Secondary education and social change in the United Kingdom since 1945

1944年的《教育（巴特勒）法案》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，这将对在20世纪后期的英国长大的几代人的生命历程产生影响。到1961年，有320万名学生在公立中学接受教育，60多万名学生在私立学校接受教育。在随后的50年里，随着历届政府试图改造教育体系，教育改革在政治和民意上一再出现分歧。然而，尽管这种政治干预的叙述已经被详尽地讲述过，但我们对1945年后学生和家长对大众教育的看法却知之甚少。该制度的改革发生在整个英国社会深刻的社会和经济转型的背景下。随着富裕、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配置了个人如何理解自己在更广泛的社会中的地位，传统的社会结构似乎出现了分裂。利用一系列创新的资源，该项目将提供战后中等教育的新的社会和文化历史，将教育融入20世纪后期英国快速社会和文化变革的经验中。这是对1945年后教育现状的不可或缺的贡献，它超越了根深蒂固的历史立场，这些立场往往将教育视为其他问题（如国家衰落或阶级重组）的代表。我们不是完全依赖于“专家声音”——政治家、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青年到就业再到为人父母的整个生活中的愿望、期望和自我意识。利用战后纵向研究和1950年后社会调查的原始数据和访谈记录，我们将探索国家、地区、地方和个人教育历史的交集，绘制这些历史在英国各地的差异以及随时间的变化。我们的研究结果将结合广泛的全国概况和一系列当地案例研究，以在特定背景下扎根教育经验。与以前的研究不同，我们的研究超越了英格兰和威尔士，考虑了整个英国和所有学校（中等现代学校、语法学校、综合学校和独立学校）。我们将提供各种各样的产出，包括两本学术专著和五篇期刊文章，以及面向广大公众的资源。我们会建立一个互动网站，方便市民与计划直接合作。它将包括研究小组撰写的短文，以及互动地图和保存教育资料的档案数据库，以帮助感兴趣的家庭和社区历史学家。我们还将策划公众产生的内容，作为“学校时光”记忆博客的一部分。这将结合图像，材料从我们的档案研究和用户自己的证词。我们的档案研究将补充通过口述历史研讨会和访谈产生的新材料。该网站将举办一系列播客节目，介绍一个家庭几代人之间关于教育经历的一系列对话。参与者将通过学校和当地历史团体招募，我们将在研究期间与他们发展关系，也将利用我们的项目合作伙伴组织。通过将战后教育的历史与更广泛的社会变革的故事重新联系起来，本研究将为当代政治和社会学争论的前沿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.