Education and the Working Class: Some General Themes Raised by a Study of 88 Working-Class Children in a Northern Industrial City, 1946-1960

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.This is an enhanced qualitative study. The research was an attempt to discover the 'gains' and 'losses' experienced by working-class children who pass through the grammar school experience. The study considered the question of why many working-class children failed to complete their full grammar school education (from 11 to 18). The authors asked if the price of access into middle-class life required a move away from working-class origins. An additional motivation was a desire to contribute to the debate on 'opening' up grammar school and university education to working-class children. Finally, the research was inspired by the researchers' own experiences as working-class grammar school children. The research selected the names of all pupils whose fathers were 'working-class' (employed in jobs outside social class I and II as defined by the Registrar General's classification of occupations for the 1951 Census) from the list of Higher School Certificate and General Certificate of Education (GCE) 'A' level passes at four Huddersfield grammar schools between 1949 and 1952 inclusive. To increase the number of girls in the universe of analysis, the range for females was extended between 1946 and 1954 inclusive. This produced a total sample of 88 people aged between 20 and 32 (49 male, 39 female). They were then interviewed. Their parents were interviewed separately. Because there were two sets of sisters, the final universe of analysis was based on 86 working-class families. Finally, ten names were randomly selected from the same pass list of children whose fathers were employed in 'middle-class' jobs. These were then interviewed as 'middle-class children'. Their parents were interviewed separately. The collection has been enhanced in two ways. First, all interviews were converted from paper to partially searchable Adobe PDF files. Second, additional relevant documents are included in the user guide, such as the original letter sent to participants, correspondence notes on methodology, information on the demography of the sample, reviews and correspondence in reaction to the collection, and extracts from an interview and lecture with the author about conducting this research