The importance of relationships to white working-class students’ engagement with school

Relationships between students and staff, and with each other, matter to young people. However, they have been undervalued in recent educational policies. This paper presents data from qualitative research in three comprehensive secondary schools in London to explore how teacher–student, home-school and peer relationships have the power to both support and undermine engagement and achievement. It uses a Bourdieusian conceptual framework to analyse how: strong teacher–student relationships mitigate against habitus disjuncture and build social capital; effective home–school partnerships are facilitated by the recognition of parental capital; and how pedagogy influences whether peer relationships build academically supportive or oppositional social capital and thus either enable social and learner identities to align or be in conflict. Whilst white working-class students are the focus of the study, findings are applicable to others and provide insights which may help address the rising problem of absence, suspension and exclusion which disproportionately affects many marginalised groups.