Histoire de l’éducation

154 | 2020
Regards sur l’histoire de l'éducation, une perspective
internationale

History of education in Britain since 1960

L’histoire de l’éducation en Grande-Bretagne depuis 1960

Gary McCulloch

Electronic version
URL: https://journals.openedition.org/histoire-education/5640
DOI: 10.4000/histoire-education.5640
ISSN: 2102-5452

Publisher
ENS Éditions

Printed version
Date of publication: 31 December 2020
Number of pages: 119-141
ISBN: 979-10-362-0416-6
ISSN: 0221-6280

Electronic reference
Gary McCulloch, “History of education in Britain since 1960”, Histoire de l’éducation [Online], 154 | 2020,
Online since 01 January 2023, connection on 03 January 2023. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/
histoire-education/5640 ; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/histoire-education.5640

All rights reserved

History of education in Britain since 1960

Gary McCulloch

Writing on the history of education has changed in fundamental ways over the
past sixty years. In 1960, the history of education was produced mainly through
texts written for a national audience, largely comprising future teachers, which
gave it low status as a field of study in the academy compared to recognised
disciplines such as history or philosophy. There was no national association to
represent the history of education, nor any specific journal to support it. The
educational past was usually represented in terms of gradual progress in the
growth of schooling since the nineteenth century and the gradual improvement
of the society and economy that it served. In 2020, the history of education
was written mainly in journal articles rather than in texts. A national History
of Education Society (HES) had emerged and grown to represent it, and was
responsible for the development of a leading journal to explore different aspects
of the past. The broad consensus of educational and social progress had been
broken, to be replaced by revisionist approaches that sought to investigate
many kinds of relationships between education and society1.
The map of the history of education changed over these six decades in three
broad phases, albeit often contested and partial in nature. In the first, roughly
from 1960 until 1975, what was described as a quiet revolution took place as
the area expanded, a new journal and association were created, and new topics
and approaches were developed, although texts remained important. Over the

1 See e.g. Gary McCulloch, The Struggle for the History of Education, London, Routledge, 2011.

Histoire de l’éducation | no 154 | 2020 | 119-141

120 Gary McCulloch

following quarter-century, these gains threatened to go into reverse as the

history of education lost its place in teacher education and general texts largely
ceased production. In the early years of the twenty-first century the history of
education began to reinvent itself as a research-based sub-discipline based in
journal literature and research monographs. This encouraged a more diverse
and fragmented audience across the social sciences and humanities rather than
in teacher education, international as well as national in its orientation, while
retaining its infrastructure in the form of its national association and journal2.
The current article seeks to trace the history of education in this period
as a discrete and unique knowledge formation with a distinctive identity in
higher education. It has been regarded by prominent advocates as a “disci-
pline” in itself, or a “sub-discipline” or “specialism”, requiring as Gordon and
Szreter put it, “both a cognitive identity and a professional identity, the latter
being at the core of its institutionalisation”3. It has drawn eclectically on the
methods, perspectives and philosophies associated with the discipline of history,
while exploring the content of education as a field of knowledge, and engaging
increasingly with the multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary facets of the social
sciences and humanities. The historical development of the history of education
over the past sixty years is surveyed here in relation to an extended university
project, occupying not only the departmental and faculty structures of higher
education but also its many accompanying projects, developed and promoted
by practising academics, such as journals, societies, centres and conferences.
The main sources through which this is discussed are the published works
that have been produced, both as books and as journal articles, and also the
societies and conferences that were established during this period4.

2 Earlier general discussions of the historiography of education in Britain include Peter Gordon,
Richard Szreter (eds.), History of Education: The Making of a Discipline, London, Woburn, 1989;
William Richardson, “Historians and educationists: the history of education as a field of study in
post-war England”, Part I, 1945-1972, History of Education, vol. 28, no. 1, 1999, p. 1-30; and Part II,
1972-1996, History of Education, vol. 28, no. 2, 1999, p. 109-141; David Crook, Richard Aldrich (eds.),
History of Education for the twenty-first centrury, London, Institute of Education, 2000; William
Richardson, “British historiography of education in international context at the turn of the century,
1996-2006”, History of Education, vol. 26, no. 4-5, 2007, p. 569-593; Joyce Goodman, Ian Grosvenor,
“Educational research–history of education a special case?”, Oxford Review of Education, vol. 35,
no. 5, 2009, p. 601-616; History of Education, special issue, “Forty years of History of Education,
1972-2011”, vol. 41, no. 1, 2012.
3 Peter Gordon, Richard Szreter, “Introduction”, in Peter Gordon, Richard Szreter (eds.), History of
Education…, op. cit., p. 3.
4 For general international trends in the history of education see also e.g. Gary McCulloch, “New
directions in the history of education”, Journal of International and Comparative Education, vol. 5,
 History of education in Britain since 1960 121

I. 1960-1975: A quiet revolution

The first of these phases, from 1960 until the mid-1970s, was one of social and
political debate in Britain. The narrow defeat of the Conservative government
in 1964 led to a Labour government under Harold Wilson that emphasised
educational and social reform. From 1970, under Edward Heath’s Conservative
government, the further expansion of the educational system began to falter
with growing industrial and economic problems. It was against this background
that the sub-discipline of the history of education was fully institutionalised as
a new academic society was established in the history of education in 1967,
and then a new research journal, History of Education, in 1972.
In terms of the approach taken by historians of education, this phase of
development was dominated by the work of Brian Simon at the University of
Leicester, whose first three of his four-volume history of education in Britain
since 1780 were published during this time. What became the first volume in
the set, published in 1960, covered the period from 1780 to 1870, and explored
the nature of educational reform in England during the Industrial Revolution,
up to and including the Elementary Education Act of 1870. The second vol-
ume, in 1965, took the story up to 1920, while the third, in 1974, addressed
the interwar period of the 1920s and 1930s5. This was a story that belied the
narrative of gradual social progress that had hitherto underpinned histories
of education in Britain. On the contrary, it proposed that this history should
be interpreted in Marxist terms, as being about a working-class struggle for
education against the vested interests of the middle class. According to Simon,
the originators of the education system in the nineteenth century, such as
James Key-Shuttleworth and Robert Lowe, represented middle class interests
in undermining those of the organised working class, in education no less than
in society as a whole. Simon portrayed the contest between these opposing

no. 1, 2016, p. 47-56; and Gary McCulloch, “Consensus and revisionism in educational history”, in
John Rury, Eileen Tamura (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the History of Education, Oxford, Oxford
University Press, 2029, p. 19-32.
5 Brian Simon, Studies in the History of Education, 1780-1870, London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1960;
Brian Simon, Education and the Labour Movement, 1870-1920, London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1965;
Brian Simon, The Politics of Educational Reform, 1920-1940, London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1974.
See also Gary McCulloch, “A people’s history of education: Brian Simon, the British Communist
Party, and Studies in the History of Education, 1780-1870”, History of Education, vol. 39, no. 4,
2010, p. 437-457; and Gary McCulloch, Struggle for the History of Education, op. cit., esp. Ch. 4.
122 Gary McCulloch

class interests playing itself out in the sphere of education throughout the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries6.
In the 1960s, the history of education was represented, as it had been for
several decades, mainly through textbooks designed to appeal to student tea-
chers being trained for their future profession. Simon’s work was no exception
to this general rule, and there were many other examples of this type produced
at this time. There were no British journals focusing specifically on the history
of education in the early 1960s, and so it tended to be a text-based field with
its roots in teacher education rather than a journal-based one leaning towards
specialised research.
A further text produced in 1960 was John Harrison’s history of the English
adult education movement, Learning and Living, 1790-1960. Harrison’s work
demonstrated the contribution of adult education, in relation to “contemporary
aspects of social policy and social change”, to the growth of democracy and its
ambivalent role as “alternatively a movement of protest and a means to promote
social acceptance and harmony”7. Another key figure who produced his most
significant work as texts at this time was Walter Armytage at the University of
Sheffield. By contrast with Simon, Armytage’s published oeuvre presented the
history of education in England in terms of gradual progress towards a rational,
scientific and civilised society. He insisted that the structures developed under
the 1870 Elementary Education Act were essentially benevolent and progressive
in their design. He also cultivated a strongly internationalist dimension in his
work which he reflected increasingly in his comparative studies, especially in
demonstrating the international influences of educational ideas and practices.
Armytage produced several books that traced the origins and development of
modern educational and social movements8. In the later 1960s, Armytage also
contributed a series of short works to the Students Library of Education series
on different national influences on English education: the American, French,
German, and Russian9. Joan Simon and Gillian Sutherland are further examples

6 On Brian Simon see also e.g. Anne Corbett, “obituary, Brian Simon”, The Guardian, 22 January 2002.
7 John Harrison, Learning and Living 1790-1960, London, RKP, 1960, p. xii-xiii.
8 Walter Armytage, Four Hundred Years of English Education, Cambridge, Cambridge University
Press, 1964; The Rise of the Technocrats: A Social History, London, RKP, 1965; A Social History of
Engineering, Cambridge Mass., MIT Press, 1966; Heavens Below: Utopian Experiments in England,
1560-1960, London, RKP, 1968.
9 Walter Armytage, The American Influence on English Education, London, RKP, 1967; The French
Influence on English Education, London, RKP, 1968; The German Influence on English Education,
 History of education in Britain since 1960 123

of leading historians of education who produced key texts that revised earlier
approaches to particular periods, and discussed new perspectives on the history of
education at this time. Joan Simon’s Education and Society in Tudor England was
a benchmark text that effectively revised much earlier scholarship on sixteenth-
century education10. For her part, Sutherland published significant studies on
the nature of educational government in late nineteenth century England11.
Nevertheless, Brian Simon in a defining contribution asserted a different
and distinctive rationale for the study of the history of education. He argued
that historical study of education should be primarily concerned with the study
of education as a social function. Thus, according to Simon, education was “a
social function, and one of primary importance in every society”12. When viewed
in this way, Simon insisted, the history of education could be recognised “as
a vital contribution to social history – rather than as a flat record of acts and
ordinances, punctuated by accounts of the theories of great educators who enter-
tained ideas ’in advance of their time”13. In such a history, moreover, education
would take its proper place, “not merely as an adjunct to the historical process
but as one of the chief factors conditioning men’s outlook and aspirations”14.
These reflections on the nature and rationale of the history of education
took place in a rapidly changing institutional context involving the expansion of
higher education. Courses in teacher training were extended from two to three
years in 1960 with a new Bachelor of Education (BEd) degree. In these extended
courses, general treatments of education as a whole gave way to specialised
examination of education based on its key disciplines, including history. This
led to larger numbers of staff being appointed with specialist experience in

London, RKP, and The Russian Influence on English Education. For Armytage see also e.g. his entry
in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: <https://doi.org./10.1093/ref:odnb/70031>.
10 Joan Simon, Education and Society in Tudor England, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,
1966. See also “The history of education in Past and Present”, Oxford Review of Education, vol. 3,
no. 1, 1977, p. 71-86. On Joan Simon as a historian of education, see e.g. Joan Simon, “My life in
the history of education”, History of Education Society Bulletin, no. 54, 1994, p. 29, 33; Ruth Watts,
“Obituary: Joan Simon (1915-2005)”, History of Education, vol. 35, no. 1, 2006, p. 5-9; and Jane
Martin, “Neglected women historians: the case of Joan Simon”, Forum, vol. 56, no. 3, 2014, p. 54-66.
11 Gillian Sutherland, Policy-Making in Elementary Education, 1870-95, Oxford University Press, Oxford,
1973. See also Gillian Sutherland, “The study of the history of education”, History, vol. 54, no. 180,
1969, p. 59-69.
12 Brian Simon, “The history of education”, in John William Tibble (ed.), The Study of Education, London,
RKP, 1966, p. 92.
13 Ibid., p. 95.
14 Ibid., p. 105.
124 Gary McCulloch

particular disciplines, and in some cases ability in research. This was therefore
a period of growth which encouraged the formation of new academic societies
to support the disciplinary communities that were becoming established15.
In the case of the history of education, the HES was formed in December 1967
at a conference held at the City of Liverpool C.F. Mott College of Education. This
was attended by 150 participants, mainly teachers of the subject in colleges
and departments of education. Armytage and Simon both lent their authority
to this initiative by opening the conference. They referred in this to a growing
interest in the history of education, particularly since the introduction of the
BEd degree. They also proposed potential new approaches to the topic, which
Kenneth Charlton of the University of Birmingham discussed further in a
subsequent address to the conference. The remainder of this conference was
concerned with a consideration of current syllabuses in colleges and departments
of education, and with a lecture on the relationship between Church and State16.
This led to an annual conference held by the Society in subsequent years to
explore particular themes: in December 1968, on the government and control
of education since 1860; in December 1969, on the changing curriculum; and
in December 1970, on history, sociology and education.
Each of the three themes selected by the HES for its early conferences held
wider significance. In the case of the 1968 conference on the government and
control of education, it helped to mark the approaching centenary of the 1870
Elementary Education Act. This was also an interest of the main academic
education journal, the British Journal of Educational Studies, whose long-time
editor, Arthur Beales of King’s College London, was himself a historian. In 1970,
the BJES published a special issue to commemorate the centenary of the Act17.
The centenary coincided with the culmination in Britain of a period of relative
economic growth and social reform, including education. Since the 1950s,
investment in educational growth had led to further development at all levels
of education. The gradual formation of a national system of education with its
foundations traced to the nineteenth century could be widely observed and
generally celebrated as a basis for further growth. The substantial reports on

15 See also Gary McCulloch, Steven Cowan, A Social History of Educational Studies and Research,
London, Routledge, 2018, p. 50-53.
16 History of Education Society Bulletin, no. 1, 1968, Editorial, p. 2.
17 British Journal of Educational Studies, special issue, “1870 Elementary Education Act”, vol. 18, no. 2,
1970.
 History of education in Britain since 1960 125

different aspects of education that were published in the late 1950s and 1960s
– the Crowther report 15 to 18, the Robbins report on higher education, the
Newsom report Half our Future and the Plowden report on primary education–
could all provide a historical narrative of growth and progress in education18.
The second HES conference theme on the changing curriculum also reflec-
ted wider developments. In England during the 1960s, the school curriculum
appeared to be a highly promising area for promoting radical change, alongside
the organisational change offered by comprehensive secondary schools designed
for pupils of all aptitudes and abilities. By the 1970s, the complexities and
disappointments of curriculum reform were more clearly evident. Over this
time, responding to these contemporary developments, the curriculum became
a topic of increasing interest for historians of education. The introduction to
the collection made the point that well defined external circumstances such
as the launching of Sputnik I in 1957 sometimes appeared to stimulate cur-
riculum change, but “often the reasons why new movements gain momentum
are more complex and the skills of the historian are therefore more necessary
then ever in helping to elucidate them”19. The collection itself represented an
impressive range of papers contributed by leading scholars in the field, from
humanist education in the Renaissance to heurism in the nineteenth century.
Thirdly, the 1970 conference theme highlighted contemporary debates over
the relationship between history of education and the disciplines of history on
the one hand and sociology on the other. A new form of social history was also
in a phase of expansion and institutionalisation during the 1960s, expressed
in works such as Edward Thompson’s Making of the English Working Class20.
Innovative studies in the social history of education were included in a self-
styled radical journal of social history, Past and Present, on such topics as the
educational revolution of early modern England and the history of literacy,
by Lawrence Stone, and on working class education in nineteenth century
England, by Richard Johnson21. At the same time sociology as a discipline, and

18 Ministry of Education, 15 to 18 (Crowther Report), London, HMSO, 1959; Ministry of Education, Half
our Future (Newsom Report), London, HMSO, 1963; L. Robbins, Higher Education (Robbins Report),
London, HMSO, 1963; Department of Education and Science, Children and their Primary Schools
(Plowden Report), London, HMSO, 1967.
19 HES (ed.) The Changing Curriculum, London, Methuen, 1971, Introduction, p. xi.
20 Edward Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, New York, Pantheon, 1964.
21 Lawrence Stone, “The educational revolution in England, 1560-1640”, Past and Present, no. 28,
1964, p. 69-139; Lawrence Stone, “Literacy and education in England, 1640-1900”, Past and Present,
126 Gary McCulloch

the sociology of education specifically, were becoming more firmly established

in higher education. In the 1960s and 1970s, there were several explicit and
elaborate attempts to integrate historical and sociological approaches to the
study of education. This was a feature of the self-styled “new” sociology of edu-
cation, which sought both social and historical explanations for “what counts
as knowledge” in modern societies22. The HES’s venture into this area went so
far as to suggest, in the contribution by Gerald Bernbaum, that “those who
work in the field of education, with its wide-ranging perspectives and tradition
of interdisciplinary activity, might pioneer historical sociology in order that we
might better understand not only the educational system, but also the educa-
tional process”23. This suggested at least a partial rapprochement, never wholly
realised, between the history and sociology of education that was not achieved
between the history of education and the philosophy of education, which cre-
ated a separate national society, conference and journal also in the 1960s24.
The HES’s interests and ideas developed in its early conferences led in 1972
to it establishing a new journal specifically devoted to the history of education.
There had already appeared a journal founded by Peter Gosden at the University
of Leeds in 1968 under the title of the Journal of Educational Administration and
History. The HES’s new journal, entitled simply History of Education, was the
first in Britain to be solely concerned with this topic. The emphasis of the new
journal was clearly linked to social history, as its first issue indicated with its
initial article by a leading social historian, Asa Briggs. This article concluded with
a ringing declaration of intent, that the study of the history of education was
best considered as part of the wider study of the history of society, social history
broadly interpreted with the politics, economics and religion included25. It was a
key moment in the redrawing of the map of the history of education in Britain.
One sign of the nature and expansion of the field in the early 1970s was

no. 42, 1969, p. 69-139; Richard Johnson, “Educational policy and social control in early Victorian
England”, Past and Present, no. 49, 1970, p. 96-119.
22 See e.g. Michael Young (ed.), Knowledge and Control: New Directions for the Sociology of Education,
London, Collier-Macmillan, 1971.
23 Gerald Bernbaum, “Sociological techniques and historical study”, in HES (ed.), History, Sociology
and Education, p. 18. See also e.g. Peter Musgrave (ed.), Sociology, History and Education: A Reader,
London, Methuen,1971.
24 See e.g. Alis Oancea, David Bridges, “Philosophy of education in the UK: the historical and contem-
porary tradition”, Oxford Review of Education, vol. 35, no. 5, 2009, p. 353-68.
25 Asa Briggs, “The study of the history of education”, History of Education, vol. 1, no. 1, 1972, p. 16.
 History of education in Britain since 1960 127

around new staffing appointments. One such was Richard Aldrich. He had read
History at Fitzwilliam College Cambridge before becoming a history teacher
at Godalming County School in Surrey and then senior lecturer in history at
Southlands College. In 1973, while still completing his PhD, he was appointed
as a lecturer in the history of education at the Institute of Education (IOE)
London, the first full time member of staff in this area at the largest centre for
educational studies and research in the UK. The following year, Aldrich presented
his hopes for his area of study in an article for the Times Higher Educational
Supplement. Under the title of “Quiet revolution in the history of education”,
Aldrich’s paper pointed out the advances made by his subject over the past few
years. This, he proposed, was part of a much wider reorganisation and expansion
of historical studies in general, although the history of education was special
because it served both history and the needs of education. He suggested that
wider changes “have tended to obscure the quiet revolution taking place in the
history of education”26. Surely the future lay with them.

II. 1975-2000: Decline and dispersal?

The final decades of the twentieth century posed significant challenges to history
of education as a discrete knowledge formation, in Britain as elsewhere, and
the expansion and confidence of the early 1970s soon began to fade. This was
in the context, first, of changes in higher education including teacher education
policy that endangered the traditional role of the history of education in teacher
education. Roy Lowe of the University of Birmingham, for example, referred
tellingly to “the beleaguered position of history of education in teacher-training
and in-service courses”, adding that “At the close of two decades which have
seen what is little short of a Renaissance, much of it conceived and carried
out within Colleges and Faculties of Education, it is ironic that historians of
education should find themselves under renewed attack”27. By the end of that
decade, its position had deteriorated to such an extent that it was virtually
excluded from the teacher education curriculum.

26 Richard Aldrich, “A quiet revolution in the history of education”, Times Higher Educational Supplement,
3 May 1974, p. 14.
27 Roy Lowe, “History as propaganda: the strange uses of the history of education (1983-1990)”, in
Peter Gordon, Richard Szreter (eds.), History of Education…, op. cit., p. 225.
128 Gary McCulloch

From the 1970s onwards, education came under increasing pressure to be

more directly accountable to current social and economic demands, and this
encouraged a growing emphasis on approaches that had an immediate utility
and relevance for schools and teachers. This general trend was witnessed in
courses in education, in teacher training and continued professional devel-
opment, and also in research. Disciplinary studies of education, under the
umbrella of educational studies, tended to give way to a more unitary approach
in educational research.28 The history of education also lost its prominent
place in educational reforms, as these increasingly looked forward towards
the promise and challenges of the next millennium rather than backwards to
the foundations of the past29. Simon continued to insist that “all those profes-
sionally engaged in education” would benefit from historical understanding30.
Nevertheless, by 1990 Aldrich could lament that, a century after being intro-
duced into the curriculum, “history of education has been virtually eliminated
from courses of initial teacher education, at least at the postgraduate level”31.
This gave rise to growing problems for the history of education in many insti-
tutions of higher education. As another British historian of education, Wendy
Robinson, commented, its “professional niche” was at risk, with an “ambivalent
location”, straddling the rival domains of history of education, which “rendered
it vulnerable to accusations of reduced status, worth and respectability within
the academy”32.
Despite these less than promising circumstances, the history of education
was able to survive partly through the support of the national organisation
that it had recently developed. The national society created an infrastructure
to help sustain it, generating regular conferences and other events and also
providing collegial support and stimulating new developments. It provided an
institutional base for the history of education, and eventually a means of nur-

28 See Gary McCulloch, Struggle for the History of Education, op. cit., Ch. 8.
29 See Gary McCulloch, “Marketing the millennium: education for the 21st century”, in Andy Hargreaves,
Roy Evans (eds.), Beyond Educational Reform: Bringing Teachers Back In, Buckingham, Open
University Press, 1996, p. 19-28.
30 Brian Simon, “The history of education”, in Paul Hirst (ed.), Educational Theory and its Foundation
Disciplines, London, RKP, 1983, p. 65.
31 Richard Aldrich, “History of education in initial teacher education in England and Wales”, History
of Education Society Bulletin, no. 45, 1990, p. 47.
32 Wendy Robinson, “Finding our professional niche: reinventing ourselves as twenty-first century
historian of education”, in David Crook, Richard Aldrich (eds.), History of Education for the Twenty-
First Century, op. cit., p. 51.
 History of education in Britain since 1960 129

turing fresh approaches and supporting new recruits. Its new journal became
more firmly established when the publishers Taylor and Francis took over its
publication from 1975, and it then benefited from stable editorship first under
Kenneth Charlton (now at King’s College London), until 1986, and then Roy
Lowe over the following decade until 1996. Gary McCulloch (Sheffield) took
over as editor from 1996 until 2003, and by 2000 it expanded further from
four issues to six issues per year. This provided the basis for a community of
knowledge and practice, and a home for specialist research in the area. It was
also a base for international research, as the HES’s annual conferences began
to attract increasing numbers of overseas delegates while its home contingent
began to diminish.
Indeed, just as the possibilities for research began to improve, the loss of
teacher education meant a steady decline in the audience for its work. This
meant a decline in staff numbers and the eclipse of the sub-discipline in a
number of institutions where it had been prominent, such as Leeds, Liverpool,
and even Simon’s old base of Leicester. King’s College London lost its premier
position in the history of education with Charlton’s retirement in 1983, to be
replaced by the Institute of Education London, now under Aldrich’s leadership.
It also led to the loss of textbooks for teaching purposes. A Social History of
Education in England by John Lawson and Harold Silver, published in 1973,
covering the history of education from medieval times to the present, was one
of the few new texts of this type33.
Only Simon’s texts remained, monuments of teaching courses in full retreat
if not dying. When Simon’s fourth volume was published in 1991, bringing his
history up to date, it was apparent that even his sales figures were well down
on those of the 1960s and 1970s34. In 1995, Simon made a detailed check
on the sales records of his four-volume history. The first, published in 1960,
had sold well over 1000 copies in Britain in every five-year cycle until 1980,
after when it began to decline. This might have been understandable as there
were later volumes now in publication, but these showed the same trend. The
second volume, published in 1965, sold 1500 copies or more in each five year
cycle until 1980, when sales began to tail off, and it went out of print in 1990.
The third volume, published in 1974, sold well over 1500 copies before 1980,

33 John Lawson, Harold Silver, A Social History of Education in England, London, Routledge, 1973.
34 Brian Simon, Education and the Social Order, 1940-1990, London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1991.
130 Gary McCulloch

but sales then declined sharply. The fourth volume, published in April 1991
in a hardback edition, sold only 529 copies by 1995, with an additional 300 in
the United States. Simon’s own explanation for these relatively low sales was
first, the high price of the books at 40 pounds, but second, “declining interest
in history of education”35.
Thus, having once sustained itself mainly through teacher education, arti-
culated in the form of textbooks, the history of education was now changing
perforce to become more dependent on research and expressed in journal
literature, in search of an audience for its work. William Richardson at the
University of Exeter pointed out that the “professional audience” had “dried
up” as government priorities had obliged teachers and educators to concentrate
almost exclusively on immediate policy problems, and that “the onus is firmly
on educationists specialising in history to put forward a fresh justification of
their role and foster a new audience for their work”36.
In terms of research focus, there were several fresh directions developed
during these years. In relation to the history of education in Wales, long regarded
simply as an adjunct to England, some new approaches were taken in the 1980s
and 1990s led especially by Gareth Elwyn Jones at the University of Wales
Swansea. In 1989, the annual conference of the HES was held at Cardiff
University on the history of education in Wales, leading the following year to
a special issue of the journal History of Education37. Historians of Scottish
education meanwhile began to challenge uncritical defences of the progress of
education in Scotland, in particular through the work of Robert Anderson at
the University of Edinburgh, especially his key study Education and Opportunity
in Victorian Scotland, and Donald Withrington at the University of Aberdeen38.
Another fresh emphasis was around the history of the school curriculum.
The politics of the curriculum and the wide range of interests associated with
it became central aspects of this new historical literature. A general historical
account of curriculum change in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by Peter
Gordon and Denis Lawton was based on their view that “curriculum change is

35 Brian Simon, note, “Historical books” (Brian Simon archive, London, UCL Institute of Education).
36 William Richardson, “History, education and audience”, in David Crook, Richard Aldrich (eds.),
History of Education for the Twenty-First Century, London, Institute of Education, p. 18.
37 History of Education, vol. 19, no. 3, 1990.
38 See e.g. Robert Anderson, Schools and Universities in Victorian Scotland: Schools and Universities,
Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 1983; and Donald Withrington, “Scotland: a national edu-
cational system and ideals of citizenship”, Paedagogica Historica, vol. 29, no. 3, 1990, p. 699-710.
 History of education in Britain since 1960 131

the result of complex patterns of interaction between influential individuals and

general processes of social, political and economic change”39.One prominent
historian of education, William Marsden, the editor of a further set of conference
papers on the topic produced by the History of Education Society, pointed out
that in the light of recent experience sophisticated theoretical frameworks were
not enough, and that interest had therefore shifted to “the constraints imposed
by economic and political factors, the conflict of personality and group interest,
[…] by the level of teaching skills available, and by the sheer complexity of the
exercise”40. In this HES collection, the focus was on curriculum change since
the Second World War, with Marsden suggesting that “stock-taking” was now
in order after the rapid pace of curriculum development in the 1960s and ear-
ly 1970s41. During the 1980s, the work of Ivor Goodson and the emergence of
a self-styled “curriculum history” took such research to a new level. Goodson’s
ideal of the potential contribution of “curriculum history”, strongly influenced
by the new sociology of education, led him to establish a book series entitled
“Studies in Curriculum History”, with Falmer Press, a rising force in academic
publishing in the 1980s under its managing director, Malcolm Clarkson. The
flagship first volume in this series, edited by Goodson himself, was a collection
under the title of Social Histories of the Secondary Curriculum42. This includ-
ed a wide range of historical accounts of the development of subjects in the
secondary school curriculum43.
Other new directions for history of education research in this period included
literacy, urban education, and technical and vocational education. In relation to
literacy, W.E. Stephens consolidated and extended the established quantitative
method of calculating literacy by estimating numbers of brides and grooms able

39 Peter Gordon, Denis Lawton, Curriculum Change in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Sevenoaks,
Hodder and Stoughton, 1978, p. 2.
40 William Marsden, “Historical approaches to curriculum study”, in William Marsden (ed.), Post-War
Curriculum Development, Leicester, HES, 1979, p. 94-95.
41 William Marsden, “Introduction”, in William Marsden (ed.), Post-War Curriculum Development,
p. vii-viii.
42 Ivor Goodson (ed.), Social Histories of the Secondary Curriculum: Subjects for Study, London, Falmer,
1985; see also Ivor Goodson, The Making of Curriculum: Collected Essays, London, Falmer, 1988.
43 For further details see also Gary McCulloch, “Curriculum history and the history of education »,
in Pat Sikes, Yvonne Novakovic (eds.), Storying the Public Intellectual, London, Routledge, 2020,
p. 91-99.
132 Gary McCulloch

to sign their names on marriage registers44. On the other hand, David Vincent
helped to pioneer the qualitative analysis of working-class autobiographies and
a wide range of sources as a complementary approach to explore the application
of reading and writing to the family, the workplace, the response to the natu-
ral world, the imaginative life of the community and the political ideology and
movements of the nineteenth century45. The history of urban education also
became a common focus of attention at this time, led in particular by historians
such as David Reeder, W.E. Marsden and Anna Davin46. At the same time, a
cluster of work developed around the history of technical and vocational edu-
cation, reflecting on the historical failures of initiatives in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries to maintain Britain’s industrial competitiveness through
educational change47.
A further rich seam for research, complementing and in some cases challen-
ging Simon’s emphasis on social class, was around the education of girls and
women. June Purvis (Portsmouth) and Carol Dyhouse (Sussex) led the way in
the 1980s, the former with research that highlighted the educational struggles
of working class girls and women in the nineteenth century, and the latter with
a study of the family relationships of girls growing up48. Purvis in particular
complained that British history of education had been too slow to respond to

44 William Stephens, Education, Literacy and Society 1830-1870: The Geography of Diversity in Provincial
England, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1987. See also David Mitch, The Rise of Popular
Literacy in Victorian England: The Influence of Private Choice and Public Policy, Philadelphia, University
of Pennsylvania Press, 1992.
45 David Vincent, Bread, Knowledge and Freedom: A Study of Nineteenth Century Working Class
Autobiography, London, Methuen, 1982; David Vincent, Literacy and Popular Culture: England
1750-1914, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989.
46 See e.g. Gary McCulloch, “Histories of urban education in the United Kingdom”, in Second International
Handbook of Urban Education, Dordrecht, Springer, 2017, p. 1005-1019; David Reeder (ed.), Urban
Education in the Nineteenth Century, London, Taylor and Francis, 1977; William Marsden, Unequal
Educational Provision in England and Wales in Nineteenth-Century Britain, London, Woburn, 1987;
Anna Davin, Growing up Poor: Home, School and Street in London, 1870-1914, London, Rivers Oram
Press, 1996.
47 E.g. Martin Wiener, English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit 1850-1980, Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press, 1981; Correlli Barnett, The Audit of War, London, Macmillan, 1986;
Gary McCulloch, The Secondary Technical School: A Usable Past?, London, Falmer, 1989; Michael
Sanderson, The Missing Stratum, London, Athlone Press, 1994.
48 E.g. June Purvis, “Working class women and adult education in nineteenth-century Britain”, History
of Education, vol. 9, no. 3, 1980, p. 193-212; June Purvis, Hard Lessons: The Lives and Education of
Working-Class Women in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1989; Carol Dyhouse,
Girls Growing Up in Late Victorian and Edwardian England, London, Routledge, 1981.
 History of education in Britain since 1960 133

the challenges posed by feminist history49. However, this early work helped to
paved the way for further activity in the 1990s, including two annual confer-
ences on related topics organised by the HES in 1992 and 1999, both leading
to special issues of its Journal. The special issue in 2000, on “Breaking bound-
aries: gender, politics and the experience of education”, guest edited by Joyce
Goodman (Winchester) and Jane Martin (North London) featured substantial
contributions from England, the United States, India and South Africa50. New
work on education and ethnicity was slower to develop, although Ian Grosvenor’s
Assimilating Identities provided a significant fresh focus on racism and educa-
tion policy since the Second World War51.
During this time, an increasing range of evidence began to be deployed in
the history of education, with some early discussions on theoretical issues. Oral
history became increasingly familiar as a methodological device, especially as
a means of discovering the experiences, outlooks and alternative agendas of
marginalised groups such as the working class, women, ethnic minorities and
indigenous peoples. The value of such evidence was emphasised by Stephen
Humphries in his study of working class childhood and youth, Hooligans or
Rebels?, published in 198152. By the 1990s, significant research was taking
place on the oral history of teachers’ professional practice, with Philip Gardner
and Peter Cunningham at Cambridge leading the way in this area53. The annual
conference of the HES was devoted to this topic in 1996, with a special issue of
the Cambridge Journal of Education based on this event following soon after-
wards54.Visual history involving analysis of documents such as photographs
and films also began to be deployed more widely at this time, allowing new
research on the history of classrooms and of teacher and learner interactions.

49 June Purvis, “The historiography of British education: a feminist critique”, in Ali Rattansi, David
Reeder (eds.), Rethinking Radical Education, London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1992, p. 249-66.
50 See History of Education, vol. 22, no. 3, 1993; and History of Education, vol. 29, no. 5, 2000.
51 Ian Grosvenor, Assimilating Identities: Racism and Educational Policy in Post 1945 Britain, London,
Lawrence and Wishart, 1997.
52 Stephen Humphries, Hooligans or Rebels? An Oral History of Working Class Childhood and Youth,
Oxford, Blackwell, 1981.
53 Philip Gardner, “The giant at the front: young teachers and corporal punishment in inter-war elemen-
tary schools”, History of Education, vol. 25, no. 2, 1996, p. 141-63; Philip Gardner, Peter Cunningham,
“Oral history and teachers’ professional practice: a wartime turning point?”, Cambridge Journal of
Education, vol. 27, no. 3, 1997, p. 331-42.
54 Cambridge Journal of Education, special issue, “Teachers’ lives: training and careers in historical
perspective”, vol. 27, no. 3, 1997. See also Cambridge Journal of Education, special issue, “Teachers,
biography and life history”, vol. 20, no. 3, 1990.
134 Gary McCulloch

More broadly, the significance of education in disseminating ideals and

practices around the British Empire itself became a key theme, especially in the
writings of J.A. Mangan. His early work on nineteenth-century public schools
developed into research that highlighted the imperial role of the products of
the public schools in different outposts of the Empire around the world55.
Meanwhile, British historians of education were especially active in helping to
organise an international association, the International Standing Conference
for the History of Education (ISCHE). Brian Simon, then the chair of the HES,
led an initiative that culminated in an all-European seminar on the history
of education held in Oxford in September 1978. ISCHE was established the
following year, with Simon elected as its first chairman from 1979 to 1982.
Further discussions and seminars produced a collection published in 1987,
edited by Simon with Detlef Muller and Fritz Ringer of Germany, on the rise of
the modern educational system, including several case studies on secondary
and higher education in England56. The HES annual conference in 1987 was
concerned with the theme of international currents in educational ideas and
practice. During the 1990s, this increasing interest in international issues
was maintained, guided in particular by Richard Aldrich, as president first
of the HES and then of ISCHE. Comparative and international approaches
were further encouraged through HES annual conferences on education and
economic performance, in 1997, and on education and national identity the
following year. Each of these events was followed by a special issue on the topic
in History of Education57.

III. 2000-2020: specialisation and internationalisation

In the first few years of the twenty-first century, Simon died, while Aldrich
retired as professor of history of education at the IOE London, and Lowe also
stepped down from his professorship at Swansea. Yet, if this seemed like the
final links with its expansive phase being broken, in the first two decades of
the 21st century the history of education in Britain generally maintained its

55 Anthony Mangan, Athleticism in the Victorian and Edwardian Public School, Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press, 1981; Anthony Mangan, The Games Ethic and Imperialism, New York, Viking, 1986.
56 Detlef Muller, Fritz Ringer, Brian Simon (eds.), The Rise of the Modern Educational System: Structural
Change and Social Reproduction, 1870-1920, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1987.
57 History of Education, vol. 27, no. 3, 1998; History of Education, vol. 28, no. 3, 1999.
 History of education in Britain since 1960 135

position by developing in its research rather than in its teaching, and becoming
increasingly specialised in its approach. It retained the strong national infra-
structure that had helped it to survive in the 1980s and 1990s, while looking
outwards to international, comparative and transnational perspectives. Still
lacking a mass audience for its work, questions remained around its future
development and identity as higher education continued to change apace.
At the turn of the century, a number of commentators could argue that
the history of education in Britain was in a healthy and vigorous condition, at
least in the quality of its research. For example, Roy Lowe argued that since
the early 1960s, over the span of his own professional career, “the writing of
the History of Education has undergone little short of a revolution”. Indeed,
Lowe continued, “In recent years, History of Education has become clearly
identified as a full and proper element in the study of history more generally,
with a central role to play in the development of social, economic and political
history, and this development can be only for the good”58. This general view
was endorsed by Crook and Aldrich, who also insisted that in terms of research
and publications, “British history of education entered the twenty-first century
in a relatively strong position”59.
On the other hand, there were significant criticisms of the kind of research
that was being undertaken. The British historian of education Kevin Brehony
contended that insufficient attention had been given to social theory, in parti-
cular postmodernism60. Meanwhile, Marc Depaepe, a senior European historian
of education, registered severe reservations in relation to British history of
education for showing the effects of having been excluded from initial teacher
education. Depaepe described one edited collection of essays produced in Britain
as “the fruit of frustration and anger at the languishing position of the history
of education course in teacher training”, and argued that this represented a
“corporatist defensive reflex” on the part of British historians of education61.
Overall, the position was doubtless mixed, as a new generation of educational
historians came to the fore. McCulloch moved from Sheffield to be appointed as

58 Roy Lowe, “Writing the history of education”, in Roy Lowe (ed.), History of Education: Major Themes,
London, Routledge, 2000, vol. 1, p. xlii-xliii.
59 David Crook, Richard Aldrich, “Introduction”, in David Crook, Richard Aldrich (eds.), History of
Education for the Twenty-First Century, op. cit., p. x.
60 Kevin Brehony, book review, History of Education, vol. 32, no. 4, 2003, p. 441.
61 Marc Depaepe, “What kind of history of education may we expect for the twenty-first century? Some
comments on four recent readers in the field”, Paedagogica Historica, vol. 39, no. 1-2, 2003, p. 189.
136 Gary McCulloch

the first Brian Simon professor of the history of education at the IOE London
in 2003. Joyce Goodman built up the history of women’s education into the
Centre for the History of Women’s Education as a professor at University College
Winchester, followed by Stephanie Spencer. Ian Grosvenor became professor of
the history of urban education at the University of Birmingham, with Ruth Watts
and then Jane Martin leading studies at Birmingham on the history of women’s
education. The HES was now firmly established with its annual conferences
and a policy for supporting research students and early career researchers.
A set of six seminars funded by the Economic and Social Research Council
(ESRC), and based on a partnership between the IOE, Winchester and Exeter,
engaged in a thorough review and analysis of the history of education and of
its key research priorities, leading in 2007 to a double special issue of History
of Education on social change in the history of education62. The election of first
Ruth Watts, and later Joyce Goodman, Jane Martin and Stephanie Spencer as
presidents of the HES reflected the importance of women in the leadership of
the national field, as well as the growing amount of research on the history of
girls’ and women’s education63. New approaches to “gendering” the history of
education itself also became well established64.
There were many other fresh directions, such as the history of learners and
learning advocated in a special issue of Oxford Review of Education on histories
of education in the modern world, and indications of a revival of interest in the
history of adult education and learning65. While interest in the history of teacher
education diminished, the history of higher education as a whole increased

62 History of Education, special issue, “Social change in the history of education: the British experience
in international context”, vol. 36, no. 4-5, 2007.
63 See e.g. Jane Martin, Joyce Goodman, Women and Education 1800-1980, London, Palgrave Macmillan,
2004; Women’s History Review, special issue, “Revisioning the history of girls and women in the long
1950s”, vol. 26, no. 1, 2017; Women’s History Review, special issue, “Twists and turns in histories
of women’s education”, vol. 29, no. 3, 2020.
64 See e.g. Joyce Goodman, “Troubling histories and theories: gender and the history of education”,
History of Education, vol. 32, no. 2, 2003, p. 157-174; Stephanie Spencer, Gender, Work and Education
in Britain in the 1950s, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005; Ruth Watts, “Gendering the story: change
in the history of education”, History of Education, vol. 34, no. 3, 2005, p. 225-241; Joyce Goodman,
“The gendered politics of historical writing in History of Education”, History of Education, vol. 41,
no. 1, 2012, p. 9-24.
65 Oxford Review of Education, special issue, “Histories of learning in the modern world”, guest editors
Gary McCulloch and Tom Woodin, vol. 36, no. 2, 2010; Mark Freeman, “Adult education history in
Britain: past, present and future”, Paedagogica Historica, vol. 56, no. 3, 2020, Part I, p. 384-395;
Part 2, p. 396-410.
 History of education in Britain since 1960 137

in volume and variety66. The history of ethnic minorities and immigration in

relation with education began to be explored in greater detail and depth67. The
history of disability and disabled people in education also received some detailed
attention, which was overdue as Felicity Armstrong argued68. Discussion of
special education facilities became a growth area69. The experiences of disabled
people in education were examined through their own testimonies70.
There was increasing awareness of the importance of theory and methodology
in history of education research, again drawing on insights in the broader social
sciences71. Visual history, analysing photographs, portraits, prints, cartoons,
films and other visual evidence have been analysed in order to accompany or
challenge the established prominence of written texts in historical research. This
kind of approach has helped historians of education to gain closer purchase
on classroom life and the teaching and learning interface72. Historical interest
in the “materiality” of schools and other educational artefacts has also begun
to be developed in a range of ways. For example, Lawn and Grosvenor have
explored the history of material technologies in schools, encountering traces of
past practices of teachers and pupils, including everyday technologies such as
pencils, slates, exercise books, ink bottles and larger devices like school desks,

66 David Crook, “Teacher education as a field of historical research: retrospect and prospect”, History
of Education, vol. 41, no. 1, 2012, p. 57-72; Roy Lowe, “The changing role of the academic journal:
the coverage of higher education in History of Education as a case study, 1972-2011”, History of
Education, vol. 41, no. 1, 2012, p. 103-115.
67 E.g. Kevin Myers, “Immigrants and ethnic minorities in the history of education”, Paedagogica
Historica, vol. 45, no. 6, 2009, p. 801-816; Kevin Myers, Struggles for a Past: Irish and Afro-Caribbean
Histories in England, 1950-2000, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2015; Olivier Esteves,
The “Desegregation” of English Schools: Bussing, Race and Urban Space, 1960s-80s, Manchester,
Manchester University Press, 2018.
68 Felicity Armstrong, “Disability, education and social change in England since 1960”, History of
Education, vol. 36, no. 4-5, 2007, p. 551-568.
69 E.g. Pamela Dale, “Special education at Starcross before 1948”, History of Education, vol. 36, no. 1,
2007, p. 17-44; Jane Read, Jan Walmsley, “Historical perspectives on special education, 1890-1970”,
Disability and Society, vol. 21, no. 5, 2006, p. 455-69; Kevin Myers, Anna Brown, “Mental deficiency:
the diagnosis and after-care of special school leavers in early twentieth-century Birmingham (UK)”,
Journal of Historical Sociology, vol. 18, no. 1-2, 2005, p. 72-98.
70 Derrick Armstrong, Experiences of Special Education: Re-Evaluating Policy and Practice through Life
Stories, London, Routledge/Falmer, 2003.
71 See e.g. History of Education, special issue, “Theory and methodology in the history of education”,
guest editors Gary McCulloch and Ruth Watts, vol. 32, no. 2, 2003.
72 E.g. Ulrike Mietzner, Kevin Myers, Nick Peim (eds.), Visual History: Images of Education, Berne, Peter
Lang, 2005; Dierdre Raftery (ed.), Celebrating Teachers: A Visual History, London, Fil Rouge Press,
2016.
138 Gary McCulloch

blackboards, typewriters, photocopiers and spirit duplicators73. Sensory history,

involving the non-cognitive dimensions of sensation, especially the five senses
of smell, sound, touch, taste and sight, has also become a theme attracting
novel attention in the history of education in Britain74.
Finally, these novel concerns with theory and methodology were accompanied
by another new departure receiving close attention in social science research:
awareness of ethical issues. In a classic piece, Richard Aldrich presented the
“three duties” of the historian in education in terms of the duty to the people
of the past, the duty to our own generation, and the duty to search after the
truth75. Such concerns were given greater force in research on the history of
child sexual abuse, in the context of schools, the family or beyond76.
In the early decades of the new century British historians of education were
also making an increasing contribution to the development of the history of
education around the world. In 2001, the University of Birmingham hosted
the ISCHE annual conference on the theme of “Urbanisation and education”77.
The HES conference and journal special issue of 2002-2003 marked the first
collaborative venture of the British HES and that of Australia and New Zealand,
with the unidirectional notion of “centre and periphery”78. A special workshop
at the ISCHE conference in 2007, arising from the ESRC initiative, went further
in exploring the themes of postcolonialism and transnationalism, with a further

73 Martin Lawn, Ian Grosvenor, “’When in doubt, preserve’: exploring the traces of teaching and
material culture in English schools”, History of Education, vol. 30, no. 2, 2007, p. 117-127. See
also e.g. History of Education, special issue, “Science, technologies and the material culture in the
history of education”, vol. 40, no. 2, 2017, based on the 2015 HES annual conference, guest edited
by Heather Ellis.
74 E.g. Gary McCulloch, “Sensing the realities of English middle-class education: James Bryce and the
Schools Inquiry Commission, 1865-1868”, History of Education, vol. 40, no. 5, 2011, p. 599-613; and
Ian Grosvenor, “Back to the future or towards a sensory history of schooling”, History of Education,
vol. 41, no. 5, 2012, p. 675-687.
75 Richard Aldrich, “The three duties of the historian of education”, History of Education, vol. 32, no. 2,
2003, p. 133-43.
76 See e.g. Carol Smart, “Reconsidering the recent history of child sexual abuse, 1910-1960”, Journal
of Social Policy, vol. 29, no. 1, 2000, p. 55-71; and Adrian Bingham, Lucy Delap, Louise Jackson,
Louise Settle, “Historical child sexual abuse in England and Wales: the role of historians”, History
of Education, vol. 45, no. 4, 2016, p. 411-29.
77 See Ian Grosvenor, Ruth Watts, “Urbanisation and education: the city as a light and beacon?”,
Paedagogica Historica, vol. 39, no. 1-2, 2003, p. 1-4.
78 History of Education, special issue, “Centre and periphery – networks, space and geography in the
history of education”, vol. 32, no. 3, 2003.
 History of education in Britain since 1960 139

special issue of the journal Paedagogica Historica as a result79. In July 2014,

nearly six hundred delegates were attracted from around the world to take part
in an ISCHE annual conference held at the IOE London on “Education, war
and peace” to mark the centenary of the First World War80. British historians
of education also made significant contributions to the further development of
ISCHE in the early decades of the twenty-first century.
Nevertheless, there remained significant strategic challenges for the future.
Nationally, the Labour governments under first Tony Blair and then Gordon
Brown and a period of economic growth had presided over further expansion
of the higher education system. The onset of financial crisis in 2008 followed
by a period of austerity under a coalition government and then Conservative
governments from 2010 posed question marks against a number of established
institutions, with a referendum in 2016 eventually leading to Britain leaving the
European Union, and there were increasing threats to the unity and security of
Britain itself. Within this broader context, the history of education continued to
be vulnerable to structural developments that were often beyond its control. It
remained largely isolated from a mass teaching audience, although in a number
of institutions the establishment of undergraduate courses in education pro-
vided a new opportunity. There were predictions of severe budget cuts and in
some cases of closure of university education departments81. Martin Lawn and
John Furlong had already identified what they saw as a demographic crisis that
appeared more acute in education departments than in the social sciences more
generally, and worse still among those working in the disciplines of education.
Indeed, they suggested, “The crucial role of a discipline in education in breaking
down problems into its own logics and mediating between public information
and problems, and public action is in danger of disappearing”82. New work in
the Scottish context appeared generally to be in decline despite the efforts of
a special conference and journal issue, and subsequently of a comprehensive

79 Paedagogica Historica, special issue, “’Empires overseas’ and ’Empires at home’: Postcolonial and
transnational perspectives on social change in the history of education”, guest editors Joyce Goodman,
Gary McCulloch and William Richardson, vol. 45, no. 6, 2009.
80 See Paedagogica Historica, special issue, “Education, war and peace”, guest editors Gary McCulloch
and Georgina Brewis, vol. 52, no. 1-2, 2016.
81 See also Gary McCulloch, Steven Cowan, A Social History of Educational Studies and Research,
London, Routledge, 2018, esp. Ch. 9.
82 Martin Lawn, John Furlong, “The disciplines of education in the UK: between the ghost and the
shadow”, Oxford Review of Education, vol. 35, no. 5, 2009, p. 549-50.
140 Gary McCulloch

handbook on the history of education in Scotland, and an edited collection

on the Catholic church and education in Scotland83. In Wales, lamented the
veteran Gareth Elwyn Jones, the study of the history of education was already
on the brink of extinction84.

Conclusion

Overall, the history of education in Britain has changed both in form and in
content, as well as in the principal audience towards which it was directed. In
some ways it had been redrawn such as to be almost unrecognisable in its key
features. It found a new role as increasingly specialised in nature and mainly
oriented towards research-based academic journal publications. As Goodman
and Grosvenor have observed, historians of education have tended “to publish
predominantly in specialized journals and for a pre-determined audience”85.
The existence of a specialist society in the history of education could also lessen
regular involvement in associations with a broader orientation. At its best,
research in the history of education could contribute well to wider research in
the humanities and the social sciences. Yet there was a risk here too that with
increasing erudition in its research, its audience would become correspondingly
remote, limited, and distant from the concerns of an impatient world.
In terms of its intellectual contribution over these sixty years, the history of
education in Britain has documented the changing and contested relationship
between education and the wider society, focusing initially on the role of social
class and increasingly on other themes such as gender, the curriculum, teaching
and learning, and drawing explicitly on wider theoretical and methodological
approaches. It has tended to focus more narrowly on the history of education
in modern times rather than on earlier periods, with even the nineteenth cen-
tury, and the origins of modern schooling, beginning to fade from view in much

83 History of Education, special issue, “Education and citizenship in modern Scotland”, vol. 38, no. 3,
2009; Robert. Anderson, Mark Freeman, Lindsay Paterson (eds.) The Edinburgh History of Education
in Scotland, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2015; Stephen McKinney, Raymond McCluskey
(eds.), A History of Catholic Education and Schooling in Scotland: New Perspectives, London, Palgrave
Macmillan, 2019.
84 Gareth Elwyn Jones, “Perspectives from the brink of extinction: the fate of history of education study
in Wales”, History of Education, vol. 42, no. 3, 2013, p. 381-95.
85 Joyce Goodman, Ian Grosvenor, “Educational research – history of education a curious case?”,
Oxford Review of Education, vol. 35, no. 5, 2009, p. 601-616.
 History of education in Britain since 1960 141

teaching and research. Initially quite insular and tending to focus on local and
national concerns, it became prominent in international activities and in con-
tributing to research with international, comparative and transnational vistas.
Unlike the situation in the 1960s, there were no longer journals catering
for different audiences that were generally prepared to include articles on the
history of education on a regular basis, although there remained a number of
potential outlets in diverse areas as well as the now established specialist jour-
nals. Also unlike the 1960s, when there were many institutions that might have
a few historians of education to provide support for teacher education, there
were now fewer institutions involved, some with isolated researchers and others
with a small group operating around a research niche. New leaders continued
to emerge: Catherine Burke at Cambridge, Wendy Robinson and Rob Freathy
at Exeter, and Stephen Parker at Worcester, among others. Looking forward
to the longer term, the existential issue remained as it had since the 1980s,
how the history of education in Britain could continue to sustain itself and
maintain its organisational infrastructure and its strong sense of identity and
purpose, forged in the 1960s and 1970s, in conditions that continued to be
far from benign.

Gary McCulloch
UCL Institute of Education London
[email protected]