A lack of research? How Ofsted misrecognised Cultural Capital

The thing about being overconfident is it can cause you to hand in your homework before you’ve checked it properly.

Alternatively, the blithe or disorganised student might submit something they have scrawled quickly onto a piece of paper while on the school bus.

And so it is with Ofsted and their ideas on the subject of cultural capital.

“This homework, inspector, has quite simply not been done to standard. See me after class for a long and painful detention.”

Let me explain.

Ofsted, and its Education Inspection Framework (2019) is checking for schools’ provision of “knowledge and cultural capital”.

The inspectorate defines this with reference to the “Aims” section of the national curriculum, which reads: “It is the essential knowledge that pupils need to be educated citizens, introducing them to the best that has been thought and said and helping to engender an appreciation of human creativity and achievement.”