class choice

8/8/2019 Class Choice

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Markets, Schools and the Convertibility of Economic Capital: The Complex Dynamics of ClassChoiceAuthor(s): Kathleen Lynch and Marie MoranSource: British Journal of Sociology of Education, Vol. 27, No. 2 (Apr., 2006), pp. 221-235Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30036131

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British Journal of Sociology of EducationVol. 27, No. 2, April 2006, pp. 221-235 RoutledgeTaylor&Francis roup

Markets, schools and the convertibilityof economic capital: the complexdynamics of class choiceKathleen Lynch* and Marie MoranUniversity College Dublin, Ireland

While economic capital is not synonymous with cultural, social or symbolic capital in either itsconstitutional or organizational form, it nevertheless remains the more flexible and convertible formof capital. The convertibility of economic capital has particular resonance within 'Celtic Tiger'Ireland. The state's reluctance to fully endorse an internal market between schools has resulted inmiddle-class parents using their private wealth to create an educational market in the private sectorto help secure the class futures of their children. Using data from recent studies of second-leveleducation in Ireland, and data compiled on the newly emerging 'grind' schools (private tuitioncentres), we outline how the availability of economic capital allows middle-class parents to choosefee-paying schooling or to opt out of the formal school sector entirely to employ market solutionsto their class ambitions. The data also show that schools actively collude in the class project to theirown survival advantage.

Introduction: recontextualizing school choiceSince the 1980s, the international educational landscape has been characterizedpolitically, ideologically and often structurally by the thematics of choice. The inter-related drive to increase choice, raise standards and shift control from the bureau-cratic school to the sovereign consumer may be regarded as representative of abroader political shift towards the right, where a distinctive neo-liberal interpretationof fairness and efficiency based on the moral might and supremacy of the market hastaken root (Apple, 2001; Bonal, 2003).There is an extensive literature deconstructing the ideology of 'choice' within aneducational context, especially in the United Kingdom (Whitty et al., 1998; Ball,2003; Lubienski, 2003; Reay & Lucey, 2003). The literature demonstrates how few

*Corresponding author. UCD Equality Studies Centre, School of Social Justice, UCD, Belfield,Dublin 4, Ireland. Email: [email protected] 0142-5692 (print)/ISSN 1465-3346 (online)/06/020221-15C 2006 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/01425690600556362


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222 K. Lynch and IM. Moranchoices exist for low-income households. What choices exist are generally betweenequally limiting class options. Low-income families cannot afford to prepare theirchildrenfor the types of examinationsthatwill enable them to enter the more selectiveschool or universities, or to live in neighbourhoods that would place them in thecatchment areafor such institutions. Options promising significant class mobility arealien, risky and potentially costly socially, psychologically and financially (Lucey &Reay, 2002; Archer & Yamashita, 2003; Taylor & Woollard, 2003).It is clear from the literature also that choice ideology legitimates class reproductionand silences class dissent by fosteringillusions of opportunity. It is, in many respects,a logical extension of meritocratic individualism that underpinned the liberal equalopportunities projects of an earlierera, assuming that those who have the 'talent' andwho 'choose to make the effort' should, and would, be meritorious (Young, 1958).Both choice and meritocratic ideologies blind us to the fact that there needs to beequality of condition to promote substantive as opposed to formal equality of oppor-tunity (Tawney, 1964; Lynch, 1987; Baker et al., 2004). Thus choice functions notonly mechanistically at the level of practiceto exclude those who do not possess suffi-cient economic, social or cultural capital to avail of and benefit from the array ofchoices, but also ideologically, as it hides the disjuncture between the will and themeans to choose behind a fagadeof equal opportunities rhetoric.Most of the literature critiquing the choice agenda has emerged from countrieswhere education is clearly defined as a market commodity at an official policy level,most notably in the United Kingdom and Australia. Within the United Kingdom thegovernment has introduced a competitive internal market within the state system,while Australia has implemented state subsidization for schools outside the statesystem. In comparison with these, Ireland does not have a market-driven, choice-based education system, having outlawed league tables, eschewed the possibility of avoucher-based system and discouraged competition between schools by prohibitingselection of students on the basis of academic attainment. Yet to posit that themechanics of choice do not operatein Ireland, or indeed to suggest that the narrativeof choice is not therefore a constitutive feature of Irishpublic discourse, is to disregardthe fact that Ireland's educational decisions have, as much as those of other moreobviously 'pro-choice' countries, been made within an international educationalcontext where choice has been established as a centrally defining logic. Moreover,school choice has existed in Irish education since the foundation of the State, arisingfrom the constitutional provisions protecting both parental rights over the educationof their children and denominational interests in education.

Recognizing that school choice is but one engine of class reproduction, and thatclass inequality may exist where choice does not operate at an officially sanctioned/policy level as a market-led educational strategy, involves breaking down the conceptof choice to reveal its location within a broader matrix of historical, political andmaterial forces. Analyses that situate choice solely at the level of parental decision-making in the school system are problematic because they fail to situate choicesynchronically, as a part of a global market-oriented discourse of neo-liberalism, ordiachronically, as a strategy in what is a well-established pattern of maximization and


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Markets, schoolsand the convertibility of economic capital 223maintenance of middle-class privilegein and through the education system. Locatingthe literature on choice within a diachronic review, which takes into account class-differentiated outcomes in education prior to the choice era, allows for the recogni-tion of choice as a recent, albeitpowerful, expression of a historicallymanifest patternof class reproduction (Gamoran, 2001). Meanwhile, the synchronic contextualizationof choice within a broader discourse of individual and market 'freedoms' allows us torecognize that choice may simplybe one of many strategies or discourses derived fromand fed by the larger global neo-liberal narrative. If the ultimate objective of ouranalytical concern is to eliminate class inequalities in education, focusing so muchattention on 'school choice' as a key dynamic of class reproduction redirects ourattention too far away from the binding power of economic capital in producingclassed outcomes. The global rise of private tutoring or 'shadow education' across adiverse range of educational systems-in Canada, Greece, Hong Kong, Japan, andLuxembourg to name but a few (Stevenson &Baker, 1992; Baker etal., 2001; Mischo& Haag, 2002; Bray & Kwok, 2003; Aurini, 2004; Psacharopoulos & Papakonstanti-nou, 2005)-is growing proof of how economically generated inequalities outside ofeducation systematically undermine equality of access, participation and outcomewithin. Thus even where market-drivenchoice has not been instituted as the modusoperandiof a given education system, as is the case in Ireland, a globalized marketideology exists that informs individualdecisions and enables alternatives to schoolingto develop outside of the state-regulatededucation system. For this reason it may behelpful to disaggregate the concept of choice into its constituent elements and phases,and to examine at its operation at policy level, at school level and at individual level.This enables us to differentiate between the different ideological endorsements of therhetoric of choice and the myriadways in which the dynamic of choice may be playedout across the educational and political landscape.In this paper we draw on a number of different sources to substantiate our claims,including previously unpublished data on what are known as 'grind schools' (i.e.'schools' run as businesses) and findings from a major study of second-level schoolsundertakenby one of the authors in the late 1990s (Lynch & Lodge, 2002).1

Making markets within the school systemPolicy levelFrom the late 1990s, Irish public policy-making has been driven by neo-liberalassumptions regarding the supremacy of the market as the primary producer ofcultural logic and cultural value (Kirby, 2002; Allen, 2003). Educationalists operatein a global and national frameworkwhere the marketreigns supreme (Sugrue, 2004).However, not all educational stakeholders have endorsed the market logic, and, infact, some have actively resisted it. Pockets of resistance exist in the Church bodies,which, while endorsing the need for parental choice, have also repeatedly challengedthe 'materialism' implicit in giving primacy to the market in society (see, for example,CORI, Education Commission Vision Statement). Well-organized union resistance


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224 K. Lynch and M. Moranfound clearest expression in the recent formation of the Education is Not ForSale coalition, as a broad alliance between the Services, Industrial, Professional andTechnical Union education branch, the Association of Secondary Teachers ofIreland, the Teachers Union of Ireland, the Irish National Teachers Organisation(INTO) and the Union of Students in Ireland.Parent organizations, although callingfor greater accountability for teachers, also have fears of a 'payment by results'system, especially given the widely cited adverse effects of such a system in the latenineteenth century. In particular, the Catholic Schools Parents Association (2002)have consistently opposed the privatizationof second level education.Perhaps one of the reasons why the ideology of market choice in particularhaslimited resonance with education stakeholders is because choice already exists butwithin a more morally plausible discourse of religious and parental freedom. Parentsare defined as the 'primary and natural educators' of the child under the IrishConstitution (Article 42) and are free to send their children to any school they wish.While options are limited by school transport arrangements, local regulationsregardingschool 'catchment' areasand, where it arises, personal resources, there is agreat deal of flexibility in the system. One-half of all second-level students do notattend their nearest school; those who are most mobile are middle-class students(Hannan et al., 1996).Ireland'schoice-based system has devolved from a colonial past riven with religioustensions and, as such, has a very different profile to other marketized or partiallymarketized school systems (Drudy & Lynch, 1993). Choice was officially imple-mented on denominational grounds, and constitutionally protected on the groundsof natural law; specifically, parentalrights (Articles 42 and 44). While the origins of'choice' lay in religious difference and not in the pursuit of greater efficiency or adher-ence to market ideology perse, the Irisheducation system produces classed outcomesas much as education systems with more obviously commercial intent (Whelan &Layte, 2002). Thus it is inappropriateto neatly categorize the Irish education systemas either 'privatized', where this refers to the movement of former state-run institu-tions into the private sphere, or as 'marketized',where this refers to the introductionof market mechanisms into a state run system (Whitty&Power, 2000). The trajectoryof the Irish experience seems to run in the opposite direction to that assumed usualby the current theorists of school choice-the Irish experience is of a denomination-ally privatized system that has graduallycome to be subsidized by the state. While itis useful to understand the Irish education system as partially choice driven, it isnecessary also to bear in mind the formativehistorical (and decidedly non-commer-cial) factors in this development.One of the most significant characteristicsof the Irish education system as it standstoday is that all schools, with the exception of 1% of completely private primaryschools, are state funded for the greater part of their current costs, and, most impor-tantly, for teacher salaries. Certain capital costs are also state funded, although capitalinvestment is heavily weighted towards the non-fee sector. The second-level fee-paying sector is strongly Dublin-based (62% are in the Dublin area) and small: only8% of all second-level schools are fee-paying; in addition, 3% of schools that are free


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Markets, schools and the convertibility of economic capital 225to day students have boarders2 (Department of Education and Science [DES],2003). With the exception of Dublin, the majority of counties have only one fee-paying school-and these tend to be either schools for minority religions or single-sexRoman Catholic schools. Outside Dublin, most parents are therefore constrained intheir choices by the geography of schools, and indeed by the steady decline in board-ing schools, especially in the Roman Catholic sector. However, the proportion ofpupils attending fee-paying schools has grown considerably: in Dublin 32% of allstudents attend a private second-level school, compared with 24% of students20 years ago (DES, 1983, 2003).State subsidization of the fee-paying secondary schools is regularly challenged asbeing unjust and creating unfair class advantage. It is typically rationalized,however, on the grounds that it protects religious minorities, particularly Anglican,Protestant or other religious groups that do not have such schools in their ownneighbourhoods. In total, almost 40% of the 58 schools that charge fees are run byreligious minorities. Of these, 21 schools are run by the Church of Ireland andother Protestant denominations, although Protestants comprise only 3.7% of thepopulation nationally, with 88.4% defining themselves as Roman Catholic (CentralStatistics Office, 2004). While the special 'block grant' given to Protestant schools(most of which are fee-paying) supports the constitutional right of parents to havetheir children educated in denominationally appropriate schools (Glendenning,1999), research by Woulfe (2002) suggests that many of the students who attendare not Protestant but are admitted on other grounds, which by definition mustinclude the ability to pay the tuition or boarding fees.3 In a study of 13 schools inselected middle-class areas in the south of Dublin city, Woulfe (2002) found thatthe majority of students attending Protestant secondary fee-paying schools werenot members of either the Anglican Church (Church of Ireland) or the other threemain Protestant churches.4 While there is no doubt that one of the reasons suchschools take students from other religions, including Catholics, is to sustainadequate school numbers, they are simultaneously operating to help maintain classadvantage. Clearly the fee-paying, Roman Catholic schools are also working to aclass agenda. Given the size and spread of the Catholic population, however, theygenerally do not need to recruit fee-paying students from other religions to surviveas educational entities.

The role of the schoolWhile 'choice' research has almost always adverted to the over-riding impact of thestructural conditions of capitalism in framing the choice issues, sociological atten-tion has been unevenly centred on the demand rather than the supply side of thechoice equation. Yet schools themselves are active collaborators in the class game:they actively interpret and redefine the rules of the game as it is played out on theirown stage. Schools are not passive recipients of parents' class choices; they activelydetermine the parameters of choice. They operate many discrete selection and orga-nizational mechanisms that are governed by the politics of survival in what are often


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226 K. Lynch and M. Moranvery competitive local contexts (Woods & Levacic, 2002). The power that schoolsexercise over parents is evident from the way that certain charter schools requireparents of prospective students to make substantial monetary and time commit-ments to the school as a condition of enrolment (Whitty & Power, 2000). Schoolsrespond to threats of middle-class withdrawalby providing advanced tracks, therebyactively protecting the school's future (Kariya & Rosenbaum, 1999; McGrath &Kuriloff, 1999). Professional parents are welcomed as active consumers, while work-ing-class parents and students are more likely to be perceived as a liability or risk tothe status of the school (Reay & Ball, 1997). Moreover, schools are generallymanaged and controlled by middle-class and upper-middle-class people (trustees,boards of governors, teachers, professionals from local authorities, etc.), to whomthe survival of the school has been entrusted. In Ireland, for example, the gover-nance of schools is determined by legislation that gives the school owners, trusteesand teacher representatives an over-riding influence over schools (Education Act,1998). While parents are represented, they exercise only limited control (Lynch,1990; Drudy & Lynch, 1993). Working-class parents in particular are very isolated(Hanafin & Lynch, 2002). Thus, while the focus on choice is vital for challengingthe false premises and promises of market-driven ideology, it needs to be comple-mented by a more substantive focus on the class operations of schools organization-ally and educationally, and on the structural and local class conditions within whichschools operate.The findings of the Equalityand Power in Schools (EPS) study (Lynch & Lodge,2002) demonstrates that the issue and problematics of choice are not confined to thesystem or policy level. Schools are autonomous entities interested in their ownsurvival. As bodies representing the classed interests of a particular locale, theyproduce and construct themselves so as to exclude or include on the basis of class. Ina wider ideological environment where knowledgeable middle-class parents areschooled in what approaches a rights-based discourse of choice, schools can intro-duce the mechanics of choice on a subtle and unofficial level, and often to a veryreceptive public. Through a series of strategies, and as a result of historical factorsbeyond their immediate control, schools place themselves and are in turn placed in ahierarchy of class-bound desirability.What was very evident from the EPS study is that schools do not need to have aselective entrance test to be effectivelysocially selective. Although all the schools wereopen to applicants from different social classes within their catchment area, in prac-tice some schools had means at their disposal to discourage applicants from socialclass groups that they did not wish to serve. The EPS study clearly demonstrated thatit is only those schools with a historical and current intake of middle-class studentsthat have sufficient symbolic and economic capital to marketthemselves as exclusive.Moreover, only those parents with sufficient economic, cultural, social and emotionalcapital have the knowledge, confidence, time and resources to select the exclusiveschools. Among the factors that facilitated this unofficial dynamic of class exclusionto operate effectively were school traditions, extracurricular activities, voluntarycontributions (indirect fees) and uniforms.


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Markets, schoolsand the convertibility of economic capital 227Schools have identifiable inherited, classed identities. While some of these identi-ties do change over time, the social class history of the school is part of its currentpublic persona. Schools that have traditionallyserved lower income groups find it

very hard to change that identity, even when their social-class profile and their ratesof academic achievement change. This was evident in the EPS study, as technical/vocational schools that had become academically successful community colleges orschools still failed to attract largecohorts of middle-class students. On the other hand,schools that once charged fees, but were now in the free scheme, still attracted largecohorts of middle-class students. While fee-paying schools that 'converted' to the freescheme had to be proactive in maintainingtheirmiddle class profile, they had a 'tradi-tion' advantage over schools without a middle-class history (Lynch & Lodge, 2002,pp. 46-48, 202).In the case of religious-run schools, the social class profile of the religious order/group that owns and manages the school is also part of its classed identity. Schoolsunder Anglican or Protestant management generally have high prestige because oftheir traditional association with the Anglo-Irish ascendancy and their concentrationin the fee-paying sector. Within the Roman Catholic sector, status distinctions existbetween religious orders, arising from their original mission to educate differentclasses of society. These identities are transposed on to the schools under theircurrentmanagement. School principals and senior managers in the EPS study wereaware of the classed identities of the religious orders that owned their schools, andopenly admitted that the 'brand name' of particular religious order was a valuablepromotional tool for some schools.

Sport also plays a particularly importantrole in projecting the class identity of theschool to the wider community (Hargreaves, 1987; Light & Kirk, 2000). In the EPSstudy, the extracurricularactivities that were promoted systematically signalled thesocial class, gender and racial identity of the school. The higher status girls' schoolsdisplayed images of uniformed white girls playing classical music or hockey in theirprospectuses, while comparable boys' schools used images of rugbymatches in partic-ular-all characteristically middle-class activities. The promotional materials of thehigher status schools also emphasized their achievements in different internationalcompetitions and informed parents of exclusive foreign tours and activities organizedannuallyfor the students, all of which typicallyinvolved various supplementary costs,including expensive travel arrangements.Schools that wanted to attractmiddle-classstudents, although not necessarily fee-paying, profiled themselves in a way thatencouraged these students to apply, knowingthey would identify with the sporting orcultural ethos portrayed.The way in which funding procedures reinforce social class-based 'choices' is alsosignificant. Although all Irish schools are state funded, in terms of major capital andcurrent costs (teacher salaries), most schools also fund some of their current expenses(outside of salaries) from 'voluntary contributions' requested from parents. Theamount that parents are asked to pay on the voluntary scheme varies greatly with thesocial-class composition of the school intake. The Labour Party estimated in 2004that it was, on average, 120 per child for second-level students and 70 for a child


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228 K. Lynch and M. Moranin a primary school, although there are huge variations in the amounts levied.Although schools cannot require parents to pay the voluntary contribution, there is amoral expectation to pay it, which can in some cases be communicated publicly in theschool to the student. Evidence from the EPS study shows that some parents referredto the voluntary contribution colloquially as a 'fee', strongly suggesting that thevoluntary contribution is not always seen as optional. It certainly operates as apsychological barrier to opting into certain schools, not least because of the secrecythat surrounds it. Of the six schools that had a voluntary contribution in the EPSstudy, none published the level of the contribution expected in their prospectuses oron their web sites. Only parents with adequate levels of social as well as economiccapital-those who were educational insiders, who were sufficiently knowledgeableabout, and unintimidated by, the voluntary contribution-were fully in a position tofreely 'choose' a school with a voluntary contribution for their child. Furthermore,well-off parents inevitably contribute a disproportionately higher amount to theschool annually, resulting in cross-school differences in extracurricular activities,sports and related facilities, and in the number of part-time or support staff employed(Lynch, 1989; Lynch & Lodge, 2002).While school uniforms are often lauded as a mechanism for class levelling withinschools, they tend to function in a more invidious manner as markers of distinctionbetween schools. School uniforms are class (and gender)5 signifiers, with the moresocially selective and elite schools having costly and elaborate uniforms. In the EPSstudy, schools that educated students from predominantly low-income families hadlow-cost, chain-store-available uniforms. Often one school's uniform was almostindistinguishable from another. Schools targeting upper-middle-class students on theother hand, had highly specific, expensive and extensive outfits available only indesignated department stores. The school uniform therefore functioned not only as asignifier of the class status of the school, but also as a creator of that status. It operatedsilently as a tool of class selection by indirectly discouraging or encouraging differentkinds of parents from applying to particular schools.Thus although selection on the basis of prior academic attainment is prohibitedin Irish schools, schools nevertheless use indirect measures to project class imagesthat actively discourage or encourage particular classes of students from applying.As can be seen in Figure 1, the professional and managerial classes were dispropor-tionately represented in fee-paying schools and in those secondary schools withhigher voluntary contributions, more restrictive and expensive uniform require-ments and stronger traditions of academic achievement. Meanwhile, the lower,white collar, skilled, semi-skilled and farming classes were disproportionately repre-sented in the community or designated disadvantaged community and secondaryschools that have only basic uniform requirements, minimal or no voluntary contri-butions and a history of vocationally-based education. Despite the constitutionallyenshrined 'right' of parents to send their children to their school of preference(Article 42.2, subsection 3), schools can and do deflect undesirable class 'choices'and encourage desirable ones as their own institutional survival as a particular typeof school demands it.


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Markets, schools and the convertibility of economic capital 229

C

1009080"70605040-3020100

Social Classes1 and 2

Social Classes3, 4, and 5

]Social Classes6 and 7

IFarmers

Designated Fee-paying Free-scheme CommunityDisadvantaged Secondary Secondary Colleges

School TypeFigure 1. Social class profile of school types. Source:Lynch and Lodge (2002)

Making markets outside of schoolsThe role of private businessesIreland does not have official school league tables and rankings. School examinationresults are not published and there is an ongoing debate about the desirability of sucha development. There is strong opposition to the potential institution of school leaguetables from the teacher unions (Association of Secondary Teachers of Ireland, 2004),who are widely recognized as the most influential body in the education sector, andfrom the Joint Managerial Body (the body representing all secondary school manag-ers). National parent bodies also oppose league tables (Catholic Schools ParentsAssociation, 2004) although they have called for more accurate information onschools so they 'can make the best possible choice for their child' (cited in skoool.ie,2004). The case for full disclosure of results has been taken to the courts by a numberof national newspapers but has not succeeded. The absence of information aboutexamination results within the state system is in sharp contrast to the private sector,where private colleges or 'grind schools' actively market their results without refer-ence to the socially and academically selective nature of the application process. Suchmarketing strategies appeal directly to the 'active consumerism' of the middle classes(Gewirtz, 2001), who, seeking to make 'informed choices' about their children'seducation, will consider a move to the private sector in order to create class advantagefor their children.

Full-time private tuition centres, colloquially known as 'grind schools', are busi-nesses set up to prepare students for examinations, especially the Leaving Certificate,


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230 K. Lynch and M. Moranon a purely commercial (for-profit) basis. There is no complete list of these businessesor of the students attending them. Although the DES requests information annuallyfrom 'grind schools' publicly listed or known to them by other means, there is no legalobligation on the 'grind schools' to provide this information as they are legally consti-tuted as private businesses. Our own desk research allowed us to identify 27 'grindschool' businesses, 13 of which offer full-time Leaving Certificate courses, althoughthe DES only obtained information from 11 when they requested it in 2003. In these11 centres (mostly the bigger and better known operations) that responded to theDES request, 2282 students were reported as studying full-time for the LeavingCertificate in 2002-03. This represents about 0.7% of the entire leaving certificatecohort for that year. The DES claim that the numbers attending 'grind schools on afulltime basis are much higher than this, although they currently have no way of estab-lishing a comprehensive tally' (direct communication from the DES, July 2004). Howeffective grind schools are in promoting educational advantage is not known as therehave been no major studies comparing their intake and examination outcomes withcomparable cohorts in regular schools with similar resources. What is clear is thatgrind schools and individual tutors are primarily targeting a wealthy group: it costE5100 on average per annum for a full set of Leaving Certificate courses in a grindschool in 2003/04.

Paralleling the 'grind schools' is a substantial private market for individual tutors,again colloquially known as 'grinds'. The average rate of pay for individual tutoringor 'grinds' (generally in a student's own home) is E30 per hour, with fees for indi-vidual tuition in Leaving Certificate higher level courses generally higher than thisagain. Although there is no up-to-date reliable national data on the current rate ofparticipation in completely private tuition or in individual 'grinds', research by theEconomic and Social Research Institute in 1994 found that almost one-third ofstudents preparing for the Leaving Certificate examination took grinds outside ofschool (Economic and Social Research Institute, 1994). While the rate of participa-tion was highest among the middle classes, with just over one-half of all studentstaking grinds, one-fifth of students from working-class backgrounds were also takinggrinds (Figure 2) This finding has since been supported by another study, whichalso suggests that there is a far higher rate of take-up of 'grinds' in more middle-class schools (Lynch & O'Riordan, 1998). Although, again, no nationally represen-tative study has been carried out, there are indications that the numbers attendinggrinds and grind schools are on the increase-with the most recent figures publishedby the Irish Independent (2005) suggesting that one in every 10 post-primarystudents is now enrolled full time in either a fee-paying secondary school or a privategrind school. In addition, the Student Enrichment Services have claimed that 70% offinal-year students are in receipt of grinds. Although this represents a inflatedfigure-the 1000 students surveyed were attending weekend university seminars onexamination success, and were therefore presumably significantly high in culturaland economic capital-the survey has been quoted relentlessly in the Irish mediaand has helped fuel something of a moral panic about the purported inadequacy ofstate education in comparison with the private sector. Therefore, in the absence


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Markets, schools and the convertibilityof economiccapital 231

C4)

C4)

C4)

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%0%

SHigherprofessionalLower professionalIntermediate non-manualSkilled manual

Semi-skilledmanualIUnskilledmanual

ITotal,all classes

Parentalsocial classFigure 2. Participationin 'grinds' (privatetutorials or classes outside of schools) by parental socialclass: Leaving Certificate. Source:Economic and Social Research Institute (1994). Figure based ona national sample taking the Leaving Certificate examination in 1994. Note: all figures weighted totake account of sampling

of any empiricallysound nationally representativestudy since the mid-1990s, it isdifficult to differentiatebetween what areundoubtedlyreal increasesin participationratesin privatetuition and a growing stigmatizationof the state sector in Irishpublicdiscourse.ConclusionTo understandhow the dynamicsof choice impacton classed outcomesin education,we need to identifythe multiple ways in which choices areoperationalizedacross theeducational landscape. Parents are but one set of actors in the 'choice' play, andschools areonly one of the stageswhere the play is acted out. While parentscan anddo make choices between schools, some schools also exercise choice in terms of thekinds of childrenthey encourageor discourageto attend. Even when schools cannot'choose' entrants on the basis of prioracademicattainment,or simply by catchmentarea,data from the EPS study in Ireland show that they can and do operatediscreteselection mechanisms that result in strongly classed school identities (Lynch &Lodge, 2002). Schools are activeplayersin the choice process, with their own statusand survivalplayinga vital role in facilitatingparticularclassed outcomes.

What the Irish case also shows, however, is that choice is no longer just aboutparents choosing between schools or schools choosing between different types of


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232 K. Lynch and M. Moranchildren; there is now a choice between schools and the private market. Even whenthe State does not endorse the marketmodel of league tables, vouchers and selectiveentry systems, middle-class parents use their highly convertible economic capital toopen up markets in education outside of the school system itself. The irony of theemerging market of 'grinds' and 'grind schools' is that the original rationale for'choice' in Ireland did not emergefrom a neo-liberal ideology but came as a result ofhistorical national and political tensions that were often mobilized around religionand the place of religion(s) in the education system. Parents' constitutional rights tobe 'the primary and natural educators' of their children, granted to secure religiousfreedom, has thus facilitated the emergence of a choice-based system drivenby whollymarket-based principles.It is clear therefore that choice needs to be located synchronically as partof a largercontemporary market-oriented discourse of neo-liberalism, which, in the Irishcontext, was facilitated by the piecemeal growth of private and public educationaround already existing religious and political divides. Choice must also be recog-nized to operate diachronically as part of a well-established pattern of maximizedclass privilege in education. It is set against a structuralbackground of economic andsocial policies in taxation, housing, health, welfare and inheritance that placesmiddle-class families at a considerableadvantage economically, and therefore educa-tionally (Lynch, 1999; Nolan et al., 2000; Cantillon et al., 2001; Fahey et al., 2004).In such a context it becomes increasingly apparent that there can be no equality ofopportunity without equality of condition in education (Lynch & Baker, 2005).Those who have superior economic resources can exercise choice not just betweenschools, but between schools and the private market.While the 'right to choose' is not endorsed officially by the Irish State in the senseof encouraging competition between schools, the ideology of the market reignswithin wider society (Kirby, 2002; Allen, 2003). Thus a significant change that hasarrived with the hegemonic prevalence of neo-liberal sentiment is the widespreadmoral endorsement of strategies for parents to advantage their own children. Nolonger simply condoned within the public sphere, there is now a growing moralizedpressure on parents to 'do the best for their children' by paying for extra educationoutside of that provided in regularschools. The choice to educate your children forthe Leaving Certificate in institutions that are run as for-profit businesses is onesuch strategy that is increasingly facilitated, sanctioned and encouraged within thecurrent neo-liberal zeitgeist. It is to this wider climate of neo-liberal values to whichwe must look if we want to understand the recent shifts in the Irish educationallandscape, where the growth of grind schools is unchecked, where the newspaperfrenzy implicitly endorses and adds to the profit-oriented sector, where the NationalParents Council actively supports the state subsidization of the fee-paying sector-where market choice, although officially outlawed at the level of the state in educa-tion, has slipped through the cracks to become an underground defining feature ofthe Irish educational landscape. The privatization-for-profit of Irish second-leveleducation is under way, albeit outside the state-financed and state-controlled educa-tional system.


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Markets, schools and the convertibility of economic capital 233AcknowledgementWe wish to acknowledge the work of Anne Lodge, National University of IrelandMaynooth who is the co-author with K. Lynch of the Equalityand Powerin SchoolsStudy (EPS) cited in this paper.Notes1. The Equality in Power and Schools study (Lynch & Lodge, 2002) examined the role schoolsplayed in either promoting equality or challenging inequality by analysing the ways schoolsselected, grouped and educated students. The fieldwork involved intensive study of all aspectsof school policy and practice in 12 strategically chosen schools in seven different counties. Eachschool was visited on at least three occasions with a full two and three weeks spent in each, 162classes were observed and audio recorded, 1557 students and 380 teachers answered question-naires about their schools, and 70 focus groups were held involving 280 students2. The number of these schools is declining steadily as most were set up specifically to recruit

people to religious life for the Roman Catholic Church. There are no longer any nuns andpriests to staff these schools. In addition, the cost of paying staff to run them as boardingschools is too high for the type of middle-income clientele that such schools served originally.3. That there are low-income Protestant families who cannot afford to attend these schools isbeyond doubt (personal communication from a former member of the Education Board of theChurch of Ireland), although this issue has never been the subject of public debate4. This is generally not the case outside Dublin, however. Protestant boarding schools in ruralareas, particularly those situated in areas with a mixed religious population, can have up to 95%Protestant attendance.

5. The way in which school uniforms and regulations are highly gendered, operating as tools ofsurveillance over young women in particular, is examined in considerable detail in the EPSstudy and in Inside Classrooms(Lyons et al., 2003).

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