An Elite Education

How Privilege Is Produced in a Private School

Emma Taylor

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2026
• Print ISBN:
  9780691264264
  9780691264257
• eBook ISBN:
  9780691288901
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Education Theory & Practice
• Index: Social Sciences

An examination of the making of privilege at one of Britain’s top boys’ schools

Alumni of Britain’s elite schools are consistently overrepresented in positions of power and influence. It is no surprise, then, that elite schools play a pivotal role in reproducing inequality. In An Elite Education, Emma Taylor draws on years of immersive ethnographic research and teaching experience at one of Britain’s leading private boys’ schools to highlight how these institutions cultivate the dispositions that propel students into elite universities and professions.

Taylor finds that elite schools provide a forgiving, flexible and exclusive training ground, enabling students to push boundaries, bend rules and negotiate with those in authority. She argues that this ability to navigate elite spaces with confidence—which she conceptualises as “audacity”—is a carefully cultivated form of privilege that is frequently mistaken for merit. Behind the formal façade of architecture, traditions and rituals lies a messy web of everyday interactions through which students learn to assert themselves without fear of consequence.

An Elite Education ultimately calls for a deeper interrogation of the taken-for-granted dispositions that continue to shape access to opportunity in Britain.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Setting the Scene
• 1. Home Away from Home
• 2. Flat Hierarchies
• 3. In Loco Parentis
• 4. The Invisible Whiteness of Being
• Futures
• Methodological Appendix
• Notes
• References
• Index