Social Science Bites

Diane Reay grew up in a council estate in a coal mining part of Derbyshire in England’s East Midlands. Those working-class roots dogged her from the start of her formal schooling. “I had to fight not to be in the bottom set; I was told that girls like me don’t go to university,” Reay, now a renowned Cambridge University education professor, tells interviewer David Edmonds in this Social Science Bites podcast. “I think that spurred a strong interest in class inequalities and I became, like many working-class girls of my age, a primary school teacher.” She in turn taught working-class children. Her primary motivation “was to make things better for them than it had been for me as a school pupil.” To which, she adds, “and I failed. I failed for a whole lot of reasons, but mainly to do with poor policy and an increasing focus on performativity and competition rather than fulfilling a child’s potential.” Those experiences in turn had a big influence on her research interests into educational inequality and embrace