Pupil Subcultures: Anti-School and Pro-School Subcultures

Table of Contents

Last Updated on October 22, 2026 by Karl Thompson

Pupil subcultures are groups of pupils who share values, norms and behaviour which give them a sense of identity and provide them with status through peer-group approval.

This post covers:

Definitions of anti-school and pro-school subcultures.
The range of pupil responses in between (Woods).
Key studies, from Hargreaves and Lacey to Hollingworth and Williams, with a summary grid.
Pupil identities, and why pupils form subcultures.
Evaluations, and how the topic comes up in the exam.

Pupil subcultures are part of the ‘relationships and processes within schools’ section of the AQA specification, which lists “pupil identities and subcultures” by name, and are examined on Paper 1 (7192/1).

Pupil Subcultures: Mind map for A-level sociology

Types of School Subculture

The two main types of school subculture usually identified within the sociology of education are anti-school subcultures and pro-school subcultures, but researchers have identified plenty of more nuanced types, often based on the social class, gender and ethnic backgrounds of pupils.

The anti-school subculture

The anti-school subculture (sometimes called the counter-school culture) consists of groups of pupils who rebel against the school for various reasons, and develop an alternative set of values, attitudes and behaviours in opposition to the academic aims, ethos and rules of the school.

In the anti-school subculture, truancy, playing up to teachers, messing about, breaking the rules, avoiding school work and generally disrupting the smooth running of the school day become a way of getting back at the system and gaining status among peers.

Counter-school cultures are cultures of resistance, or anti-learning cultures, and taking part in them can be a means of gaining status among one’s peers – the more deviant the act, the more status you gain.

The classic study of the counter-school culture is Paul Willis’s (1977) Learning to Labour, in which he studied 12 working-class boys to find out why they spent their time messing around in school rather than working.

The Pro-School Subculture

Pro-school subcultures are those which accept the values and ethos of the school and willingly conform to its rules. They tend to be pupils in higher sets who aspire to high academic achievement and are prepared to work hard, and work ‘with the teachers’, to achieve these goals.

Pro-school subcultures are often associated with middle-class pupils, although not in all cases. Mac an Ghaill (1994) found two different pro-school subcultures in his participant observation study: the academic achievers, pursuing success through traditional academic subjects, and the new enterprisers, pursuing success through vocational subjects such as business studies. See below for more detail on Mac an Ghaill’s study.

Between Pro and Anti-School Subcultures: A Range of Responses

Peter Woods (1979) argued that dividing pupils into just two poles, pro- and anti-school, was too simplistic. He suggested that pupils don’t split neatly into subcultures. Instead there is a wide variety of responses to school, and pupils can switch between different adaptations as they move through their school careers.

Peter Woods: eight ways of adapting to school

Ingratiation – pupils who are eager to please teachers and have very favourable attitudes towards school. Conformist and pro-school.
Compliance – pupils who accept school rules and discipline and see school as a useful way to gain qualifications, but who don’t have a wholly positive or negative attitude towards it. This is typical of first-year pupils.
Opportunism – pupils who fluctuate between seeking the approval of teachers and of their peer group.

Ritualism – pupils who go through the motions of attending school but without great engagement or enthusiasm.
Retreatism – pupils who are indifferent to school values and exam success. Messing about in class and daydreaming are common, but these pupils don’t want to challenge the authority of the school.
Colonisation – pupils who try to get away with as much as possible. They may express hostility to the school but still try to avoid getting into trouble. More common in the later years of schooling.

Intransigence – troublemakers who are indifferent to school and not bothered about conforming.
Rebellion – the goals of school are rejected and pupils devote their efforts to achieving deviant goals.

Key studies on subcultures

The sad thing about subcultures in schools is that most of the classic research was done decades ago, possibly reflecting the fact that clearly identifiable subcultures were more common back then…

Some of the key studies include:

Hargreaves (1967): labelling and subcultures
Lacey (1970): differentiation and polarisation
Willis (1977): Learning to Labour
Mirza (1992): Young, Female and Black
Mac an Ghaill (1994): The Making of Men
Archer (2003): Race, Masculinity and Schooling: Muslim Boys and Education
Hollingworth and Williams (2009): chavs and the ‘working-class Other’

Below I summarise each study, then pull them together in a grid. The full references are at the end of the post.

David Hargreaves: Labelling and Subcultures

David Hargreaves (1967) argued that teacher labelling and streaming resulted in the formation of subcultures as pupils responded to their positive or negative labels. He studied one secondary school and found that pupils labelled as ‘troublemakers’ were placed in lower streams, while those seen as better behaved were placed in higher streams.

The pupils placed in the lower streams were viewed as no-hopers and had in effect been negatively labelled by the education system twice: once by being put in a secondary modern (having failed the 11-plus) and then by being put in the lower streams. These pupils were regarded as ‘worthless louts’ by many teachers.

Faced with the prospect of being unable to achieve in school, these pupils somehow had to maintain their self-worth and construct a sense of identity within the school.

Pupils who had been labelled as troublemakers tended to seek each other out and formed a non-conformist delinquent subculture in which they gained status through breaking school rules: disrupting lessons, giving cheek to teachers, truanting, not handing in homework.

Two distinct groups emerged in the school, according to Hargreaves: the conformists, who had been labelled positively and put in higher streams, and the non-conformist delinquents described above. (For more on teacher labelling, see labelling theory and the self-fulfilling prophecy.)

Lacey: Differentiation and Polarisation

Lacey’s (1970) study of a grammar school found two related processes at work in schools: differentiation and polarisation. Schools generally place a high value on things such as hard work, good behaviour and exam success, and teachers judge pupils and rank and categorise them into different groups – streams or sets – according to these criteria. This is what Lacey called differentiation.

One consequence of differentiation through streaming, setting and labelling is polarisation. This refers to the way pupils become divided into two opposing groups, or ‘poles’: those in the top streams who achieve highly, more or less conform, and so gain high status in terms of the values and aims of the school; and those in the bottom streams who are labelled as failures and therefore deprived of status.

Various studies, such as those by Hargreaves (1967, 1976), Ball (1981) and Abraham (1989), have found that teachers’ perceptions of pupils’ academic ability, and the processes of differentiation and polarisation, influenced how pupils behaved and led to the formation of pro- and anti-school subcultures. (Ball’s study of banding is covered in the post on setting and streaming.)

Paul Willis: Learning to Labour

The lads saw school and academic learning as pointless to their future lives as factory workers. They therefor resented school, and spent their time messing around and resisting any attempt to learn anything. Status was earned within the group by disrupting lessons and doing as little work as possible, in

The ‘lads’ in Willis’ study were very much a traditional, working-class macho subculture, and they defined the typically middle class students who obeyed the school rules as ‘earoles’ because they were always listening to the teacher, they also saw these students as a bit cissy, in contrast to their identification with ‘proper’ masculine working class manual-labour.

This is such a significant study in the the sociology of education that it’s worth a post in its own right, so I recommend having a look at ‘Learning to Labour‘ for a more in-depth look at this classic research study!

Paul Willis (1977) conducted in-depth research with 12 working-class ‘lads’ in one school in the Midlands who formed what he called a counter-school culture.

The lads saw school and academic learning as pointless to their future lives as factory workers. They therefore resented school and spent their time messing around and resisting any attempt to teach them anything. Status was earned within the group by ‘having a laff’, disrupting lessons and doing as little work as possible.

The lads were very much a traditional, working-class macho subculture. They called the conformist pupils who obeyed the school rules ‘ear’oles’, because they were always listening to the teacher, and saw them as a bit cissy, in contrast to their own identification with ‘proper’ masculine manual labour.

This is such a significant study in the sociology of education that it’s worth a post in its own right, so I recommend reading Learning to Labour for the full account and its evaluation.

Mac an Ghaill: Masculinities, sexualities and schooling

Mac an Ghaill (1994) focused on how gender identities influenced the formation of subcultures, and showed that subcultural responses were more complex than just pro- and anti-school.

He identified at least four distinct male subcultures: the macho lads, the academic achievers, the new enterprisers and the Real Englishmen. He also examined the experiences of gay pupils, though it’s not clear whether they formed a subculture.

He conducted research with Year 11 pupils in a mainly working-class comprehensive school in the West Midlands, and found that subcultures emerged in response to a range of factors, such as:

the way pupils were organised into sets
the curriculum they followed
the relationships pupils had with their teachers
pupils’ gender identities
pupils’ position within the class structure
the changing labour market.

The macho lads

These were the academic failures who had been placed in the bottom sets, and they were much like the lads in Willis’s study. They saw school as a ‘hostile authority’ making pointless demands on them, and formed an anti-school culture based around acting tough, having a laugh and looking after your mates. Messing around in lessons was a norm of this subculture.

They saw academic work as effeminate and physical work as ‘real work’. However, unlike Willis’s lads in the 1970s, there were very few manual jobs for the macho lads to go into – all they had to look forward to were Youth Training Schemes and possibly unemployment, which created a sense of frustration.

Teachers saw policing the macho lads as one of their jobs.

The academic achievers

These had been put in top sets by teachers and were well regarded by them, as they were positive about school and the subjects they were studying.

They were mostly from skilled manual working-class backgrounds and sought academic success through traditional academic subjects such as English, maths and the sciences. They were positive about their prospects of being upwardly socially mobile.

The new enterprisers

These were typically from working-class backgrounds. They rejected the traditional academic curriculum, which they saw as a waste of time, but were motivated to study subjects such as business and computing and were able to pursue upward mobility by using school–industry links to their advantage.

The Real Englishmen

These were a small group of middle-class pupils, typically from liberal professional backgrounds, who rejected what teachers had to offer, believing their own culture and knowledge to be superior.

They saw the motivations of both the enterprisers and the achievers as somewhat shallow, although they did themselves aspire to university and professional careers.

They had something of an aloof attitude to school. Doing well was not something they openly valued, as they saw school as beneath them, yet they needed to be successful to prove this, so they were concerned to achieve without making any apparent effort.

Of course they may well have worked hard at home, but it was the appearance of achieving effortlessly that was important.

Gay pupils

Mac an Ghaill was one of the first researchers to take into account the experiences of gay pupils, who found the school heterosexist and homophobic. They also criticised the way the school treated heterosexual relationships and the nuclear family as the norm.

Heidi Mirza: Young, Female and Black

Mirza (1992) studied young Black women in secondary schools and found that they had positive attitudes towards achieving success in education. However, many also thought that some teachers were racist, and their response valued education while having little respect for the school itself. (Mirza’s study is covered in more depth on the ethnicity and in-school processes post.)

Archer: Race, Masculinity and Schooling

Louise Archer (2003) studied Muslim boys in four secondary schools, using discussion groups. She found that the boys gained status among their peers by adopting aspects of a ‘gangsta’ masculinity – being macho, being respected and talking tough.

However, they also valued a more traditional masculinity associated with the breadwinner role, and saw education as a route to a good job and income. They saw racism as widespread in their lives, but this never turned into an out-and-out anti-school culture: their attitude to school was instrumental rather than hostile.

Hollingworth and Williams: Chavs and the ‘working-class Other’

Hollingworth and Williams (2009) researched the ways in which some working-class pupils were labelled as ‘chavs’ by their middle-class peers. Their research was based on 68 interviews with white, middle-class young people in three cities in England.

The young people were able to identify distinct subcultures, such as:

hippies or ‘poshies’
goths and emos
rockers and ‘gangsters’
townies, chavs or ‘charvers’.

The chav label was attached to white working-class young people, and it was imposed on them by middle-class pupils who were keen to stress that they themselves were nothing like it.

The middle-class young people looked down on ‘chav culture’, seeing chavs as lacking self-control, having poor taste and being uninterested in education – the opposite of their own way of being a pupil. Hollingworth and Williams concluded that social class still matters a great deal in young people’s lives, and that youth subcultures are classed in how they are talked about.

Summary grid: studies of pupil subcultures

Study	Date	Main focus	Subculture(s) identified	Pro or anti-school?	Key finding
Hargreaves	1967	Class, streaming	Conformists; non-conformist delinquents	Both	Pupils labelled troublemakers and put in low streams formed a delinquent subculture to win status
Lacey	1970	Streaming	Pro- and anti-school ‘poles’	Both	Differentiation (ranking pupils) leads to polarisation into opposing groups
Woods	1979	Pupil adaptations	Eight adaptations, from ingratiation to rebellion	A range	Two poles are too simple; pupils move between adaptations
Willis	1977	Class, masculinity	The lads (counter-school culture)	Anti	The lads saw school as irrelevant to the factory jobs they expected
Mirza	1992	Ethnicity, gender	Young Black women	Pro-education, critical of school	Positive about education but critical of teachers they saw as racist
Mac an Ghaill	1994	Gender, class, sexuality	Macho lads; academic achievers; new enterprisers; Real Englishmen	Mixed	Several male subcultures in one school, shaped by sets, curriculum and the labour market
Archer	2003	Ethnicity, gender	Muslim boys	Not anti-school	‘Gangsta’ masculinity for status, alongside an instrumental view of education
Hollingworth and Williams	2009	Class	Chavs (as seen by middle-class youth)	Labelled anti-education	Middle-class young people used ‘chav’ to set themselves apart from white working-class peers

Pupil identities

A pupil’s identity is their sense of who they are in school – as clever or ‘thick’, a ‘boff’ or a ‘lad’, ‘posh’ or ‘chav’ – and how that fits with their class, gender and ethnicity. Subcultures matter because they are one of the main places pupil identities are made. Labels from teachers, the set a pupil is in and the reactions of peers all feed into it.

One example is Archer, Hollingworth and Halsall’s (2007) research with working-class pupils from six schools (53 tracked in interviews and 36 more in discussion groups). They found that the young people invested heavily in style – branded clothes such as Nike – as a way of getting a sense of worth and value. HOWEVER this created a double bind: the same style-based identities helped lead them to see higher education as ‘not for me’, which kept them in a marginalised position.

A related idea is Bourdieu’s concept of habitus – the taken-for-granted tastes, ways of speaking and expectations that come with a person’s class background. Schools tend to reflect a middle-class habitus, so working-class pupils’ style and attitudes can be treated as inferior. AQA’s mark scheme for the June 2022 10-marker credits exactly this argument: a clash between the habitus of the school and staff and that of some pupils can lead to anti-school subcultures. (For more on Bourdieu, see the post on cultural capital and educational achievement.)

Why do pupils form subcultures?

There is significant theoretical debate about where pupil subcultures come from.

The early theorists Hargreaves and Lacey focused on anti-school subcultures and argued these were a ‘response’ to teachers negatively labelling mainly working-class boys and placing them in lower streams or sets. Those labelled then responded by forming anti-school cultures which rewarded members with status for misbehaving.

Paul Willis took a different approach, arguing that the lads actively chose to form a counter-school culture based on their accurate assessment that school wasn’t relevant to them, because they didn’t need qualifications to get working-class jobs. Their counter-school culture was mainly about passing the time by ‘having a laff’.

Later studies focus on the diversity of subcultures within schools and see different subcultures emerging from pupils’ class backgrounds, genders and sexualities. Mac an Ghaill, for example, identified three different subcultures among mainly working-class boys in one school, two of them broadly pro-school but in different ways, and one anti-school.

The studies by Mirza and Archer show that subcultures can form around ethnicity, and that perceptions of schools as racist play a part – but both groups remained generally positive about education.

Hollingworth and Williams’s study suggests that the subcultures middle-class pupils see are mostly about style, except for the working-class pupils labelled as ‘chavs’. Those labelled as chavs didn’t identify as chavs themselves, which raises the question of whether this ‘subculture’ existed at all, or was a label imposed from outside.

Tony Sewell argued that the pupils who join anti-school subcultures can bring an anti-school attitude with them from outside school, so the subculture cannot simply be a response to processes within school. Sewell’s work is covered in the ethnicity and in-school processes post.

Evaluations of subcultures and subcultural theory

How important are subcultures for an understanding of in-school processes and the experience of education today?

One argument is that the older studies of anti-school cultures are less relevant now. Schools today make more use of exclusion and alternative provision such as Pupil Referral Units, so the most disaffected pupils may no longer be in mainstream classrooms where researchers would find them.

A second argument is that the classic studies focused on unusual groups. Most pupils were never part of a clearly anti-school subculture, and the ‘lads’ and ‘delinquents’ of the classic studies may not have been typical even at the time.

The more recent studies suggest that pupils do still form subcultures along ethnic, gender and class lines, but that these tend to be less extreme than the classic anti-school groups, and are more likely to combine a positive view of education with a critical view of school (Mirza, Archer).

Finally, some subcultures may be mainly about style, with members having an ordinary attitude to school work. HOWEVER, Archer, Hollingworth and Halsall’s research suggests that even style-based identities can have real consequences for pupils’ educational choices – so style subcultures are not necessarily ‘incidental’ to education.

How pupil subcultures come up in the exam

Pupil subcultures appear on Paper 1 (7192/1), both as a topic in their own right and as evidence in questions on class, gender and ethnic differences in achievement. Recent AQA questions include:

June 2022, 10 marks: Applying material from Item A, analyse two ways in which relationships and processes within schools may lead to anti-school subcultures. See my worked answer to this question.
June 2021, 6 marks: Outline three reasons why some working-class boys join anti-school subcultures.
June 2019, 10 marks: Applying material from Item A, analyse two ways in which processes within schools may affect pupils’ identities.

For the identities questions, see also my practice answer on ways in which pupil identities may come into conflict within school.

Revision bundle

If you like this sort of thing, then you might like my sociology of education revision bundle, written by Karl Thompson, who taught A-level sociology for eighteen years and spent twelve as an AQA examiner, marking all three papers on the current specification.

Signposting

This post has been written primarily for students studying the education topic, as part of the AQA’s A-level sociology course.

References

Abraham, J. (1989).
Archer, L. (2003) Race, Masculinity and Schooling: Muslim Boys and Education. Buckingham: Open University Press.

Archer, L., Hollingworth, S. and Halsall, A. (2007) ‘”University’s not for me – I’m a Nike person”: urban, working-class young people’s negotiations of “style”, identity and educational engagement’, Sociology, 41(2), 219–237.
Ball, S. (1981) Beachside Comprehensive.
Hargreaves, D. (1967).
Hollingworth, S. and Williams, K. (2009) ‘Constructions of the working-class “Other” among urban, white, middle-class youth: “chavs”, subculture and the valuing of education’, Journal of Youth Studies, 12(5).
Lacey, C. (1970) Hightown Grammar.
Mac an Ghaill, M. (1994) The Making of Men: Masculinities, Sexualities and Schooling.

Mirza, H. S. (1992) Young, Female and Black.
Willis, P. (1977) Learning to Labour.
Woods, P. (1979) The Divided School.
Brown: Sociology for AS.
Chapman et al: Sociology AQA Year 1 and AS Student Book.