PRIVILEGE AND RACE: THEORISING BLACK STUDENT'S' IDENTITY FORMATION & NEGOTIATION OF BRITISH PRIVATE SCHOOLS

Britain's elite private schools play a central role in the social reproduction
of class and privilege. However, with little sociological inquiry into their
dynamics we lack understanding about what place race and racism hold
within them and how they intersect with educational privilege. We know
almost nothing about the rippling social and spatial effects of how
privileged education is manifested when catered to, and formed by, a
white dominant elite. After the 2020 resurgence of #BlackLivesMatter,
private schools saw many of their Black students and alumni collectively
express experiences of marginalisation, discrimination and trauma. My
research is the first to seriously address these discussions amongst
independent schools. Using a Bourdieusian framework alongside critical
race theory, I will investigate Black students' and alumni's collective
experiences, specifically the impact their schooling has had on their
identity development and attainment outcomes throughout and post-education.
The study method will be mixed, triangulating variables from
qualitative and quantitative sources, such UCAS' data for HESA's, and
include focus groups and semi-structured interviews conducted on 50-70
students and alumni alongside document analysis. I will be using STATA
or SPSS to conduct regression and thematic coding analysis to build the
most accurate picture of the research problem. I am confident that the
findings will be significant for a topic that has been widely discussed yet
given little attention academically, despite its impact on many lives.