Secondary education and social change in the United Kingdom since 1945

1944年的《教育(管家)法》彻底改革了英国的教育结构。中学教育第一次成为一种大众体验，这将对20世纪末英国一代又一代成长的人的一生产生影响。到1961年，有320万学生在国家资助的中学接受教育，60多万学生在私立学校接受教育。在接下来的50年里，随着历届政府试图重塑教育制度，教育改革一再导致政治和公众意见的分歧。然而，尽管这种政治干预的叙述已经被详尽地讲述了，但我们对1945年后学生和家长对大众教育的看法知之甚少。制度改革是在整个英国社会发生深刻的社会和经济变革的背景下进行的。传统的社会结构似乎支离破碎，因为富裕、社会流动性、顺从程度的下降、个人主义和消费主义等过程重新塑造了个人在更广泛的社会中理解自己地位的方式。该项目将利用一系列创新的来源，提供战后中学教育的新社会和文化史，将教育嵌入到20世纪末英国快速社会和文化变化的经历中。这是对现有的1945年后教育图景的不可或缺的贡献，超越了根深蒂固的历史学立场，这些立场往往将教育视为其他关切的代理，如民族衰落或阶级重组。我们并不完全依靠“专家的声音”--政客、评论员或教师--而是询问日常的教育经历如何塑造和反映学生和家长从年轻到就业再到为人父母的一生中的抱负、期望和自我意识。使用战后纵向研究和1950年后社会调查的原始数据和采访记录，我们将探索国家、地区、地方和个人教育历史的交集，绘制出这些历史在整个英国是如何不同的，并随着时间的推移而变化。我们的发现将结合广泛的国家概况和一系列地方案例研究，以扎根于特定背景下的教育经验。与之前的研究不同，我们的研究将目光投向了英格兰和威尔士以外的地方，考虑了整个英国和所有学校(中学、现代学校、语法学校、综合学校和独立学校)。我们将提供不同的成果，包括两本学术专著和5篇期刊文章，以及针对广大公众的资源。我们将开发一个互动网站，促进公众和项目之间的直接合作。它将包括研究团队撰写的短文，以及互动地图和保存教育材料的档案数据库，以帮助感兴趣的家庭和社区历史学家。我们还将策划公众生成的内容，作为“学生时代”记忆博客的一部分。这将把图像、我们档案研究的材料和用户自己的证词结合在一起。我们的档案研究将补充通过口述历史讲习班和访谈产生的新材料。该网站将主持一些播客，以一系列关于一个家庭几代人之间的教育经历的对话为特色。参与者将通过学校和当地历史团体招募，我们将在研究期间发展与他们的关系，并利用我们的项目合作伙伴组织。通过将战后教育史与更广泛的社会变革的故事重新联系起来，这项研究将为研究仍处于当代政治和社会学辩论前沿的现象提供一个重要的新的历史视角。

The 1944 Education (Butler) Act overhauled the structure of British education. For the first time secondary schooling became a mass experience, which would have an impact upon the life course of successive generations growing-up in late 20th century Britain. By 1961 3.2 million pupils were being educated in state funded secondary schools, and over 600,000 in the independent sector. Over the ensuing 50 years, educational reform has repeatedly divided political and popular opinion as successive governments have attempted to remodel the system. Yet while this narrative of political meddling has been exhaustively told, we know very little about what pupils and parents thought mass education was for after 1945. Reform of the system occurred against a backdrop of profound social and economic transformation across British society. Traditional social structures appeared to fragment as processes including affluence, social mobility, a decline in deference, individualism and consumerism reconfigured how individuals understood their position within wider society.Drawing on an innovative range of sources, this project will provide a new social and cultural history of postwar secondary education, embedding education in the experience of rapid social and cultural change in late 20th century Britain. This represents an indispensable contribution to the existing picture of post-1945 education by moving beyond entrenched historiographical positions, which too often treat education as a proxy for other concerns, such as national decline or class realignment. Rather than relying entirely on 'expert voices' - politicians, commentators or teachers - we ask how the everyday experience of education shapes and reflects pupils' and parents' aspirations, expectations, and sense of self, across their lives from youth to employment to parenthood. Using the original data and interview transcripts from postwar longitudinal studies and post-1950 social surveys, we will explore the intersection of national, regional, local and individual histories of education, charting how these differed across the UK and changed over time. Our findings will combine a broad national overview with a series of local case-studies to root the experience of education within specific contexts. Unlike previous studies, our research looks beyond England and Wales to consider the whole of Britain and the complete spectrum of schools (secondary modern, grammar, comprehensive and independent). We will deliver a diverse range of outputs, including two academic monographs and 5 journal articles, as well as resources aimed at a wide public audience.We will develop an interactive website to facilitate direct collaboration between the public and the project. It will incorporate short pieces written by the research team, alongside interactive maps and a database of archives holding material on education to help interested family and community historians. We will also curate content generated by the public as part of a 'School Days' memory blog. This will combine images, material from our archival research and users' own testimonies. Our archival research will be supplemented with new material produced through oral history workshops and interviews. A number of podcasts will be hosted on the website, featuring a series of conversations about educational experience between several generations within a family. Participants will be recruited through schools and local history groups with whom we will develop relationships during our research and also by drawing upon our Project Partner organizations. By reconnecting the history of post-war education with the story of wider social change, this study will offer an important new historical perspective on phenomena that remain at the forefront of contemporary political and sociological debate.