Professor Albert Henry "Chelly" Halsey (born 1923) is a British sociologist. He is Emeritus Emeritus Professor of Social and Administrative Studies at the University of Oxford, and Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford.
Professor Halsey 'worked in what he called the "political arithmetic" tradition throughout his career, with the dual tasks of documenting the state of society, and addressing social and political issues through "experimental social administration"'[1]
He presented the BBC's annual Reith Lectures in 1978. Entitled Change in British Society, Halsey examined topics such as class, status, family and social cohesion.
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Halsey was an adviser for Anthony Crosland;[2] and on education played an '"activist" role in policy development in the UK and internationally, through his work on educational reform...and as research adviser to Crosland at the DES with the introduction of comprehensive schooling in the UK'.[3]
Generally accepted has been 'A. H. Halsey's assertion that in capitalist industrial societies "It is inevitable that the educational system should come into close relationship with the economy"'.[4]
'Halsey's creed of "ethical socialism" springs from a lasting Anglican belief. His background is not just working class, but respectable working class'.[5]
Despite a hankering for social consensus in Britain, 'as Halsey confesses, such a consensus became more difficult to sustain as the twentieth century proceeded; unfortunately the "bases of social integration in Christian belief, national and imperial success, localised kinship and collective self-help institutions...were all to decay"'.[6]