ABSTRACT
Policy shifts that valorise the market as a key predicate of educational provision have prompted research into schooling’s cultural geography. There is now a better appreciation of the positional effects of schools, and the degree to which parents consciously swap schools, even localities to access more propitious educational environments. Failing that, their children undertake marathon journeys across a city to access favoured schools. Though such tactics are restricted to families in the know, those possessing the relevant information about schools, their consequences have been dramatic (Ball, Bowe, and Gewirtz 1995; Butler with Robson 2003; Hine and Mitchell 2003; see Taylor’s chapter). They have led to a revival of selective high schooling, the abandonment of school zoning, and in Australia at least, a drift towards the private sector. In the ‘social calculus’ governing school selection, the idea of schooling children in their neighbourhoods, in the interests of producing more inclusive and democratic communities, which was a cornerstone principle of comprehensive education, has been abandoned. The cogency of the comprehensive ideal, which, even in the context of neoliberal policies still has many proponents, is one underpinned with the idea that placement of schools ought not to be taken lightly for it can promote social cohesion. In spite of this benefi t, it was a policy that was rarely adhered to fully; there were always pockets of the population that chose, if they could, to avoid comprehensive education, either through accessing the selective remnants of the government sector or private schools (Connell 2003: 236; Connell et al. 1982; Sherington 2004: 175). This enabled them to preserve a way of life that countervailed the egalitarian imperative, whose privileges were dependent on the savvy stewardship of economic, social, and cultural capital. Self-assets such as education were integral parts of this stewardship and included attending schools that maintained this capital.
