This chapter examines experiences of education, particularly schooling. The main focus, as in other chapters, is to examine the impact of public policies on private lives in the context of change over time. The stories in Chapter Two, the accounts of family life in Chapter Three and the discussion of medicalisation in Chapter Four all drew attention to the significance of educational policies and practices in young people’s private lives. Across the three generations, the separation of children from their families and friends was perhaps the most obvious example. The complex policy relationship between health and educational provision highlighted the extent of medical authority in educational settings (for example, in determining choice of school and in daily school routines). There were also strong suggestions in the stories that low academic expectations for disabled children had impacted on life course trajectories and later opportunities in adulthood.

School and college experiences frame peer cultures, role models and identity construction (discussed in Chapter Seven). Successful participation in education is also an important enabler of social and economic inclusion for adult life (this is very relevant to the discussion of employment in Chapter Six). The examples in this chapter focus on some key issues at the interface between private lives and public education policies – on the personal and policy factors that influenced choice of school and college, the ways in which institutional provision shaped those choices, on the social experience of educational settings and on academic expectations and achievements.

Selecting pupils, choosing schools

Within the stories, choices and decisions about sending a child to special school featured prominently as key biographical turning points. These decision points illustrated much about the interaction between public policies and private lives. They were often points at which individual agency and familial resources collided with professional authority or with institutional barriers to inclusion. They established life course trajectories that would persist into adulthood, or marked turning points towards alternative biographies and life chances. There were both similarities and differences in the experience of those from the three generations.

Professional authority in selection

Those of the oldest generation were born into a rapidly changing policy context.