‘I couldn’t wait for the day’: Young Workers’ Reflections on Education during the Transition to Work in the 1960s

The school and labour market experiences of young workers are a major concern for both academics and policy makers alike. This concern has generated a great deal of research reflecting a wide range of debates around the transition from school to work. One of the first research projects to consider this process was undertaken in the early 1960s by researchers at the University of Leicester, led by Norbert Elias. The data was collected via interviews and whilst 910 interviews were completed, the data was not fully analysed or published. Recently, 866 of the interview schedules have been discovered and an initial analysis suggests that the data provides a significant insight into the transition from education to work in the 1960s. This paper aims to present some of this data for the first time, exploring young workers’ reflections on education and their transitions to work and adulthood.