Diane Reay

Diane Reay is a sociologist and academic, who is Emeritus Professor of Education at the University of Cambridge.^[1][2][3] She is noted for her study about educational inequalities among students in state schools in the United Kingdom.^[1] She has maintained that there is a tendency to misuse the school selection practice to transform social class differences into education.^[4] For instance, she criticized the Oxbridge application process as "institutionally racist".^[5]

Working-class student experiences

Reay's research highlights the challenges that working-class students have in higher education, in particular when accessing and transitioning to and within higher education.^[1]

Background

Reay is the daughter of a coal miner and the eldest of eight children. She was raised on a council estate and was given free school meals while a young student. In an interview, she said, "I learned as a small child I had to work at least twice as hard as the middle-class children to achieve the same result."^[1]

She taught in a London primary school for 20 years before she began work at Cambridge,^[1] where she is currently an emeritus professor of sociology of education.^[3]