'All the Names': LEAs and the making of pupil and community identities [1]

The coming of LEAs in 20th-century England presented an administrative challenge and an information explosion as the local state worked to meet both local and national educational policy demands. This paper will analyse the ways in which the organisation of knowledge was enlisted into the service of local education policy-making. It will argue that the collection of data by the local state involved both the construction of knowledge and its ordering. These processes in turn involved the creation of an 'education archive', an archive in which ideas about pupils and communities were embedded and genealogies of identity created. The paper will be illustrated through a case study of Birmingham LEA. In particular, use will be made of the Education Census, 1907-1970.