1. Explore the language around “cultural capital” and “disadvantage”

2. Create a well-designed cultural curriculum

Does your school have a plan for taking students on a cultural journey? How many trips will your students go on before they leave your school? Could these experiences be incorporated into a passport of sorts?

The cultural experiences you offer will be determined by factors such as your school’s location and budget. A lot of cultural experiences can be delivered in-house in the form of external speakers, films and documentaries, or virtual reality. Others will require excursions. In either case, creating a Cultural Passport helps staff to plan experiences that complement and supplement previous experiences. 

Schools should strike a balance between celebrating each community’s history and going beyond the existing community to broaden students’ horizons. Again, language is important. Does your school’s cultural curriculum explore the differences between so-called “high” and “low” culture? 

No class is an island. Students of all social backgrounds should experience live theatre, visiting museums, going to art exhibitions, visiting the countryside and encountering people from cultures other than their own. Equally, every school’s cultural curriculum should celebrate working class culture. The working classes have a vibrant history of creating art, music, theatre, literature and so on, which needs to be reflected in the core curriculum. 

By looking through the lens of race and gender, most schools have a more diverse offering of writers compared with when I went to school. It is right that more Black voices and more female voices are represented in the school curriculum. This opens new insights for readers, as well as providing Black and female students with more role models. 

Similarly, there should be a strong emphasis on the work of working-class artists and autodidacts, no matter the social demographic of the school. Studying working-class writers such as Jimmy McGovern, Kayleigh Lewellyn, and musicians such as Terry Hall and even Dolly Parton can be inspiring. Similarly, learning about autodidacts such as Charles Dickens, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Vincent Van Gogh and Frida Kahlo can teach students that where there is a strong desire to learn, people can find a way. 

Action: Ensure your school is “teaching backwards” from rich cultural experiences. Outline the experiences that will be stamped in their Cultural Passport before they leave your school.

3. Explore social capital barriers for students

One of the greatest things we can do as educators is to remove a barrier that is holding a student back. One barrier that is faced by many working-class students is lack of social capital – i.e. the limited range of occupations of their social acquaintances or network.

In 2016 I created the first of a number of Scholars Programmes in Kirkby, Merseyside. I’m proud that as well as making a positive impact on academic results at GCSE, it has raised aspirations. The programme is deliberately designed to build social capital. Over the duration of the programme (from Year 7 to 11), students have opportunities to meet and interview adults who are in careers that they aspire to. As well as work experience, the school organises Zoom interviews for students with people working in the industry that they are interested in joining. Not only do these interviews invigorate students, they create a contact that is there to be emailed for information and advice. Over time, the school has created a database of contacts who are able to offer work placements or are happy to take part in either face-to-face or virtual interviews with students. These people are friends and family members of the staff, and even friends of friends.

It is much, much harder for working class students to enter elite professions such as medicine, law and the media. The arts and the creative industries are also harder to break into. Contacts who are able to help a student to build specific industry knowledge and experience can give them a better chance of future success.

Action: Creatively utilise a database of school contacts to provide information and advice for students. Match students with professionals who can offer career advice and insights.

Reference: P. Bourdieu, Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction. In J. Karabel and A. H. Halsey (eds), Power and Ideology in Education (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), pp. 487–51.

The ideas and strategies in this article are contained within The Working Classroom by Matt Bromley and Andy Griffith (Crown House Publishing). More information about the book and training around its contents can be found here.

NACE members can benefit from a 20% discount on all purchases from the Crown House Publishing website. View our member offers page for details.

Plus... The NACE Conference 2025 will draw on the latest research (including our own current research programme) and case studies to explore how schools can remove barriers to learning and create opportunities for all young people to flourish. Read more and book your place.

Phase 1: developing our thinking

• In the UK, there has been a 9% gap in achievement between girls and boys since at least 2005; prior to that a gap was in evidence at O-Level and the 11+ exam.
• This gap is the same in many developed countries, but the narrative is different. In France, for example, the gap causes less consternation.
• Historically, almost all cultures have bemoaned adolescent boys’ “idleness” and their “ideal of effortless achievement”.
• The gap narrows in late adolescence and, internationally, by the age of 30 males have outstripped females in terms of their level of education and training, and earnings.
• Gender is an unstable indicator of individual student’s attainment and engagement: not all boys are underachieving, and not all girls are achieving. 
• Gender-based approaches to teaching and learning are too often gimmicky, distracting and have no discernible effect on achievement. Learning has always been difficult; engagement comes from excellent subject knowledge of the teacher, supportive monitoring of understanding and confidence between teacher and learner.

Phase 2: interventions 

Phase 3: lessons learned

Impact on teaching

Impact on pastoral support

• “We work hard for the teachers who like us.”
• “Extended day is pointless.”
• “If we’re put in intervention, no one explains why.’”
• “Interventions make me feel sh*t.”
• “You need confidence to be motivated.”
• “Some of our targets are genuinely too high.”
• “It feels like the school is just after the grades.”
• “If you share how you really feel with your mates it will all crumble.”

Phase 4: ongoing provision and evaluation

Key takeaways:

1. The attainment gap between boys and girls of this age is perennial. The work we do in schools can only go some of the way to address it, so concentrate on what is in your control: teaching well and caring well.
   
   
2. Excellent teaching is what it always has been: that which allows students, male and female, to think. Learning is what it always has been: necessary, sometimes exciting, sometimes hard and distasteful. That goes for all of us, male and female.
   
   
3. That said, all children need to develop positive habits of mind to stay motivated and happy enough that their actions have meaning. There will be challenges to this, different between time and time and community and community. To work out what these challenges are, and how to address them intelligently, use a wide range of data to ask meaningful questions.
   
   
4. Loneliness and a lack of discussion about aims and habits are main drivers of underachievement and can quickly erode wellbeing. Boys as a group appear to feel these deficits more keenly than girls as a group (but not exclusively). We are in loco parentis and need to prioritise time and space for students who don’t do so at home to explore and examine how to develop successfully, in ways that are personal to them.
   
   
5. Use your colleagues’ professional expertise and nous and encourage them to engage in contextual reading. It is alarming at the present time – perhaps encouraged by the instantaneity of the Twittersphere – how much change can be reactive and ignore lessons from the history of education policy. Before initiating any major or contentious change, aim to run it by as many colleagues as possible and get a pre-mortem. In our experience, colleagues’ insights, suggestions and misgivings all played a crucial role in preventing us making major mistakes.

Recommended reading:

• UNESCO 2019 Gender Review: https://en.unesco.org/gem-report/2019genderreport
• Gender and Education Association: www.genderandeducation.com
• Gender issues in schools: what works to improve achievement for boys and girls – DCSF 2009
• Gary Wilson, Breaking Through Barriers to Boys’ Achievement: Developing a Caring Masculinity (2013)
• Matt Pinkett and Mark Roberts, Boys Don’t Try? Rethinking Masculinity in Schools (2019) - review

Anna Wynd, head of modern foreign languages at North Oxfordshire Academy (NOA), explains how the school approaches language learning through a “menu of challenge”.

In our approach to modern foreign language teaching and learning at North Oxfordshire Academy, we strive to nurture and encourage our pupils’ enthusiasm and curiosity, offering a varied menu of challenge.

Interactive games such as the “horse race” allow pupils to work in differentiated teams to solve tasks that will move their horse closer to the finish line, while allowing opportunities for self- and peer-assessment. Our KS3 homework involves a variety of interests, skills and pupil choice at different levels, such as recipes in the target language.

Preparing for the unexpected

The current MFL Programme of Study details the importance of pupils having the opportunity to read literary texts in the language (such as stories, songs, poems and letters) to stimulate ideas, develop creative expression and expand understanding of the language and culture.

NOA’s MFL library, which includes books, DVDs and magazines, allows the MFL department to continue to support the Academy’s drive on literacy by encouraging reading for pleasure in the target language and an exploration of intercultural understanding.

In addition, the films act as an effective and enjoyable way of developing pupils’ listening skills, particularly in training them to deal with “the unexpected element” of languages – a skill required for outstanding achievement according to Ofsted. Furthermore, the longer texts have been challenging yet purposeful, and act as a great stretch for our most able language learners.

A varied menu of challenge

We also include the following in our menu of challenge for language teaching and learning:

• A bank of authentic resources which are planned into schemes of work (maps, brochures, receipts, magazines).
• A whole-school approach to Assessment for Learning (AfL): “Find the gap, teach the gap.” Every student has a knowledge organiser for every subject, and uses them to revise the vocabulary and grammar that is studied in each lesson for the memory platform test. Every lesson begins with a memory platform that assesses prior learning. Pupils then self-assess in green pen. The main aim for this is to improve memory recall.
• Using sixth-form students to support Year 11 in small study groups to go through exam skills. The Year 11 cohort enjoy hearing from a peer about how they dealt with the exam, revision and stress.
• French Club, attended by able language learners in Year 8. Activities include board games in the target language; discussion of festivals and traditions in more detail, and comparison with the UK or with the home country of the students who attend; pupil-created quizzes either on cultural facts or what they’re currently learning; listening to French songs and talking about art and artists.

This case study was originally published in the Spring 2017 edition of NACE’s Insight newsletter. To view past editions, log in as a member.