Exploring UK residents’ views on substantive education reform: adversarially co-produced narratives indicate fluidity in support

There is evidence to suggest that multiple related crises within the UK education system require substantive reform at each level in order to enable young people to progress. However, such reform is often rejected on the basis that associated costs are not electorally feasible due to public opposition to investment and, by implication, tax, leaving politicians unable to implement reform, even though they may otherwise wish to do so. Here, we analyse data from a methodologically diverse series of surveys (1) n=693; 2) n=10; 3) n=2,200) of adult UK residents conducted between November 2023-January 2024 examining associations between demographic characteristics, socioeconomic status, health and level of support for a test case of progressive education reform. We deploy for the first time in an educational studies context adversarially co-produced narratives as a treatment to examine fluidity in preferences, particularly among those who express strong initial opposition to the policy programme, whom we term ‘haters’. Our analysis of survey 3 indicates significant impact of narratives on assessment of education reform, particularly on ‘haters’, and clear associations between age, risk of destitution and various other socioeconomic characteristics, health status and levels of support. We present Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) of these associations and find moderately strong positive correlations with levels of support for tax reform as a possible means of funding change. This first use of these methods in educational research indicates that there is widespread support for investment in the education system that removing socioeconomic barriers to educational success is seen as important and that salient narratives can increase support among opponents. This suggests that there is significant support for substantive public investment in education, along with possible forms of funding through taxation. This may support prior studies that suggest that residents view improvements in education as being important to addressing broader challenges.