A designed ‘lack of design’: How autonomy enables the mobilisation of capital at elite schools

Taylor, Emma and Stenhouse, Rachel ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2534-569X (2025) A designed ‘lack of design’: How autonomy enables the mobilisation of capital at elite schools. British Journal of Sociology of Education. ISSN 0142-5692 (In Press)

Accepted Version File not available for download. Available under License In Copyright. Download (243kB)

Abstract

There has been a recent burgeoning of interest in the power of elite private schools in the UK. However, little attention has been paid to the propulsive power of the mechanisms in place within such schools that enable and support the mobilisation of valued forms of cultural capital such as ‘ease’. Here, we draw upon unprecedented access to two elite private boys’ secondary schools in England to show how what we conceptualise as a designed ‘lack of design’ within the elite school curriculum contributes to the formation of an elite habitus which is valued in the context of recruitment to elite higher educational and professional institutions. Ultimately, we argue that the practices described are misrecognised by stakeholders as taking place within an autonomous system, when this so-called autonomy or independence is very much informed by the signifiers of distinction upon which these schools sell themselves.