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There has been reference in literature to the concepts of a Transnational Capitalist Class and a Global Middle Class, but there has been little discussion of how education may form any sense of class solidarity for these groups. In national contexts, ruling class socialisation has been achieved through elite private schooling. But the notion of global classes presents a fundamentally different problem for class socialisation and solidarity since the educational mechanisms for creating solidarity are unclear. This question has achieved prominence through the political discourse identifying and attacking an international, liberal elite who are 'Citizens of Anywhere' and 'Nowhere'. We focus on the role of the elite, traditional 'International School', delivering the International Baccalaureate programmes specifically designed to promote 'international mindedness' (IM), in the educational trajectories of this echelon of society. We argue that IM offers a class constructed platform in providing an element of global social solidarity.

Our paper reveals a significant under-reported emergent phenomenon: the graduates of the well-established 'Elite Traditional International Schools' worldwide are beginning to cluster in certain universities, in certain 'global cities'. As one might expect, New York and London are central to this clustering, alongside Boston, Toronto and Vancouver. Surprisingly, these destinations are not the world's top, elite universities, showing that the forms of class reasoning which we might expect of the 'Trans-National Capitalist Class' do not seemingly apply to this model of elite education. We explore the emerging evidence, and discuss its character and implications.