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Elite schools in the UK are bound to the history of British colonialism. This paper examines the material ties between these schools and the transatlantic slave trade. We combine multiple sources to examine which schools and their alumni accrued substantial economic capital derived from the enslavement of Black people. We find two principal connections: first, in donations and foundations of schools from those who made their fortune in the slave trade; and second, through income of boys attending these schools. Drawing on the Legacies of British Slavery dataset, we show that schools with alumni benefitting from the slave trade include the most prestigious British private schools. Moreover, this paper traces the histories of several secondary schools founded by, or in receipt of, substantial donations from slave-owning families. We argue that extractive, violent forms of colonial capital accumulation have been central to, the formation and maintenance of these elite educational institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the relationship between elite schools, capital, and the state. It discusses how these schools accumulate wealth through various means and maintain close proximity to economic capital. The article also explores the connection between elite schools and the state, highlighting their alignment with state projects of capital accumulation. It delves into the role of elite schools in the formation and reproduction of capital and class. Additionally, the article discusses the commodification of elite education and the mystique surrounding these schools. Overall, it aims to shed light on the complex interplay between elite schools, capital, and the state. [Extracted from the article]

A new method is proposed here aimed at eliciting the mechanisms which maintain the relational positioning of people and places within social space. This 'mapping tool' is inherently relational by design and involves participants creating visual representations of their geographic imaginaries, encompassing their perceptions and preferences of different localities. This is followed by an interviewing approach wherein participants 'speak to' their map, producing 'thick' narratives detailing the ties that bind people and places. The method was developed and used as part of a 3-year study into the geographic imaginaries of young people in the UK, involving the collection of 1,000 maps, together with over 200 interviews, across 20 diverse localities. We draw on empirical examples of using the method from this study, including processes of differentiation within the middle classes and the place-based identities of towns, cities and localities.

This paper examines how the English educational state has consistently acted to support private schooling in areas where fee-paying schools would be otherwise financially unviable. Educational data on private school participation since the 2008 financial crisis reveals the stark regional divides between London and the South-East of England and the rest of the country. This analysis of contemporary trends is framed within a historical understanding of the spatial dualism of the English middle class in relation to education. The paper traces the policy lineages of the spatial logic of state subsidies for elite models of schooling in northern England, noting the continuity between Direct Grant grammar schools, the Assisted Places scheme and the recent conversion of private schools into state-funded academy or free schools. A review of applications from private schools to become free schools highlights, how differentiated local class structures affect the viability of elite education without state support.

This article explores the patterning of student im/mobility internally within the United Kingdom, using exceptionally detailed student records data on full-time undergraduate entrants from 2014. For this cohort of students, geographic mobility was clearly the preserve of the most socio-economically advantaged, and was less common for Pakistani and Bangladeshi ethnic groups. Significantly, the student's 'home' region emerges as the most important factor driving im/mobility even when social, ethnic and educational differences are held constant. The concept 'structures of feeling' can help make sense of immobility in areas of the North-East, North-West and Wales, where students are likely to look on higher education choice through a different lens of accumulated and contemporary, inter-generational cultural experience. Exploring exceptions to the dominant trends, we also find a more complex patterning of im/mobility that is likely to reflect the deep historical and structural framing of young people's socio-spatial horizons.

This paper uses social network analysis methods to explore how the spatial mobility of students to attend university creates regional divisions and socio‐spatial hierarchies of schools and universities. Using community detection methods as our methodological lens we stitch together regional economic geography, the student mobilities literature and the sociological and geographical analysis of elite education. Combining these statistical techniques with qualitative data from our broader study, we explore student flows between different geographical areas in the UK for universities. The clusters or 'communities' of areas underline how student migration to attend university in the UK is a moment which reflects and re‐creates regional and national boundaries. The second part of the paper examines school to university student flows, highlighting a distinctive, predominantly English cluster of elite schools and universities. Examining student mobility patterns with network methods allows us to distinguish a distinctive archipelagic geography of elite formation through higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There now exists a growing literature on educational mobilities, and this paper contributes to understanding the way contemporary youth imagine the geography of the United Kingdom and how this translates to their mobility intentions. Using Giddens and Massey and drawing on a unique multi‐sited qualitative dataset, we examine how these flows can be understood as embedded within narratives of the self that are situated within a particular spatial structuring of social, economic, and ethnic difference. The multi‐sited dataset provides a unique opportunity to see the simultaneity of these social relations across space, mutually shaping, and reshaping each other over time. We illustrate how embedded within imagined mobility narratives are deeply unequal structures of economic power, (re)producing oppressed and dominant positions across social and geographic space. Geometries of race and ethnicity are also shown to structure the ways in which different ethnic groups look upon the geography of their university choices. The patterning of these imagined spatial flows around the United Kingdom at the point of university entry can be interpreted as one further manifestation of deep‐seated geometries of power that pervade social life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new method is proposed here aimed at eliciting the mechanisms which maintain the relational positioning of people and places within social space. This 'mapping tool' is inherently relational by design and involves participants creating visual representations of their geographic imaginaries, encompassing their perceptions and preferences of different localities. This is followed by an interviewing approach wherein participants 'speak to' their map, producing 'thick' narratives detailing the ties that bind people and places. The method was developed and used as part of a 3-year study into the geographic imaginaries of young people in the UK, involving the collection of 1,000 maps, together with over 200 interviews, across 20 diverse localities. We draw on empirical examples of using the method from this study, including processes of differentiation within the middle classes and the place-based identities of towns, cities and localities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using exceptionally detailed administrative data on all 412,000 students attending university in the United Kingdom in 2014–2015 combined with spatial census data from 2011, we explore for the first time how the ethnic composition of where students grow up is linked to where they attend university. We calculate a "diversity score" for every U.K. university, which is then compared with the ethnic diversity of the surrounding area, allowing us to explore the institutional geography of ethnicity in U.K. universities. These scores provide the basis for a multilevel analysis of factors influencing whether students move towards more or less ethnically diverse universities than where they have grown up. White students are more likely than their ethnic‐minority peers to move towards a university that is more diverse than their home neighbourhood. We thus explore how students' mobility decisions for university are influenced by the uneven geography of race in U.K. cities and universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]