Cultural capital and secondary school music education in England, featuring the ‘Stormzy vs Mozart’ furore

The phrase “cultural capital” has come to assume significance in the education system in England. There are a number of reasons for this, but chief amongst these is the fact the Ofsted, the Office for Standards in Education, which is England’s arms-length governmental inspection body, have said they will be inspecting schools for how this is delivered: Inspectors will make a judgement on the quality of education by evaluating the extent to which […] leaders take on or construct a curriculum that is ambitious and designed to give all learners, particularly the most disadvantaged and those with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) or high needs, the knowledge and cultural capital they need to succeed in life […] (Ofsted, 2021) What this means is that school inspectors will be looking at how schools “give” – Ofsted’s word – cultural capital to children and young people in schools. Why this matters, at least in England, is that the theme of this EAS book is “Music is what people do”; however, the ways in which the phrase “cultural capital” is interpreted could mean that some musics that some people do would seem to matter more than others. In other words, there are perceptions that some music has more cultural capital implicit within it than others. This is clearly problematic, and so in this chapter we wish to try and deconstruct this matter, discuss a number of aspects thereof, and tease out what some of the implications might be for an international audience