An examination of the making of privilege at one of Britain’s top boys’ schools

Alumni of Britain’s elite schools are consistently overrepresented in positions of power and influence. It is no surprise, then, that elite schools play a pivotal role in reproducing inequality. In An Elite Education, Emma Taylor draws on years of immersive ethnographic research and teaching experience at one of Britain’s leading private boys’ schools to highlight how these institutions cultivate the dispositions that propel students into elite universities and professions.

Taylor finds that elite schools provide a forgiving, flexible and exclusive training ground, enabling students to push boundaries, bend rules and negotiate with those in authority. She argues that this ability to navigate elite spaces with confidence—which she conceptualises as “audacity”—is a carefully cultivated form of privilege that is frequently mistaken for merit. Behind the formal façade of architecture, traditions and rituals lies a messy web of everyday interactions through which students learn to assert themselves without fear of consequence.

An Elite Education ultimately calls for a deeper interrogation of the taken-for-granted dispositions that continue to shape access to opportunity in Britain.

Emma Taylor is lecturer in education at King’s College London.