Patterns of Participation in Lifelong Learning: do families make a difference?

Abstract

This article draws on the results of a large‐scale study of lifetime participation in education and training. Focusing on the datasets relating to parents and children in the same family, it suggests that despite large changes in educational and training provision since 1945, individual participation trajectories remain very similar within families. The article also illustrates some of the varied ways in which family influences have been played out, and concludes that there is sufficient evidence here to indicate that explanatory models of lifelong participation in education and training need to take account of family effects on participation both immediately after completion of compulsory education and later in life too.