ABSTRACT
In the past twenty years there has been a fundamental restructuring of the economy and labour market. Concomitantly, education has also been restructured. This chapter addresses the ways in which economic and educational changes have led to a recasting of the social class structure in England and Wales. In doing so it also seeks to examine the question of whether the concept of social class is still of relevance. For as Reay (1997: 226) observes, ‘understandings of class are products of specific historical and cultural locations … and the 1990s has been a period when both politicians and academics have announced the demise of class and the advent of classlessness’. In order to answer these questions, we begin by outlining the key shifts within education policy and provision since Callaghan’s Ruskin speech in 1976. As many of the chapters in this collection have made evident, 1976 signalled a sea change in state policy. In this chapter we argue that the educational reforms of this period had, at their heart, a reworking of the education/social class relation.
