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

Hudson, Karen and Mulholland, Kirstin and Croft, Emma and Benton, Paula and Stark, Graham and Littlefair, David and Atkinson, Joanne and Johnson, Sophie B. and Reed, Howard and Johnson, Elliott and Johnson, Matthew (2025) Exploring UK residents’ views on substantive education reform : adversarially co-produced narratives indicate fluidity in support. Political Research Exchange, 7 (1): 2564696. ISSN 2474-736X

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Abstract

Substantive reform capable of addressing multiple crises within the UK education system is often rejected on the basis that public opposition to tax and investment precludes politicians from implementing reform, even though policymakers 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'. We find widespread support for investment in the education system, belief that removing socioeconomic barriers to educational success is important and that salient narratives can increase support among ‘haters’. We find that younger age, higher risk of destitution and lower health status predict higher levels of support. We present innovative 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.