Written by Matt Bromley and Andy Griffith, The Working Classroom: How to make school work for working-class students offers practical strategies and tools to help secondary schools address the needs of working-class students, including by building cultural capital and designing learning that is more engaging to working-class students. 

Schools do amazing work to support children from disadvantaged backgrounds. But this book will enable them to do more. Disadvantage comes in many forms – one being cultural poverty, where some students have relative knowledge gaps compared to their more affluent peers. The Working Classroom explores how working-class students are disadvantaged by a flawed system and what we can do to close the gap.

The book examines how and why we must seek systemic changes but focuses on actions within the control of teachers and school leaders which will ensure that we create a socially just education system – one that builds on the rich heritage of the working class, rather than seeing that background as a weakness. It offers practical ways of enabling students and families to appreciate their strengths, building on the best of working-class culture whilst also empowering teachers, students and parents to change the system.

Backed up by practical case studies that have a proven impact in schools with high levels of deprivation, The Working Classroom will enable teachers to audit their current provision and encourage them to adopt new systems and practices so that they, and the wider school, will have a greater impact on the lives of working-class students and their families.

Suitable for both teachers and leaders in a secondary school or sixth form college setting who seek to support social change in education and anyone in the corporate or non-education world who wants to practice effective altruism or philanthropy.