- Reay, Diane. Miseducation: Inequality, Education and the Working Classes. 1st ed., Bristol University Press, 2017, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt22p7k7m.
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Diane Reay is a sociologist and academic, who is Professor of Education at the University of Cambridge.[1][2] 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.[3] For instance, she criticized the Oxbridge application process as "institutionally racist".[4]
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]
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.[5]