Letters: AH Halsey, one of the last great sociologists with experience of real life

Anne Corbett writes:AH Halsey was an intriguing figure for me, a young journalist in the early 1970s. My magazine, New Society, was riven by the sociological debate on 11-plus failure and poor school results. Was it due to cultural deprivation? Or the structural causes of unequal distribution of power, wealth and opportunity? This renowned sociologist had turned up in the New Society offices to persuade the editor to enrich the debate. His idea was a story on the new educational priority areas (EPAs) as backed by what he called action research.

So I found myself reporting on some inspiring schools in Liverpool and the West Riding of Yorkshire. Though the EPAs were set up in the political hope that they would show how schools might better support life opportunities, Halsey was faithful to the research ethic of evaluation.