Scholarship Students in Elite South African Schools

This book provides a narrative account of the experiences of twenty former scholarship students from historically disadvantaged communities who attended elite public and private secondary schools. It draws on in-depth, one-on-one semi-structured interviews conducted with former scholarship recipients who were between the ages of 19 and 24 years at the time of the interviews. Various themes are explored, specifically focusing on elite schooling in relation to the experiences and navigational practices of the scholarship recipients and the adjustments that they felt they needed to make in order to fit into the elite school space.The book analyses and discusses the reflective experiences of students who were awarded a scholarship to attend an elite secondary school. It reveals that accepting the gift of a scholarship is far more complex, multi-layered, and at times harsh and even painful for the individual recipients than is possibly realized by those involved in this practice. This book contributes to academic educational debates within the sociology of education, elite schools and schooling in the post-apartheid South African context.
​"Empirically rich and theoretically sophisticated, this book provides a most engaging account of students from disadvantaged backgrounds who received a scholarship to attend an elite South African secondary school – of how they think about and negotiate their disadvantage in the contradictory landscape of post-apartheid South African education. It shows how the ‘two-tiered’ system persists in South Africa, and how social class has become a more significant factor in determining social privilege and access to quality education." — Fazal Rizvi, Emeritus Professor, University of Melbourne, Australia.
"Scholarship Students in Elite South African Schools is a timely and well researched volume that foregrounds the trajectories and perspectives of disadvantaged students who are scholarship awardees to elite schools in the ever-evolving post-apatheid context.The writing here is consistently insightful and refreshing. I highly recommend this volume to readers interested in understanding matters of the articulation of privilege and class in the post-apartheid South African educational context." — Cameron McCarthy, University Scholar, University of Illinois at Urbana