What is Cultural Capital?

To be honest, cultural capital is not the usual conversation piece. But it is both a conscious and unconscious part of our everyday lives. Now that Ofsted has introduced the concept into the new Education Inspection Framework it will become more conscious for many people.

In 2011, I started to investigate how I could put cultural capital at the core of the LEYF learning approach. Our model is all about giving children from disadvantaged backgrounds the best early education possible. Having grown up in a working-class world, I knew that there was a world beyond me which valued things I didn't even know about. When I arrived in England, those differences were more apparent perhaps because I was an outsider. I couldn't always name it but I realised that how you speak, hold your knife and fork, where you shop, how you name your children, what you did in your spare time and much more was associated with different values, some more prized than others. However, what took me a while to recognise was that knowing and understanding these subtleties could improve your access and opportunity to education, employment and success.