Girls’ Post-war Secondary Technical Schools in England

: Education and the Life Course

Abstract

This thesis explores women’s memories of their experiences of a secondary technical school education in England post World War Two, an area of girls’ education that has until now received little attention within existing historiography. It focuses on how the women understand how these experiences played out across their life course. The study examines how the women compose their memories of their (educational) experiences and how they narrate the significance of their school years in relation to their life course. To do so, it employs a feminist research approach and draws upon oral history interviews with alumnae together with empirical evidence from the ‘bottom up’ to provide both an examination of the education experienced by girls within secondary technical schools and a picture of the women’s memories of the effects on the life course of their education in girls’ secondary technical schools. In four central substantive chapters, five secondary technical schools across three different geographical areas of England are examined: two schools in Kent, one in Gloucestershire and two in Greater Manchester. Chapter Two explores and analyses the formal and informal curriculum experienced within the schools to determine the extent to which it was gendered. In addition, it highlights the extent to which the women considered their (social) class shaped their experiences and whether they recount classed tensions between the schools and the girls, the schools, and the parents, and between girls and their families/communities. Chapter Three adds nuance to existing interpretations of technical education. It highlights how the women recount taking ‘specialised’ technical courses, that then led to recognised qualifications. Moreover, it points to how pupils were simultaneously prepared for the world of work and to become future homemakers. In doing so, the chapter suggests secondary education for girls was more complex than the existing binary of an academic career focus of the grammar schools and the homemaker focus of the girls’ secondary moderns. Chapter Four examines the women’s memories of their first experiences of the world of work and how they consider their education within the technical schools provided them with skills, qualifications, and opportunities with which to embark on a career. The chapter argues that the analysis of the women’s stories and how they compose them demonstrates how the women’s opportunities were shaped by gender and to an extent class. It, therefore, highlights the complexity of the women’s relationship with their education and with their employment pathways. Chapter Five completes the exploration of the women’s lives and the extent to which they believe their education shaped their life course. More widely, it rethinks the boundaries of home and work for the women. The analysis of the women’s stories demonstrates how within a technical school education these boundaries were blurred. The dual focus of the schools on both a career and a role in the home led to tensions as the women struggled to balance what they wanted to do, what they felt they ought to do and what they were able to do. The employment of a feminist discourse analysis of oral histories and empirical evidence within this study reveals that girls’ state secondary educational experiences in post-war England were not as clearly defined as previously thought. The analysis of the women’s memories of their experiences adds nuance to the currently held assumptions concerning technical education and secondary education in the post-war period especially in terms of education for girls. Furthermore, the analysis contributes to broader historical scholarship on women’s lives, family life, the workplace and women’s role in the community.

Date of Award	22 Jan 2023
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Winchester
Supervisor	Joyce Goodman (Supervisor), Stephanie Spencer (Supervisor) & Sian Edwards (Supervisor)