Jen Featch

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.