study is no exception. This study is guided and framed by the theoretical concepts of cultural, economic, social and human capital as developed by Bourdieu (1984).

Human capital comprises knowledge and skills, social capital comprises social networks and supports, economic capital comprises material resources, and cultural capital comprises the social assets (tastes, behaviours, qualifications etc) that promote social mobility or reproduce class privilege. Bourdieu’s theory is used to understand the benefits, limitations and opportunities afforded by elite private schools. While the theoretical framework guided data collection and analysis, it did not constrain it; alternative interpretations and findings were welcomed.

This qualitative research involved case study – my own auto-ethnographic case and elite school alumni - within an interpretive phenomenology paradigm. Qualitative choices were justified for two reasons. First, qualitative methods are useful for understanding participants’ perceptions and experiences (Manen, 1997). The aim of this project is to examine participants’ reflections and perspectives rather than objective or generalizable facts about their experiences.

Second, qualitative methods are useful for generating new insights and hypotheses which is appropriate when a topic has not been extensively researched (Creswell, 2012), which is true of this topic.

The combination of case-study and phenomenology provides opportunity to explore an under-researched area of education in Australia. Using this combination gives weight and depth to the stories that participants chose to disclose and a chance for the researcher to use specific

50 examples to help explain the elite schooling phenomenon in Western Australia. The methods used to action this combination of qualitative research methods involved in-depth interviews and an investigation into the phenomenon from a range of perspectives – literature, theoretical frameworks, alumni responses, case-study (auto-ethnographic and elite alumni). The in-depth interview gives the interviewer the opportunity be more reflexive in their approach with the participants and develop tangential lines of questioning that are unlikely to occur in purely quantitative approaches. Researchers should take a reflexive approach to researching and interviewing the elite: reflexivity is about awareness of the self as researcher and of how others seek to position you (Maxwell & Aggleton, 2015). Another reason for this choice of method is to move beyond what Howard and Kenway (2015) call ‘clinging to the familiar’ when studying elites; qualitative interviews provides scope to move beyond and expand on that which is already known or assumed. This project is not designed to repeat familiar stories or use typical frameworks used for studies of elite education, despite using classical techniques such as in- depth interviews.

Interpretative phenomenology, auto-ethnography, case study: the researcher as subject

I knew that my long-remembered experiences at an elite secondary school might affect my research, a common type of problem in qualitative and ethnographic types of projects: “For a reader to trust the perspective of a researcher as presented in qualitative inquiry, the disclosure of the researcher's position in relation to the data is vital.” (Pitard, 2017, p.1). This was potentially problematic as there could be a perception of bias or lack of objectivity, ‘which is always expected of more traditional research’ (Dyson, 2007, p. 37). I wanted to include my own experiences and struggles within a system of elite schooling alongside those of others so that I could illustrate a kaleidoscope of lived reality: “autoethnography is a qualitative research

51 method that utilizes data about self and context to gain an understanding of the connectivity between self and others within the same context.” (Ngunjiri, Hernandez, & Chang, 2010, p. 1).

Reading about auto-ethnography helped me to see that my elite schooling experiences were one part of a rich and varied tapestry of education culture in Australia, one that is different for everyone. I have included large parts of my narrative about my elite schooling experiences to show that personal accounts of researchers can be a source of privileged knowledge: “Researcher narratives and autobiographical accounts can provide educational experiences for others.” (Hamdan, 2012, p. 600). However, memories are subject to the winds of time and although I think I can recollect and write well, nothing can be completely independent or objective of a writer or researcher. My own experiences at school were vivid and deeply felt, with ramifications continuing throughout my life and therefore it made sense that I would be a subject in my own study. “Methodology that combines the method with the writing of the text, which in turn explicates the personal story, or journey of the writer, within the culture in which the investigation, or experience, takes place.” (Dyson, 2007, p. 36).

Having a respected colleague interview me, I felt, was a means of circumventing this aspect of my contributions as a subject of this study. It was a way of taking a step back from the connection I felt to those experiences at school. Possessing a degree of distance was a reason why I also chose to use snowball sampling to find participants, so that I could interview people without whom I held a close connection or closely aligned political or social views about education. This meant that I could gather a wide range of experiences, not just those that aligned or matched my own and could avoid a self-fulfilling prophecy. “The use of first-person active voice brings with it a degree of risk because it exposes feelings, beliefs and attitudes. It also leaves one open to criticism because of a perceived lack of objectivity. However, if the perceived reality of the writer is presented as is, in an open way, i.e. without claims to be the truth, then the story conveys the message, that is the meaning and guides the reader in the construction of the reality.” (Dyson, 2007, p. 40).

Participants

This study sought to identify and investigate alumni from elite private schools in

Western Australia. Purposeful sampling (Creswell, 2012) provides a pragmatic solution for the researcher and allows more alignment with the phenomenon under investigation. The process allows information rich cases to be chosen for an in-depth study that yields insights and understanding (Patton, 2002). The importance of availability, willingness to participate and ability to communicate experiences in a reflective manner were required. It is not meant to be comprehensive in terms of screening but rather focussed on examining the complexity of different conceptualisations of the phenomenon. The participants for this project were chosen using a purposeful sampling technique (Creswell, 2012). I reached out to contacts and friends of contacts from my school connections, which I acknowledge is a product of my own lived experience of privilege. The number of participants was small but feasible given the time constraints but meets the requirements of a Masters level degree. The age range was set to

30+ years of age as participants were asked to reflect on the effects of their schooling on their life opportunities and experiences, in assuming that careers were reasonably established since schooling ended. To avoid conflict of interest, individuals who are employed by any of the schools were deemed ineligible to participate in the study. Alumni of both genders were invited to participate to maximise the range of insights. At the start of the data collection period, there were eight participants, three male and five female, all aged 40 years and older.

A general overview of the participants for this small-scale study shows that it is representative of ‘Australian’ demographics with regards to:

• Marital status: majority married, minority of single parents

• Children: majority with two or fewer children

Some factors were contrary to the general population. The ABS’s Survey of Education and Work in May 2018 showed 31.4% of Australians aged 20-64 years had a Bachelor’s degree or higher:

• Education levels: all except one participant gaining at least a bachelor’s degree.

Table 1: Overview of participants

Name Gender Occupation Education Parental Parental School Funding level occupations education choice for elite levels for schools children Bronwyn Female Shop owner Year 10 Business Unknown Public No owners Bill Male Consultant PhD Engineer Bachelors Catholic Equal to state schools Drake Male IT specialist Bachelors Farmers Years 10-12 Elite Ambivalent Sunday Female Sessional Post- Public servant Year 10 Public No academic Graduate Mike Male Real estate Bachelors Business owner Bachelors Elite Ambivalent agent, business Hairdresser Technical owner qualification Sylvia Female Editor Bachelors Advertising Year 12 Undecided No executive High school Bachelors teacher Shimbo Male?? Home school Bachelors Market Unknown Home No opinion teacher gardeners schooling Milla Female Entrepreneur, Bachelors Physiotherapist Bachelors Elite Ambivalent relief teacher

Participant narratives

In this section, I explain the main characteristics of each participant in the study and discuss basic information about the school sectors they attended, their marital status, occupation and school choice for their own children. The majority of the participants in this study were not historically ‘elite’ or ‘upper class’ as traditionally defined (Zanten et al., 2015) but came from a range of middle class backgrounds.

Bronwyn is aged in her mid-40s and runs a clothing store south of the city. She is married with three children, all of whom attend local public schools. Bronwyn did not complete

Year 12 or continue to higher education. Adopted at a young age, she doesn’t believe her biological parents were highly educated. Her adoptive parents were wealthy Christians who chose Taunton for Bronwyn and her sister because of its religious affiliations, as well as having a personal connection to the head teacher. Bronwyn attended the local public primary school.

Bill is in his 50s and is married with two adult sons, who attended Catholic private schools. Bill is a consultant and works with universities across the world, following a career in the armed forces. His father was an engineer and his mother worked in management and leadership. Bill attended the local public primary school before beginning high school at

Haversham.

Drake, married with two children, is aged in his 40s and works in IT after completing tertiary qualifications at a local university. One child attends Taunton School for Girls and the began at Lutheran Boys School, the brother school to Taunton, in 2020. Drake’s parents were farmers, with his father leaving school at 15, and his mother finishing year 12. They chose

Haversham for Drake because they felt the local public school was ‘too full of farmers’. He attended the local state primary school.

Sunday is a single parent who works as a sessional academic. After graduating from

Taunton School for Girls, she completed a Bachelor’s degree, then later a post-graduate

57 diploma in teaching. Her son attends the local public high school, Sunday’s mother was also a single parent, who did not finish high school, but worked in the Navy for many years before becoming a civil servant. Sunday believes her mother sent her to Taunton School for Girls because she perceived it as strict and more likely to keep Sunday out of trouble than the local public high schools. Sunday attended four different primary schools, two of which were overseas; the two in Australia were local public primary schools.

Mike is divorced and works in real estate. His two children attend local elite private schools, one of which is Mike’s old school, Lutheran Boys School. His current partner has two children from a previous relationship, both of whom attend Taunton School for Girls, which is also his partner’s alma mater. Mike’s father was university educated, then began his own real estate business. His mother was a hairdresser who worked part time, then supported his father to run the business. He was sent to Lutheran, he believes, because his parents wanted him to experience a wide range of opportunities and options. He attended the local public primary school.

Sylvia, an editor, is married with one child and lives outside of Australia. Sylvia won an

English scholarship to attend Ravensthorpe College, then went on to complete a Bachelor’s degree at the oldest university in Western Australia. Her sister went through the same school, and her brother through Haversham, a similarly elite, single sex school in another suburb.

Sylvia’s mother was a part-time high school teacher, and her father worked in advertising after he finished high school. She thinks that she and her siblings were sent to elite schools in part because her parents believed they offered a better quality of education than the public system.

Sylvia attended public primary schools in Australia and New Zealand. She and her husband have yet to decide whether their child will attend public or private high school, but they are open to enrolling the child at Sylvia’s alma mater, located in the inner city.

Shimbo is in her mid-40s, married to a fellow church-goer, and has home-schooled her four daughters. After graduating from Taunton School for Girls, she went on to complete 58 tertiary education at a university in Perth. Her parents were commercial gardeners and her father worked in local government. Later in life they owned and operated a café in a nearby suburb. She was sent to Taunton because her parents refused to send her to the local public school, considered to have a very poor reputation, and because she needed to learn how to

‘talk to girls’. She attended the local public primary school.

Milla is in her mid-40s, divorced, with two sons. She lives in one of Perth’s most affluent western suburbs and her elder son attends a local elite private school, with his younger brother to follow in the coming year. Milla describes herself as an entrepreneur and businesswoman; a teacher and ex-journalist. She was raised by her mother, a university graduate and physiotherapist. Her grandfather, a surgeon, financially supported Milla’s family.

Milla attended Taunton School for Girls from kindergarten, and was one of about 10 girls who attended the school through to the end of Year 12. Her brother attended Lutheran Boys

College, Taunton’s brother school.

Data collection

To examine the benefits accrued to individuals, alumni were asked directly for their perspectives. To provide further depth and nuance, participants were also asked about the school choices they have made for their children. The purpose was to gain a sense of the degree to which participants valued their school experience and the opportunities, resources and benefits that it provided. One assumption of this project is that parents are committed to providing an educational experience for their children that they believe is valuable. Asking participants about the school choices they have made for their own children provides another window for examining the overall value that they ascribe to their own school experiences.

Participants were also asked about their lived experiences at school, for the purpose of contextualising and interpreting their perceptions of the benefits and limitations of elite private schooling. Asking about their lived experiences at school allowed me to generate insights about the mechanisms that influence whether and how elite private schools provide benefits to alumni. I also asked participants for their view about the benefits and limitations of elite private schooling for the larger society. As alumni, they have unique insights that can be useful for understanding the larger social context of elite private schooling.

Over a period of 1-2 months, loosely structured interviews took place with participants given information about the project (including the research questions) beforehand. Participants were free to nominate their preferred locations and times for their interview, so that they could be comfortable and relaxed during the data collection. On average, the interviews lasted about one hour and were audio-recorded, then transcribed verbatim by www.gotranscript.com, a professional transcription service that specialises in academic transcriptions.

Interviews were conducted using a ‘stem-plus-query’ style of questioning (Cavana,

Sekaran, & Delahaye, 2001), for example, “Could you elaborate on that in a bit more detail?”.

Paraphrasing was used to clarify any misconceptions and style of questioning concentrated on what and why, rather than how, as the intention was to gently guide participants into sharing

60 their lived experiences (Sandberg, 2000) at elite private schools and in later life. these strategies were used to maintain the credibility of the data produced to ensure it was a true and genuine expression by the participants. Therefore each interview took a slightly different path as each participant attached differing values and judgements on their own experiences, and each interview followed slightly different tangents according to what the participant wanted to express.

To begin, participants were asked about their families, including details about where they grew up, the occupations of their parents, numbers of brothers and sisters, and why they think their parents sent them to their elite private school. They were then asked for their general opinions of what their experiences were like at school – did they enjoy school or not, and their reasoning behind that perspective. The majority of the interviews was taken up with exploring participants’ opinions about the long term benefits and disadvantages to them personally of their elite private school education. It was at this point I asked participants if they perceived of any academic benefits of attending their school, and if there were any social benefits or opportunities associated with their schooling. To balance this, I then asked the participants if there were any perceived disadvantages, including academic and social, associated with attending their school.

Next, I considered exploring the inter-generational link by asking participants if they had chosen to send their children to an elite, private school, and what the reasons were for their decisions.

Finally, I concluded the interview by asking the participants for their opinions about elite schools and wider society, whether they saw any benefits or disadvantages to those schools and if, based on everything that we had discussed as well as their opinions on this last issue, they had any recommendations for policy makers about elite private schooling.

Data analysis

Once the interviews were transcribed, they were entered into Nvivo for data analysis.

Nvivo was chosen as the preferred analysis program because it is considered an effective computer software program for developing key themes from qualitative data. It enables rigorous and systematic approaches to developing themes that can be connected to the research questions (Maher, Hadfield, Hutchings, & de Eyto, 2018). One way it does this is by allowing for analysis of different types of data such as interview transcripts, videos, news articles and scholarly research papers, which allows the researcher to guide the analysis rather than the inverse (Feng & Behar-Horenstein, 2019; Zamawe, 2015).

Nvivo was used to create a thematic node structure that helped to develop key themes and common language and vocabulary used across the data collected. Some of the key themes, common phrases and language included:

• Privilege, elite

• Networks and clubs, friendships

• Othering (mostly of students who did not attend elite schools)

• School choice, school as a business

• Expectations, rules, uniforms

The nodes were then extracted to establish patterns, insights and themes across the data for discussion (Feng & Behar-Horenstein, 2019), using Bourdieu’s concepts of social and cultural capital as a guiding framework. ‘Key words in context’ was a data analysis method used as it is one by which the researcher can better understand the vocabulary used by participants and the context in which it is used (Leech & Onwuegbuzie, 2011).

Ethics

Ethics approval for this project was received in June 2018. After receiving university ethics clearance, informed consent was obtained from participants, and they were assigned pseudonyms for confidentiality.

Limitations of the study

Because the study was purely qualitative, it was difficult to ascertain certain markers identified in the literature review with regards to detailed demographics – for example, acquiring information about a participant’s Body Mass Index (BMI), rates of smoking and alcohol consumption, assessment of mental health and earning capacity are probably not the kind of question that can be asked in an intimate, in-depth interview one-to-one. One way to gather this information alongside the in-depth interviews would have been to ask the participants to complete a follow up tick-box, anonymous survey or similar to ascertain correlations with these markers. This aspect of data collection will be incorporated into my doctoral study on the same topic. I also didn’t ask participants whether or not they had married or partnered with someone who had also attended an elite school – although some participants provided this information as part of their interviews. This question will be included in my doctoral research as it will help establish the agency of social capital and the power of intergenerational closure. I did not ask for personal perspectives on their academic ability –some studies have suggested that ability has an equally strong effect on outcomes as parental SES (Marks & McMillan, 2003), although this study sought to examine longer term benefits and disadvantages rather than good education outcomes from high school. I also did not ask participants whether or not they consider themselves to be, or to identify as ‘elite’, having had an elite schooling experience. This could have been important given that some researchers contend that ‘one of the purposes of an elite education is to help students internalize elite status’ (Courtois, 2018, p. 9). It would also be very useful in future iterations of this project to measure or capture the perceptions of public school alumni, to establish any long-term benefits and disadvantages of attending a government school

63 as a contrast to the data collected from elite alumni. This may provide good evidence that may demonstrate the Federal Government's somewhat economically flawed reasoning for funding elite schools.

As I wrote draft after draft of this thesis, I came to realise that perhaps my snowball sampling approach was not the most effective. In future research, it would be more powerful, I believe, to seek out those in influential and elite positions in society (judges, politicians and newspaper editors, for example) who are unknown to me personally. By going straight to the source, I may be able to better measure the extent to which elite, private schools feature in the corridors of power, and why that is so. In connection with the above suggestion about interviewing public school graduates, it would be a compelling piece of research that produces data showing the correlation or causality between elite families, elite schooling and the halls of power.

CHAPTER FOUR: FINDINGS

Well, [elite schooling] does create a sense of exclusion, doesn't it, and a sense of a social hierarchy. Whether you think that's the benefit or not probably speaks to the kind of person you are. – Sylvia

This chapter summarises the findings and provides responses to the research questions based on feedback from participants. It lists the main findings and groups the findings into key themes developed from the data collected.

Findings

In this section I present the findings from each research question.

Research question one: What were participants’ experiences at elite private schools?

Participants reported a mix of school experiences, with some experiencing levels of anxiety and stress and others experiencing happiness and engagement. Male participants, generally, experienced elite schooling positively. For both Drake and Mike, family and home lives were stable and loving, providing secure foundations for their experiences at school.:

For myself I had a great time. I loved it. I absolutely loved it. – Drake

Well, I think having the opportunity with the facilities that I had, I think that was probably better than public school or government school. – Mike

Two female participants viewed their elite schooling positively. Sylvia earned an English scholarship to attend her school and found that the academic environment matched her studious nature:

When I was there, it was just very, very small. It that feel of being quite intimate and everything. I quite liked school ... because I like to study, I really enjoyed learning. I liked doing my homework. – Sylvia

For Milla, coming from a single parent family with a less stable home life, school was a place of safety and security, a place where she felt acknowledged and known by the teaching staff:

The pastoral care was amazing. I thrived at school, and I was really happy there. It was very safe. - Milla

One male and three female participants found their experiences either mixed or anxiety-making and stressful. For both Bill and Shimbo, school was just a place and series of experiences to be tolerated:

I enjoyed some aspects of it. I found some of it constraining. I found some of it disappointing and I think that's probably pretty true for most children, I suspect. – Bill

Generally, I never liked school. I had more hang-ups with having to wear shoes and a uniform. I don't look back at that with nasty memories at all. It's school. It was just school. – Shimbo

For others, namely Bronwyn and Sunday, school was a place of shadows and stress.

Bronwyn, coming from a strict Christian family background, found the cliques of high school difficult to deal with on a daily basis, and was teased for simple things such as carrying the

‘wrong’ bag to school:

I was shadowed with so much anxiety … [school was always] slightly stressful. – Bronwyn

For Sunday, arriving at school in second-hand clothes from a single parent family, the seemingly already formed friendship groups meant that she found fitting in and making friends difficult and distracting from the academic side of her schooling.

[It was] anxiety making, I would suggest … it was a very competitive environment. [It was] clear from the get-go that most of the girls knew other girls already, where I had come from the local public primary school, and there was only one other girl from that school who'd come to Taunton. I really felt on the back foot, immediately, I guess. It was clear that I didn't fit in. The other girl seemed to make friends really quickly, and easily, and be laughing, and happy, and confident, and all those things, and I was none of those things. – Sunday

Research question two: What were participants’ perceptions of the benefits and disadvantages of attending an elite private school?

For some participants, mostly female, the friendships that were formed at school were a key benefit. For others, benefits included exposure to a wide range of subjects and experiences, as well as academic rigour and high expectations. Differences between gender responses were evident and provided significant points of discussion for the females. Many of their comments compared their social capital to those of males, whereas males did not explicitly refer to the social capital acquired at their elite school.

Friendships and networks. All of the female participants except one spoke of friendships being the key benefit of having attended their school. Bronwyn said: “I'm so happy with the people I've met from there … That's the highlight, socially I felt like I went to

[Taunton] with Dora. We're two peas in a pod since we were 14 or 15 or year nine. I couldn't imagine life without her. That's a positive.”

That's where my friendship formed with [X] and we remain really good friends, and ... that's been wonderful, that was great. – Shimbo

I certainly mixed, having a lot of friends that were from families, very well-off families. It probably gives you a perspective of where you could go. – Drake

However, all of the female participants actively eschewed the idea of elite alumni social capital providing economic or financial advantage. Although after Sunday’s child was diagnosed with a brain tumour, her alumni ran a fundraising drive to help her financially through that time:

One of the girls from my year started up a GoFundMe page for me, while he was ill. Girls I hadn't heard from in 25 years, throwing money at it, to support me. I don't know what I would have done without that. That still really sticks in my mind, as something, an incredible act of kindness, a huge kindness. I would say that's the one thing. – Sunday

The two participants who spoke the most – and the most positively - about friendships from school (social capital) were Bronwyn and Milla, both married with two or more children.

Both came from what could be called upper class backgrounds.

Bronwyn’s adoptive parents, business owners, were wealthy Christians with a personal connection to the head teacher of Taunton. Milla’s grandfather was a surgeon, her grandmother a pharmacist, and they helped support her family to pay the school fees for her and her brother to attend Taunton and Lutheran. Her mother decided that she liked the school then worked out how to pay for it later, after enrolment.

Female participants were very clear on the difference between the ways women and men use post-school social capital:

I don't think girls’ schools have the network that all-boys schools have. I don't think girls’ schools network like that and I've never felt that advantage. I've never gone anywhere and been part of an alumni network where there's been favours, jobs, anything like that. I've never felt a sense of that school network doing anything professionally for me. It wasn't that sense of Ravensthorpe getting together as a group of women who studied together, whereas I know the Connell boys were doing it right out of the gate. They were having annual dinners together and it was very much a sense of, ‘We're all going to be doing business together’ and whatever and so on. – Sylvia

I think the old boys use [the network] more than the girls do, absolutely. I think the solidarity that I have with Taunton girls is much more of an affection, than a networking thing. Whereas, I think, for the men it's like, ‘Oh, he went to there, why don't you talk to him, and that will get you somewhere.’ I don't see the women using it in such mercenary ways. - Milla

Interestingly, the male participants did not put great stock in their post-school social capital. The male participants did not use a gendered frame to discuss their concept and value of social capital (none claimed that men and women use social capital differently). None used the phrase ‘old boy’s network’ or similar; only one male participant framed friendships formed during that time as a business or financial advantage post-school:

In terms of social, the personal relationships, I actually developed quite a lot of good personal relationships with various people at … Haversham … in the right environment it

can be helpful because you can say, ‘Oh, I think I remember you from Haversham,’ or whatever. – Bill

Employment opportunities were individualised rather than generated through groups of alumni or connections. Only two participants mentioned post-school employment opportunities in connection to their elite schooling experiences.

I do remember [my mum] said to me, I think I must've been about 19, ‘Oh, so-and-so from your year's working at the Department of Premier and Cabinet, you should ring her up and ask her for a job.’ I couldn’t think of anything more excruciating than asking someone I used to go to school with for a job. I suppose it was never explicitly expressed to me that that was the purpose [of attending an elite school], but certainly in my family, one of my cousins was sent to Dunstan College, and that was the main reason that he was sent there, was to make those connections, and be part of that old boys network, which he loves. – Sunday

If anything, especially in the employment area, it is an advantage as soon as they heard private school they actually went, ‘Oh.’ Which at the time I would inwardly think ‘you're an idiot’. I could be the worst person, you're judging me on my school, but I kind of went, ‘That's fine. I'll use that. I need the job.’ – Shimbo

If you use it expeditiously, in the right environment it can be helpful because you can say, ‘Oh, I think I remember you from [school]’ or whatever. Those sorts of things can be helpful. – Bill

Academic rigour and expectations. Both male and female participants spoke of the academic rigour and expectations that guided them through their elite schooling experiences. They claimed their schooling made them feel that they could go on to do anything they wanted to, and that almost anything could be a viable post-school option. Overall, though, the expectation was that they would attend university after school and that the school would provide the disciplined approach to study required to achieve this post-school outcome.

[School] provided a level of rigor in the educational process, which to a certain degree, helped me. It gave me an exposure to some topics, I might have otherwise have not looked at. – Bill

The school set very high expectations on your achievements. There was a very high expectation that you'd go to university. – Drake

[School gave me a] foundation for thinking that I could do some quite remarkable things, once I'd left school. I suppose it gave me that springboard, which was expanded upon at uni, of critical awareness, and thinking. Thinking beyond what's on the literal page of a book, I'm looking beyond it, is something that school taught me” – Sunday

I think the whole thing about the ethos being at Taunton, it is about being educated, and really using your brain, and doing the best for your brain that you can. Then, socially, as well. I felt there was more discipline in a school like that, that sort of kept us in line. – Milla

Research question three: How did attending an elite private school affect participants’ life opportunities?

Participants found it difficult to identify specific ways that attending an elite private school had affected their life opportunities. However, female participants did credit their elite school with guiding them towards what they felt were good life choices, which paid benefit later in life. More specifically, they claimed that attending their elite school stopped them from making poor life choices around sexuality and illicit drug taking, in contrast to what they perceived was occurring at local public high schools, all of which were located in low SES areas at that time. No male participants spoke of this benefit but rather highlighted their schooling as providing a foundation for future learning opportunities through work, almost a framework through which to experience the world and the career experiences that flow from an elite school education:

When you’re surrounded in that environment of expectation of success and expectation of uni, it drags you out. Put it in a different one and it would drag me down and I'd be like, ‘Yes, I can be a checkout chick now’ - it's too hard, whereas I had a couple of really good teachers that went, ‘No, I'll work with you. Do it.’ – Shimbo

[Taunton] was keeping me out of trouble, because it was strict … if I had gone to Calford Public High, it's very unlikely I would have gone to university, highly unlikely. I definitely would have fallen with a bad crowd, but then I did that, anyway, after high school. – Sunday

If I went to Calford Public High, or Westminster State High School, which were the two in my area … I would have gone off the rails, quite a bit. I would probably have had sex earlier. [Going to Taunton] was probably more about a moral compass, I think, and I wouldn't have focused on being a good student. I'd say Taunton made me, really. – Milla

The only high school option [in our catchment zone] was Askwith State High. In mum's words, there was no way her children were going to Askwith and becoming drug dealers within two weeks of being there. Knowing my personality where I would hit the mischief. Looking back at me at that age, I would have gone the bad road in Askwith. – Shimbo

Bill claimed that his schooling experiences had given him a good foundation for future learning and work:

Having to do English literature, for instance, was quite helpful because it gave you an understanding of constructs in terms of literary techniques. Which could then be applied in different ways. Funnily enough, when I started out doing the research into educational psychology, a lot of those ideas started to flow into the educational psychology frameworks which I then rationalized through logic.

Research question four: What were participants’ opinions of the benefits and disadvantages of elite private schools for wider society?

Participants found it difficult to elucidate any benefits of elite private schools to wider society. However, the more socially privileged the participant, the more muted their views on the disadvantages of elite schools to wider society. The most common sentiment among the participants was that elite schooling played a key role in creating a societal divide between those who could access elite education and those who could not, and that this separation continued to play out beyond school years. This was true for participants who were sending their children to elite private schools or public schools. At least half of the participants in this study had decided to send their own children to an elite private school. Sylvia was considering sending her child to her old, elite school.

That word elite is the clincher. Depriving this idea of depriving other citizens, the communities and you're not part of this. Yes, the big divide. – Bronwyn

It can actually create a separation in education, which is less than ideal. – Bill

[Elite schooling] engenders a very clear us-and-them mentality, which I think is not a good basis for cohesive society. – Sunday

Well, it does create a sense of exclusion, doesn't it, and a sense of a social hierarchy. Whether you think that's the benefit or not probably speaks to the kind of person you are. – Sylvia

There doesn't need to be so many [elite schools]. There's a lot in this area. - Milla

Some interviewees mentioned that elite schools provided a degree of choice to parents, and pushed children to achieve good marks at school:

I don't think you can argue that there are any benefits actually to the wider society. Ultimately, though, fee-paying schools are

about independent schools and about offering an alternative education choice, that's how I would say. – Sylvia

Questionable, if there's any to wider society, of having those schools in existence. You could argue, I suppose, rather crudely that it offers parent's choice, but you know. – Sunday

You're certainly pushed very hard academically to compete against other academic like-minded people. They do tend to drag out a good mark, I suppose. – Drake

Government subsidisation of non-government schools. Participants mostly disagreed with government funding of elite schools, even when they had experienced elite school positively and had gone on to choose elite schools for their own children:

In terms of a private school, the private school is already reaping considerable revenues from the parents paying these additional funds. For them to then get higher government subsidies than the state schools is just wrong in every possible level in terms of that egalitarian part of my mind. – Bill (two children at Catholic private schools)

From a government point of view policy-wise, it's a rock and a hard place because they have a history that they put money into those private schools they're funding. Certainly, the Catholic system is very well-funded from the government. If you cut that funding, throw it back to government schools, are they going to be able to cope with the influx of the students that are going to be coming back into the system? Is it a form of outsourcing of education? Instead of one method, the government's outsourcing the education by funding a business model. They don't need to provide the resources and the infrastructure to keep those kids at school. If they stop giving to private schools probably only 1% or 2% of the population can actually afford to send their kids there. – Drake (one child at an elite school, the second to follow in the coming year)

The government isn't, from my understanding, it doesn't have to support private schools as much as the public. I could be wrong. – Mike (two children, elite schools)

I personally don't think you can argue that it's right that the government subsidizes. If the public school system is struggling so much to even be able to deal with that kind of basic stuff in a classroom, then I don't see how you can justify funding schools with those parents clearly can afford to pay for fees. I can't see how you can justify subsidizing private schools when public education is under so much pressure. – Sylvia (one child, undecided on sector)

Definitely the federal government needs to reduce the money [it pays to private schools]. It'd be interesting to see if the boarding schools get more than the non-boarding schools, because they are supporting the regional and the rural students. – Milla (two children at an elite school)

Summary

In this section of the thesis, I have outlaid the participant responses to the research questions. Female participants spoke of friendships formed and of their elite school as a type of moral compass that prevented them from early sexual behaviour and staying the path to university. Male participants spoke of access to opportunities they felt a public school would not have offered them. Generally, the more well off the participant the more muted their views on the benefits of elite schooling to wider society and on the benefits of continued government funding of elite private schools.

Key themes

The key themes that emerged from the findings can be aligned to Gaztambide-

Fernandez (2009b)’s 5Es of elite schooling, with participants exhibiting at least two of the five across their schooling experiences. Of the 5Es, ‘Entitlement’, exclusion, excellence, and envisioning were all evident across the data and are discussed in greater depth below. They also reflect the intangible resources embedded in elite schooling in terms of social capital theory.

The majority of participants highlighted the academic [scholastic] and social benefit of their time in elite schools. Many participants highlighted that their schools set very high expectations about their futures but also in terms of their values and morals. Male and female experiences in elite schools differed and many females believed males benefited more directly than females. Many themes were time-specific in that many benefits that participants highlighted were related directly to their time at school or immediately after school.

Assuredness and entitlement

In a clear embodiment of Gaztambide-Fernandez (2009b)’s 5Es of elite schooling, none of the participants explicitly acknowledged the privilege of attending an elite school. Perhaps, 74 while no participant could articulate how an elite school privileged their lives long term, the privileges and advantages they acquired were there, if unacknowledged or hidden underneath commentary from participants about checkout chicks and dental nurses, or in how their elite school had assumed and encouraged a pathway to university for all its students. This ingrained privilege becomes internalised as natural and assumed: consider the forced choice of the Year

10 tertiary options handbook. Before embarking on the final two years of high school, students are given an information book that details all the subjects that need to be chosen in order to follow their chosen career, almost all of which are achieved by attending university. Students can become a lawyer, a dentist, a journalist, a doctor – but not less.

This sense of entitlement or assuredness was observed in Milla’s interview:

My mum took me [to Taunton] for swimming lessons, and she said, ‘What do you think of this school? I kind of like this school.’ … She went up to the office, inquired, and got me in. That was it, really, and then, worked out the money afterwards.

For Bronwyn, a deep-seated belief in her own capacity to create a life outside of school is evident, without academic qualifications, imbued with a confidence about how things would turn out:

Interviewer: What did you hope for yourself once you finished school? Where did you see yourself in the future?

Bronwyn: I guess always I'm living my passion. I never thought different to that, so I never thought I'm going to be that, say a receptionist. I know that's not very highly, like there'll be high expectation, but I'm not going to be a receptionist or—

Interviewer: A dental nurse.

Bronwyn: A dental nurse, because I knew that I could never do anything I didn't want to do. I knew that it would be creative. I knew it had to do with patterns and colours and creativity and so that's what I do now.

Tapping into excellence – resources and opportunities

About two thirds of the participants highlighted the academic rigour they experienced as a benefit, but as a benefit of attending the school, rather than a long-term benefit that affected their lives in tangible ways. Their schools set very high expectations about their futures 75 but also in terms of their values and morals. Elite school gave participants exposure to ideas, topics and learning experiences that provided opportunities for critical and creative thinking in a supportive but competitive environment.

You're coming in, they give you a series of opportunities and I was lucky enough to take a number of those opportunities and because I had certain talents, I could take advantage of them. – Bill

Well, I think having the opportunity with the facilities that I had, I think that was probably better than public school or government school. Sporting wise there was gymnasiums and pools and probably all the team sports that you could be involved with. Then if you were music orientated or drama or the manual arts, that the facilities from what I can understand were better than the other ones. - Mike

Exclusion, othering, insulation, mixing with the ‘right’ people

Sunday spoke of the post-school consequences of the insulation from ‘real world’ experiences that occurs at an elite school, echoing Bourdieu (1984)’s notion of distinction, wherein the elite are symbolically distanced from ‘common people’:

It's been a disadvantage as much as anything else, because when, inevitably, those parts of life come along where it's a major dip in life, being a victim of domestic violence, and whatever, you're in a state of complete shock, because this doesn't happen to ‘people like me’. In a sense, it's an assumption in the back of my mind that I'll never end up in public housing, because I've got a degree and I went to Taunton. That's never going to happen. There was an insulation, stuff that happened to other people, not Taunton people. That was outside the realm of possibilities of what would happen in life. – Sunday

This is evident in Drake’s interview, when he reveals why his parents chose to send him to Haversham, and in Mike’s interview:

There was no specific reason other than they didn't want me to go to the obvious [local, public] school because they felt that was too full of farmers. - Drake

They wanted me to go to a school with a different mix, to a different group of people to what I've what I've grown up with. Basically just expand. I would say another decision for my parents and probably myself as well it just have my kids mix with probably medium to upper-class society and not get dragged into some of the lower actions of what lowest or some of the lowest society can get involved with. - Mike

Insulation

Sunday spoke of the post-school consequences of the insulation from ‘real world’ experiences that occurs at an elite school and this is part of what Maxwell and Aggleton

(2010) and Howard (2008) call ‘othering’, where “isolation is fairly consistent in the various spheres of these students’ lives. They have little contact with the … life circumstances of others.” (p.199) Whether active or passive participants in the hegemonic state within the elite school environment, Sunday and her classmates were clustered together, purportedly as one against the wider world and all its vagaries, with a limited range of ‘real world’ experiences and contact with other, non-elite student groups: “little contact with the life and educational circumstances of those different from themselves, particularly with less social status” (Benjamin et al., 2010, p. 199). Zanten (2015) posits that this homogeneity of the elite school encourages the ‘development of very limited frames of reference within which young people can position themselves … so that small differences in degrees of … merit between them and close peers achievement loom larger than wider social differences.’

Avoiding the checkout chick jobs

Perhaps, while no participant could articulate how an elite school privileged their lives long term, the privileges and advantages they acquired were there, if unacknowledged or hidden underneath commentary about checkout chicks or in how their elite school had assumed and encouraged a pathway to university for all its students. This ingrained privilege becomes internalised as natural and assumed: consider the forced choice of the Year 10 tertiary options handbook: students can become a lawyer, a dentist, a journalist, a doctor – but not a dental nurse, a subject raised in the interview with Bronwyn. This is a subtle element of the stratification process that elite schools take part in, a disavowal of class (Kenway, 2017). As

Gaztambide-Fernandez (2009a) so aptly stated: [elite students] “learn to lead lives of distinction 77

… the power of social class is hidden in notions of and feelings about individual worth, dignity and respectability.” (p.197)

This bubble of privilege is one also alluded to by both Shimbo and Bronwyn. Both claim that they are convinced their elite school experiences meant that they would never become

‘checkout chicks’ or ‘dental nurses’, an othering of themselves from those students in the state system.

Akin to the Westonian bubble of ‘eliteness’ portrayed in Gaztambide-Fernandez

(2009a)’s The Best of the Best, both Shimbo and Bronwyn draw a symbolic and figurative boundary to distinguish their experiences from other people, as though manning a checkout or becoming a dental nurse (rather than becoming the dentist themselves, a figurative and literal hierarchy of employment status) is somehow a sign of failure and a non-return on investment; by rejecting a lower class occupation a new, higher class identity begins to be crafted and internalised as elite; occupations such as ‘checkout chick’ become the domains of the lower classes. Bronwyn and Shimbo have constructed a social class dichotomy that separates the privileged from everyone else (Howard, 2008).

Class disavowal

While many research study participants are reluctant to self-identify with a specific social class, or to use social class as a reason for why society is organised a certain way, social class is still ‘a strong organising structure within people’s narratives’ (Maxwell & Aggleton, 2010). The

‘othering’ of people outside of the elite school has been reported in the research literature and was found in my study as well. Students at government schools were compartmentalised as

‘other’, implied to be of less value to society, and government schools were considered places only for working class people. And again, the implication is that it is the individual’s fault/problem responsibility for their own successes and failures, rather than the spotlight shifted

78 to the system that is set up to advantage some but not most others. It is an ‘other’s’ fault if they end up at state school with low ambitions to man a checkout at a supermarket.

Elite schools often tout their commitment to social justice or equity, to demonstrate and validate their good character: “this commitment has considerable ideological value for elites in diverting attention away from their privileged circumstances and thus protecting, rationalizing and legitimizing their advantages.” (Howard & Kenway, 2015, p.1013). Sunday told of how her old school, Taunton, demonstrated this:

They wrote to me asking for a donation to a Hardship Fund. In the letter, the principal said that ‘we know you fully appreciate the importance of giving back to your community’. This offended me on so many levels.

Often elite schools create the appearance of virtue in wider socio-political contexts in which egalitarian values appear to be highly valued (for example, scholarships and bursaries).

For Sunday, the letter, complete with reply-paid envelope, was a powerful actualisation of class disavowal and denial, the double-edged sword of beneficence.

Mixing with a different, better crowd

Indeed, this othering is evident in Drake’s interview, when he reveals why his parents chose to send him to Haversham, and in Mike’s interview, where intergenerational hegemony plays out. Mike justifies his class disavowal by claiming that he possesses insider knowledge when it comes to mixing with a better-quality crowd and othering public schools, presenting his thoughts as though logical, normal, natural.

Delineating the boundaries between social classes appears to have a homogenising effect, especially for the way in which those labelled as working class are viewed by those who position themselves outside of this category (Maxwell & Aggleton, 2010). Associating with, or schooling with, public school students is viewed as dangerous, risky, and a threat to future

79 academic and moral successes. It is this assumption, this othering of non-elite students that emerges throughout many interviews for this project.

More morals, better discipline, less sex

None of the male but most of the female participants gave an almost saviour-like status to their school, as though attending it had prevented them from ‘going off the rails’ either at all or much earlier in life. One participant associated attending public school with having sex at an early age and another claimed that elite school stopped her from falling in ‘with a bad crowd’ but went on to admit that she did that anyway, post-school. Many stated that this perception

(without phrasing it as such) was the reason their parents had chosen elite schools for them.

Shimbo’s school choices for her own children, as well as the choices made for her by her parents, reflect this othering of public schools:

Interviewer: How did you end up at Taunton?

Shimbo: Because the only high school option [in our catchment zone] was Askwith State High. In mum's words, there was no way her children were going to Askwith and becoming drug dealers within two weeks of being there. Knowing my personality where I would hit the mischief. Looking back at me at that age, I would have gone the bad road in Askwith.

I had just always presumed [my children] would go to a private school because there was zero chance of moving into a public, secondary school at all. Again, our option for our [local] public high school was horrific. It's a very bad reputation there. There was no way that we're going there. My husband was public secondary and he presumed public secondary [for them] and I went, "Hell no."

I think from a discipline and behaviour point of view, I can see a downside to public [schools] because they don't have the ability to reign in the kids.

Milla’s affording of Taunton with a moral compass and the two nearest public schools as places in which students were able to ‘go off the rails’ and make poor choices about their sexual health implies heavily that students attending a state school are immoral, lacking the capacity to make responsible, long-term choices.

If I went to Calford High, or Westminster, which were the two [public high schools] in my area … I would have gone off the rails, quite a bit. I would probably have had sex earlier. [Going to Taunton] was probably more about a moral compass, I think, and I wouldn't have focused on being a good student. I'd say Taunton made me, really. – Milla

These sentiments are echoed in Shimbo’s perceptions of how adolescent sexuality is approached in private and public schools:

[My daughter] was only in the Christian college for a term, but I [knew] there was zero chance of them teaching her these, I know that they'll learn, she doesn't need to learn sexual positions in year 10, so no. Whereas in the public school I don't know whether you can say that, I don't know. - Shimbo

This othering is present in Milla’s comments about why she chose elite private schools for her sons, namely, to avoid perceived chances of ‘blokey bullying’ and exposure to undisciplined and unchecked socialising, or risky behaviours:

Shipley State College was just too big, and also a bit mixed results in terms of, I see a lot of girls going there with a lot of makeup on. There's a lot of pressure on them to … to socialize more than educate. It's really about them being teenagers, and nubile sexual sort of thing, and that's not what you need when they're trying to concentrate and go to school. That was the rationale. - Milla

Shimbo’s school choices for her own children, as well as those choices made for her by her parents, reflect this othering of public schools. Milla’s affording of Taunton with a moral compass and labelling the two nearest state schools as places in which students were able to

‘go off the rails’ and make poor choices about their sexual health implies heavily that students attending a state school are immoral, lacking the capacity to make responsible, long-term choices. These sentiments are echoed in Shimbo’s perceptions of how adolescent sexuality is approached in private and public schools. This othering is present in Milla’s comments about

81 why she chose elite private schools for her sons, namely, to avoid perceived chances of ‘blokey bullying’ and exposure to undisciplined and unchecked socialising, or risky behaviours.

Bourdieu, a founder of the concepts of cultural and social capital, goes a step further in exploring and asserting the elite’s self-exclusion as complicit in the development of social and cultural capital – by avoiding places that aren’t for ‘people like us’ (Ball, 2010). Hence elites will cluster in areas that are for ‘people like them’: elite schools being one of those places, where all types of capital align and mesh. This can be seen as a key benefit of elite education. However, only one participant, Mike, spoke of this specifically as a reason for sending his children to elite schools, so that they will mix with upper and upper- middle class children, and avoid potential

‘riff-raff’. Other participants, like Shimbo, however, made reference to it.

Summary

In summary, most participants found it difficult to pinpoint specific ways in which attending an elite school had benefited their lives longer term. Some participants spoke of elite school attendance positively affecting their initial post-school employment opportunities but that the effects of school sector levelled out after a period of time.

Post-school social capital was interpreted differently depending on gender. Female participants eschewed post-school networks as an advantage, with alumni females focused on maintaining friendships that began at school. All the male participants and most of the female participants spoke generally in positive terms about post-school networks and opportunities that arose from attending an elite school, although these opportunities tended to present closer to year of graduation than later in life.

About one-half of participants felt that attending an elite school prevented them from making poor life choices related to sexual health and risk-taking behaviour such as drinking alcohol or taking drugs. About two-thirds of the participants felt strongly that attending an elite school gave them a good foundation for future learning and set them on a clear pathway to

82 university and higher education, which they felt they would not have experienced in the public school system.

None of the participants explicitly acknowledged the privilege of attending an elite school.

CHAPTER FIVE: DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

“While the public education system is often viewed as lacking resources to the point of crisis and is sometimes blamed for issues such as teenage violence or drug abuse private elite schools present themselves as the last surviving bastions of proper education and the guarantors of moral order.” – Courtois (2018)

In this chapter, I consider the underlying implications of the data and its key themes.

Core themes revealed from the findings frame the discussion and contribute to new knowledges in the field of elite schooling: gendered and generational social capital perceptions; elite schools as saviour/othering; as well as elite schooling and the wider community. Literature is used to support, affirm and contradict the findings and recommendations are provided for future studies and policy reform.

All participants exhibited at least two of Gaztambide-Fernandez (2009a)’s five Es of elite education, as per the table seen below. While almost all the participants could list at least one or two benefits of elite schooling for themselves, their children and the wider community, but much of the feedback related to benefits that occurred within the context of the time they attended the school, not explicitly after school.

Table 3: Tabulation of participants’ experiences and the 5Es of elite education (Gaztambide-Fernandez, 2009b)

Entitlement Engagement Exclusion Excellence Envisioning

Milla

Bronwyn

Shimbo

Sylvia

Sunday

Mike

Drake

Bill

Social capital perceptions were gendered and generational

Social capital refers to these intangible resources and can be conceived in terms of; obligations and expectations, information channels and social norms (Coleman, 1988). It is also important because it ‘facilitates the acquisition of financial rewards’ (Buerkle & Guseva, 2002).

The concept of social capital provides this study with a useful theoretical construct for highlighting the disparities in students’ educational experiences at the individual, institutional and societal level.

All the female participants except one spoke of friendships being the key benefit of having attended their school. It should be noted that friendships that first developed at school are not unique to elite schools – they occur at institutions of different kinds, around the world.

It could be argued that, rather, it is the limited range of demographic mixes of students who attend elite private schools that makes these forged bonds so potentially powerful, even though female participants maintained they did not use the friendships for economic or financial benefit. It was expected that the data from this study would fall in line with the data produced about social capital in other studies (Buerkle & Guseva, 2002; Coleman, 1997; Denord,

Hjellbrekke, Korsnes, Lebaron, & LeRoux, 2011; Ream & Palardy, 2008; Reeves et al., 2017;

Zweigenhaft, 1992 & 1993) and that it would translate into clear economic benefit. But only one female mentioned using her elite schooling experience to help with employment post- school and only one male made similar comments.

The two participants who spoke the most – and the most positively - about friendships from school were Bronwyn and Milla, both married with children. Both came from what could be called privileged backgrounds, certainly when compared with the other participants for this study. Bronwyn’s adoptive parents, who were business owners, were also wealthy Christians with a personal connection to the head teacher of Taunton. Milla’s grandfather was a surgeon, her grandmother a pharmacist, and they helped support her family to pay the school fees for her and her brother to attend Taunton and Lutheran. Her mother decided that she liked the school then worked out how to pay for it later, after enrolment. This help from affluent grandparents – a reliance on generational [historical] wealth - is part of the economic resources that Zanten (2015) found in her research are critical to explaining access to elite education tracks. However, Bronwyn left Taunton at the end of Year 10 and became an independent businesswoman and Milla forged a career in broadcast media after completing a bachelor’s degree. Neither claimed to have used their schooling for economic benefit.

All the female participants actively eschewed the idea of elite alumni social capital providing economic or financial advantage. Male participants did not use a gendered frame to discuss their concept and value of social capital and only one male participant framed friendships formed during that time as a business or financial advantage post-school. Given the large numbers of parents who enrol their children in order to access the wealth of social capital available at elite schools, questions can and should be asked whether elite schooling actually provides that access and whether or not the exorbitant fees are a worthy investment for those parents. Buying accessing to friendships seems a little unnecessary when they can be found at any institution, and especially unnecessary if no financial gain is to be had from that investment.

Questions could also be asked about the deliberate ways in which single sex elite private schools use social capital and networking. There could be potential economic consequences for women if they do not approach social capital as an economic or financial opportunity post-school. This could call into doubt a climb to leadership positions by not

86 utilising the networks women made at school, as men in an ‘old boys’ network’ (a phrase used by female participants in this study) may do. It is possible that there are situations of women remaining at lower management levels while men have been quite open about utilising their social networks for economic and financial benefit after school. It would be interesting to examine this at mixed-sex schools in future research.

There is also the idea that social capital is something that elite private schools actively cultivate and nurture because it is a source of future funding. Old boys’ and old girls’ fundraisers are very common at elite schools; Sunday’s letter from Taunton about the school’s hardship fund exemplifies this. “Another indicator of the high levels of economic capital in families connected with elite schools is the amount of money collected from past pupils when schools launch appeals for funds, a common practice when a school needs money for a new building or project.” (Courtois, 2018, p. 54). Drake and Sylvia also touch on this: that parents were often

‘hit up’ for donations to help build the new music room or swimming pool. If a school sends out 10,000 letters to its elite alumni, even just one or two donors could well be enough to build the new pool. By this end, elite private schools could have the capacity to create a unified and closed community that continues to inculcate and hoard advantage and privilege for those within; they become continuous creators and nurturers of social capital for economic benefit

(Benjamin et al., 2010; Cookson & Persell, 1985; Howard, 2008) to the school and beyond.

Private school effects were diffused when compared to US and UK

The benefits of social capital acquired at these Perth elite private schools appears to be diffused, in direct contrast with experiences at American and British elite private schools

(Gaztambide-Fernandez, 2009a; Howard, 2008; Kenway & Koh, 2015; Maxwell & Aggleton,

2014; Peshkin, 2001; Zweigenhaft, 1992 & 1993). None of the male participants used the phrase ‘old boys’ network’ to frame how their elite education benefited them post-school and no participants referred to being members of any elite clubs or networks.

It could be argued that the diffusion occurs because in Australia the education might be considered elite but few of the cohort could be defined as elite or very privileged. As so many children attend private school in Australia it is a relatively normalised part of everyday culture, albeit one subsidised by governments. In both the UK and USA, elite private secondary schooling is restricted to a very small portion of the wider population. With their highly restrictive fee structure, it is only the very wealthy who can access them (Benjamin et al., 2010;

Cookson & Persell, 1985; Gaztambide-Fernandez, 2009b; Kenway & Koh, 2015; Maxwell &

Aggleton, 2014; Reeves et al., 2017; Wakeling & Savage, 2015).

The American elite schooling landscape is very different to Australia’s. The handful of

US elite schools in operation do not receive government subsidies, are very expensive to attend and educate a tiny percentage of the high school population (Gaztambide-Fernandez,

2009a; Howard, 2008). It could be said that the ‘elite school effect’ is diffused here as there are so many of them: in America there are very few, and a much greater population, so it could be said the effect is more concentrated, especially when considering the size of the population.

Australia’s population is about 24.5 million people, while North America’s population is about

327 million Proportionately, far fewer Americans attend private schools (5.8 million in 2017 according to the US National Center for Education statistics) compared to Australians (35% or

875,000). It should be noted that a very minute percentage of those students attend an elite private school, a far smaller number and proportion than in Australia.

Yet while the effects may be diffused it cannot be denied that there are still substantial benefits to an elite education for some of its graduates. An examination of the current Liberal

Government’s federal cabinet shows a very high percentage of ministers who attended an elite private secondary school, most of whom were educated in Sydney or Melbourne. Very few attended a public school (the current prime minister, Scott Morrison, attended an academically select high school). Appendix C details the schools and tuition fees for each cabinet Minister.

Another possible explanation for the diffused benefits found in my study compared to the international literature may be related to the stratification of higher education institutions.

Higher education is much less stratified in Australia than in the US or UK. Certainly the “Group of Eight” universities in Australia (the Universities of Melbourne, Sydney, Queensland, NSW,

WA, Adelaide, the Australian National University and Monash University) enjoy high levels of prestige and status. But the difference between these and the other universities in Australia are much less marked, however, than in the US or UK. For example, almost all universities in

Australia are public, and fees do not vary by university. By contrast, universities are much more stratified in the US and UK, and elite universities are extremely well resourced and extremely selective. Attending an elite private secondary school in the US and UK facilitates access to these highly selective and competitive universities (Benjamin et al., 2010; Gaztambide-

Fernandez, 2009a; Howard, 2008). Attending one of these elite universities, in turns, is associated with many benefits. In the UK studies have shown that attending a Russell Group university, especially Cambridge or Oxford, creates a great wealth of opportunities for its participants (Reeves et al., 2017; Savage et al., 2013; Sullivan et al., 2016); similarly attending

Harvard, Yale or other Ivy League university sets a student up for life but is very difficult to access without a great deal of financial resources, elite social connections or academic brilliance

(Gaztambide-Fernandez, 2009a).

Elite schools and wider society

The most common sentiment that featured across the data was that elite schooling played a key role in creating a societal divide between those who could access elite education and those who could not, and that this separation continued to play out beyond school years.

This sentiment implies that for some, the existence of elite schooling was not about its divisive effects upon society but rather the division and inequity that comes about from access, or lack of access, to elite education in the first place. This was true for participants who were sending

89 their children to elite schools or public schools, although opinions became more muted and neutral the more privileged the participant. Could it be argued that this is a type of Marxist false consciousness (Brantlinger, 2008)? Mike and Drake were either resolutely ambivalent about elite schools in society or felt their function was to ‘sort’ through the riff-raff so that their children would not be exposed to ‘those types’ of people, echoing Howard (2008)’s adroit observation of elite schools that its “[students] have little contact with the ‘ugly’ school and life circumstances of Others.”

It could be argued that elite schools provide a higher quality of education than public schools for its students and that students who achieve the highest have tried the hardest. This is manifested in the wider pool of potential students that elite schools now have available to them in Australian society, a pool that is widened with tax rebates and benefits to the stakeholders and normalised by policy and the media as ‘school choice’. Zanten et al. (2015) contended that it is this wider pool that legitimates elite schools’ place in a meritocratic and competitive education marketplace; yet “their prestige and power are enhanced by the services they now seem to provide to other, frequently disadvantaged, schools and communities.” (p. 7).

Participants were clear that they were choosing schools for their children just as their parents had chosen specific schools for them.

The participants acknowledged that elite schools have access to social and cultural resources that are disproportionately high compared to what the rest of society can access or utilise. Because this richness isn’t shared around, or shared around in a deeply, infrastructural way, they not only inculcate advantage but keep it for themselves and thusly maintain their own position, indeed, pass it on to the next generation as normal, natural and a result of hard work and ability.

Elite schools use meritocracy as a form of distinction and class disavowal – a common rhetoric is that they achieve great outcomes through merit and hard work not through intergenerational transmission of privilege and access to the most excellent of resources.

Appendix B provides examples from each elite school’s mission statement, values statement or marketing material that demonstrates this. But elite schools self-select and reject specific populations. As a business, they are able to pick and choose who they would like as clients - failing students can be eased out and it is possible that those students who are considered unlikely to achieve high results are not admitted at all. This technique of self-selection includes offering scholarships and bursaries, with elite schools claiming that they are really helping disadvantaged students to get ahead, but, as Sylvia attests in her interview, winners are cherry picked from subject areas and from other school sectors to ‘value-add’ to the elite school and its results. Attributing success to intelligence and diligence is a key strategy that elite schools utilise effectively. This denies the considerable economic and educational resources that are used to achieve success. Kenway (2017) contended that elite schools claim they are diverse and inclusive, which speaks to their virtues of tolerance and hospitality, but really, international students and boarders are enrolled because they pay extortionately high fees. It could further be argued that this is promoted as an act of beneficence whereby international students can reap the benefits of a top-level Western education but in fact it conceals the diversity that they do not want to accommodate, namely, economic and social diversity.

Understanding the ‘economy of eliteness’ … requires us to go beyond any notion that elites/the upper class produce their economic power and other forms of power on their own. It requires a recognition that their economic power is also shored up by the work of others … by their uses of their financial capital and by their own hegemonic endeavours. (Howard & Kenway, 2015, p. 1020)

Anderson (1990, p. 106) claimed that “the public and private school systems in

Australia are in disequilibrium … the operation of a private system (largely government funded) alongside a public school system, but with fewer responsibilities, is causing the destabilisation and decline of public education.” That it is now considered relatively ‘normal’ to choose a school for a child, rather than attend the local public school, contributes to subjugation of

91 government responsibilities. To appear to ‘compete’ in the education marketplace, to partake in this façade of school choice, public schools are now obligated or expected to run specialist programs to cement a unique selling point in the marketplace; this includes ‘gifted and talented’ programs, for which an extraordinary secondary tutoring industry has exploded in popularity among those parents who can afford to pay a tutor but not to move suburbs or pay for a private school. Brantlinger (2008) contends that this competitive schooling environment is

‘socially and emotionally damaging to all children, including the supposed … winners in the system’.

Findings and literature review: areas of alignment and non-alignment

The key themes from the literature review showed that according to critical theorists such as Bourdieu, when the social and cultural capital of a student is mis-aligned with that of their school, disadvantage occurs (Bernstein, 2003; Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977). This was borne out by one participant, Sunday. Conversely, when all the capitals align, advantage occurs and this was true for almost all the participants, with all but one continuing to higher education and/or independent business ownership.

The literature review showed that research on elite schools is typically related to

Gaztambide-Fernandez (2009b)’s 5Es of elite schooling (entitlement, engagement, exclusion, envisioning and excellence) and some, but not all, of these factors were notable in the participants’ lived experiences at their elite schools. Moreover, they were less notable in their post-school lives.

The literature also indicated that a person’s existing social class correlates to the types of benefits and disadvantages experienced at an elite school (Maxwell & Aggleton, 2014). This was only partially evidenced in this study. With such a small pool of participants it is difficult to say with any certainty that there was a clear correlation between a participant’s social class and their experiences. Bronwyn and Milla could be seen as very privileged or elite and both have

92 gone on to be business owners and entrepreneurs. Mike finished elite schooling and, after a time, took over his parents’ business. No participant did worse than their parents. This aligns with much of the literature indicating that elite schooling confers advantage that aligns with the social class and SES of the students before they begin at the school.

However, Milla claimed that Taunton ‘made her’, where Sunday, coming from a lower middle-class background, experienced elite school as an ‘affect alien’, feeling one-step removed from the student cohort. Neither could say with any specificity that attending an elite school had provided them with long-term benefits or disadvantages, although social capital advantages and intangible resources were implied within the responses and actions of the participants.

Adding to existing theoretical understandings

Social capital refers to intangible resources being conceived in terms of obligations and expectations, information channels and social norms (Coleman, 1988), as well as networks and connections that can be transformed into economic capital (Bourdieu, 1986a). The findings from this study evidence that both definitions are partly true in the Australian context, with some participants mentioning the high expectations their schooling environment placed upon them and fewer participants using a gendered frame to attribute the financial benefit of their elite networks post-school.

Bourdieu’s predictions of the benefits of social and cultural capital in elite schools were not clearly evidenced by the findings in this study. When he considered French schools,

Bourdieu claimed that it was cultural capital that was a key element of the transmission of advantage through education. Social capital, the network of relationships, was a “product of investment strategies, individual or collective ... aimed at establishing or reproducing social relationships ... directly usable in the short or long term.” (Bourdieu, 1986b, p. 249). In this study, women talked about friendships formed and how males utilised the social capital of elite schooling, but no male participants referenced this. In theory this framework should have

93 worked, given its application to studies of elite schooling in other countries, however, it did not.

Friendships formed at school occur regardless of sector or exclusivity. One possible explanation for this is that while the education the participants received could be defined as elite using

Gaztambide-Fernandez’s 5E model, not all of the participants were from elite or exclusive, upper class backgrounds.

The study also showed that the elite schooling effect is not as obvious as it might seem in the US or the UK but rather, appears as diffused. Compared to the literature from those contexts, the benefits uncovered in my study are less marked and less unique. It is possible that this was because so many more children are educated at elite schools in Perth by comparison to the numbers in the US or the UK. As a country with a buoyant economy and high standard of living, it could be argued that economically healthy levels of income in Australia increase the capacity and willingness of parents to pay significant amounts of money for a secondary education. However, in the US and the UK, elite schooling is reserved for the very elite in society and their tuition fees reflect this, to the point of being significantly beyond the reach of most parents. With almost 35% of children attending a private school in Australia, a good portion of those attending an elite private school, the exclusivity element is reduced.

Limitations

Certain life markers that were initially identified in the literature review with regards to detailed demographics and elite schooling, such as an individual’s BMI, assessment of their own mental health or earning capacity were not ascertained with the participants of this study. Given the style of the data collection – in-depth, one-on-one interviews – it was the opinion of the interviewer that they were not the types of questions that could be asked in an intimate, in- depth interview one on one. However, I could have asked the participants to complete a follow up tick-box, anonymous survey or similar to ascertain correlations with these markers as a less

94 confrontational method of acquiring the information. The links between these markers and elite private school education in Australia will be followed up in doctoral level study.

Participants were also not specifically asked whether or not they had married or partnered with someone who had also attended an elite private school, despite the literature drawing attention to the power of intergenerational closure (Carbonaro, 1998; Zweigenhaft,

1992 & 1993) and its effects of social capital and education outcomes. This aspect will also be pursued at doctoral level as this line of inquiry will help to establish the agency of social capital and the power of intergenerational closure on the long-term benefits for elite school attendees.

I also did not ask participants whether or not they consider themselves to be, or to identify as ‘elite’, having had an elite schooling experience. This could have been important given that some researchers contend that ‘one of the purposes of an elite education is to help students internalize elite status’ (Courtois, 2018, p. 69).

It would also be illustrative in future iterations of this project to capture and measure the perceptions of public school alumni, to establish any long-term benefits and disadvantages of attending a government school, alongside more in-depth perspectives of elite private school alumni. Generating research that examines school sector benefits and disadvantages would add value to the ongoing debates about sector effectiveness, school funding, school choice and other policy decisions, along with adding to the research on education inequity and achievement outcomes that are often related in the media to school sector. No research has yet examined the perspectives of elite and government school alumni to compare experiences and perceptions of the quality of their education and connected this to the school choices they are making for their own children.

95 contacts. By going straight to the source, I may be able to better measure the extent to which elite, private schools feature in the corridors of power, and why that is so. In connection with the above suggestion about interviewing public school graduates, it would be a compelling piece of research that produces data either confirming or denying the hypothesis that elite private schooling provides demonstrable benefits for all its attendees.

Implications and recommendations

While this project looked specifically at elite, private school alumni from Perth, Western

Australia, and thus is small in scope and stature, it does offer some insight and new knowledge about the phenomenon of elite private schooling in contemporary Australia. The aim of this study was to capture the opinions and perspectives of people who attended an elite private school. The findings from this study have implications for individuals, institutions and the wider community. Recommendations are provided below alongside suggestions for future research opportunities.

The majority of the participants expressed negative or muted views on government funding of elite schools, even when they had experienced elite school positively and had gone on to choose elite schools for their own children, again echoing that notion that Brantlinger

(2008) describes as a type of false consciousness.

Recommendation 1:

More research into elite private schooling should explore Australian-specific findings and implications so that the Australian experience does not go unexamined but contributes to what is already known about elite schooling. More projects on this subject could contribute to a burgeoning international field of research literature and provide a unique point of interest, given that the Australian elite system is different to that in Europe and America and educates a disproportionately high number of students compared with other countries. As the findings

96 from this study show, although the education experience was elite, the participants mostly were not, and it could be implied that the ‘elite effect’ is diffused as a result which, it could be argued, is some evidence that government investment in the private education sector does not provide good value for money.

Recommendation 2:

We should continue to examine funding arrangements for elite private schools and consider whether that funding provides an appropriate return on investment for the public sector.

Questions could be asked as to whether private school sector subsidies have been an effective policy approach that has improved education outcomes and provided good value for money.

Although a small scale sample, the limited benefits outlined by the participants of this study, and their mostly muted views on whether elite private schools are of benefit to society, indicate that perhaps the high cost of such an education and the high levels of government subsidisation do not provide a significant long-term investment. Australian elite private schools receive substantial funding from the federal government, educate on average about 35% of high school aged students and there are plenty of elite-level schools in each state (Western Australia has at least ten elite private schools). By subsidising elite private schools there are less resources available for those students in the public system, which educates the majority of children in

Australia.

Future Research

Many adaptations can be made to this study for future research at doctoral level.

Widening the pool of participants beyond Western Australia could help add vigour and weight to the results as well as having the data reach saturation point. A study of 10 or fewer participants can only provide a limited amount of data and this makes policy recommendations

97 difficult. It would be difficult to use such a small piece of research for wide-reaching policy changes or initiatives regardless of its underlying principles of social justice.

There is still the question of the prevalence of elite school alumni in powerful position such as in government and the law. Clearly elite schooling has some influence that was not evidenced in this study and exploring this is a priority for this research at doctoral level.

Examining the experiences of alumni from other school sectors (Catholic, public) would also enable connections to be made between long term benefits, such as career choices, levels of income and health and wellbeing. Incorporating perspectives from across the sectors may also provide answers as to why benefits and disadvantages of secondary school sector perhaps are not so different after all.

In terms of the methodology, using a mixed methods approach would aid the capture of extra data missed in this study, such as earning capacity, Body Mass Index and alcohol consumption, retaining a sense of caution about self-reported data.

Conclusion

This study has captured some of the voices of elite private school alumni to investigate their experiences, perceptions and opinions about the benefits, advantages and disadvantages of elite schools for themselves and the wider community.

There is no research that says outright that elite schools are a benefit to society, and, indeed, the participants in this study were not able to say how elite schools provide wider benefit to society. Some female participants cited friendships formed as a benefit of attending an elite private school, but friendships can be formed at any school and is not unique to one institution. However inherent biases and benefits toward elite school systems were embedded in the responses, lived experiences and actions of the participants within this study. Some participants noted the elite school’s capacity for ‘sorting the riff-raff’ while others credited their school with steering them away from poor lifestyle choices such as taking drugs or risky sexual

98 behaviour, a factor that affected school choice for their own children in some circumstances.

Certainly, the more privileged the participant, or the higher their SES, the more muted their critiques of elite schooling in general. No participant explicitly acknowledged the privilege of attending an elite school, although one participant, Sylvia, mentioned that she felt privileged to have received her scholarship to her elite school.

While we can research elite schools and how their existence damages education equity and a fair and just society, what we are not focusing on is how governments and businesses perpetuate this divide and play a role in maintaining such a system. We must look beyond participants in small scale studies to deeply and critically consider the system in which elite schooling continues to operate unabated, buoyed by federal government funding and donations from privileged benefactors. Changes are called for if we are to answer the question posed in the introduction, whether we want equality of access and opportunity, or equality of results, or both.

If, as the research data (Carbonaro, 2006; Chesters, 2018; Cobbold, 2015; Dronkers &

Robert, 2008) suggests, there is little to no difference in outcomes between the sectors, questions can, and should be asked as to why there is such a push towards school choice; and why must there be funding arrangements for all of the sectors.

Australia’s growing private school sector is due partly to the growth of Commonwealth funding for private schools (Watson & Ryan, 2010) and middle class Australians’ search for advantage (Ball, 2003a; Brantlinger, 2003a; Lareau, Evans, & Yee, 2016; Pini, McDonald, &

Mayes, 2012; Rowe & Windle, 2012). School enrolment data in Australia has seen government school enrolments increasing by 1.2% compared to non-government enrolment figures increasing to 34.6% over the last decade. The Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows almost

34% of Australian secondary students attend a non-government school (Statistics, 2018) with

Western Australian numbers above the average with non-government, secondary school

99 enrolments at almost 50% of the population. Clearly the non-government sector fills a need and is not disappearing any time soon.

The characteristics of elite schools in Australia and the system in which they operate are under-studied. The more knowledge and data that becomes available about elite schooling and its place within the education system, the more capacity for sectors to learn from each other and work towards an equitization of the playing field for all children.

100

REFERENCES

Allan, A; & Charles, C. (2014). Cosmo Girls: Configurations of Class and Femininity in Elite Educational Settings. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 35(3), 333-352. doi:10.1080/01425692.2013.764148 Anderson, DS. (1990). The Public/Private Division in Australian Schooling: Social and Educational Effects. In Saha, L; & Keeves, JP (Ed.), Schooling and Society in Australia: Sociological Perspectives (pp. 87-110). Sydney, NSW: Australian National University Press. Anyon, J. (1981). Social Class and School Knowledge. Curriculum Inquiry, 11(1), 3-42. doi:10.1080/03626784.1981.11075236 Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2018). Schools in 2018. (4221.0). Retrieved May 2019, from www.abs.gov.au Ball, S. (2003a). Class Strategies and the Education Market: The Middle Classes and Social Advantage: Taylor and Francis. Ball, S. (2003b). The Risks of Social Reproduction: The Middle Class and Education Markets. London review of education, 1(3), 163-175. doi:10.1080/1474846032000146730 Ball, S. (2010). New Class Inequalities in Education. The International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 3(30), 155-166. doi:10.1108/01443331011033346 Ball, S. (2015). Elites, Education and Identity. In Zanten, Ball, & Darchy-Koechlin (Eds.), World Year Book of Education 2015: Elites, Privilege and Excellence: The National and Global Redefinition of Educational Advantage. Florence: Routledge. Ball, S. (2016). The Future of Elite Research in Education. In Maxwell & Aggleton (Eds.), Elite Education: International Perspectives (pp. 69-75). London: Routledge. Ball, S; Bowe, R; & Gewirtz, S. (1996). School Choice, Social Class and Distinction: The Realization of Social Advantage in Education. Journal of Education Policy, 11(1), 89-112. doi:10.1080/0268093960110105 Beavis, A. (2004). Why Parents Choose Public or Private Schools. ACER, 12(12), 1-5. Benjamin, B; DiAquoi, R; Gaztambide-Fernández, R; Khan, S; Kuriloff, P . . . Howard, A (2010). Educating Elites: Class Privilege and Educational Advantage. Lanham: R&L Education. Bernstein, B. (2003). Class, Codes, and Control. Volume I, Theoretical Studies Towards a Sociology of Language. London;New York;: Routledge. Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. London; Melbourne;: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Bourdieu, P. (1986a). The Forms of Capital. In Halsey, Lauder, Brown, & Wells (Eds.), Education, Culture, Economy Society (6 ed., pp. 46-58). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1986b). The Forms of Capital. In Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education (pp. 241-258). Westport CT: Greenwood. Bourdieu, P; & Passeron, JC. (1977). Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture. London: SAGE. Bowles, S. (1977). Unequal Education and the Reproduction of the Social Division of Labour. In Karabel & Halsey (Eds.), Power and Ideology in Education (pp. 137-151). United Kingdom: Oxford University Press. Brantlinger, L. (2003a). Dividing Classes : How the Middle Class Negotiates and Rationalizes School Advantage. London, UNITED KINGDOM: Routledge. Brantlinger, L. (2003b). Dividing Classes: How the Middle Class Negotiates and Rationalizes School Advantage. New York: Routledge Falmer. Brantlinger, L. (2008). Playing to Middle-Class Self-Interest and School Equity. In Weis (Ed.), The Way Class Works: Readings on School, Family and the Economy (pp. 243-255). Florence: Routledge Ltd.

101

Brown, P. (2013). Education, Opportunity and the Prospects for Social Mobility. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 34(5-6), 678-700. doi:10.1080/01425692.2013.816036 Brown, P; Halsey, A; Lauder, H; & Wells, AF. (2003). Education, Culture, Economy and Society (6 ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Buerkle, K; & Guseva, A. (2002). What Do You Know, Who Do You Know?: School as a Site for the Production of Social Capital and Its Effects on Income Attainment in Poland and the Czech Republic. The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 61(3), 657-680. doi:10.1111/1536-7150.00184 Campbell, C. (2010). Class and Competition. In Connell, Welch, Vickers, Foley, & Bagnall (Eds.), Education, Change and Society (pp. 93-129). Melbourne, Victoria: Oxford University Press. Campbell, C; Proctor, H; & Sherington, G. (2009). School Choice: How Parents Negotiate the New School Market in Australia. Crows Nest, N.S.W: Allen & Unwin. Carbonaro, W. (1998). A Little Help from My Friend's Parents: Intergenerational Closure and Educational Outcomes. Sociology of Education, 71(4), 295-313. doi:DOI: 10.2307/2673172 Carbonaro, W. (2006). Public-Private Differences in Achievement among Kindergarten Students: Differences in Learning Opportunities and Student Outcomes. American Journal of Education, 113(1), 31-65. doi:10.1086/506493 Carbonaro, W; & Covay, E. (2010). School Sector and Student Achievement in the Era of Standards Based Reforms. Sociology of Education, 2(83), 160-182. Cassells, R; Dockery, M; Duncan, A; & Seymour, R. (2017). Educate Australia Fair? Education Inequality in Australia. Retrieved from https://bcec.edu.au/publications/educate-australia- fair-education-inequality-australia/ Cavana, RY; Sekaran, U; & Delahaye, BL. (2001). Applied Business Research: Qualitative and Quantitative Methods (Australian ed.). Milton, Qld: J. Wiley & Sons Australia. Chesters, J. (2018). The Marketisation of Education in Australia: Does Investment in Private Schooling Improve Post-School Outcomes? Australian Journal of Social Issues, The, 53(2), 139-157. doi:10.1002/ajs4.38 Clark, D; & Bono, D. (2016). The Long-Run Effects of Attending an Elite School: Evidence from the United Kingdom. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 8(1), 150-176. doi:doi: 10.1257/app.20130505 Cobbold, T. (2015). A Review of Academic Studies of Public and Private School Outcomes in Australia. Retrieved from http://www.saveourschools.com.au Codd, J; Gordon, L; & Harker, R. (2010). Education and the Role of the State: Devolution and Control Post-Picot. In Halsey, Lauder, Brown, & Wells (Eds.), Education, Culture, Economy, Society (pp. 263-272). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Coleman, J. (1988). Social Capital and Schools. Education Digest, 53(8), 6. Coleman, J. (1997). Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital. In Halsey, Lauder, Brown, & Wells (Eds.), Education, Culture, Economy & Society (pp. 80-95). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Connell, R. (2002). Making the Difference, Then and Now. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 23(3), 319-327. doi:10.1080/0159630022000029812 Connell, RW; Ashenden, DJ; Kessler, S; & Dowsett, GW. (1982). Making the Difference: Schools, Families and Social Division. Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Considine, G; & Zappalà, G. (2002). The Influence of Social and Economic Disadvantage in the Academic Performance of School Students in Australia. Journal of Sociology, 38(2), 129- 148. doi:doi:10.1177/144078302128756543 Cookson, P; & Persell, C. (1985). Preparing for Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools. Coulson, A. (2009). Comparing Public, Private, and Market Schools: The International Evidence. Journal of School Choice, 3(1), 31-54. doi:10.1080/15582150902805016

102

Courtois, A. (2018). Elite Schooling and Social Inequality: Privilege and Power in Ireland's Top Private Schools. London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Creswell, J. (2012). Educational Research : Planning, Conducting, and Evaluating Quantitative and Qualitative Research (4 ed.). University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Boston Pearson. Crozier, G; Reay, D; & James, D. (2011). Making It Work for Their Children: White Middle- Class Parents and Working-Class Schools. International Studies in Sociology of Education, 21(3), 199-216. doi:10.1080/09620214.2011.616343 Demerath, P; Lynch, J; Milner, H; Peters, A; & Davidson, M. (2010). Decoding Success: A Middle-Class Logic of Individual Advancement in a U.S. Suburb and High School. Teachers College Record, 112(12), 2935-2987. doi:http://libproxy.murdoch.edu.au/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/87910 0407?accountid=12629. Denord, F; Hjellbrekke, J; Korsnes, O; Lebaron, F; & LeRoux, B. (2011). Social Capital in the Field of Power: The Case of Norway. The Sociological Review, 59(1), 86-108. doi:10.1111/j.1467-954X.2010.01994.x Deresiewicz, W. (2008). The Disadvantages of an Elite Education77(3), 20. Retrieved from The American Scholar. Washington, 77(3). Drew, C. (2013). Elitism for Sale: Promoting the Elite School Online in the Competitive Educational Marketplace. Australian Journal of Education, 57(2), 174-184. doi:10.1177/0004944113485838 Dronkers, J; & Robert, P. (2008). Differences in Scholastic Achievement of Public, Private Government-Dependent, and Private Independent Schools. Educational Policy, 22(4), 541-577. doi:doi:10.1177/0895904807307065 Dyson, M. (2007). My Story in a Profession of Stories: Auto Ethnography: An Empowering Methodology for Educators. Australian Journal of Teacher Education (Online), 32(1), 36- 48. doi:10.14221/ajte.2007v32n1.3 Estrada, R; & Gignoux, J. (2017). Benefits to Elite Schools and the Expected Returns to Education: Evidence from Mexico City. European Economic Review, 95, 168-194. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euroecorev.2017.03.007 Feng, XL; & Behar-Horenstein, L. (2019). Maximizing Nvivo Utilities to Analyze Open-Ended Responses. The Qualitative Report, 24, 563+. Forbes, J; & Lingard, B. (2015). Assured Optimism in a Scottish Girls’ School: Habitus and the (Re)Production of Global Privilege. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 36(1), 116- 136. doi:10.1080/01425692.2014.967839 Frenette, M; & Chan, P. (2015). Academic Outcomes of Public and Private High School Students: What Lies Behind the Differences? Statistics Canada, Social Analysis and Modelling Division(367), 1-25. Gannicott, K. (2016). Did Gonski Get It Right?: School Funding and Performance. Policy: A Journal of Public Policy and Ideas, 32(2), 10-19. Gaztambide-Fernandez, R. (2009a). The Best of the Best: Becoming Elite at an American Boarding School. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Gaztambide-Fernandez, R. (2009b). What Is an Elite Boarding School? Review of Educational Research, 79(3), 1090-1128. doi:10.3102/0034654309339500 Gaztambide-Fernandez, R; Cairns, K; & Desai, C. (2013). The Sense of Entitlement. In Maxwell & Aggleton (Eds.), Privilege, Agency and Affect: Understanding the Production and Effects of Action (pp. 32-49). United Kingdom: Palgrave Macmillan UK. Gaztambide-Fernandez, R; & Howard, A. (2010a). Outlining a Research Agenda on Elite Education. In Howard & Gaztambide-Fernandez (Eds.), Educating Elites: Class Privilege and Educational Advantage (pp. 195-207). Lanham: R&L Education.

103

Gaztambide-Fernandez, R; & Howard, A. (2010b). Why Study Up? In Howard & Gaztambide- Fernandez (Eds.), Educating Elites: Class Privilege and Educational Advantage (pp. 1-7). Lanham: R&L Education. Gaztambide-Fernandez, R; & Maudlin, D. (2016). School Choice and the Production of Elite Status in the USA and Canada. In Maxwell & Aggleton (Eds.), Elite Education: International Perspectives (pp. 55-68). London: Routledge. Gaztambide-Fernández, R; & Howard, A. (2012). Access, Status, and Representation: Some Reflections from Two Ethnographic Studies of Elite Schools. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 43(3), 289-305. doi:doi:10.1111/j.1548-1492.2012.01181.x Germov, J. (2004). Which Class Do You Teach? Education and the Reproduction of Class Inequality. In Allen (Ed.), Sociology of Education (pp. 250-269). Southbank, Victoria: Social Sciences. Gonski, D. (2011). Review of Funding for Schooling: Final Report. Canberra: Review of Funding for Schooling. Hamdan, A. (2012). Autoethnography as a Genre of Qualitative Research: A Journey inside Out. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 11(5), 585-606. doi:10.1177/160940691201100505 Hayes, D. (2010). Young People and School. In Connell, Welch, Vickers, Foley, & Bagnall (Eds.), Education, Change and Society (pp. 1-20). Melbourne, Victoria: Oxford University Press. Henward, A; & Grace, D. (2016). Kindergartners’ Development of Privileged Subjectivities within an Elite School. Children & Society, 30(6), 488-498. doi:10.1111/chso.12157 Howard, A. (2008). Learning Privilege: Lessons of Power and Identity in Affluent Schooling. New York: Routledge. Howard, A. (2010). Stepping Outside Class: Affluent Students Resisting Privilege. In Howard & F. Gaztambide (Eds.), Educating Elites: Class Privilege and Educational Advantage (pp. 79- 95). Lanham: R&L Education. Howard, A; & Kenway, J. (2015). Canvassing Conversations: Obstinate Issues in Studies of Elites and Elite Education. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 28(9), 1005- 1032. doi:10.1080/09518398.2015.1077536 Johnston, G. (1990). The Sociocultural Schism in Australian Schooling. Australian Journal of Education, 34(1), 25-40. doi:10.1177/000494419003400102 Kenway, J. (2013). Challenging Inequality in Australian Schools: Gonski and Beyond. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 34(2), 286-308. doi:10.1080/01596306.2013.770254 Kenway, J. (2017). Elite Schools, Class Disavowal and the Mystification of Virtues. Social Semiotics, 27(3), 265-275. doi:10.1080/10350330.2017.1301791 Kenway, J; & Fahey, J. (2014). Staying Ahead of the Game: The Globalising Practices of Elite Schools. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 12(2), 177-195. doi:10.1080/14767724.2014.890885 Kenway, J; & Fahey, J. (2015). The Gift Economy of Elite Schooling: The Changing Contours and Contradictions of Privileged Benefaction. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 36(1), 95-115. doi:10.1080/01425692.2014.970268 Kenway, J; Fahey, J; & Koh, A. (2013). The Libidinal Economy of the Globalising Elite School Market. In Maxwell & Aggleton (Eds.), Privilege, Agency and Affect: Understanding the Production and Effects of Action (pp. 15-31). United Kingdom: Palgrave Macmillan UK. Kenway, J; & Koh, A. (2015). Sociological Silhouettes of Elite Schooling. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 36(1), 1-10. doi:10.1080/01425692.2015.977557 Kenway, J; Langmead, D; & Epstein, D. (2015). Globalizing Femininity in Elite Schools for Girls: Some Paradoxical Failures of Success. In Zanten & Ball (Eds.), World Yearbook of Education 2015 : Elites, Privilege and Excellence: The National and Global Redefinition of Educational Advantage (pp. 153-168). Florence: Routledge.

104

Kingston, P; & Lewis, L. (1990). The High-Status Track: Studies of Elite Schools and Stratification. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Konstantinou, I. (2015). What Are Middle-Class Parents Looking for in a School? Retrieved from The Conversation website: https://theconversation.com/what-are-middle-class-parents- looking-for-in-a-school-50278 Lareau, A. (1987). Social Class Differences in Family-School Relationships: The Importance of Cultural Capital. Sociology of Education, 60(2), 73-85. doi:10.2307/2112583 Lareau, A. (2011). Concerted Cultivation and the Accomplishment of Natural Growth (2 ed., pp. 1): University of California Press. Lareau, A. (2015). Cultural Knowledge and Social Inequality. American Sociological Review, 80(1), 1-27. doi:10.1177/0003122414565814 Lareau, A; Evans, S; & Yee, A. (2016). The Rules of the Game and the Uncertain Transmission of Advantage: Middle-Class Parents’ Search for an Urban Kindergarten. Sociology of Education, 89(4), 279-299. doi:10.1177/0038040716669568 Lareau, A; & Weininger, E. (2003). Cultural Capital in Educational Research: A Critical Assessment. Theory and Society, 32(5/6), 567-606. Leech, N; & Onwuegbuzie, A. (2011). Beyond Constant Comparison Qualitative Data Analysis: Using Nvivo. School Psychology Quarterly, 26(1), 70-84. doi:10.1037/a0022711 Lubienski, C; Crane, C; & Lubienski, S. (2008). What Do We Know About School Effectiveness? Academic Gains in Public and Private Schools. Phi Delta Kappan, 89, 689+. Lubienski, S; & Lubienski, C. (2006). School Sector and Academic Achievement: A Multilevel Analysis of Naep Mathematics Data. American Educational Research Journal, 43(4), 651- 698. doi:10.3102/00028312043004651 Maher, C; Hadfield, M; Hutchings, M; & de Eyto, A. (2018). Ensuring Rigor in Qualitative Data Analysis: A Design Research Approach to Coding Combining Nvivo with Traditional Material Methods. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 17(1), 1609406918786362. doi:10.1177/1609406918786362 Manen, M. (1997). Researching Lived Experience, Second Edition : Human Science for an Action Sensitive Pedagogy: Routledge. Marks, G. (2015). School Sector Differences in Student Achievement in Australian Primary and Secondary Schools: A Longitudinal Analysis. Journal of School Choice, 9(2), 219-238. doi:10.1080/15582159.2015.1028827 Marks, G; & McMillan, J. (2003). Declining Inequality: The Changing Impact of Socio-Economic Background and Ability on Education in Australia. The British Journal of Sociology, 54(4), 453-471. doi:10.1111/j.1468-4446.2003.00453.x Marsden, P. (2005). The Sociology of James S. Coleman. Annual Review of Sociology, 31(1), xii- 24. doi:10.1146/annurev.soc.31.041304.122209 Maxwell, C. (2015). Elites: Some Questions for a New Research Agenda. In Zanten, Ball, & Darchy-Koechlin (Eds.), World Year Book of Education 2015: Elites, Privilege and Excellence: The National and Global Redefinition of Educational Advantage. Florence: Routledge. Maxwell, C; & Aggleton, P. (2010). The Bubble of Privilege. Young, Privately Educated Women Talk About Social Class. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 31(1), 3-15. doi:0.1080/01425690903385329 Maxwell, C; & Aggleton, P. (2013). Becoming Accomplished: Concerted Cultivation among Privately Educated Young Women. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 21(1), 75-93. doi:10.1080/14681366.2012.748682 Maxwell, C; & Aggleton, P. (2014). The Reproduction of Privilege: Young Women, the Family and Private Education. International Studies in Sociology of Education, 24(2), 189-209. doi:10.1080/09620214.2014.919091

105

Maxwell, C; & Aggleton, P. (2015). Researching Elite Education: Affectively Inferred Belongings, Desires and Exclusions. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 28(9), 1065-1080. doi:10.1080/09518398.2015.1074751 Maxwell, C; & Aggleton, P. (2016). Elite Education: International Perspectives. London: Routledge Ltd. McCandless, T. (2015). Classing Schools. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 36(6), 808-820. doi:10.1080/01596306.2014.970129 Ngunjiri, F; Hernandez, K; & Chang, C. (2010). Living Autoethnography: Connecting Life and Research. Journal of Research Practice, 6(1), E1. OECD. nd. Public and Private Schools: OECD Publishing. OECD. (2011). Private Schools: Who Benefits. Pisa in Focus(7), 1-4. doi:doi:https://doi.org/10.1787/5k9h362mhtkd-en Perry, L; & Southwell, L. (2014). Access to Academic Curriculum in Australian Secondary Schools: A Case Study of a Highly Marketised Education System. Journal of Education Policy, 29(4), 467-485. doi:10.1080/02680939.2013.846414 Peshkin, A. (2001). Permissible Advantage?: The Moral Consequences of Elite Schooling. Mahwah, N.J: L. Erlbaum Associates. Pini, B; McDonald, P; & Mayes, R. (2012). Class Contestations and Australia’s Resource Boom: The Emergence of the ‘Cashed-up Bogan’. Sociology, 46(1), 142-158. doi:10.1177/0038038511419194 Pitard, J. (2017). A Journey to the Centre of Self: Positioning the Researcher in Autoethnography. Forum : Qualitative Social Research U6, 18(3). Polidano, C; Hanel, B; & Buddelmeyer, H. (2013). Explaining the Socio-Economic Status School Completion Gap. Education Economics, 21(3), 230-247. doi:10.1080/09645292.2013.789482 Preston, J. (2013). Community Involvement in School: Social Relationships in a Bedroom Community. Canadian Journal of Education / Revue canadienne de l'education, 36(3), 413- 437. Proctor, H. (2011). Masculinity and Social Class, Tradition and Change: The Production of 'Young Christian Gentlemen' at an Elite Australian Boys' School. Gender and Education, 23(7), 843-856. doi:10.1080/09540253.2010.549114 Ream, R; & Palardy, G. (2008). Reexamining Social Class Differences in the Availability and the Educational Utility of Parental Social Capital. American Educational Research Journal, 45(2), 238-273. doi:doi:10.3102/0002831207308643 Reed-Danahay, D. (2004). Locating Bourdieu. Bloomington, UNITED STATES: Indiana University Press. Reeves, A; Friedman, S; Rahal, C; & Flemmen, M. (2017). The Decline and Persistence of the Old Boy: Private Schools and Elite Recruitment 1897 to 2016. American Sociological Review, 82(6), 1139-1166. doi:10.1177/0003122417735742 Robert, P. (2010). Social Origin, School Choice, and Student Performance. Educational Research and Evaluation, 16(2), 107-129. doi:10.1080/13803611.2010.484972 Rowe, E; & Windle, J. (2012). The Australian Middle Class and Education: A Small-Scale Study of the School Choice Experience as Framed by ‘My School’ within Inner City Families. Critical Studies in Education, 53(2), 137-151. doi:10.1080/17508487.2012.672327 Saltmarsh, S. (2016). Elite Education in the Australian Context. In Maxwell & Aggleton (Eds.), Elite Education: International Perspectives (pp. 42-54). London: Routledge. Sandberg, J. (2000). Understanding Human Competence at Work: An Interpretative Approach. The Academy of Management Journal, 43(1), 9-25. doi:10.2307/1556383 Savage, M; Devine, F; Cunningham, N; Taylor, M; Li, Y; Hjellbrekke, J; . . . Miles, A. (2013). A New Model of Social Class? Findings from the BBC’s Great British Class Survey Experiment. Sociology, 47(2), 219-250. doi:10.1177/0038038513481128

106

School Curriculum & Standards Authority (2017). Year 12 Student Achievement Data. Western Australia: Government of Western Australia. School Curriculum & Standards Authority (2018). School Comparison Statistics. (STS009). Western Australia: Western Australian State Government. Sheppard, J; & Biddle, N. (2017). Class, Capital, and Identity in Australian Society. Australian Journal of Political Science, 52(4), 500-516. doi:10.1080/10361146.2017.1364342 Smith, J. (2019). Participants and Researchers Searching for Meaning: Conceptual Developments for Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 16(2), 166-181. doi:10.1080/14780887.2018.1540648 Song, H. (2017). The Cost of Attending an Elite College. Economics Letters, 159, 173-176. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econlet.2017.07.029 Sriprakash, A; & Proctor, H. (2018). Social Class and Inequality. In Connell, Welch, Vickers, Foley, & Bagnall (Eds.), Education, Change and Society (pp. 112-138). Melbourne, Victoria: Oxford University Press. Stuber, J. (2010). Class Dismissed? The Social Class World Views of Privileged College Students. In Howard & F. Gaztambide (Eds.), Educating Elites: Class Privilege and Educational Advantage (pp. 131-151). Lanham: R&L Education. Sullivan, A. (2001). Cultural Capital and Educational Attainment. Sociology, 35(4), 893-912. doi:doi:10.1177/0038038501035004006 Sullivan, A; Parsons, S; Green, F; Wiggins, R; & Ploubidis, G. (2018). The Path from Social Origins to Top Jobs: Social Reproduction Via Education. The British Journal of Sociology, 69(3), 776-798. doi:doi:10.1111/1468-4446.12314 Sullivan, A; Ploubidis, G; Parsons, S; Bann, D; & Hamer, M. (2016). Does an Elite Education Benefit Health? Findings from the 1970 British Cohort Study. International Journal of Epidemiology, 46(1), 293-302. doi:10.1093/ije/dyw045 Tan, C. (2015). The Contribution of Cultural Capital to Students’ Mathematics Achievement in Medium and High Socioeconomic Gradient Economies. British Educational Research Journal, 41(6), 1050-1067. doi:10.1002/berj.3187 Teese, R. (1989). Australian Private Schools, Specialization and Curriculum Conservation. British Journal of Educational Studies, 37(3), 235-252. doi:10.2307/3121280 Teese, R. (1998). Curriculum Hierarchy, Private Schooling, and the Segmentation of Australian Secondary Education, 1947-1985. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 19(3), 401-417. doi:0142-5692/98/030401-17 Teese, R. (2005). For Which Young People Do Schools Work Well and Why? . In Richardson & Prior (Eds.), No Time to Lose: The Wellbeing of Australia’s Children (pp. 240-253). Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Press. Teese, R; & Polesel, J. (2003). Undemocratic Schooling: Equity and Quality in Mass Secondary Education in Australia. Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Press. Tranter, D. (2012). Unequal Schooling: How the School Curriculum Keeps Students from Low Socio-Economic Backgrounds out of University. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 16(9), 901-916. doi:10.1080/13603116.2010.548102 Vickers, M. (2010). Curriculum. In Connell, Welch, Vickers, Foley, & Bagnall (Eds.), Education Change and Society (pp. 309-335). Melbourne, Victoria: Oxford University Press. Wakeling, P; & Savage, M. (2015). Elite Universities, Elite Schooling and Reproduction in Britain. In V. Zanten & Ball (Eds.), World Yearbook of Education 2015 : Elites, Privilege and Excellence: The National and Global Redefinition of Educational Advantage (pp. 169-183). Florence: Routledge. Watson, L; & Ryan, C. (2010). Choosers and Losers: The Impact of Government Subsidies on Australian Secondary Schools. Australian Journal of Education, 54, 86+.

107

Weis, L; & Cipollone, K. (2013). 'Class Work': Producing Privilege and Social Mobility in Elite Us Secondary Schools. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 34(5-6), 701-722. doi:10.1080/01425692.2013.816037 Wiesel, I; & Levin, I. (2018). Cohesion and Differentiation in Australia's Elite Suburbs. Geographical Research, 56(4), 410-420. doi:doi:10.1111/1745-5871.12268 Willis, P. (1977). Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs. London: Saxon House. Windle, J; & Stratton, G. (2013). Equity for Sale: Ethical Consumption in a School-Choice Regime. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 34(2), 202-213. doi:10.1080/01596306.2013.770247 Zamawe, FC. (2015). The Implication of Using Nvivo Software in Qualitative Data Analysis: Evidence-Based Reflections. Malawi medical journal : the journal of Medical Association of Malawi, 27(1), 13-15. Zanten, v., A (2015). A Family Affair: Reproducing Elite Positions and Preserving the Ideals of Meritocratic Competition and Youth Autonomy. In v. Zanten (Ed.), World Year Book of Education 2015: Elites, Privilege and Excellence: The National and Global Redefinition of Educational Advantage. Florence: Routledge. Zanten, v, A. (2016). Promoting Equality and Reproducing Privilege in Elite Educational Tracks in France. In Maxwell & Aggleton (Eds.), Elite Education: International Perspectives (pp. 115-125). London: Routledge. Zanten, v., A; Ball, S; & Darchy-Koechlin, B. (2015). World Yearbook of Education 2015 : Elites, Privilege and Excellence: The National and Global Redefinition of Educational Advantage. Florence: Routledge. Zweigenhaft, R. (1992). The Application of Cultural and Social Capital: A Study of the 25th Year Reunion Entries of Prep School and Public School Graduates of Yale College. Higher Education, 23(3), 311-320. doi:10.1007/BF00145019 Zweigenhaft, R. (1993). Prep School and Pub lic School Graduates of Harvard: A Longitudinal Study of the Accumulation of Social and Cultural Capital. The Journal of Higher Education, 64(2), 211-225.

108

Appendices

Appendix A: Student enrolments by state or territory and sector, 2018

Australian Bureau of Statistics (2018). Schools in 2018. (4221.0). Retrieved May 2019, from ABS

109

Appendix B

Elite private schools in Perth: school mottos, religious affiliations, tuition fees, confirmation fees, total annual cost

School School motto Religious Year 10 Confirmation Total cost School marketing phrases on affiliation tuition fee of enrolment for one publications, eg ‘vision’, ‘core values’ (L indicates translated fee year from Latin) Scotch May God be with us, Uniting Church $27, 740 $7415 $35, 155 To develop young men with strength of character, College as He was with our self-understanding, a passion for sustained learning forefathers (L) and spiritual inquiry who will become active members of the global community Hale School Duty (L) Anglican $26, 970 $8100 $35, 070 Always striving to be the finest versions of ourselves by giving our personal and collective best and making the most of each opportunity Christ God is our leader, Anglican $27, 620 $6905 $34, 525 A school renowned for building good men to make Church learning is our light (L) a positive difference in their world. Grammar School Presbyterian By work and with Presbyterian $27, 792 $4800 $32, 592 As an organisation we are leaders; we also teach Ladies’ honour (L) our girls how to be leaders by developing College themselves and their leadership potential. Being successful requires courage and we promote this through our ‘have a go attitude’, which is central to life at PLC. Methodist Strive for the highest Methodist $26, 825 $5310 $32, 135 Each and every MLC girl is special, and we celebrate Ladies’ (L) her individual gifts and talents. She gives her best in College all that she does, and grows to serve her community and beyond, as a leader on her chosen path in life. Penrhos Strive for the highest Uniting Church $25, 256 $5679 $30, 935 Our purpose is clear – to inspire girls to become College (L) extraordinary women. This notion of ‘extraordinary’ means helping support each girl to become the best she can be, as she grows in character and uses her unique gifts, talents and passions to their full potential.

110

Perth College For the church of God Anglican $25, 011 $5642 $30, 653 We help girls grow braver and stronger. Using the (L) science of positive psychology and our unique model of self-leadership and wellbeing, we enable girls to flourish. St Hilda’s Lord direct us (L) Anglican $25, 450 $5078 $30, 528 Beyond the academic excellence which St Hilda's Anglican pursues it proudly offers all its students an School for education strong in traditional values of honesty, Girls hard work, respect and academic rigour, designed to prepare each student to be future-ready. Wesley By daring & by doing Uniting Church $24, 607 $4921 $29, 528 We believe that every student has powerful College (L) capabilities, skills and talents. Our goal is to support them in activating this potential in order to create their own future. [To] be intellectually, physically and artistically engaging. [To] be vibrant, caring and connected to strive for personal best and pursue excellence. St Mary’s Faithfully (L) Anglican $23, 175 $5560 $28,375 We are committed to nurturing confident and Anglican Girls’ caring young women who embrace opportunities School and contribute meaningfully to their community, both within and beyond school. Guildford Go forward (L) Anglican $22, 653 $2860 $25,513 Inspiring students to achieve personal excellence Grammar and to be outstanding citizens who work to create a just, loving and peaceful society. All Saints To serve with wisdom Anglican $24, 560 $132 $24, 692 We believe in creating dynamic learning College and courage environments that encourage self-aware students who are committed to the pursuit of personal excellence in all they do. Our dedicated staff, combined with our unique programs, support each student in fulfilling his or her potential. Aquinas Truth conquers (L) Roman Catholic $18, 221 $2804 $21, 025 We open hearts and minds, through quality College teaching and learning experiences, so that through critical reflection and engagement each person is hope-filled and free to build a better world for all. Trinity In the name of the Roman Catholic $16, 010 $2150 $18, 160 Our goal is to see each boy be the best he can be, College Lord (L) lead a fulfilling life and be active and responsible citizens of the future. To do this, we provide a multi-faceted approach to education, with four distinct areas of focus, or as we refer to them, the Four Pillars. These Pillars – Faith, Academics,

111

Culture and Sport – are the foundation of Trinity College life.

112

Appendix C

Members of the Australian Commonwealth Government cabinet as at

October 2019, secondary schools attended with tuition fees

Name and position School attended Cost of one year’s tuition – Year 10

Scott Morrison Sydney Boys High School – academic selective $2517 public school Prime Minister Ken Wyatt Unknown Unknown

Minister for Indigenous Affairs Michael McCormack Trinity Senior High School (later merged into Unknown Kildare Catholic College), Wagga Wagga Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development

Alan Tudge Haileybury College, Victoria $33, 560

Minister for Population, Cities and Urban Infrastructure Bridget McKenzie Tintern Grammar School, Victoria $29, 028

Minister for Regional Services, Sport, Local Government and Decentralisation

Josh Frydenberg Mt Scopus College, Victoria $36, 950

Treasurer Bialik College, Victoria $35, 950 Mathias Cormann Unknown Unknown

Minister for Finance and the Public Service Linda Reynolds Jakarta Intercultural School $11, 704

Minister for Defence

Marise Payne MLC School, Burwood, Sydney $30, 664

Minister for Foreign Affairs

Minister for Women Simon Birmingham Gawler & District College, South Australia $370

Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment Christian Porter MP Hale School, Perth $26, 970

Attorney-General

113

Peter Dutton MP St Paul’s School, Queensland $14, 950

Minister for Home Affairs Michaelia Cash Iona Presentation College, Perth $12, 840

Minister for Employment, Skills, Small and Family Business

Matthew Canavan Chisolm Catholic College, Queensland $5116

Minister for Resources and Northern Australia Karen Andrews Townsville Grammar School, Queensland $12, 380

Minister for Industry, Science and Technology Dan Tehan Xavier College, Melbourne $31, 360

Minister for Education Greg Hunt Peninsula Grammar (previously The Peninsula $27, 120 School, Victoria) Minister for Health Anne Ruston Renmark College, South Australia Unknown

Minister for Families & Social Services

Stuart Robert Rockhampton Grammar School, Queensland $10, 388

Minister for NDIS & Government Services Paul Fletcher Sydney Grammar School $36, 615

Minister for Communications, Cyber- Safety & the Arts David Littleproud Toowoomba Grammar School, Queensland $16, 420

Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources

Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Drought Preparation and Response

Sussan Ley Dickson College, ACT Unknown

Minister for the Environment Angus Taylor The King's School, Parramatta, NSW $34, 586

Minister for Energy

114

115