ABSTRACT
This chapter explores different ideas about what education is and what it means to learn in the modern institutions that adults have built to school children and young people. It considers the rise of mass formal schooling across the UK, covering key ideas, including selection and ability, and ways in which receiving an education can both reduce and widen social inequalities among different groups within and across societies. Drawing upon broader ideas about what a ‘good’ education might look like, it considers how learning itself can happen in diverse places and spaces.
