Education, Work and Social Change in Britain’s Former Coalfield Communities

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xix

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2. Introduction: Education, Work and Social Change in Britain’s Former Coalfield Communities

   • Robin Simmons, Kat Simpson

   Pages 1-12

3. Contextualising the Coalfields: Mapping the Socio-Economic and Cultural Loss of the Coal Industry

   • Tim Strangleman

   Pages 13-35

4. Growing-Up in the Interregnum: Accounts from the South Yorkshire Coalfield

   • Nicky Stubbs

   Pages 37-59

5. A Conflictual Legacy: Being a Coalminer’s Daughter

   • Diane Reay

   Pages 61-83

6. How Education and Training Developed the Mining Workforce: Oral Recollection and Testimonies

   • Martyn Walker

   Pages 85-105

7. ‘Dirty, Dirty Job. Not Good for Your Health’: Working-Class Men and Their Experiences and Relationships with Employment

   • Richard Gater

   Pages 107-126

8. Education, Social Haunting, and Deindustrialisation: Attuning to Ghosts in the Hidden Curriculum

   • Kat Simpson

   Pages 127-148

9. Teaching Industrial History After Deindustrialisation: ‘Tracks of the Past’ in the Scottish Coalfields

   • Ewan Gibbs, Susan Henderson-Bone

   Pages 149-171

10. ‘I Was Never Very Clever, but I Always Survived!’: Educational Experiences of Women in Britain’s Coalfield Communities, 1944–1990

    • Natalie Thomlinson

    Pages 173-195

11. Are We Expecting Too Much? Aspirations and Expectations of Girls Living in an Ex-Mining Community

    • Gill Richards

    Pages 197-222

12. Practices and Negotiations of Belonging in the Deindustrialising Coalfields: Navigating School, Education and Memory Through a Time of Transformation

    • Jay Emery, James Pattison, Kat Simpson, Natalie Thomlinson, Lucy Jackson

    Pages 223-244

13. Conclusion: The Ghost of Coal

    • Robin Simmons, Kat Simpson

    Pages 245-257

14. Epilogue

    • Huw Beynon

    Pages 259-264

15. Back Matter

    Pages 265-268

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This edited book presents a range of chapters written by new and established authors, drawing on a range of different perspectives and traditions to critically analyse education, work and social change in the former coalfields. Historically, coal was one of Britain’s major industries, employing over a million men at its peak. But mining was more than an occupation - it was a way of life for those living and working in coalfield communities. Work, leisure, family relations and other dimensions of social life were centred upon the coal industry and its related institutions such as trade unions, working-men’s clubs and welfare institutes. These communities have, however, undergone significant social and economic change over time, not least in terms of the pain and suffering associated with the Great Strike of 1984–85, the successive waves of pit closures which took place thereafter and the eventual demise of the coal industry. The book will be of interest to academics drawing on sociology, social policy, history, geography and other subject disciplines.

• coalmining communities
• work
• sociology of education
• sociology of work
• working-class communities

• School of Education and Professional Development, University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield, UK

  Robin Simmons, Kat Simpson

Robin Simmons is Professor of Education at the University of Huddersfield, UK. His research interests lie in the sociology of education, education policy, and the history of education. Robin has led research funded by leading bodies including the Raymond Williams Foundation, Gatsby Charitable Foundation, and the Leverhulme Trust. He has written extensively on social class, particularly in relation to young people’s experiences of participation and non-participation in education, employment, and work-based learning. Robin is co-editor of Education and Working-Class Youth: Reshaping the Politics of Inclusion published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2018.

Kat Simpson is Senior Lecturer in Education and Community Studies at the University of Huddersfield, UK. Her research interests lie in education and social class, especially pupils’ and teachers’ experiences of schooling in former coalmining communities. She has written extensively on different aspects of deindustrialisation and social haunting. Methodologically, Kat is interested in Marxist ethnography and critical policy analysis. Her book Social Haunting, Education and the Working Class: Reimagining Schooling in a Former Mining Community was published in 2021.