‘We never get a fair chance’: Working-Class Experiences of Education in the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

Definitive evidence is emerging from the wider economy that we are by no means ‘all in it together’ in relation to the current recession.¹ Rather, austerity is primarily for those who already have the least while the secure upper echelons of the middle class and our political and economic elites remain largely untouched.² Instead of cushioning those who are already disadvantaged, a recent Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) report³ confirmed that in relation to government cuts announced in December 2011 it is lower-income groups who would bear the brunt. Furthermore, the economic struggle between capital and labour has increasingly been resolved to the growing benefit of capital, with profits now taking 47 per cent of GDP, up from 35 per cent in 1973.⁴ Since then there has been a continuing decline in real wage growth.⁵ This growing imbalance between capital and labour was starkly revealed in the Daily Mail’s front page headline of 20^th December 2011. It blazoned ‘As families are chased for every penny corporate giants dodge massive bills as they are let off £25 billion in taxes’. The rising share of profits and falling share of wages have had significant consequences for the economy, in particular, leading to a growing concentration of income and wealth among the top 40 per cent of society and the relative impoverishment of the bottom 60 per cent.⁶