Ball, Bowe & Gerwitz

• Market forces and parental choice
• Middle class parents have more choice in the education market due to their cultural and economic capital
• League tables
• It looks at the impact of league tables and Ofsted creating competition between schools.
• There were intended and unintended consequences.
• Schools would cream skim the top achievers to make sure that they got the best grade, they put more effort into these students. If they didn’t fit into cream skimming or silt shifting (which was for lowest achievers and teaching them only the skill that they would need for working) then they were neglected and ‘doomed to fail’, this meant that they were given easier work to fill the time.
• Middle class parents were ‘skilled choosers’ so the introductions of parentocracy meant that middle class students were more likely to get into high achieving schools because their parents had the contacts to make sure that their child got a place.
• Working class parents were not as informed which meant that their children had to settle for lesser schools. 
• Recognises the middle class advantage shown by lots of Marxist theorists and applies real life policies to this theory. Looked at 15 schools so it can be generalised. 
• It doesn’t look at the success of the working class students who do achieve highly and get into high/top ranking universities and jobs.