Revisiting educational advantage and social class: a Bourdieusian analysis of middle-class parents’ investment in private schooling and shadow education

Abstract

This article provides a Bourdieusian analysis of middle-class parents’ investment in private schooling and shadow education (tutoring support) in India, thus contributes to the scholarship of class-based educational advantage. It unveils parents’ aspirations for their children’s education and investigates how these aspirations shape the demand for private education. Bringing into sharp focus the complexity of social privilege, this article discusses how middle-class parents’ articulation of their lack of valued cultural capital informs their decision to invest in private schools. However, parents’ views on their ineffective involvement in their children’s education produce a perceived home disadvantage, which parents compensate for by investing in tutoring services. The article argues that investing in private education–both in formal educational institutions and tutoring centres–is a case of ‘capital exchange’ (transfer of economic capital to secure cultural capital) exercised by privileged social groups to ‘purchase’ valuable educational resources, thus reproducing their social class position.