Spens (1938)

Notes on the text
Preliminary pages Membership, Analysis, Preface, Introduction
Chapter 1 Development of the secondary curriculum
Chapter 2 The present position
Chapter 3 Physical and mental development of 11-16 year olds
Chapter 4 The curriculum of the grammar school
Chapter 5 Scripture
Chapter 6 English, classics, mathematics, general science
Chapter 7 The School Certificate Examination
Chapter 8 Technical schools
Chapter 9 Administrative problems
Chapter 10 Welsh problems
Chapter 11 Conclusions and recommendations
Appendix I List of witnesses
Appendix II Liberal education (Young)
Appendix III Secondary curriculum (Kandel)
Appendix IV Faculty psychology (Burt)
Appendix V Transfer of training (Hamley)
Appendix VI Curricula in the Dominions (Clarke)
Index

London: HM Stationery Office

Chapter 1 Sketch of the development of the traditional curriculum in secondary schools of different types in England and Wales
[pages 1 - 86]

The lessons of history and their limitations

1. The 'lessons of history' are often difficult and obscure, but it is at any rate possible to discover, from the systematic study of an historical development such as the evolution of the traditional curriculum for grammar schools (including the non-local public schools) and for other types of secondary school, the successive phases of opinion by which it has been influenced. As we see one view or theory of education subjected to criticism and in consequence modified or superseded by another, we may be able partially to understand and appraise the value and meaning of each successive phase, and to form opinions of our own which, though they cannot possibly claim to be final, may at any rate claim to be based on something more substantial than current opinion and popular views of the significance of what has occurred.

Secondary or higher schools in England and Wales and indeed in most Western European countries were at the time of their origin, and even down to a comparatively recent date, to a considerable extent institutions for the education of children, chiefly boys, either belonging to the more prosperous classes or selected for their ability. Schools designed to provide education for the mass of the people were not established till after grammar schools, and those institutions of university rank with which they were intimately connected, had long been in existence. Thus, whereas elementary or primary schools (1), provided on a large scale for the less affluent classes of the population, have developed from the ideas and necessities of modern times and have in general no very remote history, the public (or non-local grammar schools) and the grammar schools of England and Wales, which may broadly be described as schools of the academic type, have a long and interesting history going back to the Hellenistic and Roman schools of rhetoric, such as the famous public school kept by Quintilian at Rome in the latter half of the first century of our era.

Curricula for higher schools, if they be carefully examined over any considerable period of time, will be found to reflect and reveal in a remarkable way the interplay of deep seated forces in the national life. These opposing forces are often characterised as liberal or conservative. More careful detailed study of the evolution of the traditional curriculum shows that the train of causation is highly complex and that such names only partially and imperfectly describe the character and significance of the forces at work. The history of the traditional curriculum bears witness to the unending struggle between rival philosophies of life and widely divergent theories of education and human development. These find expression in varying forms in succeeding generations in the controversies which centre round this or that aspect of education and training; for instance, the rival claims of a classical and a modern education; of the humanities and the sciences; of a general and a specific (technical) education. The real root of the problem which confronts us today is probably to be found in the increasing complexity of the political, economic and social background of modern life and the rapid growth of knowledge which make ever fresh demands on the schools and the teachers. It is becoming more and more evident that a single liberal or general education for all is impracticable, and that varying forms both of general and quasi-vocational education have to be evolved in order to meet the needs of boys and girls differing widely in intellectual and emotional capacity. New 'subjects' are constantly obtruding themselves on the higher schools. Relief can only be found through a synthesis of claims and a constant reorientation of outlook resulting from greater insight and wider experience.

The Seven Liberal arts: Trivium and Quadrivium

2. The conception of general education current throughout western Europe in the middle ages which in England and Wales survived in a modified form down to the eighteenth century, was that of the seven liberal arts or sciences which were regarded as preparatory to the study of theology, law and medicine. (2) Of these the trivium - grammar, rhetoric and logic, known as the artes sermocinales - were regarded as preparatory to the remainder, namely, arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy, described as the quadrivium, or artes reales vel physicae.

The history and significance of the conception of the liberal arts are discussed in some detail in Appendix II to this Report.

When universities developed in western Europe from the thirteenth century, the three 'philosophies', natural, mental and moral, were superimposed.

In the sixteenth century in England and Wales the traditional general curriculum for the grammar school and the university, as distinct from the professional studies of divinity, medicine and law which were pursued at the university alone, was in substance the mediaeval seven liberal arts described above, but in them the balance of studies had been considerably modified. The quadrivium, comprising arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music, belonged to the university; the trivium, consisting of grammar, rhetoric and logic, was rather unsystematically distributed between pupils in grammar schools and students in their first year at the university. (3) It must be remembered that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and to a great extent in the eighteenth century, youths were admitted to the universities at the age of 15 or even earlier. Of the studies included in the trivium, the only one that was systematically taught in the grammar schools in effect was grammar, which meant Latin literature (4), and in particular the necessary preliminary study of Latin grammar, which was regarded as the special 'business' of schools. (5)

The grammar schools, local and non-local

3. For some hundreds of years before the middle of the eighteenth century the typical school in England and Wales was the endowed grammar school, which was generally regarded as the lower stage or feeder for 'grammar scholars', who in due course were to proceed to be be 'artist scholars' at Oxford or Cambridge. One of the basic ideas of the grammar school was that it was designed to send at any rate its more gifted pupils to the universities. It was implicitly regarded as a schola particularis of the university which was the studium commune vel generale, and in theory at any rate its function was to instruct its pupils in the trivium. In practice, however, the principal aim of the grammar school was to give some form of instruction in Latin, which down to the first half of the eighteenth century was still to a great extent the language of theology, law, science, and even diplomacy in western Europe.

To quote a classic example, William of Wykeham in his foundation deed for Winchester College dated 20 October 1382, after referring to his foundation of New College Oxford (1379) - 'a perpetual college of seventy poor scholars, clerks, to study theology, canon and civil law and arts in the University of Oxford' - laid down that his foundation of 'Seinte Mary College by Wynchestre', which he designed to feed New College, Oxford, was to consist of 'seventy poor and needy scholars, clerks living college-wise in the same, studying and becoming proficient in grammaticals or the art, faculty or science of grammar.'

In the same way Eton College, founded by King Henry VI in 1440 on the model of Winchester, was planned as a great non-local grammar school (6) which was to pass its pupils on to King's College, Cambridge.

The teaching of grammar, described in William of Wykeham's foundation deed for Winchester College (1382) as 'the foundation, gate and source of all the other liberal arts, without which such arts cannot be known, nor can anyone arrive at practising them', and in the foundation deed for Wotton-under-Edge Grammar School in Gloucestershire (1384) as 'the foundation of all the liberal arts', was regarded as the distinguishing mark of higher education.

The most frequent terms in which founders described the schools which they intended to establish, were simply a 'grammar school', a ' free grammar school', or ' a master to teach grammar'.

That the teaching of the liberal science or art of grammar was regarded as the distinguishing mark of higher education is shown by the fact that in some cases an 'English School' for the 'pettys' was established side by side with the grammar school, or, as it was sometimes called, 'the Latin School.' (7)

Some foundations were designed not only for grammar, but for elementary subjects as well, regarded usually as a preparation for grammar. For instance, Enfield Grammar School (1507) was 'to teach children within the town of Enfielde to know and read their alphabet letters, to read Latin and English, and to understand grammar, and to write their lateines according to the use and trade of grammar schools.'

In a few cases a self-contained primary school was established. For instance Archbishop Rotherham, at his Jesus College at Rotherham, provided, in a Foundation Deed dated 1 February 1483, for a writing school with a Fellow learned and skilled in the art of writing and accounts to act as Master to teach gratuitously the art of writing and reckoning 'to the many youths endowed with natural capacity who do not attain to the dignity and height of the priesthood, but are fitted rather for the mechanical arts and other concerns of this world.'

It was not however till after the Restoration in 1660 that numerous endowed schools were founded for primary education only.

The scholars, usually described in the school statutes as 'children' or 'youth' for whom the grammar schools were intended, were of no one class in particular. The school was to be for such as required an education in grammar, and among them there would be boys of all classes, but many more of those above the labouring class than of those in that class. The 'poor' are frequently named in the school statutes, but rather in a way indicating a desire to keep the school available for them, than in expectation that they would in fact form the majority of the scholars.

The relation of the grammar schools to the universities and to the system of apprenticeship

4. The statutes of grammar schools founded in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries indicate clearly that the grammar school was regarded as an institution primarily designed to prepare scholars to proceed to the universities, from which they would in due course enter one of the three ancient learned professions or the profession of teaching. The grammar schools were thus from one point of view vocational schools orientated towards the universities. (8)

The danger of sending too many 'grammar scholars' to the universities, and thereby overcrowding the learned professions, was always present to the minds of contemporary statesmen. A classic illustration is afforded by the following passage from a letter of 1611 from Sir Francis Bacon (afterwards Viscount St Albans) to King James I, about Thomas Sutton's proposed foundation of a hospital and school in the Charterhouse of Smithfield.

'Concerning the advancement of learning, I do subscribe to the opinion of one of the wisest and greatest men of your kingdom, that for grammar schools there are already too many, and therefore no providence to add, where there is excess. For the great number of schools which are in your Highnesses realm, doth cause a want, and likewise an overthrow; both of them inconvenient, and one of them dangerous; for by means thereof they find want in the country and towns, both of servants for husbandry, and apprentices for trade; and on the other side, there being more scholars bred than the state can prefer and employ, and the active part of that life not bearing a proportion of the preparative, it must needs fall out, that many persons will be bred unfit for other vocations, and unprofitable for that in which they were bred up, which fills the realm full of indigent, idle and wanton people, which are but materia rerum novarum.' (9)

In this context it is important to point out that there was a certain connection, particularly in the seventeenth century, between the grammar schools with their orientation towards the universities and the contemporary system of apprenticeship which corresponded to our modern system of technical education. In a number of endowed schools part of the funds was allocated to binding boys to a trade after several years at school. A good illustration of this tendency is afforded by the statutes of Sir Thomas Cookes for Bromsgrove School (1693). Cookes gave an annual income of £50 to the school, £20 of which was paid to the schoolmaster for the gratuitous instruction of 12 foundation scholars in the English and Latin tongues and, if they were capable, in the Greek tongue also and to write and cast accounts. The remaining £30 was to be expended by the trustees on clothing the boys and paying premiums for boys after six years at school, 'to be placed apprentice or put out to such trade as the trustees think proper'. (10)

The curriculum of the grammar schools in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

5. The only grammar that was or could be taught in the grammar schools at first was Latin. Greek was added in the sixteenth century by many founders. The Reformation movement, by its insistence on Biblical study, helped to strengthen the position of Greek, and in a few cases also established Hebrew on the list of school studies. Arithmetic and elementary mathematics are rarely mentioned in early foundations. At Bungay (1592) 'The school master and scholars were to keep school every Saturday and half-holiday till 3 o'clock in the afternoon for writing and casting accounts with the pen and "counters" according to their capacities.'

The statutes of Blackburn Grammar School (1597) suggest that 'the principles of Arithmetic, Geometry, and Cosmography with some introduction into the sphere are profitable.'

In its main features, however, the ordinary grammar school curriculum up to the beginning of the nineteenth century reproduced the education in rhetoric described by Quintilian and inherited by the western church from the Roman Empire. (11)

The narrow and restricted character of the traditional curriculum in the public schools and grammar schools, representing as it did an all too faithful adherence to the form, if not to the real spirit, of the Renaissance, was largely due to the inert condition of the two ancient universities in the seventeenth and still more in the eighteenth century. In the middle of the seventeenth century the conservatism of the universities, which were steeped in the neo-scholastic tradition, was to some extent counteracted by the great movement which spread from Italy all over western Europe for the establishment of scientific academies. In England a series of tentative proposals for founding a great society or academy for scientific research finally assumed concrete form in the Royal Society of London, which received its first Charter from Charles II in 1662. It is interesting to note the emergence of the idea of associating a school with a scientific society of this type. It appears, for instance, in Abraham Cowley's Proposition for the Advancement of Experimental Philosophy (1660), in which he suggested that a school should be attached to his philosophical college for scientific research.

The courtly academies

6. Even in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there was much criticism of the limited vocational aim of the grammar schools, based as it was on the requirements of the universities and the learned professions. In particular, it no longer suited the needs of the upper classes, who desired their sons to be trained for posts at court, for diplomacy and for higher appointments in the army. Meanwhile institutions based on the vocational needs of the governing class had developed on the Continent. They were known in France and in the German and Scandinavian states as knightly or courtly academies. (12) They gave instruction to young nobles, not only in horsemanship and the use of arms, but also in modern languages, history and geography, and in the application of mathematics to military and civil engineering. A proposal for the establishment of a school on these lines in England was made by Sir Humphrey Gilbert in 1572, and in the following century Cowley, Locke, Defoe and many minor writers urged in vain that schools of this type should be established. The upper classes in England in the seventeenth century frequently entrusted the education of their sons to private tutors, and afterwards sent them to the knightly or courtly academies on the Continent. The development of these courtly academies on the Continent to meet the needs of the upper classes showed that the vocational motive was present. Incidentally, the development of this type of school designed for the governing class was one of a number of movements which reflected the maladjustment between the classical grammar schools and the needs of contemporary life.

The mathematical schools

7. In the latter part of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth century there was a great development of seaborne trade and a consequent demand for captains and officers for the mercantile marine who had an adequate knowledge of mathematics. This led to some interesting attempts to develop a specific or quasi-vocational education in some of the endowed schools on or near the sea coast. For instance, at Dartmouth Grammar School (1679) there was to be a master to teach Latin and another to teach English, the art of navigation and other mathematics.

A few other schools on or near the sea coast, such as Williamson's School at Rochester (1701), Neale's Mathematical School in Fetter Lane, London (1705), and Churcher's College at Petersfield (1722) made explicit provision in their statutes for the teaching of the 'art of navigation and other mathematics'.

The most characteristic development of this kind was at Christ's Hospital (1552), within which a 'Mathematical School' for 40 boys was established in 1673. The boys were to be well grounded in grammar and common arithmetic and were to be taught 'the whole science of arithmetic' and the art of navigation. They were then to be bound as apprentices for seven years to captains of ships. Books, maps, globes and mathematical instruments were ordered for the instruction of the boys, who were to remain at school till the age of 16. Though this mathematical school enjoyed royal patronage and was supported in various ways by Pepys, Halley, Sir Isaac Newton and other eminent mathematicians of the period, it was a comparative failure up to the latter half of the eighteenth century, largely owing to incompetent management. (13)

The Nonconformist academies

8. During the Commonwealth many proposals were made for modifying the traditional courses in schools and universities, but the liberal movement received a check at the Restoration which tended to make the endowed grammar schools even more conservative than heretofore.

The policy of ecclesiastical uniformity adopted after 1660 further reinforced the static tendencies of the grammar schools and compelled many youths to seek on the continent a training foreign both in aims and in means. Their criticisms of the conventional curriculum on their return to England must have indirectly added to the widespread dissatisfaction which became still more acute after the industrial revolution. During the eighteenth century the endowed schools remained impervious to new ideas, and their tenacious adherence to ancient custom further stimulated the growth of a body of public opinion hostile to the traditional curriculum.

The celebrated controversy in England at the end of the seventeenth century between the 'ancients' and 'moderns' was indicative of the change that was gradually taking place in conceptions of curriculum, and of the demand for 'useful studies', which became so insistent towards the close of the eighteenth century and which may already be traced in Locke's treatise Some Thoughts concerning Education (1693).

The Nonconformist academies, established in considerable numbers from 1670 onwards, though at first intended for the education of ministers, received many lay pupils. (14) They often provided a wide curriculum, including (in addition to the traditional Greek and Latin), English, modern languages, mathematics and a certain amount of natural science, principally physics. Moreover, they were far less insular than the grammar schools and were influenced indirectly by educational developments in Scotland, Holland, Germany and the Protestant cantons of Switzerland.

For instance, the academy at Newington Green (1666-1706) had a garden, a bowling green, a fishpond, a laboratory, an air pump, a thermometer and mathematical instruments of various kinds. At the Sherriffhales Academy (1663-1697) in Shropshire, practical exercises accompanied the course of lectures and the students were employed at times in surveying land, composing almanacs, making sundials of different construction and dissecting animals. The celebrated Joseph Priestley (1733-1804), who taught for several years at the Warrington Academy, published in 1765 his essay on A Course of Liberal Education for Civil and Active Life, in which he stresses the importance of English, history, geography, French, practical mathematics with some algebra and geometry, chemistry and sufficient Latin to read the easier classics. He urges that the whole plan of education from the grammar school to the finishing university should be designed for the use of the general students as well as for those intended for the professions.

When Protestant Nonconformists were legally allowed to follow the teaching profession by an Act of Parliament passed in 1779 (15), a large number of new private schools, partly modelled on the older dissenting academies, were established, especially in London and industrial towns such as Birmingham and Manchester, to meet the needs of manufacturers and merchants who demanded a more practical education for their sons than that provided in the endowed schools. These commercial academies and private schools undoubtedly had many faults, but they were more receptive of new ideas and more ready to experiment than the old endowed grammar schools, and subsequent reforms in the curriculum can be largely traced to their influence.

The public schools and grammar schools down to 1840

9. The grammar schools, local and non-local, with their narrow curriculum almost confined to Greek and Latin, were not able to meet the new demands for courses of training and education fitting boys for the life of the period. This dissatisfaction with the traditional curriculum was well expressed in Locke's Thoughts concerning Education (1693) in which he stressed the importance of a broader intellectual training, moral development and physical hardening. Locke's low opinion of the contemporary curriculum is shown by his statement, that 'Of a great part of the learning now in fashion in the schools of Europe ... a gentleman may in good measure be unfurnished with, without any great disparagement to himself or prejudice to his affairs.' (16) Locke's view on the value of private education by tutors rather than public education found wide acceptance among the upper classes who frequently throughout the eighteenth century educated their sons at home by tutors and then sent them on the 'grand tour' either with or without a period of residence at Oxford or Cambridge. Throughout the greater part of the eighteenth century there was a marked decline in the numbers of the pupils at grammar schools and of students at the universities. The middle classes frequently sent their sons to small private schools. Towards the end of the eighteenth century the boys attending the non-local public schools, such as Eton, Winchester, Westminster, Harrow, Rugby and Shrewsbury, tended to be drawn from the upper and wealthier classes.

A book entitled Liberal Education or a Practical Treatise on the Method of Acquiring Useful and Polite Learning, published in 1787 by Vicesimus Knox, headmaster of Tonbridge School from 1778 to 1812, gives a good general idea of the aims and methods of the more efficient grammar schools towards the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century.

Knox, who was a vigorous upholder of the 'established manner' in education, regarded Latin and Greek as the basis of all sound instruction, but thought it desirable, when this foundation had been laid, to include modern studies. Classical teaching should consist chiefly of the grammar of the two languages and the composition of prose and verse in both. To these basic studies might be added the elements of history and geography, some mathematics, French and accomplishments such as drawing, music and fencing, though Knox himself approved more of 'dancing and the learning of the military exercises which is now very common'. Boys were expected to read English books and easy Latin books in their leisure time. It is clear from the stress which Knox lays on the inadequacy of the education given in many private schools, which prepared boys for business and office life, that the established classical curriculum did not entirely meet the needs of the middle classes. Knox asserted that, though these academies professed to teach many subjects, their success was in fact confined to reading, writing and summing.

The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were marked by great advances in various branches of science and by the development of rich vernacular literatures in the countries of western Europe, and many protests were raised in different quarters against the narrowness of the traditional curriculum. (17) Nevertheless, the endowed schools, both local and non-local, supported by the conservatism of the old universities, successfully resisted all attempts at reform. There is evidence to show that a considerable number of endowed grammar schools tried to provide an education of a more modern type alongside the traditional classical curriculum, For instance, 183 boys, of whom 153 were boarders, went from Manchester Grammar School to the university between 1749 and 1784. Most of the local day boys at that period left school about the age of 12, either to go into trade or to get a more vocational training at a commercial academy. (18)

At Stafford Grammar School, about 1820, Ward's edition of Lilly's Latin Grammar and the Westminster Greek Grammar were used, 'but as not a sixth part of the boys ever wish to learn the classics, being principally destined for commerce and manufacture, the system of education is chiefly directed to English Grammar, Writing and arithmetic. This system has been adopted by the present masters in the last 20 years.' (19)

At Odiham Grammar School in Hampshire, the course in the latter part of the eighteenth century included systematic teaching in English. (20)

In 1805 Lord Eldon, accepting Dr Johnson's definition of a grammar school as 'a school in which the learned languages are taught grammatically', ruled in the Court of Chancery that no part of the funds of the Leeds Grammar School could be expended in engaging teachers of French or German or in creating a subsidiary department for commercial training. His judgement was upheld by subsequent decisions and this state of affairs continued till the passing of the Grammar School Act 1840. (21) In a few instances the governors of well endowed grammar schools were able to incur the expense of securing the passing of a private act of parliament to enable them to enlarge the scope of the original foundation. For instance, in 1838 a private act was passed to enable the governors of Macclesfield Grammar School to establish a second school to be called the Modern Free School, at which instruction should be given 'in writing, arithmetic, mathematics, the modern languages and in such other branches of education (exclusive of the learned languages) as the Governors shall for that purpose from time to time direct.'

The static condition of the education given in most of the public schools and grammar schools down to 1840 or even later was largely due not only to the predominant influence of the two old universities, but also to the fact that they were endowed foundations. Few institutions are so proof against change as foundations supported by endowment, and consequently to a great extent independent alike of external control and of popular demand. Thus, till the middle of the nineteenth century the endowed schools of England and Wales were, for the most part, in a backwater, and their pious founders determined from the tomb their studies and their methods of instruction long after changes in the circumstances of the districts or of the pupils had made the founders' statutes inappropriate, or the development of educational theory had rendered them obsolete.

The grammar schools have had very varied histories. Some with slender endowments gradually fell into decay; some became in practice elementary schools, and most of them were distracted by the varying claims of different classes of boys who required different kinds of training. Nevertheless, many small grammar schools continued till the middle of the nineteenth century or even later to take the sons both of the lower middle class and of the gentlefolk of the neighbourhood, sending boys not infrequently to the universities and producing from time to time some distinguished scholars. Meanwhile, certain well endowed educational foundations, some of which, such as Eton, Winchester and Westminster, had always been non-local, and some of which, such as Harrow, Rugby and Shrewsbury, became non-local in the eighteenth century, came to be regarded as the proper places of education for the sons of the gentlefolk; and those who could afford the expense became anxious to send their sons from a distance to them. There thus grew up the practice of sending boys to boarding schools, and ultimately a preference for boarding schools as opposed to day schools. (22) The reforms in discipline and corporate life effected by Dr Arnold during his tenure of the headmastership of Rugby (1828-42), which spread to other public schools, together with the facilities for travelling afforded by the new system of railways, tended to increase the prestige of a few great schools among the affluent classes and particularly the new class of wealthy manufacturers. From these different circumstances there arose a class of public schools which maintained a high standard of efficiency, but at a cost which confined them to the wealthier classes. Meanwhile, the habit of founding grammar schools gradually died out towards the end of the eighteenth century; also, owing to the industrial revolution there was a great increase in the population, and the distribution of it was wholly changed. Many of the old grammar schools were situated in thinly populated areas, and on the other hand in many new and populous neighbourhoods there was no provision of higher schools. The absence of grammar schools in some places and their inefficiency in others afforded an opening for private venture, and over a large part of the country 'commercial academies' and private schools became the recognised means of education for the middle and lower middle classes.

Attacks on the traditional curriculum

10. The narrow range of studies in vogue at the public schools and the universities of Oxford and Cambridge was vigorously attacked by writers in the Edinburgh Review in 1809 and 1810. These articles pointed out that the principal defect of the public schools was excessive devotion to Latin and Greek to the exclusion of modern subjects. It was absurd to regard the classics as the only test of a cultivated mind. A place should be found for modern history, modern languages, geography, chronology, experimental philosophy and a considerable amount of mathematics. The attack was renewed in the Edinburgh Review in 1830 in an article chiefly devoted to Eton: 'The most precious years are spent, not in filling the mind with solid knowledge; not in training it to habits of correct and patient thought; but in a course of half-studious idleness (23), of which the only lasting trace is the recollection of misspent time.'

James Pillans (1778-1864), Professor of Humanity at Edinburgh University, who was for some time a private tutor at Eton, gives an interesting description of the curriculum at the great public schools about 1823 in his Rationale of Discipline, written in 1823 and published in 1851.

'In the great schools of England - Eton, Westminster, Winchester and Harrow, where the majority of English youth who receive a liberal and high professional education are brought up - the course of instruction has for ages been confined so exclusively to Greek and Latin that most of the pupils quit them not only ignorant of, but with a considerable disrelish and contempt for, every branch of literature and scientific equipment, except the dead languages. It may be said that there are in the immediate neighbourhood of the College, teachers of Mathematics, Writing, French and other accomplishments to whom parents have the option of sending their sons. But as these masters are extra-scholastic - mere appendages, not an integral part of the establishment - and as neither they nor the branches of knowledge they proffer to teach are recognised in the scheme of school business, it requires but little acquaintance with the nature of boys to be aware, that the disrespect in which teachers so situated are uniformly held extends, in young minds, to the subjects taught and is apt to create a rooted dislike to a kind of instruction which they look upon as a work of supererogation. And this, we venture to say, is all but the universal feeling at Eton.' (24)

The fourth decade of the nineteenth century was a period of great unrest both in primary and secondary education (25), and the traditional curriculum and current ideas about education were subjected to severe examination and criticism in the publications of the Central Society of Education, founded in 1837. The following passage from an article by Thomas Wyse (1791-1862) (afterwards Sir Thomas Wyse), entitled Education Reform (1837), gives a vivid picture of the state of secondary education at the time:

'In no country is the strife between the new and the old educations more vehement - the education which deals with mind as spirit and that which deals with it as matter. In no country are there greater anomalies - greater differences not merely in the means, but in the ends of education ... it runs through the entire system.' (26) Such was the position of education in England according to Wyse at the time of the first parliamentary grants for elementary education (1833).

He adds: 'If we find in the country and town schools little preparation for occupations, still less for the future agriculturalist or mechanic, we find in the grammar schools much greater defects. The middle class in all its sections, except the more learned professions, finds no instruction which can suit its special middle class wants. They are fed with the dry husks of ancient learning when they should be taking sound and substantial food from the great treasury of modern discovery. The applications of chemical and mechanical science to everyday wants - such a study of history as will show the progress of civilisation - and such a knowledge of public economy in the large sense of the term as will guard them against the delusions of political fanatics and knaves, and lead to a due understanding of their position in society, are all subjects worth as much labour and enquiry to that great body, as a little Latin learnt in a very imperfect manner, with some scraps of Greek to boot - the usual stunted course of most of our grammar schools.' (27)

Though educational reformers such as Pillans and Wyse, and a large section of the middle classes, were profoundly dissatisfied with the curriculum in vogue in the public schools and the grammar schools, nevertheless these schools, which were the resort of the governing classes of the time, had many defenders. For instance Vicesimus Knox published in 1821 a vigorous defence of the grammar schools in opposition to a bill presented to parliament in 1821 authorising the authorities of grammar schools to allow English, writing and accounts to be added to the classical curriculum. (28)

Again, the writer of the article on education in the Penny Encyclopaedia (1845) states that the endowed schools were still the best all-round schools in England.

Educational experiments

11. The writers of the articles in the Edinburgh Review cited above held that it was impracticable to reform the public schools, and suggested that educational experiments should be carried out in other schools. There were, however, few organisations or individuals who were prepared to experiment. The Protestant Nonconformists, who had been allowed to follow the teaching profession by an act passed in 1779, though they were still excluded from the universities and the public schools, made comparatively little use of the opportunities thus afforded. Mill Hill School, founded by the Congregationalists in 1807, which was organised on public school lines partly on the advice of Dr Keate, headmaster of Eton, had from its inception a curriculum somewhat wider than that in vogue in the ancient foundations. In addition to classics the boys devoted a considerable amount of time to mathematics, including algebra, Euclid and trigonometry; French was taught by a Frenchman and courses of lectures were given on natural and experimental philosophy; drawing was taught by 'an artist of respectability'; and history, English reading, elocution and ancient and modern geography formed an integral part of the school course. The schools established in the first half of the nineteenth century by the Society of Friends showed a noticeable tendency to break away from the trammels of the traditional curriculum. Special attention was devoted to the study of English and particularly to oral reading and composition, and the pupils were frequently required to write descriptions of excursions, lectures and other incidents of school life. Considerable attention was also given to natural history, elementary natural science, geography and manual work of various kinds.

The most remarkable experimental school at this period was the private school conducted from 1819 by the Hill family at Hazelwood, near Birmingham, and later at Bruce Castle in Tottenham. The salient features of these two schools were the breadth of the curriculum and the arrangements for self-government. (29) The younger pupils, who were taught in a separate classroom, were kept together for all subjects while the remainder were grouped and regrouped for each branch of study. The course in the eight classes of the school included orthography, geography, parsing, shorthand, mathematics, French, Greek and Latin. The first geography class was composed of members of the highest French class and was taught by the French master in French, 'improvement in French being quite as much the object as the acquisition of geographical knowledge'. Modern languages were taught as early as possible.

A description of the school published in 1833 states that fencing, dancing and music were taught by visiting teachers and that lectures in natural philosophy were also provided. There was systematic instruction in swimming and gymnastics, and boys with practical tastes were encouraged to take up subjects such as drawing etching, painting, mapmaking, surveying, making mathematical diagrams, making machines, printing at the school press, reporting debates and trials before the school jury, and music. Many of the arrangements show the influence of Pestalozzi (1746-1827). For instance, mapping was carried on out of doors in association with surveying. Adequate facilities and rewards were provided for voluntary work in a series of activities, many of which were manual, and much stress was laid on civic and moral training. The government of the school was vested in the headmaster, the teachers and a committee of boys who were elected once a month and met weekly to frame rules and regulations. The school had a judge, a keeper of records, an attorney-general, a constable and a jury appointed by lot. There was a weekly conference of the teachers, dealing with instruction rather than government. The school attracted much attention at the time and De Quincey wrote an article about it in the London Magazine in 1834.

The gradual enrichment of the traditional curriculum in some of the public schools

12. It is broadly true to say that till some time after the passing of the Grammar Schools Act 1840 (30), the two classical languages with the elements of history and geography held a decided predominance over the whole course of study in most endowed schools.

At Eton, Rugby, Shrewsbury and some other schools, French, arithmetic, writing and drawing were taught on half-holidays by 'masters of accomplishments'. One of the most progressive of the endowed schools in the first half of the nineteenth century was Shrewsbury, where the curriculum was carefully reorganised under Dr Samuel Butler, headmaster from 1798 to 1836. The course was still mainly classical, but more attention was given to Greek than was usual in most schools, and English, geography, algebra, Euclid and English history formed part of the ordinary work of the fifth and sixth forms. The boys had a considerable amount of time for private reading, to which Butler attached great importance. He introduced promotion by merit and periodical school examinations for the upper forms in which an English theme played an important part. Butler's successor, Dr BH Kennedy, made French a part of school 'business' in 1836, appointed a German master in 1837, and in 1836 added mathematics to the regular school curriculum.

Butler's work as a reformer of the traditional curriculum was further developed by Dr Thomas Arnold, who was head master of Rugby from 1828 to 1842. Regarding the formation of moral principles and habits as the most important part of education, Arnold assigned a leading place to history and other forms of instruction calculated to develop character. Under the system which he had established at Rugby by 1835 the boys were taught in three divisions - Classical, Mathematical and French. The sixth form remained the same in personnel for all studies. Classics formed the core of the curriculum, but were supplemented by instruction in French and mathematics (including arithmetic, algebra and geometry), which were taught by the classical form masters. The curriculum also included English, German, ancient history and modern European history. The teaching of ancient history was partly based on a first hand study of Greek and Roman historians; and the French texts read in the sixth form included some of the historical works of Guizot and Mignet.

Arnold devoted much attention to developing the corporate life of the school and exercised a profound influence over his prefects. Apart from the fact that he brought neo-humanistic ideas to bear on the traditional classical studies he did comparatively little to enrich the traditional curriculum. On the other hand his far-reaching reforms in the corporate and social life of the school did much to rehabilitate the public schools in popular esteem, and prepared the way for the foundation of a number of new proprietary schools on public school lines which are described in the following section.

Arnold's successor, Dr Tait, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, appointed a special teacher of modern languages at Rugby to whom the classical form masters might transfer their pupils. Tait also appointed two special mathematical teachers for the whole school instead of requiring all classical masters to teach mathematics. Physics under the name of 'natural philosophy' became a subject of instruction at Rugby in 1837 and a physics laboratory was erected in 1859. The Report of the Schools Inquiry Commission (1868), which is summarised in Section 15, shows that the reforms introduced by Butler and Arnold spread rather slowly except in the larger schools.

The curriculum devised for Uppingham by Edward Thring, headmaster from 1853 to 1887, is of interest on account of its recognition of the importance of the teaching of English and of the aesthetic subjects, especially music and art. The ordinary school subjects, classics, English composition, on which great stress was laid, Scripture, history and geography, were taken in the morning. In the afternoon came music and various optional subjects of which every boy had to take one or two, such as French, German, chemistry, carpentry, turning and drawing. Thring was one of the first headmasters to assign to music a prominent place in the school by making attendance at singing classes and music lessons compulsory. He also attached great importance to systematic physical exercises and to hobbies. The Uppingham gymnasium, opened in 1859, was the first of its kind in any English public school, as were also the workshops, laboratories, school garden and aviary. It was largely owing to the indirect influence of Thring's methods that school activities outside the classroom developed so rapidly after 1868. The older endowed schools had already systematic organised games, school magazines and debating societies, and these spread rapidly to the smaller schools. In the same way systematic gymnastics were introduced on the Uppingham model into most schools. School plays, concerts, natural history societies and other out-of-school activities were developed somewhat later.

The rise of proprietary schools, boarding and day

13. Arnold's work at Rugby (1828-1842), as has been said above, restored the prestige of the large boarding schools among the middle class who welcomed the social and moral training which they offered. The demand for more boarding schools of the public school type, which coincided with the rapid increase in wealth of the middle classes, and the construction of the new system of railways facilitating means of communication, led to the establishment of a considerable number of new boarding schools, partly by stockholding companies. The most famous schools of this type were Cheltenham College (1841), Marlborough College (1843), Rossall School (1844), Radley College (1847), Wellington College (1853), Epsom College (1855), Bradfield College, (1859), Haileybury (1862), Clifton College (1862), Malvern School (1863) and Bath College (1867). These institutions, described in the Report of the Public Schools Commission (1864) as proprietary schools, were designed to make boarding schools accessible to those sections of the middle class who found difficulty in paying the fees of the older and more expensive public schools.

To the same end Canon Nathaniel Woodard (1811-1891) founded in 1848 the Woodard Society to provide Anglican boarding schools for the various sections of the middle class. Thus Lancing was founded for the gentry, Hurstpierpoint for the upper middle class and Ardingly for the lower middle class. (31) One outcome of Arnold's influence was appreciably to arrest the movement for the foundation of day proprietary schools, which had begun in the third decade of the nineteenth century. Among the most important day schools of this type were the Liverpool Institute (1825), King's College School (1829), University College School (1830), Blackheath Proprietary School (1831), the City of London School (1837) and Liverpool College (1840).

These new schools, being untrammelled by the statutes of founders and being in most cases without endowment, were obliged to make an effort to respond to the needs of the time and to offer an education which, if from one point of view liberal, was also controlled to a considerable extent by the vocational aim.

The vocational motive is specially apparent in the arrangements at Cheltenham College (1841), which had from its inception a Modern (or Military and Civil) Department designed primarily to prepare boys for Woolwich and Sandhurst, for appointments in government offices, for engineering or for commercial life. The main study was mathematics, and though Latin was to a certain extent retained, Greek was omitted, natural science was introduced and more stress was laid on modern languages. The lower forms were carefully grounded in Latin, English, history and elementary mathematics.

Several of these new schools besides Cheltenham had developed modern sides. For instance, King's College School had a modern department which contained in 1862 almost as many boys as the classical department. The City of London School also had a modern side. One aim of these modern departments was to prepare boys for definite examinations, in which they would not have succeeded if they had competed direct from the classical department. Amongst these examinations were those for Woolwich and Sandhurst, which at Cheltenham College 'mainly guided the reading of the higher classes in the modern department'.

The emergence of middle class schools

14. There was a large section of the middle and lower middle classes who either could not afford to send their sons to the public schools and the grammar schools or to the new proprietary schools, or who desired a more modern type of education at a lower cost. (32) Many of them sent their children to private boarding or day schools. The chief defects of these private schools, which were later described in detail in the Report of the Schools Inquiry Commission (1868) and the ancillary Reports of the Assistant Commissioners who inspected schools for that Commission, were the absence of standards and the interference of the parents, who were apt to impose a utilitarian curriculum on some at any rate of these schools. Dr Arnold, writing in 1832, thus described the commercial or English schools at which a considerable proportion of the sons of tradesmen and farmers received their education: 'In some instances they are Foundation schools, but more commonly they are private undertakings entered upon by individuals as a means of profit for themselves and their families. The pupils receive instruction in Arithmetic, History, Geography, English Grammar and Composition. ... The rudiments of Physical Science are also taught in them, and with a view to his particular business in life he learns Land Surveying if he is to be brought up to agricultural pursuits, or Bookkeeping if he is intended for trade.'

There was, however, especially after the passing of the Reform Act of 1832, a very considerable popular demand for this type of school in order to complete an elementary education with a course of two or three years of studies of a utilitarian character designed as a preparation for a business career. Some of the grammar schools and the new proprietary schools (eg Manchester Grammar School and the Liverpool Institute) set up distinct departments to provide such a course. In Manchester the Church Education Society opened in 1846 the first of four 'commercial' schools. This school provided a modern curriculum including French, German and drawing. The National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church, founded in 1811, began about 1838 to interest itself in the question of establishing middle schools designed to offer the middle classes at moderate fees a good general education based on church principles. The Society accordingly began to graft superior schools on to its already existing Normals Schools. Thus a Middle School, sometimes known as the Yeoman School, was founded at York attached to the Church Training College. It was arranged in six classes, the lowest class containing some children of the ages of 5 and 6. In addition to the three Rs, grammar, Latin, history and mensuration were taught. Schools of like type were founded by the Society at Canterbury, Lincoln, London and elsewhere.

In Devonshire a scheme was started about 1855 to provide middle class county schools for the sons of farmers and others concerned in agriculture. It was proposed to teach in these schools, in addition to the three Rs, English, history, and religious instruction, mathematics including arithmetic, algebra, Euclid and trigonometry, bookkeeping, mensuration and the elements of political economy. Latin, chemistry, mechanics, European history and music were suggested as extra subjects.

In some cases after 1869 middle class schools were engrafted on to ancient grammar school foundations by the Endowed Schools Commission (1869-1874) and the Charity Commission (1874-1902), eg the Middle School for Boys at Tiverton. (33)

The views of the Public Schools Commission (1861-4864) on the traditional curriculum

15. In 1861 the government appointed a Royal Commission with Lord Clarendon as chairman to inquire into the administration of nine great public schools. (34) The Report of this Commission, published in 1864, is of much interest not only as marking the beginning of direct state intervention in the affairs of the endowed schools (35), but also as illustrating contemporary views on the curriculum for boys. The constructive suggestions of the Commissioners on the curriculum show the strength and vitality of the classical tradition, and indicate that the Commissioners had sought to justify their adherence to this tradition in a modified form by taking as their model the Prussian Gymnasium of the period, with its ideal of neo-humanistic 'general culture' deriving from the reforms introduced by Wilhelm von Humboldt in 1809. (36) The Commissioners were of opinion that the course of study provided in the nine great public schools was sound and valuable in its main elements, Latin and Greek, but was lacking in breadth and flexibility. The position held by the different studies in a school was determined by several considerations: their admission into or exclusion from the school course; the time allowed to them; the value assigned to them in examinations and in promotion within school. At all nine schools arithmetic and mathematics were taught. In all except Eton there was instruction in one modern language, either French or German, and at Rugby and Charterhouse instruction was given in both. At Rugby, natural science was taught to boys who elected to study it instead of languages. Lectures on it were given at Winchester and occasionally at Eton. The Commissioners pointed out that natural science was thus practically excluded from the education of the higher classes in England, 'a plain defect and a great practical evil'. Drawing might be taken as an extra and some instruction in music might generally be obtained in the same way. In their general observations on the subjects approved for school courses the Commissioners strongly supported the classical tradition. 'For the instruction of boys, especially when collected in a large school, it is material that there should be some one principal branch of study, invested with a recognised and, if possible, a traditional importance, to which the principal weight should be assigned, and the largest share of time and attention given. We believe that this is necessary in order to concentrate attention, to stimulate industry, to supply to the whole school a common ground of literary interest, and a common path of promotion. The study of the classical languages and literature at present occupies this position in all the great English schools. It has, as we have already observed, the advantage of long possession, an advantage so great that we should certainly hesitate to advise the dethronement of it, even if we were prepared to recommend a successor.'

The Commissioners thus regarded classics as the principal study, but held that the main object for which boys learned Latin and Greek was to teach them to use their own language. They recommended that in addition to classics and religious teaching all boys should learn arithmetic and mathematics and at least one modern language, which should be either French or German; one branch at least of natural science and either drawing or music. Boys should also acquire some general knowledge of geography and English history, some acquaintance with modern history and a command of pure grammatical English. Mathematics should include the elements of geometry, algebra and plane trigonometry; natural science should, where practicable, include two main branches, one comprising physics and chemistry and the other comparative physiology and natural history. These recommendations for the teaching of natural science were apparently taken direct from the arrangements then in force for the teaching of Naturkunde in the Prussian Gymnasium, which assigned to that study one hour a week out of 28. The Commissioners also regarded geography as ancillary to history (37), as it was at that time in the Prussian Gymnasium.

The Report of the Schools Inquiry Commission (1864-1868)

16. The Report of the Public Schools Commission directed attention to the need for a comprehensive investigation of the state of secondary education in England and Wales, and the government accordingly appointed in 1864 a Royal Commission, under the chairmanship of Lord Taunton, to inquire into the education given in schools not included within the terms of reference of the Public Schools Commission, 'and also to consider and report what measures (if any) are required for the improvement of such education, having especial regard to all endowments applicable or which can rightly be made applicable thereto'.

The Report of this Commission, which is usually known as the Schools Inquiry Commission, was published in 1868. It throws much light on contemporary ideas regarding the curriculum.

The Commissioners reported that in general the distribution of secondary schools throughout the country was inadequate, particularly in the more populous areas. There seemed to be no clear conception of the purpose of secondary education (38), nor was there any appropriate differentiation of courses adapted to the needs of pupils who left school at different ages. Only a small number of the existing schools took advantage of the standards set up by the various external examining bodies, and a still smaller number sent pupils on to the universities. The best work, on the whole, was found in some of the endowed and proprietary schools, but the general results were unsatisfactory in nearly all the subjects that were taught. The private schools were for the most part unsatisfactory, and were subject to interference from parents who were only interested in education that had an immediate practical value.

Of the old endowed schools of England and Wales, 782 in number, only 209, or about 27 per cent, were really classical schools; 183 schools, or about 23 per cent, were semi-classical and taught little or no Greek; 340, or about 43 per cent, did not teach either Greek or Latin, and seldom gave any effective instruction even in mathematics, French or natural science. In fact the majority of these 340 schools gave an education no wider than that of an ordinary elementary school. In the grammar schools which really taught classics, the teaching was generally poor and in many instances it seemed as if the main function of the classical teaching was to furnish an excuse for the neglect of all other useful learning. English and natural science were rarely taught systematically or regarded by the headmaster as a serious part of the school 'business'. It is especially interesting to note the inferiority of the non-classical schools described in the Report. This was doubtless partly due to the fact that few of the advocates of reform had any clearly defined notion of what the non-classical school should do.

The Commissioners insisted on the importance of grading and stated that schools of three grades were required above the rank of primary education. 'The wishes of the parents can best be defined, in the first instance, by the length of time during which they are willing to keep their children under instruction. It is found that, viewed in this way, education, as distinct from direct preparation for employment, can at present be classified as that which is to stop at about 14 (39), that which is to stop at about 16, and that which is to continue till 18 or 19; and for convenience we shall call these the third, the second, and the first grade of education respectively. The difference in the time assigned makes some difference in the very nature of the education itself; if a boy cannot remain at school beyond the age of 14, it is useless to begin teaching him such subjects as require a longer time for their proper study; if he can continue till 18 or 19, it may be expedient to postpone some studies that would otherwise be commenced early. Both the substance and the arrangement of the instruction will thus greatly depend on the length of time that can be devoted to it. It is obvious that these distinctions correspond roughly, but by no means exactly, to the gradations of society. Those who can afford to pay more for their children's education will also, as a general rule, continue that education for a longer time.'

The persistence of the classical, or at any rate the Latin, tradition in English higher education is strikingly shown in the constructive recommendations of the Commissioners for their three grades of secondary schools, viz.:

(a) First grade schools with a leaving age of 18 or 19 closely connected with the universities which would teach Greek as well as Latin. The Commissioners' archetype for this grade of school was probably the contemporary Prussian Gymnasium.

(b) Second grade schools with a leaving-age of 16 or 17 which would make Latin an important subject and in addition teach two modern languages. The Commissioners' model or cadre for this type of school was largely derived from the contemporary Prussian Realschule erster Ordnung, later known as the Realgymnasium.

(c) Third grade schools with a leaving age of 14 or 15 which would teach the elements of Latin and French. The Commissioners write, 'These third grade schools represent a type intermediate between contemporary primary and secondary schools such as the Prussian Burgerschulen and the Sekundarschulen of Zurich.' (40)

The constructive recommendations of the Commissioners in respect of curriculum show clearly the influence of that class idea of education which held the field in England till the end of the nineteenth century. Education was envisaged in terms of social classes, there was to be one education for the less affluent class, another for the middle classes of society and a third for the upper classes. There was no machinery for passing from one grade to another, though a boy of exceptional ability might succeed in doing so. The type of education which a boy received depended on the wealth and social position of his parents, the career marked out for him, and the age at which he would like to embark on it. For girls there was nothing but home education or private schools. The Commissioners emphasised the importance of organising a system of secondary schools within the reach of every class of society.

The general views of the Schools Inquiry Commission on curriculum

17. In discussing the problem of the choice of subjects for the curriculum of schools of different grades, the Commissioners considered the preliminary question as to whether schools should endeavour to give general education or, as far as possible, to prepare boys for special employments. They state that on this point there was almost unanimous agreement among their witnesses in favour of general education. 'Of course, no objection could be raised to the teaching of any subject which, though specially useful in some particular employment, was either well suited to the general cultivation of the intellect, or could easily be made so. The double purpose served by such a subject would be of necessity a weighty argument in its favour. But special preparation for employments to the neglect of general cultivation was all but universally condemned as a mistake. It disorganised and broke up the teaching. It conferred a transitory instead of a permanent benefit, since the boy whose powers of mind had been carefully trained, speedily made up for special deficiencies and very often it taught what soon had to be unlearnt or learnt over again.' (42)

The Commissioners held that the demand of some parents for a modern education in first grade schools was one which could best be met by establishing separate modern schools of the first grade since the modern side of a classical school was apt, being apart from the main current, to become a refuge for boys of inferior calibre, and since the inclusion of fresh subjects in first grade classical schools was difficult without direct encouragement from the universities. The Commissioners thought that in second and third grade schools the industry or business of the district gave an exceptionally practical value to specific sciences or languages, but they held that, in the curriculum of all secondary schools alike, three leading subjects should be used as the chief instruments for the discipline of the mind, namely, language, mathematics and physical science.

The Commissioners were disposed to agree with the majority of their witnesses that language was the most valuable instrument of the three. The humane subjects of instruction, of which the study of language is the beginning, appeared, in their view, to have a distinctly greater educational power than the material. 'Nothing', they say, 'appears to develop and discipline the whole man, so much as the study which assists the learner to understand the thoughts, to enter into the feelings, to appreciate the moral judgements of others. There is nothing so opposed to true cultivation, nothing so unreasonable as excessive narrowness of mind; and nothing contributes to remove this narrowness so much as that clear understanding of language which lays open the thoughts of others to ready appreciation. Nor is equal clearness of thought to be obtained in any other way. Clearness of thought is bound up with clearness of language, and the one is impossible without the other. When the study of language can be followed by that of literature, not only breadth and clearness, but refinement become attainable. The study of history in the full sense belongs to a still later age: for till the learner is old enough to have some appreciation of politics, he is not capable of grasping the meaning of what he studies.'

Among languages, Greek could only be taught with advantage in first grade schools, but the Commissioners held that Latin could be taught with good results in other schools, and Latin held its ground, in their view, against all other languages, including English, by its character as a language, and by the help it gave in acquiring an accurate knowledge of English, and in learning other languages at the same time or afterwards. (43) Latin, together with French or German, or both, should accordingly occupy, with mathematics and science, the greater part of the school time of boys who had first mastered the indispensable elementary subjects. English, literature and history merited careful attention but had subordinate claims on the time of the school. Science teaching could best be made a valuable discipline if it began with sciences that appealed principally to the faculties of simple observation, such as elementary botany, advancing to physical geography as a subject which led to some general understanding of natural objects, and ending with elementary physics and chemistry as the common groundwork of all the sciences. The Commissioners were of opinion that 'the extent to which natural science may be carried may greatly vary, just as is now the case with mathematics. Indeed it may be highly desirable that there should be considerable variety in this respect; for it must not be lost sight of that boys of very ordinary power of grasping other subjects may evince special ability in natural science, which ought to be provided for. Nor would it be wise in a country whose continued prosperity so greatly depends on its ability to maintain its pre-eminence in manufactures, to neglect the application of natural science to the industrial arts, or overlook the importance of promoting the study of it, even in a special way, among its artisans.'

The Endowed Schools Commission (1869-1874): The Charity Commission (1874-1902)

18. Though the Report of the Schools Inquiry Commission made a considerable impression on public opinion at the time, the only step taken by the government of the day to carry out the administrative recommendations of the Commissioners was to pass the Endowed Schools Act 1869, establishing the Endowed Schools Commission. This body, which was merged in the Charity Commission in 1874, was vested with extensive powers in respect of educational trusts. From 1869 onwards part of the funds of educational trusts was in many instances applied to girls' education by this Commission. (44) The new schemes prepared for endowed schools for boys and girls by the Endowed Schools Commission (1869-1874) and the Charity Commission (1874-1902), frequently contained clauses regarding curriculum and external examinations, and did much to liberalise the courses in such schools and to introduce some measure of differentiation in the curriculum for girls' schools. (44)

The influence of external examinations from about 1850 on the curriculum of secondary schools of different types

19. The examination system in England and Wales is at present so closely associated with the education of boys and girls in both the primary and secondary schools that it is difficult to realise that it is of comparatively modern growth. Before 1850 competitive examinations had a limited place even at the universities and were not much in use in secondary schools.

It is true indeed that the establishment of severe examination tests for the honours degree of BA at Oxford and Cambridge at the beginning of the nineteenth century had a salutary indirect influence on the teaching of classics and mathematics at the public schools and grammar schools, which, as we have shown in an earlier section of this chapter, had always been intimately connected with the ancient universities. For instance, from the beginning of the nineteenth century the requirements for the honours degree at Cambridge obliged every candidate first to take mathematics. Oxford, too, under the academic Statute of 1800 required mathematics as well as classics for the BA degree from 1802. After 1807 a special honours class list for mathematics was established at Oxford. The prominent position thus assigned to mathematics at the two universities helped to give mathematics an assured place in the curriculum of the endowed schools, non-local and local. Indeed it is broadly true to say that the public schools and the grammar schools began to recover, at the same time as the two ancient universities, from the condition of torpor and stagnation into which they had sunk in the eighteenth century, and that their recovery was considerably accelerated by the institution of serious examination tests for arts degrees at Oxford and Cambridge. So, too, the establishment of the natural sciences Tripos at Cambridge in 1851, and of the Honours School of Natural Science at Oxford in 1853, undoubtedly helped to prepare the way for the inclusion of science in the school curriculum.

But after 1850 the curriculum of most of the better boys' schools, both endowed and private, began to be largely determined by the requirements of various external tests such as the examinations for the Indian Civil Service and the Home Civil Service, first held in 1855, the London Matriculation. Examination, the Oxford Local Examinations and the Cambridge Local Examinations, both first held in 1858, and the examinations of the College of Preceptors, instituted in 1853. The Local Examinations of Oxford and Cambridge were originally designed to meet the needs of what were then termed 'middle class' schools. (45) Later, when the needs of secondary education as a whole were considered by the Schools Inquiry Commission in 1868, the Commissioners recommended the establishment of a statutory council for examinations in secondary schools, and provisions to this end were included in the original draft of the Endowed Schools Bill of 1869. These sections of the bill were afterwards dropped, but the movement of public opinion which they reflected had two important effects on the development of examinations in secondary schools. The Endowed Schools Commission (1869-1874) and their successors, the Charity Commissioners (1874-1902), frequently included in their schemes for endowed schools clauses providing for annual examinations by external bodies. In the second place the abortive proposal made in the Endowed Schools Bill of 1869 for the establishment of a central examinations council aroused much opposition on the part of the public schools, who were opposed to state intervention of any kind, and thereby contributed to the establishment of the Headmasters' Conference in 1870. This body at first tended to favour a system of leaving examinations conducted by the state, but subsequently decided that it would be more satisfactory to invite the cooperation of the two ancient universities. The universities accordingly established in 1873 the Oxford and Cambridge Schools Examination Board to act as a joint examining body for those schools, particularly the public schools, which sent large numbers of pupils to both universities. The first examination instituted by this Joint Board was the Higher Certificate Examination for boys of the age of 18 and over, held for the first time in 1874 as a sixth form examination. In 1879 girls were admitted to this examination. In 1884 the Lower Certificate Examination was started for boys leaving school at the age of 16, and in 1905 the School Certificate Examination was established for pupils of 17 years of age. Thus, the examinations conducted by the Oxford Delegacy and the Cambridge Syndicate and by the Joint Board were expressly designed for pupils in secondary schools.

On the other hand the London Matriculation Examination, for which very large numbers of pupils in secondary schools were presented, was in its origin, an examination for entrance into London university and had no relation to the courses of study in any individual schools. It gradually came to be used as a leaving examination in secondary schools by many pupils who did not intend to proceed to a university course. In 1902 the university of London set up an Extension Board vested with definite powers for the examination and inspection of secondary schools, and this body established some examinations on rather different lines from the existing Local Examinations of the two old universities, based on an intimate connection between examination and inspection.

In addition to these examinations conducted by academic bodies, a large number of professional bodies organised general entrance examinations of their own for admission to each individual avocation. This had the effect of creating a large number of external authorities each of which had liberty in a sense to make its own rules for general school education. The bewildering variety of standard and requirement imposed by these various bodies caused much inconvenience in the schools and interfered very considerably with the systematic organisation of the curriculum.

In this context it should be mentioned that in the last four decades of the nineteenth century public elementary education as from 1861 and the development of instruction in science and art as from 1870 were chiefly promoted by examinations, which, as a result of the monetary reward involved in their results, had the effect of standardising and dominating the work of the schools concerned. While financial rewards were not attached to the results of the examinations in secondary schools described above, many of these schools were disposed to advertise unduly their successes in these external tests.

Another class of external examination which had a very considerable influence on the work of the better endowed schools and private schools was the examinations for open scholarships at Oxford and Cambridge. The Act of 1854 giving effect to the recommendations of the Royal Commission of 1850-52 on Oxford, and the Act of 1856 giving effect to the recommendations of the Royal Commission of 1850-52 on Cambridge, included provisions for the removal of restrictions in electing scholars at the various colleges. These scholarships, thus thrown open for competition, provided a strong stimulus to the better boys in the schools and tended on the whole to raise the general standard of scholarship. (46) The examination system, and particularly the examinations of the various professional bodies, had a disturbing effect on the curriculum of many secondary schools, but on the other hand it should in justice be pointed out that English literature and modern subjects were fostered in the last decades of the nineteenth century by being included in the programmes drawn up for the examination of boys and girls in secondary schools by the universities and the College of Preceptors. Again, the London Matriculation Examination, which has greatly influenced the curricula of schools, public and private, imposed in effect an exacting standard of general education by requiring candidates to offer Latin, mathematics, English with English history and modern geography, two branches of natural science, Greek (which was required down to 1874), and either French or German. (47)

Contemporary criticisms of the curriculum: the claims of science

20. As a result of the great advances in science during the nineteenth century it became more and more apparent that the legitimate claims of science to be included as an integral part of the curriculum for secondary schools must be recognised. William Whewell, the celebrated Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, had urged in 1837 the claims of mathematics and science to be regarded as part of a liberal and academic education. The Prince Consort was keenly interested in the claims of science, and these were further stressed by the Great Exhibition of 1851, which brought home to Englishmen their comparative backwardness in this respect. In 1854 three eminent scientists urged the claims of science as an integral part of general education. Professor TH Huxley delivered a famous address on the Educational Value of the Natural History Sciences; John Tyndall lectured on the Importance of the Study of Physics as a Branch of Education; and Michael Faraday, in a lecture on the Education of the Judgement, stressed the importance of cultivating the scientific spirit. Herbert Spencer, in an article in the North British Review, took the view that a knowledge of life was more important than any other knowledge whatever. In 1859 Spencer published four essays in the Westminster Review which were issued in book form in 1861 under the title of Education: Intellectual, Moral, Physical. This work, which had a very wide circulation, did much indirectly to undermine confidence in traditional methods of education. The section dealing with curriculum is for the most part a restatement of the utilitarian point of view. Spencer concludes that knowledge of the various branches of natural science is of the highest value, and his section on curriculum mainly consists of an elaborate plea for giving the teaching of natural science the leading place in formal education. In another passage of his book he strongly advocates systematic physical training. The most prominent advocate of the teaching of natural science in the [eighteen] sixties and seventies was Professor TH Huxley (1825-1895), who in his Essays (48) and other writings urged the claims of science to be included in any proper scheme of secondary education. His views exercised much influence on the development of public opinion in regard to the teaching of science. Huxley outlines a curriculum which consists of natural science, the theory of morals and of political and social life, the history and geography of the motherland, English literature and translations of the greatest foreign writers, English composition, drawing and either music or painting.

The volume entitled Essays on a Liberal Education, published in 1867 under the editorship of Dean Farrar, who was at that time an assistant master at Harrow, reflects very clearly the widespread dissatisfaction with the traditional curriculum. In regard to science, Professor Henry Sidgwick of Cambridge, in an essay on the theory of classical education, points out that even if it be admitted that knowledge of the processes and results of physical science does not by itself constitute culture, nevertheless it is of such great importance that the intellectual man who has been trained without it must feel at every turn his inability to comprehend thoroughly the present phase of the progress of humanity. In regard to natural science and English he writes: 'I think that a course of instruction in our own language and literature and a course of instruction in natural science ought to form recognised and substantive parts of our school system. I think also more stress ought to be laid on the study of French. While advocating these new elements I feel most strongly the great peril of overburdening the minds of youth to their intellectual and physical detriment or both.'

Canon JM Wilson, at that time science master at Rugby, in his essay on science teaching expressed the view that a study of two unlike branches of natural science was a necessary part of any complete education, and emphasised the habits of accurate observation, exact reasoning, and power to judge evidence which could be developed by good scientific teaching. Mathematics in his view did not altogether serve the same purpose. In another paper, written in 1866, Canon Wilson stated that the decided opinion of those who had given most attention to the subject was that experimental physics ought to form the staple of scientific teaching in schools.

The Sixth Report of the Royal Commission on Scientific Instruction and the Advancement of Science issued in 1875 deals with secondary schools. The Report recommends that (i) in all public and endowed schools a substantial portion of the time allotted to study should, throughout the school course, be devoted to natural science, and that not less than 6 hours a week on the average should be assigned to this purpose; (ii) in all general school examinations not less than one sixth of the marks should be allocated to natural science, and that in any leaving examination the same proportion of marks should be maintained. It is significant that the Report omits to define precisely the character of the scientific teaching to be given. Contemporary scientists were unanimous in urging that natural science should be taught, but apparently they had never attempted to determine what specific sciences should be taught. The Commissioners, accordingly, merely record their opinion that school laboratories should be constructed to supply accommodation for practical work in physics as well as in chemistry, and that many persons of experience in education had arrived at the conclusion that chemistry was not so well fitted for the practical instruction of young pupils as physics.

Three educational movements which affected traditional ideas on the grammar school curriculum

21. There were three great movements in education in the second half of the nineteenth century which had important reactions on the traditional ideas about secondary education, namely:

(i) The movement for the provision of higher education for girls and women.

(ii) The establishment in 1870 of a national system of elementary schools which from the beginning had a marked tendency to throw up experiments in post-primary education.

(iii) The recognition of the importance of technical education and the beginnings of state intervention in it.

The development of the curriculum for girls' schools

22. In the historical chapter of our Report on Differentiation of Curricula between the Sexes in Secondary Schools (1923), we traced in considerable detail the evolution of the present curriculum for girls' secondary schools. We shall, therefore, in the present section only summarise the salient features of that development. In England, as in the other countries of western Europe, girls were for the most part educated privately up to about 1845, and the traditional education, consisting chiefly of foreign languages and 'accomplishments' tended to accentuate the differences between the sexes.

The new movement for the higher education of women formed part of a wider sociological movement and began, as in France and Germany, with an attempt to provide appropriate training for women who intended to teach. The Governesses' Benevolent Association, founded in 1843, established in 1846 examinations on the basis of which certificates were granted to governesses. This led directly to the establishment of lectures for them and so to the foundation of Queen's College, Harley Street, London, in 1848, with the support of FD Maurice, Charles Kingsley and others. It is evident from the early history of Queen's College that the leaders of the movement took as their model the traditional education for boys which they had themselves received. Among the first students of the college were Miss FM Buss and Miss Dorothea Beale, who became the founders of the present system of higher education for girls: the first as Headmistress of the North London Collegiate School (1850) and the second as Principal of the Cheltenham College for Young Ladies (1853). In both these schools the curriculum was largely modelled on the contemporary curriculum for boys, except that less stress was laid on Latin and Greek and that subjects such as music needlework and dancing were included. The curricula in vogue at these two schools were regarded as archetypal by the leaders of the women's movement and had profound influence in moulding the curriculum of the new high schools for girls which were established in considerable numbers after 1869.

The influence of external examinations on the curriculum for girls

23. In 1863 a small committee of ladies interested in education, which had been formed in 1862 with Miss Emily Davies as secretary, secured the concession that girls should be allowed unofficially to take the papers of the Cambridge Local Examinations. In 1865 this practice was given an official trial for three years and in 1868 it was accepted permanently. In this way the Cambridge local and similar external examinations came to exercise an important formative influence on the development of the curriculum in girls' schools. Thus almost from the inception of the movement for the higher education of women, preparation for examinations was a salient feature of the new schools for girls; (i) because the admission of girls and women to public examinations came at the crucial moment of reform; (ii) because preparation for examinations was the principal reason for the foundation of several important educational institutions for women, such as Queen's College, London (1848), Bedford College, London (1849) and Girton College, Cambridge (1873); (iii) because, in the view of the educational world at that period and of many of the pioneers of women's education, the capacity to pass examinations was the principal if not the sole criterion of the educability of girls; (iv) because examinations seemed to offer a motive for girls to study and for their parents to keep them at school.

The causes which appear to have led to the assimilation of the girls curriculum to that for boys in the period 1850-1880

24. The main causes for the assimilation of the girls' curriculum to that of the boys in the fifth and sixth decades of the last [i.e. nineteenth] century may be summarised under three main heads: humanistic, vocational, and economic. All these implied the taking over of the existing system of education for boys as nearly as was possible and the degree of assimilation varied according to the character, practice and principles of the pioneers of women's education.

(i) Humanistic considerations.

Nearly all the early leaders of the movement for the emancipation of women stressed the idea of women's education as liberal and humane. The Assistant Commissioners who reported on girls' education for the Schools Inquiry Commission, 1864-1868, recommended for girls' schools the same subjects as were taught in boys' schools.

(ii) Vocational considerations.

The pioneers of the movement for women's education always had in view the vocational side, but, as the movement at that period was essentially middle class, they tended to model the curriculum for girls on the existing middle class conception of a liberal education for boys. (50) The Report of the Schools Inquiry Commission and contemporary statements by the leaders of the women's movement constantly urged the desirability of teaching certain subjects to girls, such as Latin, German and mathematics, on the ground that they afforded a good mental discipline and an effective means of training the mental faculties. (51)

(iii) Economic considerations.

The pioneers of the women's movement strongly emphasised the aim of education as fitting women to earn a living. This idea constantly recurs in the writings and public utterances of the pioneers of women's education and it was necessary to show, by identity of curriculum and examinations, that women could do as well as men if they were to secure opportunities of earning a living in professional work.

The development of girls education after 1868

25. The chapter on girls' education in the Report of the Schools Inquiry Commission (1868) [text online] produced a profound and immediate impression on public opinion. The Endowed Schools Act of 1869 set up the Endowed Schools Commission vested with powers to apply part of the funds of educational trusts to girls' education. (53) In 1869 the Cambridge Higher Local Examination was instituted and the need to prepare women for it led to the foundation of Newnham College in 1871. Girton College, founded at Hitchin in 1869, was removed to Cambridge in 1873. In 1869 the University of London established a general examination for women with more advanced special papers. In 1870 women were admitted to the Oxford Local Examinations. In 1871 the National Union for the Improvement of the Education of Women of all Classes was founded, of which the chief aims were to promote the foundation of cheap day schools for girls and to raise the status of women teachers by giving them a liberal education and a good training in the art of teaching. To this end the National Union in 1872 formed the Girls' Public Day School Company, whose purpose was 'to supply for girls the best education possible, corresponding with the education given to boys in the great public schools.' The Company established first in London, and later in other large towns, a number of excellent schools the curriculum of which was largely modelled on that of the North London Collegiate School. By 1900 the Trust had 33 schools attended by more than 7,100 girls. Thus the standards for the secondary education of girls in England and Wales were rapidly raised by the admission of girls to external examinations and by the increased numbers of women teachers who had a university training. These two factors probably tended to emphasise too explicitly the academic character of the work done in girls' schools.

The growing recognition of the claims of natural science, to which attention was directed by the Report of the Royal Commission on Scientific Instruction and the Advancement of Science (1875), led to the gradual introduction of natural science, especially botany, into secondary schools for girls. In the same way the increasing attention paid to questions of health and physical development prepared the way for the introduction of physical training into these schools. The head mistresses, who had organised themselves as the Association of Head Mistresses in 1874, were accordingly compelled even in the seventies to consider the congestion of studies. The more liberal education which they had received in the women's colleges, reinforced by the professional spirit which from the first, marked their activities, enabled them to arrive at a working solution of the problems involved. The curriculum was made more educative and more flexible by the recognition of diversity of aptitudes in the pupils and by a corresponding arrangement of studies, while a common core of basic subjects was retained in the lower part of the school. The new high schools for girls were to a great extent unfettered by the traditions and prejudices which obsessed the endowed schools for boys, and the mistresses were more responsive to new ideas, more critical and more disposed to adapt themselves to changing circumstances. Reforms in the curriculum and in methods of teaching were, on the whole, readily accepted. Manual work was introduced into girls' schools at a relatively early date, and mistresses were, on the whole, quicker than masters to recognise the claims of less gifted pupils. The rapid development of girls' education after 1869 is marked by the permission, accorded in 1876, for girls to take the examinations of the Oxford and Cambridge Joint Board, established in 1873.

Games did not form part of the original tradition, but were introduced by the younger mistresses from the women's colleges at Cambridge, Oxford and London from about 1885. Drill was regarded as a necessary safeguard before girls were allowed to take part in the more vigorous games. St Leonard's School, founded at St Andrews in 1877, contained from its inception some wholly new features. It was not merely a day school with boarding houses attached, but the various houses formed an integral part of the school, and each house mistress was one of the staff, her work being divided between the school and her house. Much attention was devoted from the beginning to outdoor games. A number of boarding schools for girls in England were founded largely on the model of St Leonard's. These schools, while retaining the ordinary subjects of study in girls' schools, have also adopted other subjects from the boys' curriculum as well as the whole public school plan - the house system, the prefects, house games, and colours - and have thus developed a particular kind of tradition and of esprit de corps. The ideas fostered in these schools are being widely spread by mistresses and old pupils who are now teaching in high schools and county or municipal schools.

Towards the close of the last century housecraft was introduced into the curriculum for older girls in some schools, and improvements in the methods of teaching art and music were also introduced. In addition to sewing, which had always formed part of the traditional curriculum for girls, crafts of various kinds, such as embroidery and bookbinding, were introduced into some schools, especially as alternative subjects for the less gifted girls.

The reaction on secondary education of the establishment in 1870 of a national system of elementary schools, and of its tendency to throw up experiments in post-primary education

26. The development of secondary education in England and Wales was profoundly influenced by the fact that the state organised a national system of elementary schools for children between the ages of 5 and 13 in 1870, more than 30 years before it took seriously in hand the organisation of secondary education in 1902 alter the passing of the Education Act of that year. The development of popular, as distinct from middle class, education in England and Wales was due to a combination of religious, philanthropic and political motives, and was largely influenced in its early stages by the legislation incorporated in the Factory Acts and the Mines Acts, designed to prevent the early employment of child labour. We have traced the development of the state system of public elementary schools in the historical chapters of our Reports on The Education of the Adolescent (1926) and on The Primary School (1931). In the first named Report we described in considerable detail the rise of the 'higher grade schools' (54) We shall accordingly here only give a very brief account of that development. After 1870 the School Boards in the larger urban areas were gradually forced by pressure of facts to extend the scope of their work to education of a type higher than elementary. This was partly due to the necessity for providing some reasonable education for their pupil teachers between 16 and 18 years of age, so as to secure a supply of teachers for their elementary schools, but it was partly due also to the natural tendency which education has to foster a desire for more education. It was soon found that a considerable number of children remained beyond the legal age of 13 after passing the Seventh Standard. 'Ex-standard' classes were accordingly organised for these children, but after a time it was found convenient to draft them into one central school. Sometimes a building was erected for the purpose, and sometimes a previously existing school was set apart for this work, but in either case the school in question became what was called in the last two decades of the nineteenth century a 'higher grade school'. Most of these schools had an upper portion arranged as an Organised Science Course or School under the Science and Art Department at South Kensington; some School Boards retained a few ex-standard scholars in their schools in science classes under the Science and Art Department. Some School Boards, especially those in large urban areas such as Bradford, Birmingham and Sheffield, devoted much attention to the development of these higher grade schools. For instance, Sheffield established about 1878 a Higher Central School for the Sixth and Seventh Standards, to which pupils were admitted by competition. The upper part of this school was arranged as an Organised Science School under the Science and Art Department, and the course of instruction included mechanics, physics, chemistry and drawing, comprising machine drawing and construction. The Birmingham School Board established a central higher grade school with a three-year course. During the first year the pupils were Seventh Standard scholars earning grants from the Education Department. For the remainder of the course they became students earning grants on examination from the Science and Art Department at South Kensington. This procedure was adopted by other School Boards in organising and financing schools of this type, which were known locally as higher standard or higher elementary schools. (55) They were essentially an organic outgrowth of the system of elementary education established by the Education Act of 1870. These 'higher grade schools' were very fully discussed in the Report of the Royal Commission on Secondary Education, 1895. The Report pointed out that the name 'higher grade elementary school' had been applied in at least three senses. (i) The first type, which might be described as normal, was represented by the school which taught from the Fifth Standard upwards and gave an education for two years after the Seventh Standard, i.e. to the age of 15 at least, (ii) Another type was that which taught from the lowest standard upwards, also giving an education for two years (in some cases even four) after the Seventh Standard, though the proportion of pupils remaining after the Seventh Standard was seldom large. A school of either of these two types might or might not include an Organised Science School working under the Science and Art Department. (iii) Lastly, there was the pseudo-'higher grade' school which charged a fee, and was supposed to be more select, while in respect to its curriculum it was almost wholly 'elementary'.

Following the threefold classification of secondary schools adopted in the Report of the Schools Inquiry Commission (1868), the Commissioners described third grade schools as those of which the special function was the training of boys and girls for the higher handicrafts or the commerce of the shop and town. This could best be effected by continuing and enlarging the education of the elementary school, with such addition of manual instruction as might be needed to educate the hand and eye of the craftsman and at once to define and illustrate the principles he had learnt. 'Higher grade schools' which were adduced as an example of the type required, were held to be an absolute necessity in any efficient system of secondary education. Properly organised they would become the crown of the elementary school system. (56)

The Commissioners held that these schools had risen to meet a legitimate demand and admitted of correlation and development, but not of abolition or even repression. (57) In their final recommendations the Commissioners pointed out that these 'higher grade elementary schools' had a double aspect, being in one sense elementary schools, and in another sense wholly or largely secondary schools, teaching subjects which could not be deemed elementary and not receiving in respect of those of their pupils who were beyond the so-called 'Standards' any grant from the Education Department. In point of fact, they did supply in those populous places where they existed much the same kind of secondary education which the Schools Inquiry Commission (1868) had proposed to have supplied by their schools of the third grade. The Commissioners accordingly recommended that such schools should be treated as secondary schools, placed under the jurisdiction of the local authority for secondary education, and coordinated with other secondary schools in the district by being brought into a definite and organic relation with other secondary schools and institutions of the districts, so that they should rather cooperate than compete with the latter where they existed, and should be made more available as places of preparation for advanced instruction.

The development of technical education in England and Wales down to 1880

27. Down to the beginning of the nineteenth century such technical education as existed was given mainly through the system of craft apprenticeship, which had been standardised in the Elizabethan Statute of Artificers, 1562. The industrial revolution, beginning towards the end of the eighteenth century, prepared the way by the introduction of machinery on a large scale for the gradual break-up of the old apprenticeship system. The master craftsman often developed into the capitalist employer, owning and using machinery, or applying to industrial practice scientific principles which he scarcely understood; the collection of machinery into factories prevented the employer from undertaking personally the training of his apprentices, even if he had wished to do so. Moreover, the character of industrial skill was changed; a smaller proportion of workmen needed manual skill, while a larger proportion required a knowledge of general principles, which could more satisfactorily be learnt in a technical school than acquired by practice in a workshop.

Various acts had attempted to check foreign competition by making it penal to enlist artisans for employment abroad. These acts were repealed in 1825; but first the industrial revolution in Great Britain, and then the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, which absorbed the energies and dissipated the capital of most of the states of western Europe, gave British industry a position of unchallenged supremacy, with the result that, for half a century or more, foreign competition was no longer feared.

In these circumstances, the state took no action to foster the training of industrial recruits; although the old apprenticeship system was no longer generally suitable, its modification to meet the altered conditions was left to voluntary agencies. An important movement began with the establishment in 1823-1824 of several Mechanics' Institutes, and by 1850 there were 610 of these institutes in England and 12 in Wales, with a total membership of over 600,000. Nevertheless these Mechanics' Institutes did not fulfil the functions for which they had been founded, though they made an important contribution towards the development of the modern state system of technical education. Apart from the establishment in 1837 of a Normal School of Design in London and some annual grants made in aid of the maintenance of certain provincial schools of design from 1841 onwards, the state took no action in the direction, of aiding technical education until the Great Exhibition of 1851, which drew public attention to the lack of facilities for technical education in England as compared with those provided in various continental countries. In 1852 a Department of Practical Art was organised under the Board of Trade. The Department later became known as the Department of Science and Art and was organised as a branch of the Education Department in 1856. This Department instituted in 1859 a general system of examinations in science (i) for teachers, who received certificates of competency, and (ii) for students. The examinations were in branches of science related to industrial occupations and formed part of the provision for fostering the study of science among the industrial population. They were organised on much the same lines as the examinations of the Society of Arts which had been begun in 1856. In 1873 the Royal Society of Arts instituted examinations in technological subjects and these were transferred in 1879 to the City and Guilds of London Institute, a body composed of representatives of the Corporation of London and certain of the Livery Companies which contributed to its funds.

The development of public interest in technical education, which prepared the way for further state aid, was largely due to the pressure of foreign competition. At the Great Exhibition held in London in 1851 there were 100 departments in which goods were displayed, and in most of these Great Britain was awarded the prize. At the Paris Exhibition of 1867 there were 90 departments, and Great Britain received prizes in only 10 of these. British firms which exhibited at the Exhibition at Paris in 1878 had similar experiences, and public opinion at last began to be impressed by the inadequacy of the provision for technical education.

A Royal Commission was accordingly appointed by the government in 1881 'to inquire into the instruction of the industrial classes of certain foreign countries'.

The Reports of the Royal Commission on Technical Instruction (1881-1884)

28. The Reports of the Royal Commission on Technical Instruction (1881-1884) mark an important stage in the development of public opinion on the subject of technical and secondary education. There is in these Reports no more important paragraph than the passage on page 516 of Volume I of the Second Report (1884), in which the Commissioners stated that 'the best preparation for technical study is a good modern secondary school of the types of the Manchester Grammar School, the Bedford Modern School, and the Allan Glen's Institution at Glasgow'. (58) The Commissioners called attention to the fact that the middle classes in England were at a great disadvantage compared with those of the Continent for want of a sufficient number of such schools. They pointed out that 'the existing endowments are very unevenly distributed over the country; in many of the large manufacturing centres no resources of the kind exist; private enterprise is clearly inadequate to do all that is required in establishing such schools, and we must look to some public measure to supply this, the greatest defect of our educational system.'

The Commissioners made the following specific recommendations in regard to secondary and technical instruction:

'IV. Secondary and technical instruction:

(a) That steps be taken to accelerate the application of ancient endowments, under amended schemes, to secondary and technical instruction.

(b) That provision be made by the Charity Commissioners for the establishment, in suitable localities, of schools or departments of schools, in which the study of natural science, drawing, mathematics, and modern languages shall take the place of Latin and Greek.

(c) That local authorities be empowered, if they think fit, to establish, maintain, and contribute to the establishment and maintenance of secondary and technical (including agricultural) schools and colleges.'

29. Perhaps the most serious obstacle in the way of any adequate systematic organisation of post-primary education was the absence of local authorities and of administrative areas of suitable size.

The Schools Inquiry Commissioners in their Report of 1868 had recommended the establishment of central and local authorities for secondary education, vested with powers to provide rate aid for existing schools and for the foundation of new schools. Owing to the fear of state intervention and the widespread dislike of public control, these suggestions were not carried out.

The administrative difficulty was to some extent removed by the Local Government Act 1888, which set up County Councils for administrative purposes. This measure, with the Technical Instruction Act 1889, and the Local Taxation (Customs and Excise) Act 1890, which were ancillary statutes from the educational point of view, made advance possible by creating for each county, and large county borough, an elected local authority with specific powers and funds for educational development.

In 1887 a group of members of parliament and scientists, among whom were AHD Acland, H Hobhouse, TH Huxley, Sir Llewellyn Smith and Sir Henry Roscoe, founded the National Association for the Promotion of Technical and Secondary Education under the chairmanship of the Marquis of Hartington. Its principal aim was to encourage educational reforms which would improve the capacity in a broad sense of all those upon whom the national industries depended. The Association undertook a vigorous campaign to educate public opinion and to diffuse information; and it was largely due to the efforts of this body that the Technical Instruction Act was passed in 1889, which empowered the newly established councils of counties and county boroughs to supply, or aid in supplying, technical instruction, to establish committees for that end, and to levy a rate limited to one penny in the pound. The definition of technical instruction in this Act was so comprehensive as to include secondary education of a modern character (59), and the authorities in question were thus empowered to assist secondary schools under certain conditions either directly or by means of scholarships and prizes. In the following year the Local Taxation, Customs and Excise Act 1890 made certain funds, known from their origin as 'whiskey money' available for technical education.

The relation of technical education to secondary education: The Welsh Intermediate Education Act 1889

30. From the character of the legislation in respect of technical instruction at this period (1889-1890) it is evident that public attention was being directed to the lack of scientific and technical instruction bearing on industries. This attitude was due in the main to the Reports of the Royal Commission on Technical Instruction (1881-1884). Unfortunately it was not generally realised that an adequate provision of good secondary education was the indispensable foundation for any effective system of higher technological instruction. It is, however, interesting to note the way in which the concept of technical education was associated at this period with that of secondary education. (60) The two were regarded not as distinct entities, but rather as complementary aspects of one whole. This point of view, as will be seen below, was developed in the Report of the Royal Commission on Secondary Education (1895). It found expression at the time in the Welsh Intermediate Education Act 1889, under which quasi-representative authorities for 'intermediate' and 'technical' education were set up and empowered to work out organised schemes for the intermediate and technical education of the inhabitants of each county in the Principality, and to establish new secondary schools in areas where they were needed.

Section 17 of the Act defined 'intermediate education' as meaning a course of education which does not consist chiefly of elementary instruction in reading, writing and arithmetic, but which includes instruction 'in Latin, Greek, the Welsh and English language and literature, modern languages, mathematics, natural and applied science, or in some of such studies and generally in the higher branches of knowledge.'

In the same section of the act the expression 'technical education' is defined as including instruction in:

'(i) Any of the branches of science and art with respect to which grants are for the time being made by the Department of Science and Art;

(ii) The use of tools, and modelling in clay, wood, or other material;

(iii) Commercial arithmetic, commercial geography, bookkeeping, and shorthand;

(iv) Any other subject applicable to the purposes of agriculture, industries, trade or commercial life and practice, which may be specified in a scheme, or proposals for a scheme, of a joint education committee as a form of instruction suited to the needs of the district;

but it shall not include teaching the practice of any trade, or industry, or employment.'

31. The administrative confusion, resulting largely from divided control, had produced in the public mind vague and rather confused notions about secondary education. (61) It was felt that effective steps should be taken to organise secondary education on the lines indicated by Matthew Arnold in 1866. In 1892 the government introduced a bill to enable counties to organise secondary education, but this measure had to be dropped. In October 1893 an important conference was held at Oxford on secondary education in England (62), and partly as a result of this conference the government appointed a Royal Commission on Secondary Education in 1894 under the chairmanship of Mr (afterwards Viscount) Bryce, with wider terms of reference than any of the earlier Commissions, 'to consider what are the best methods of establishing a well-organised system of secondary education in England, taking into account existing deficiencies, and having regard to such local sources of revenue from endowments or otherwise as are available or may be made available for this purpose and to make recommendations accordingly.'

In their Report, published in 1895, this Commission, the first to include women, of whom there were three among its 16 members, discussed in considerable detail the character and content of secondary education. After summarising the views of the Schools Inquiry Commission of 1868, they pointed out that since that time the problem had been seriously affected by the rise of other studies and other ideas in education. Among the factors of this change were the Endowed Schools Acts, the Elementary Education Acts, especially so far as they had occasioned the foundation of the higher grade and the organised science schools, the Technical Instruction Act, and the Local Taxation Act 1890. The Commissioners pointed out that it was accordingly necessary to consider whether and in what sense the idea of education in secondary schools required modification. Accepting the Schools Inquiry Commission's scheme for three grades of secondary school, the Commissioners pointed out that in the first place the standard of age had changed; in second grade schools the limit of age had distinctly advanced to 17 or 18, and in third grade schools to 15 or 16. This extension of the time spent at secondary schools was due to many causes, social as well as educational, but in second and third grade schools new subjects dealing with problems which the Schools Inquiry Commission of 1868 would have considered too complicated for a secondary school had been introduced to give what was termed 'special preparation for employment'. Technical subjects had been introduced in secondary schools and the whole system of technical institutes and colleges had come into being. Thus the school curriculum had been enlarged and pupils had in consequence tended to stay longer.

Secondly, the gradation of social classes adumbrated by the Schools Inquiry Commission, 1868, required to be modified, since the legislation which they recommended had done something to open schools leading directly to the universities to the sons of men who fell into the categories neither of the rich nor of the educated.

Thirdly, the growth of special and technical studies in schools had created a branch of secondary education which, while not 'a substitute for apprenticeship', was yet as distinctly a preparation for it or for an industry as the old first grade school was for a profession or for the university.

'The technical college, while in the strictest sense a school of applied science and art, yet supplies what is so distinctly a propaedeutic [introduction] to industry that its encouragement may well seem a primary duty of the bodies specially charged with the care of both our wealth as a state and our well being as a people. And its rise has no doubt modified our ideas as to secondary education.'

The Commissioners pointed out that this modification, acting along with older and less obvious forces, had created conditions that could no longer be ignored. For one thing, it had tended to make what the Schools Inquiry Commission of 1864-1868 termed 'a general education' at once more difficult and more necessary; more difficult because the premium placed upon proficiency in special studies had thrust the preparation for them back to a too early stage in the educational process; and more necessary because special studies without a broad basis in general studies were both ineffective and narrowing. The Commissioners then explained that their witnesses seemed to feel that no more serious danger threatened modern education than a too early specialisation. 'It is instructive that witnesses representative of technical and classical education were agreed in regarding instruction in their special subjects as inadequate by itself, and in holding that secondary education suffered from a too narrow early curriculum, and we may add a too utilitarian spirit.' Thus, Mr Bothamley complained that in technical instruction they were 'constantly hampered by the want of mathematics and the want of foreign languages'; and Mr Reynolds said 'that boys came, especially from the private and public schools, singularly ill-prepared to take advantage of the curriculum in a technical college.' (63)

In the following remarkable passage, which we quote in full, the Commissioners expressed the view that the difference between technical and secondary education is one not of kind or character, but of emphasis:

'We have spoken as if technical and classical instruction alike fell as subordinate or coordinate divisions under the common head of secondary education. We are aware that there are some who would limit the term education to the discipline of faculty and the culture of character by means of the more humane and generous studies, and who would deny the name to instruction in those practical arts and sciences by means of which man becomes a craftsman or a breadwinner. But this is an impossible limitation as things now stand. We have just seen that the training in classics may have as little liberal culture in it as instruction in a practical art; modern literature may be made a field for as narrow and technical a drill as the most formal science. Education inevitably becomes more and more practical, a means of forming men, not simply to enjoy life, but to accomplish something in the life they enjoy. We may, therefore, describe its general idea thus: All education is development and discipline of faculty (64) by the communication of knowledge, and whether the faculty be the eye and hand, or the reason and imagination, and whether the knowledge be of nature or art, of science or literature, if the knowledge be so communicated as to evoke and exercise and discipline faculty, the process is rightly termed education.

'Now, secondary education may be described as a modification of this general idea. It is the education of the boy or girl not simply as a human being who needs to be instructed in the mere rudiments of knowledge, but it is a process of intellectual training and personal discipline conducted with special regard to the profession or trade to be followed. Plato in the Protagoras draws a distinction between the man who learns the arts of the grammarian, the musician, or the trainer as a craftsman, for trade, and the man who learns them as a private person or freeman, for education or culture. (65) But even culture is not an end in itself: it makes the private person of more value to society and to the state. All secondary schools, then, in so far as they qualify men for doing something in life, partake more or less in the character of institutes that educate craftsmen. Every profession, even that of winning scholarships, is a craft, and all crafts are arts. But if secondary education be so conceived, it is evident that under it technical instruction is comprehended. The two are not indeed identical, but they differ as genus and species, or as general term and particular name, not as genus and genus or as opposed terms. No definition of technical instruction is possible that does not bring it under the head of secondary education, nor can secondary education be so defined as absolutely to exclude from it the idea of technical instruction. Under the common head there are many species, each distinguished by the particular means and instruments employed and faculties exercised, but all agreeing in method and end, viz. the discipline of faculty by exercise. Technical instruction is secondary, i.e. it comes after the education which has awakened the mind by teaching the child the rudiments, or, as it were, the alphabet, of all knowledge, and the better the whole of this alphabet has been mastered the better and the easier will the later learning be. And secondary instruction is technical, i.e. it teaches the boy so to apply the principles he is learning, and so to learn the principles by applyin