ABSTRACT
At former Westhill conferences, we have presented papers on two quite disparate and separate themes. In Bringing Schools Back In (1979), we argued for a relative autonomy model of the relationship between the educational system and broader societal structures. 1 Using evidence showing the independent effects of school environments in South Wales in the generation of different levels of pupil deviance, academic attainment and truancy, we argued for schools to be seen as having quite clearly specified goals but as having substantial freedom to determine their means and their ultimate pedagogical strategies. Given that the use of these different strategies generates different kinds of pupil output, the school, as well as reflecting the needs of the capitalist economic and social systems, actually moulds in turn that wider society in an interlocking and interactive process. Schools – and the educational system in general – could be seen as in part determined and in part free from constraint. They were in part determined but also in part free in the determination of those factors and those forces that moulded them.
