Schools

Abstract

Socialisation is a sociological and not an administrative concept. The problem therefore arises, in this as in every other aspect of social structure, of translating published official statistics into social indicators. Education has to be thought of sociologically as the organisation of the more formal aspects of socialisation. Throughout the twentieth century formal socialisation has grown in importance in the double sense that it has taken up more of the time of more people at each stage of its development. One result has been an increased production of official statistics which have changed their character in response to changes in the structure of education and to changes in the preoccupations of administrators and policy makers.