Hard times for education in England

Martin Allen and Patrick Ainley

Abstract

This paper summarizes a ten-lecture Open Access course in the post-war politics of education in England which can be accessed, together with supporting reading, lecture notes and videos of the lectures via our website at https://education-economy-society.com/. It is submitted to BESA journal in hopes that it will be used by students of education studies and, to help them follow the argument of the course, key concepts are emboldened below. These are generally related as pairs of ‘binaries’ that, while recognizing with Bourdieu the limitations of such ‘paired concepts’, are offered to readers as things to think with; hopefully simplifying reality as much as possible without making it too simple, as Einstein is supposed to have said. For thesame reason, citations are kept to a minimum although references can be found in the full lecture notes and supporting materials for the course which are provided on-line. The paper also updates and develops the argument of our 2010 book Lost Generation? New strategies for youth and education (London: Continuum).

Allen, M. and Ainley, P. (2012) Hard times for education in England. Educationalfutures, [online] Vol. 5(1). Available at: https://educationstudies.org.uk/?p=608 [Accessed 19 Apr, 2024].

Keywords

class structure, corrosion of learning, education and training, free-market, students and teachers, welfare state

Volume

Volume 5(1) 2012

Full Text

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