‘As if by osmosis’: How Ofsted’s new deficit model emerged, fully formed, as cultural capital

Abstract

This paper considers recent developments in English education policy as, confirming promises made in the 2016 White Paper, Educational Excellence Everywhere, schools are now to concentrate on the realisation of a knowledge-based curriculum, one that allows all students to ‘acquire’ cultural capital. First, the remodelling of Bourdieu’s concept, designed to explain class privilege, means that the cultural capital is now a mechanism for disciplining schools and teachers who fail to deliver the required curriculum. Second, in going beyond the social inclusion advocated by previous governments, this version of cultural capital has simply recycled the 1950s notion of cultural deprivation, turning it into a ‘knowledge deficit’ to be explained with reference to the work of ED Hirsch. It remains to be seen if ‘Hirsch-knowledge’ offers anything more than passive consumption of approved content, and the paper ends with a discussion of the implications for students of the new curriculum.

Artistic Production and (Re)production: Youth Arts Programmes as Enablers of Common Cultural Dispositions

“…Despite the young people never articulating that they wanted to enter the ‘mainstream’, the high arts of theatres and galleries, they did accumulate capitals that were of significance for the Cultural Industries through ‘common cultural dispositions’. The Arts Award programme within informal and alternative education settings did not enable young people to ‘catch up to the mainstream’ through consuming existing forms of cultural capital, as recently problematically set out by Ofsted 6 (Birkenshaw and Temple Clothier, 2021; Nightingale, 2020). Under settings with more of a youth focus, the programme offered a counter-cultural movement.…”

The (white) ears of Ofsted: A raciolinguistic perspective on the listening practices of the schools inspectorate

“…Our analysis is part of a broader critique of the inspectorate's practices, which shows how they have long held political and ideological influence on the activities of schools (e.g. Gallagher 2010; Perryman, Maguire, Braun, & Ball 2018; Nightingale 2020). We draw on research within the sociology of education which conceptualises the inspectorate as a technology of vertical surveillance (Page 2017).…”

“…This is especially pertinent given that Ofsted increasingly draw on discourses of social justice in its policies. For instance, Ofsted (2019b:8) argue how disadvantaged children require access to ‘cultural capital’, including standardised English, which frames schools as spaces in which minoritised, racialised children are required to model their language practices on the white speaking subject (see also Nightingale 2020). This meritocratic myth that if marginalised speakers simply modify their language practices to conform with benchmarks set by white listeners, then this will solve social inequality is a core tenet of a raciolinguistic ideology, despite the fact that the white listening subject—such as the inspectorate—will continue to hear these students’ language as insufficient (Flores & Rosa 2015).…”

‘Different people, different backgrounds, different identities’: Filling the vacuum created by policy views of ‘cultural capital’

“…While it is perfectly valid to suggest that both thinking about, and critique of, Bourdieu's original use and definition of the term has moved on as a consequence of societal change (e.g. Savage et al, 2015; Yosso, 2005) it is quite clear that this interpretation‐a ‘remodelling of cultural capital’, in Paul Nightingale's (2020) words, produces a ‘deficit model’ of learning in which schools are seen to need to be commanded to teach certain kinds of knowledge because they are, apparently, not doing so. It is this remodelling – or as Norman Fairclough suggests (see below) – ‘rewording’ of cultural capital that interests us most here.…”