How Capital generates capitals in English elite private schools: Charities, tax and accounting

The sociological literature on elite private schooling is frequently informed by Bourdieu’s signature concepts of cultural, social and symbolic capital. Yet, his insistence that economic capital is the ‘root’ of these other capitals is often overlooked or downplayed. This paper addresses this lacuna. While it gestures to Bourdieu’s other capitals, its primary focus is on finance itself and the various legal and accounting regimes that facilitate schools’ financial capital acquisition, accumulation and conversion into other individual and organisational capitals. We interrogate these schools’ income-generating and spending strategies on fees, infrastructure and scholarships, explicating how charity law, tax regimes, and accounting rules work to their advantage. In so doing we demonstrate how ambiguous law and accounting regimes enable them to produce exclusivity through pricing and luxury infrastructure. In short, we show how elite private schools in England keep fees high, scholarships low and luxury pervasive.