The impact of educational and industrial policy developments on working class school leavers across two generations

The research project attempts to advance evaluations that look toward the major impacts educational and industrial developments within Britain over recent decades have had on working class school leavers’. The thesis aims to contribute uniquely to these fields of study by concentrating the qualitative research that underpins the project within a distinctive geographical area within south west Birmingham, an area where the employment sphere was dominated for many decades by a large car manufacturer until its closure. The research focuses on the very unique experiences of school leavers in the area across two generations that it is suggested were subject to the influences of differing educational and industrial policies. Underpinning the exploration of people from this part of Birmingham’s experiences of school and post school transition is the thesis’ contribution to the new wave of class analysis that has emerged within academia within recent years. In particular the study adheres in part to contemporary evaluations of class as being individualised and subject to variations according to cultural and social as well as economic influences through a person’s life course. However, the thesis also suggests the use of a theoretical model of class that incorporates fluid, often changing, but sometime shared class experiences. Included within this exploration is a critique of the ideological construction of working class educational and occupational underachievement as being due to individualised social and cultural deficiency. Instead the thesis suggests the interrelationship of the growth of the educational market within the UK alongside rapid deindustrialisation has influenced distinctive and at times shared working class experiences.