A Cultural Road Less Travelled

: Culture as Growth, not Capital. An exploratory multi-methods study of the attitudes of Heads of English working in private schools in England towards canonical literature, cultural capital, cultural heritage, personal growth and professional autonomy.

Abstract

Since the publication of the 2019 Ofsted School Inspection Handbook, state schools in England have been evaluated on their provision of cultural capital, misdefined through reference to the National Curriculum as “the best that has been thought and said” (National Curriculum, 2014: 6) and further interpreted in the teaching of English literature as “the English literary heritage” (DfE, 2013: 3). These reforms have been criticised for prioritising canonical literature (Nelson-Addy, 2018), promoting cultural nationalism (Belas & Hopkins, 2019; Smith, 2018), and for misrepresenting Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital (Bates & Connolly, 2023). While research has explored English teachers’ resistance to these reforms in the state sector (Goodwyn, 2016; Birkenshaw and Temple Clothier, 2023), little is known about the perspectives of teachers in private schools, an epistemological gap this thesis addresses.
This study investigates the attitudes and values of Heads of English working in private schools in England towards canonical literature, cultural capital, and the cultural heritage and personal growth models of teaching English (Cox, 1989), but also explores how they exercise their relative professional autonomy. The study begins by outlining Gove’s celebration of private schools as bastions of traditional subject disciplines, free from bureaucratic control and the bestowers of cultural capital; institutions which, he argued, the state sector might learn from (Gove, 2009). This study accepts this invitation. Drawing on 12 semi-structured interviews and a focus group, and analysed using reflexive thematic analysis (RTA), the study finds that private school Heads of English often reject Gove’s culturally nationalistic GCSE, instead choosing international qualifications which offer a wider range of texts, and prioritise the personal growth of students and teachers. Moreover, unlike Ofsted, the Independent Schools Inspectorate (ISI) does not assess cultural capital but instead emphasises intercultural appreciation (ISI, 2023). The study argues for greater teacher agency across sectors, which could open up the canon, enhance the personal growth of both students and teachers, and encourage a redistribution of cultural capital.

Date of Award	20 Jan 2026
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Bristol
Supervisor	Lorna A Smith (Supervisor) & Lucy A Kelly (Supervisor)