A curriculum for all classes

In a quiet, hidden corner of Highgate Cemetery lies the man whose spark electrified the modern world. While tourists tend to gravitate to the grand, imposing tomb that commemorates Karl Marx, I prefer to pay homage to Michael Faraday in his final resting place, a modest gravestone obscured by overgrown greenery. This is not just because he was one of our greatest ever scientists; he also happened to come from a working-class background.

Born in 1791 to a blacksmith struggling to make ends meet, Faraday’s early exposure to hardship provided the tenacity and resilience that would define his career. He worked as an apprentice at the age of 14 in a bookseller based in London’s Marylebone area. Surrounded by books, his love of science blossomed. Faraday went on to become one of world’s most celebrated experimentalists, unlocking the secrets of magnetic and electric fields, paving the way for the electric machines that power our modern world. Yet just like his grave, his remarkable journey is often over-looked when pupils learn about his discoveries.

It's just one example of the countless untold origin stories of the thinkers, artists, writers and scientists who have shaped our world from the pantheon of hard knocks. Their stories need to be told to demonstrate not only the challenges, but also the strengths and benefits that come from beginning life in less privileged circumstances.

For Charles Dickens it was time spent working in a shoe polish factory at 12, and seeing his father imprisoned for debt that provided the real-life experiences that made him the writer he became, rallying against the class divides that scarred Victorian society. William Shakespeare meanwhile came from a lower middle-class family in small-town Stratford. His father’s fall from respectability into financial difficulties surely helped to hone his later observations on the human condition amid the ups and downs of life's fortunes.

One of my favourite back-stories is that of the self-taught palaeontologist, Mary Anning who was forced to sell fossils from the Jurassic coast for her economic survival. Anning’s (literally) ground-breaking fossil finds in the 19^th century have only just begun to be acknowledged – her crime being both working class and female. Despite thousands of geography students visiting Dorset's iconic Durdle Door each year, few are taken to nearby Lyme Regis, where Anning unearthed fossils that rewrote scientific history.

We should celebrate all the great minds who have graced and shaped our world where-ever they come from. But telling the personal tales of people like Faraday, Dickens or Anning offers a chance to make our school curriculum more accessible and relatable to all children, particularly those from under-resourced or disadvantaged backgrounds.

For so many pupils what is taught in schools feels like an alien and intimidating world with little connection to their own lives. Classroom discussions are dominated by middle class ways of speaking and behaving, with the highest status won by children who excel in narrow academic performance. National directives encouraging schools to boost cultural capital have prioritised middle-class pursuits – visits to museums, theatres and high-brow art galleries (while our creative industries remain stubbornly elite preserves). It’s quite right that all children should be introduced to high art-forms, but equally we should value other cultural activities whether it be grime and rap music or brass bands and community choirs. I would also invite local tradespeople - plumbers, electricians, carpenters - to speak or run workshops, alongside university graduates who may have left the area to get jobs elsewhere. 

Building an equitable curriculum means recognising the diverse forms of human talent—be it practical, creative, or academic—and valuing every form of success, celebrating students who go on to be local plumbers and nurses just as much as those who leave for university and beyond. Just as importantly, it’s about recognising the ‘hidden talents’ developed by children when exposed to challenging environments, such as poverty or chronic stress. These can include resilience, quick-thinking in unpredictable situations, and working collaboratively with others to solve problems.

Over the years, I’ve been involved in many initiatives aimed at equalising the education playing field. But these will always be limited if what we teach in schools is unrelatable to all our pupils.  We have made great strides in making our curriculum more diverse and representative when it comes to the ethnicity, gender and other aspects of our children. But at a time when a growing number of pupils are facing hardship outside the school gates, more needs to be done to remind our latest generations of the past accomplishments and struggles of working-class communities.

There is for example the amazing tale of the Jarrow march of unemployed workers who walked to London in 1936 to protest against job cuts, and the momentous miners' strike of 1984. Then there is the work of Aneurin Bevan, the Welsh political leader spearheaded the creation of our National Health Service who in the post War years. In more recent times, remarkable people have challenged the inequities that persist in our education system. Stormzy, a grime artist giving voice to the marginalised experiences of young, Black, working-class youth, has championed university scholarships. The footballer Marcus Rashford, meanwhile, became one of the country’s most powerful campaigners calling on government ministers to address food poverty among children during the summer holidays. The nature of the class struggle may have changed, but the core challenges remain.

Every year I’m angered by the middle-class biases that continue to plague questions posed in national examinations. We’ve had questions set in ski resorts, theatres and classical concerts, problems based on rocking horses, strawberry jam-making, savings and house purchases. Pupils who have enjoyed the stage or slopes and come from owned homes are much more likely to be able to infer the answer than those who haven’t, whatever their actual proficiency in a subject may be. The class barriers baked into our education system need to be removed.

Traditional groupings of status – working, middle and upper class – may seem hopelessly out of touch in the multifaceted world we now live in. Yet just because class is more complex doesn’t mean it no longer matters. The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu offers a more nuanced and contemporary understanding of class that moves beyond these old distinctions. A person’s status is a combination or their economic capital (income and wealth), social capital (networks of people they know), and cultural capital (education, behaviours, traits and attitudes). According to Bourdieu, school cultures are orientated strongly towards middle-class norms, putting working-class pupils at a distinct disadvantage.

In the equity scorecard for schools we are publishing as part of the south-west social mobility commission work we urge teachers to consider how they can do more to acknowledge working class culture in our schools.

Faraday believed in the capacity of every person to learn and achieve, regardless of their background. The point will not be lost on Becky Francis, a former professor of social justice, who is leading England’s current school curriculum and assessment review. What is taught in our classrooms should reflect all our class backgrounds and spark the imaginations of all our learners.

Lee Elliot Major is Professor of Social Mobility at the University of Exeter