A RESPECTED Oxford sociologist and architect of the comprehensive school system has died aged 91.

Professor Albert Henry Halsey, known as “Chelly” Halsey, was an Emeritus Fellow of Nuffield College who taught there for more than 50 years since joining in 1962.

And in the 1960s he was a close adviser to Labour Education Secretary Anthony Crosland, during the accelerated introduction of comprehensives across the country.

He supported the famous circular issued by Mr Crosland in 1965, urging local authorities to press ahead with the reforms.

Prof Halsey was also the author of an extensive range of sociology books and a major critic of the British class system, regarding his interest in education as “a hobby”.

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He famously told parents to not send their children to private school because it made the deprevation of poorer families worse and he repeatedly called for such selection to be abolished.

And in 1978 he presented the BBC’s Reith Lectures, on Change in British Society, discussing class, status, family and social cohesion.

He said: “Only by a reappraisal of what has gone wrong can we save our dear old England.”

Albert Henry Halsey was born in Kentish Town, North London, on April 13, 1923 to parents William and Ada.

The son of a railway porter and grandson of an engine driver, there was not much money in his working-class childhood home. But his parents, both described by Prof Halsey as “lively and highly intellegent”, had enough to buy a set of encyclopedias.

Prof Halsey later told the Oxford Mail’s sister paper The Oxford Times they were the most important thing to him in his younger years. “They were always known in our house as ‘the Volumes’. I nearly learned them by heart. Even today, I have an astonishing smattering of odd knowledge than can only come from ‘the Volumes’.”

He went to Kettering Grammar School, in Northamptonshire, and at 18 joined the Royal Air Force during the Second World War.

It proved to be a revelation. “It was like suddenly being transferred to a public school,” he said.

“In the morning we had instruction, then in the afternoon they gave you a nice toy to fly, an aeroplane, and then we played rugby football.”

A posting to Rhodesia, South Africa, followed where his disgust at the “coloured bar” became a lasting influence on his views of poverty and inequality.

“I remember being there and longing for that marvellous quiet countryside on a nice muggy day,” he said.

“I felt a great sense of belonging to England and thinking, like Orwell, that it was a wonderful country with the wrong people in charge – the bloody old Tories.”

Back in England he attained a grant to study at the London School of Economics (LSE) and graduated with a degree in 1952, specialising in sociology. He considered going in to politics as a career, but a taste of student politics was enough to put him off.

He married his wife Margaret, a part-time social worker, in 1949, and the couple had three sons and two daughters. All attended comprehensive school in Oxford.

Following his graduation from LSE he was taken under the wing of leading education sociologist Jean Floud, resulting in his co-editorship of her 1956 scholarly article Social Class and Educational Opportunity.

After this he worked as a lecturer at Liverpool and Birmingham universities through the 1950s.

He moved to Oxford in 1962 to take a place at Nuffield as a faculty fellow.

Prof Halsey held that post for two years before becoming a professorial fellow, a role that lasted until 1993.

After that, he was an emeritus fellow up until his death.

In the 1980s he sat on Oxford University’s Hebdomadal Council, the governing body, until 2000.

An Anglican, he was part of the commission set up by the Archbishop of Canterbury which produced a damning report, Faith in the City, on British urban decay in 1985.

In 1995 he was elected a fellow of the British Academy, a national expert academy for the humanities and social sciences.

He was also a keen gardener and, for a time, had charge of the gardens at Nuffield.

Albert Halsey died peacefully on October 14. A funeral took place at Oxford Crematorium on October 23.

Prof Halsey’s wife Margaret died in 2004. He is survived by three sons, two daughters, eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Nuffield College has said it will hold a memorial service, likely to take place in the new year.

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