ABSTRACT
However, contemporary sociological thinking about class has its roots in the work of Marx and Weber and their attempts to explain social status in the context of industrialisation. The influential German sociologist Ulrich Beck describes class as a form of analysis that had outlived its analytical usefulness. Others argue strongly that class remains one of the most useful ways of exploring educational inequalities. The Royal Society of Arts conducted a survey of the literature, and their report begins by saying 'Social class remains the strongest predictor of educational achievement in the UK, where the social class gap for educational achievement is one of the most significant in the developed world. It highlights that oppression is not simply related to a specific dimension of experience or identity (e.g., class, gender, ethnicity, race, disability, sexuality), but is about the relationship between these dimensions of difference: the world is experienced very differently by white, middle-class, heterosexual males from black, working-class gay women.
