‘A bit unfair’? How parental responsibilisation camouflages class-based inequalities at a highly selective educational transition in Zurich, Switzerland

Abstract

International research focused on the increasing responsibilisation of parents in terms of their children’s schooling and educational success has highlighted how responsibilities shift from the state and the school towards parents and families themselves (e.g., Crozier 2019; Holloway and Pimlott-Wilson 2014; Vincent 2017). However, only few studies have shed light on how such policies as well as parental and teacher practices impact pupils’ perception of socioeconomic and educational inequalities.
Our presentation contributes to the study of mechanisms of parental responsibilisation that solidify unequal educational opportunities and camouflage these, especially in the eyes of the pupils. It shows how parental responsibilisation plays a crucial role in ensuring that class-based inequalities remain unrecognized by pupils at the educational transition after sixth grade in Zurich, Switzerland – a city with strong spatial inequalities regarding transfer rates to the highest-ability secondary school track, the only one granting direct access to university. Based on an ethnographic study with families from diverse socio-economic backgrounds whose children are sixth graders, we analyse the impact of the interplay of parents’ and teachers’ practices for the pupils’ understanding of inequalities. We argue that class-based inequalities are (un)intentionally being camouflaged for pupils through parental involvement in their children’s education which is produced as the norm as well as parents’ and teachers’ practices of silencing inequalities. While pupils recognise language-based educational inequalities, they do not see class-based ones, which reinforces pupils' perception of this transition as meritocratic and of a society in which socio-economic inequality have no bearing on educational chances.