Ofsted will consider your 'cultural capital' when assessing your quality of education. Find out what cultural capital is and how it’s inspected here.
Cultural capital isn’t just 1 thing
Cultural capital can include experiences, art and knowledge from a variety of cultures
Cultural capital doesn’t just come from British 'high' culture (e.g. trips to the ballet or opera, or an understanding of Dickens and Shakespeare). It can include experiences, art and knowledge from a variety of cultures, and popular culture (e.g. Indian dance or Nigerian cooking, or an understanding of The Beatles or Stormzy).
Include these different forms of cultural capital throughout your curriculum and enrichment activities, to avoid elitism. Ofsted chief inspector Amanda Spielman called cultural capital “a golden thread, woven through everything you do to teach children well”.
This may be something you’re doing already, without thinking about it. Our anti-racism curriculum review tool can help you spot some potential gaps and make changes to your curriculum to improve diversity.
Diversifying cultural capital isn't just about ethnicity
Remember, it's not only about race and ethnicity when expanding your cultural capital offering in school.
You'll also want to include representation of different:
- Social classes – for example, by looking at books written by working-class authors
- Genders and sexualities – see our gender and LGBTQ+ inclusivity curriculum audit to make sure your teaching represents the diversity seen in modern Britain
- Abilities – when looking at role models in history, for example, make sure you don't only focus on able-bodied people
- Intersections in society – for example, when studying women's rights, how did the experiences of working-class women differ to those in the upper class?
Take a look at how you can weave cultural capital into your curriculum.
Understand your pupils’ own culture first, and help them to value it
For your pupils to be able to appreciate and understand other cultures, they need to feel confident in their own cultural identity first – start here when thinking about cultural capital.
Celebrate the diversity in your school
Remember that all pupils bring with them a wealth of cultural traditions and history that shouldn't be ignored. To get started:
All pupils bring with them a wealth of cultural capital
- Look at the different cultures and ethnic groups that make up your school, and think about your local context – consider social class, as well as ethnicity
- Make sure the achievements and culture of your pupils’ heritage is represented throughout your curriculum and enrichment activities – view this as part of your cultural capital offer. For example, if you're in an ex-mining community, does your history curriculum look at the local history of mining and the contributions of miners?
Get to know your pupils' backgrounds
If you don’t know about your pupils’ cultural heritage or it doesn't feature in your curriculum, it’s your job to find out more. To do this:
- Talk to parents and local community leaders
- Consider setting up a working group
If you have families from around the world, you might want to hold international days or events where pupils/parents/staff wear traditional dress or bring in traditional food or objects of cultural significance to share. For more examples of the kind of changes you might want to make, see our article on anti-racism: how to review and re-frame your curriculum.
Remember that this approach:
- Will benefit all pupils – if you're a diverse school, pupils will learn to value each others' cultures, as well as their own
- Goes beyond race – are women’s achievements celebrated in science? Do you read books by LGBTQ+ authors? Is the working-class history of your local area represented?
Incorporate and celebrate cultures that aren’t within your school
This is about preparing your pupils to live in culturally diverse modern Britain
It’s important that you also expose pupils to cultures from outside their school (especially if your school is mono-cultural, e.g. if your pupils are mostly white) – so make this part of your cultural capital offer. This is about preparing your pupils to live and thrive in culturally and ethnically diverse modern Britain.
To do this:
- Think about what kind of cultural experiences your pupils aren’t getting, don’t have access to, or might not be aware of
- Remember to take a broad approach – don’t just think in terms of white, English 'high' culture that pupils might not have access to: think about other forms of art, dance or music they might not have experienced, e.g. Islamic art, African dance and Gamelan music
- Think about the experiences your pupils might need to fully access your curriculum – e.g. if you have a topic on ‘castles’, this will mean nothing to pupils if they’ve never visited a castle
- Make sure all pupils are able to access enrichment activities such as clubs and trips – you can use your pupil premium funding for this
Think about your school's context
- If your school is in a majority white area, are pupils exposed to black and brown role models (beyond musicians and footballers)?
- If your school is in a majority Pakistani area, are pupils learning about cultures other than their own and English culture?
- If your pupils are mainly ethnic minority groups, for example, black, Asian, Indian, white Roma, are you preparing them to feel confident in situations (such as university open days) where they may be a minority?
Again, there are examples of how to do this in our anti-racism: how to review and re-frame your curriculum article.
You can still include more traditional interpretations of cultural capital
Of course, it’s important pupils also have an understanding of 'high' culture such as Dickens, Shakespeare and Mozart. But make sure you present this in your curriculum and enrichment as 1 form of culture, with many other forms of culture alongside, of equal value.
Make sure your staff know this isn’t the default at your school, and it isn’t the only way you define 'cultural capital'. To support staff with this more, share our staff handout on how to talk to pupils about race, racism and Black Lives Matter.