The retreat from social class within the sociology of education has been accompanied by the intensification of socio-economic and cultural inequalities. This paper seeks to draw upon cultural analyses of social class by addressing a classificatory shift of white English working-class males, who have moved from an ascribed primary "socio-economic" status to an embodied "aesthetic" performance. We examine the reconfiguration of social class within state schools and historical and contemporary shifting images of white working-class males within the education literature. We suggest the need to engage with a multi-dimensional explanatory frame in order to understand how working-class young men now inhabit a new cultural condition in the post-colonial urban space of inner-city schools. This shift is best captured by exploring the simultaneous articulations of multiple categories of difference--including class, gender, ethnicity, sexuality and generation--in relation to contemporary representations of social class. (Contains 4 notes.)