ABSTRACT
In this chapter Dave Hill considers the formal curriculum and the hidden curriculum and their impact on equality in schooling. He discusses how the National Curriculum was developed, and identifies the mixture of gains and losses it has created in terms of educational equality regarding ‘racegender, special needs, sexual diversity and social class. Critical concepts from Bourdieu andAlthusser are used to illustrate the crucial connection between social power and social worth, in terms both of curriculum knowledge that has been selected and in terms of the cultural behaviours privileged and rewarded through both the formal and the hidden curricula. These concepts provide insight to the reproduction of inequalities through these aspects of education, which serve to advantage or disadvantage teachers, students and pupils with different cultural characteristics.
