The twofold capital requirement of educational success: social closure in the International Baccalaureate Diploma in Australia

Abstract

While the universalisation of educational provision in a given country generally leads to an internal diversification of its educational system, the neoliberal policies that have spread across Australia since the 1980s have resulted in the concentration of particular social groups at specific educational sites. Moreover, by encouraging a freer interplay of educational supply and demand, neoliberal reforms have grounded this process of educational segregation in the socio-economic properties of students and their families. Predictably, two specific types of resources have been able to function as capital in the educational system: these are cultural capital and economic capital. I propound that the most profitable educational sites have been encircled by boundaries through admitting quasi-exclusively holders of combined economic and cultural capitals. The twofold endowment in economic and cultural capitals has come to function as a social closure mechanism in Australian education. In order to illustrate my argument, I take the example of the International Baccalaureate Diploma and show how economic capital and cultural capital are twin requirements for accessing this valuable educational site.