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Education in England: a brief history Introduction
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Education in England: a brief history
Chapter 3 1900-1944 The state system takes shape © copyright Derek Gillard 2007
1900-1918 Laying the foundations Across Europe and the USA systems of publicly financed elementary schools had been rapidly developed in the second half of 19th century, providing educated personnel for the new industries. Now, at the turn of the century, the USA was beginning to open common secondary high schools as well, and many European schools were giving priority to engineering and science, subjects 'conspicuously downgraded in England's classical model of education, the one preferred by gentlemen'. (Benn and Chitty 1996) So the development of a national public system of education in England and Wales was lagging behind much of Europe and the USA 'by a good half a century' (Green 1990 quoted in Benn and Chitty 1996), and it was against this background that the Conservative government of Arthur Balfour presented its 1902 education bill to the Commons.
1902 Education Act (The Balfour Act)
Despite this, the bill caused dissent among both Conservative and Liberal politicians, who feared that the cost of popular education would lose them the support of the large landowners and industrialists who were the major taxpayers. Most, however, accepted the argument that, with mass education developing fast elsewhere, Britain needed an educated workforce if it was to maintain its position in world trade. So Balfour got his bill. But not before religion had once again reared its divisive head. The 1870 Act had taken 28 days to debate. The 1902 Act took 59, and most of that time was spent on the religious clauses. Dissenters and Doubters objected to state funds being used to support denominational schools, including those of the Church of England but more especially those of the Catholic Church. 'Inside and outside Parliament there was outcry against "Rome on the rates".' (Gates in Gardner, Cairns and Lawton 2005) The Act abolished the School Boards and created Local Education Authorities (LEAs), based on the county councils and county borough councils which the 1888 Local Government Act had established. The new LEAs had authority over the secular curriculum of voluntary (church) schools. They provided grants for school maintenance, but if a school wanted to provide denominational teaching the buildings had to be paid for by the church. Church of England schools generally heeded the rule that no pupil or teacher should be required to conform to religious belief or ritual. Roman Catholic schools were less enthusiastic about obeying the rule. They enforced religious observance more strictly and in 1917 the church issued a canon expressly forbidding Catholic parents from sending their children to non-Catholic schools on pain of excommunication. The Act laid the basis for a national system of secondary education into which the higher grade elementary schools and the fee-paying secondary schools were integrated. And, as we saw at the end of chapter 2, it introduced new fee-paying grammar schools offering a few free scholarship places, a move approved of by a few socialists, like Sydney Webb, but disapproved of by many others, like Keir Hardie. The raising of the elementary school-leaving age had rendered the third grade schools outmoded, so the new LEAs began to establish first and second grade secondary schools. The Act also empowered LEAs to support teacher training colleges. Most of the existing colleges were church owned, though new non-denominational colleges (eg Froebel, Edge Hill and Charlotte Mason) had opened in the last years of the 19th century, as had teacher training departments in the universities - 16 of them by 1900. The expansion of LEA teacher training meant that by 1906 not all places at denominational colleges were being filled. The Board of Education therefore decreed that if the church colleges wished to receive grant aid, they must forfeit the right to use denominational criteria in offering places. The Church of England and the Catholic Church protested, the government backed down, and the churches were allowed to recruit up to half their students on the basis of their denominational allegiance.
Further developments In 1904 the Board of Education (which had come into existence in 1899) published its Secondary Regulations, defining a four year subject-based course leading to a certificate in English language and literature, geography, history, a foreign language, mathematics, science, drawing, manual work, physical training, and household crafts for girls. The Board began to promulgate some surprisingly modern ideas. 'The high function of the teacher is to prepare the child for the life of a good citizen, to create or foster the aptitude for work and for the intelligent use of leisure. The only uniformity of practice the Board wishes to see is that all teachers should think for themselves and adapt the curriculum to the needs of the children in their charge.' (Board of Education 1905) The Elementary Code of 1907 sought to clarify the aims and improve the quality of elementary education. The 1907 Education (Administrative Provisions) Act established the scholarship and free place system for secondary education (which already existed in some places), designed to give promising children from elementary schools the opportunity to go to secondary schools. All grant-aided secondary schools had to admit free place scholars (not less than 25 per cent of the previous year's total intake) who had spent at least two years at public elementary school. The schools were paid £5 for each free place pupil. By about 1910 selective 'central' schools had been established in London, Manchester and elsewhere. All these schools recruited pupils from the elementary schools at around the age of 11. The Secondary Schools Examination Council was set up in 1917 to administer the new School Certificate and Higher School Certificate examinations.
1918 Education Act (The Fisher Act) In 1917 the Lewis Report proposed a school leaving age of 14 with no exemptions, followed by attendance for at least 8 hours a week or 320 hours a year at 'day continuation' classes up to age 18. The wide-ranging Education Act of 1918 enacted most of these recommendations. It extended educational provision, raising the school leaving age from 12 to 14 and giving all young workers the right of access to day release education. The raising of the leaving age was not immediately implemented, however, and had to wait until the 1921 Act.
Consultative Committee reports Five Consultative Committee reports were published in this period:
1918-1944 Between the wars The Hadow Reports Consultative Committees chaired by Sir Henry Hadow produced six reports between 1923 and 1933. These were:
Galton, Simon and Croll (1980) argue that 'the motivation for this fundamental change did not arise from any serious consideration of the needs and character of children aged seven to eleven (or five to eleven). It arose solely from a consideration of the needs of the older (senior) children.' I don't entirely agree with this view. The 1931 and 1933 reports demonstrated, I would argue, a considerable concern for the education and welfare of younger pupils and contained some surprisingly progressive ideas. The 1931 report suggested, for example, that 'A good school is a community of young and old, learning together,' and that 'the curriculum of the primary school is to be thought of in terms of activity and experience rather than knowledge to be acquired and facts to be stored'.
Primary education Hadow's 1926 recommendation for transfer at age 11 led to the creation of primary schools (sometimes referred to as junior schools) for children aged 5-11, which became government policy from 1928, though they were only formally established in the 1944 Education Act. The Hadow Committee went on (in their reports of 1931 and 1933) to focus on the style of education to be offered in these schools. This was important because, despite the efforts of the developmentalists, the earliest primary schools bore all the hallmarks of the elementary system 'in terms of cheapness, economy, large classes, obsolete, ancient and inadequate buildings, and so on.' (Galton, Simon and Croll 1980). They also continued to provide a curriculum based on the arid drill methods of the elementary schools. But the principles of child development were beginning to influence - albeit very slowly - the style of education offered to younger pupils. Blyth (1965) distinguishes five factors which gave impetus to the developmental tradition during this period:
But was developmentalist education being put into practice? Galton, Simon and Croll (1980) are doubtful: 'How far it affected actual practice in schools is, however, another matter.' There were two main reasons why the implementation of developmentalist education was slow and patchy. First, the new primary schools quickly became the battleground for a number of competing forces. Those who believed in the new ideas about child development clashed with those who saw the job of the primary schools as being to get children through the 'scholarship' examination. The latter group tended to win, so the primary schools were seen as a 'sorting, classifying, selective mechanism'. (Galton, Simon and Croll 1980) And second, psychologist Cyril Burt and educationist Percy Nunn continued to assert 'the absolute determination of "intelligence" by hereditary or genetic factors.' (Galton, Simon and Croll 1980) They therefore strongly recommended that children should be segregated into classes on the basis of ability ('streamed'). For these two reasons, 'the basic class teaching approach, with the main emphasis on literacy and numeracy, continued in the new junior schools after the Second World War'. (Galton, Simon and Croll 1980)
Secondary education The school leaving age had risen to 14 in 1921. Now, Hadow had proposed that it should be raised to 15. The cost implications were enormous, especially for the churches. The 1936 Education Act therefore authorised building grants of up to 75 per cent for new denominational 'Special Agreement' senior schools. As a result, the Church of England submitted proposals for 230 new schools, the Catholic Church for 289. By the early 1940s, about ten per cent of elementary school pupils were being selected to go on to secondary schools. The rest either remained in 'all-age' schools or went on to senior schools. It was becoming clear that England's class-divided secondary schools were failing the nation's children. Twice as many students were going on to higher education in Germany, more than twice as many in France, over three times as many in Switzerland, and almost ten times as many in the US. Scotland's education system, 'based on a widespread respect for learning and a more traditionally egalitarian social outlook' (Benn and Chitty 1996), was also doing much better than England's. Yet arguments were still put forward in support of a divided and elitist system. The only difference was that, whereas in the late 19th century such divisions were openly based on class, now they were based on notions of intelligence and aptitude. Thus the 1938 Spens Report Secondary Education with special reference to grammar schools and technical high schools recommended that there should be three types of secondary school: grammar schools for the academically able, technical schools for those with a practical bent, and new 'modern' secondary schools for the rest. (Spens also recommended that the school leaving age should be raised to 16. Incredibly, it would be 1973 before this was finally implemented). The newly-appointed principal of London University's Institute of Education, Fred Clarke, was horrified. The proposed tripartite system would be 'hardly intelligible ... in ... any British dominion or in the United States', he wrote, and warned that failure to change would 'weaken the power of Britain to cooperate with the other free peoples of the world' and would 'intensify social conflict' at home. (Clarke 1940, quoted in Benn and Chitty 1996) Trades unionists and others in the Labour Party began to campaign for a unified and more equal system of schools, and in 1942 several local government chief executives, anxious to have a more rational system, asked for an end to plans for differentiated secondary education. But their pleas fell on deaf ears. 'The decision-makers at the Ministry of Education were determined on the divided system.' (Benn and Chitty 1996) The Norwood Report Curriculum and Examinations in Secondary Schools backed the idea of three types of schools by arguing that children naturally had three 'types of mind'. One type liked learning; another liked applied science or art; while the majority did not like 'ideas' and was 'generally ... slow'. (Norwood Report, quoted in Benn and Chitty 1996) 'Norwood thus imagined an entire mental and emotional universe for its groupings, each of which as it were lived on different worlds, inhabiting different subjectivities.' (Jones 2003)
1944 McNair Report The McNair Report on The supply, recruitment and training of teachers and youth leaders recommended the rationalisation of teacher training provision, a three year course and salary increases. Also published in 1944 was the Fleming Report, which examined how independent schools might be integrated into the state system. It was never implemented.
The 1944 Education Act During World War II the coalition government led by Winston Churchill began an ambitious programme of 'social reconstruction'. Policies, though executed by ministers of either main party, were jointly agreed. The 1944 Education Act formed an important part of this programme.
Labour won a landslide victory in the general election after the war so it was Clement Attlee's Labour government which implemented most of the Act's provisions. Communist and teachers' leader GCT Giles described the Act as 'a drastic recasting of our educational system' (Giles 1946, quoted in Jones 2003). He and other reformers were delighted that it promised a free, common and universal system of education for students up to 18 based on the notion that 'the nature of a child's education should be based on his capacity and promise, not by the circumstances of his parents'. (White Paper 1943) Such hopes were premature. The 1944 Act wasn't that radical. In many ways, it maintained the class divisions of the past. As Williams (1965) put it: 'One has only to compare the simple class thinking of the Taunton Commission's recommended grades with the Hadow, Spens, and Norwood reports, and the practical effects of the 1944 Education Act, to see the essential continuity, despite changes in the economy, of a pattern of thinking drawn from a rigid class society, with its grading by birth leading to occupation, and then assimilated to a changing society, with a new system of grading.' 
The government of education The Act divided responsibility for education between central government, which was to set national policies and allocate resources; the local education authorities (LEAs), which were to set local policies and allocate resources to schools; and the schools themselves, whose head teachers and governing bodies would set school policies and manage the resources. Jones (2003) notes that some historians have seen in the 1944 Act a strengthening of central government over local control and he acknowledges that, in some respects, this was true. But he argues that: 'to stress centralisation too strongly is to miss something about the dynamic that 1944 in effect encouraged. Local authorities had some power to organise and reorganise schooling. In addition, because the Act made no stipulations about curriculum and pedagogy, teachers had considerable capacities to initiate school-level change. ... These capacities were often under-used, but none the less the elements of decentralisation built into the Act were later the basis for significant initiatives of local curricular reform.' (Jones 2003)Central government The Act replaced the Board of Education with the Ministry of Education - there had previously been no government department dedicated to education - and gave the Minister 'a creative rather than a merely controlling function, charging him or her with promoting education in England and Wales'. (Mackinnon and Statham 1999) The Minister had 'the duty to secure the effective execution by the local authorities under his control and direction of the national policy for providing a varied and comprehensive education service in every area'. (1944 Act) S/he was responsible to parliament and exercised this responsibility through the Ministry. 'The Secretary of State does not provide schools or colleges, nor employ teachers or prescribe textbooks or curricula.' But s/he 'can identify areas for development and place duties on local authorities.' (Shipman 1984) Local education authorities The bulk of the 1944 Act set out the way in which the national service should be locally administered by LEAs, which were based on the counties and county borough councils, the largest of which was the London County Council (LCC). They were to build and maintain the county (state) schools and the one third of schools provided by voluntary, usually religious, bodies. The LEAs would usually appoint and always pay the teachers. They were to allocate resources to the schools, including staff, buildings, equipment and materials. They would not have detailed control of the curriculum but were to 'contribute to the spiritual, moral, physical and mental development of the community by securing that efficient education shall be available to meet the needs of the population of their area'. They were to provide sufficient places for 5-16 year olds, set the length of school terms and the school day. All this was to be done without 'unreasonable public expenditure'. (1944 Act) Within this framework, LEAs did have considerable autonomy: 'Over the years these local authorities have often developed distinctive styles of administration and forms of school organisation. Cross a local government boundary and you may find different ages of transfer between schools, whether from primary to secondary, primary to middle or middle to secondary. There are sixth forms in schools, consortia of schools, tertiary and sixth form colleges. Some LEAs pioneered comprehensive secondary schooling, while others doggedly fought for the survival of their grammar schools.' (Shipman 1984)Every local authority was to have an Education Committee consisting of elected councillors, and was required to appoint a Chief Education Officer or Director of Education who would head the salaried officers of the LEA. (For further information see my article The Chief Education Officer - the real master of local educational provision?). The schools The Act established a nationwide system of free, compulsory schooling from age 5 to 15. (The school leaving age was raised to fifteen in 1947 and the Act said it should be raised to 16 as soon as practicable). Pupils could be taught in LEA schools ('county maintained schools'), schools maintained by other organisations or, in certain circumstances, (under Section 56 of the Act) 'otherwise'. (The phrase 'or otherwise' came to be used by parents who did not wish their children to attend school but preferred to educate them at home. An organisation supporting such parents is known as 'Education Otherwise').
The tripartite system Section 8 of the 1944 Act required the provision of opportunities for all pupils 'in view of their different ages, abilities and aptitudes, and of the different periods for which they may be expected to remain at school'. This was interpreted as meaning the 'tripartite system' of secondary education which had been promoted by the Spens and Norwood reports, with grammar schools for the most able, secondary modern schools for the majority, and secondary technical schools for those with a technical or scientific aptitude. (In practice, very few of this last group were ever opened). In fact, the Act did not specify any particular kind of secondary school, as J Chuter Ede, Labour Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education, pointed out in a speech reported in The Times of 14 April 1944: 'I do not know where people get the idea about three types of school, because I have gone through the Bill with a small toothcomb, and I can find only one school for senior pupils - and that is a secondary school. What you like to make of it will depend on the way you serve the precise needs of the individual area in the country.' (quoted in Chitty and Dunford 1999)However, even though it wasn't specified, there is no doubt that the tripartite system was the outcome of the Act. And the effect of the tripartite system was to disqualify a majority of the nation's children from access to qualifications. The General Certificate of Education (GCE), introduced in 1951, was designed for the top 25 per cent of the ability range. GCE exams were normally taken at 16 (Ordinary Level) and 18 (Advanced Level), mostly in the grammar schools and the independent (public or private fee-paying) schools. The result was that the 'parity of esteem and prestige' between grammar and secondary modern schools, which the Act's authors had envisaged, never became a reality. Competition for grammar school places increased as these schools offered pupils the opportunity of a place at university and thereafter a professional career. The tripartite system thus reinforced the notion that working class children were of lower intelligence. The tripartite system also had profound effects on primary schools. The success of their pupils in the selection process at eleven (the 'eleven plus') quickly became the measure by which the new primary schools were judged. 'Once again, the fate of the junior school and its educational role depended on developments at the upper levels.' (Galton, Simon and Croll 1980)
The curriculum The Act gave head teachers, in consultation with governors, control of the school curriculum and resourcing. It is worth noting that it said very little about the curriculum (other than religious education) and its authors clearly did not anticipate national government interfering in the curriculum. It was left to the teaching profession to decide what to teach and how to teach it. In fact, the minister did not have the legal right to determine the content of education and, in the phrase first used by Conservative minister of education Sir David Eccles in 1960, was not expected to enter 'the secret garden of the curriculum'. In fact, over the years following the Act, central government exercised indirect influence through HMIs, through DES participation in the Schools Council, and through government sponsored research projects like the one on comprehensive education. But 'the nearer one comes to the professional content of education, the more indirect the Minister's influence is'. (Kogan 1971) Head teachers were very much in control in the schools, and education was rarely the subject of debate at Cabinet level before the 1980s.
Church schools The 1944 Act failed to resolve the problem of the church schools. Since the 1870 Education Act, the Church of England had controlled most rural elementary schools and many urban ones. 'They were in many cases the epitome of low-level mass education.' (Jones 2003) Almost all were housed in Victorian buildings which the church could not afford to maintain - Giles called them 'pigsty schools' (Giles 1946 quoted in Jones 2003). The government could have opted to subsidise them but would have faced strong opposition from nonconformists and secularists who objected to public funds being used to support the church. 'Butler's solution was to trade influence for cash - public funding of church schools in return for majority local authority representation on governing bodies.' (Jones 2003) The Act thus categorised church schools as voluntary 'aided' (where the church had greater control) or 'controlled' (where the LEA had greater control). Aided schools were offered 50 per cent of their building costs from state funds; controlled schools 100 per cent. All maintenance costs for both types of school would be paid by the state. Both Rab Butler and Archbishop of Canterbury William Temple assumed that only about 500 of the 9,000 Church of England schools would opt for voluntary aided status. In fact, around 3,000 of them did - along with all the Roman Catholic and Jewish schools. As part of his deal with the churches, Butler also promised that state schools would be required to provide non-denominational religious education and a daily act of worship. LEAs were required to have an Agreed Syllabus for Religious Education, to be compiled by elected politicians, local church leaders, and teachers and other education professionals. All county and controlled schools were required to teach this syllabus, but in aided schools religious education was left to the discretion of the churches. Parents were given the right to withdraw their children from religious education and worship if they wished. In the years following the 1944 Act, most Church of England aided schools taught the local Agreed Syllabus but supplemented it. RC schools ignored the Agreed Syllabus and taught RE in a more confessional style, 'very much concentrated on introducing children to the Catholic community of faith'. (Gates in Gardner, Cairns and Lawton 2005)
Other provisions The Act extended the concept of education to include those older and younger than the school age and 'the community's needs for culture and recreation'. (Mackinnon and Statham 1999) It aimed to provide a comprehensive School Health Service by requiring the provision of school meals, free milk, medical and dental treatment, and various support services including transport etc. It established two Central Advisory Councils for Education (one for England, one for Wales) to advise the Minister.
Notes Various sections of the 1944 Act were replaced by later legislation and it was repealed in its entirety by the 1996 Education Act. There were similar Education Acts in Scotland (1945) and Northern Ireland (1947). For more information on these, see Ken Jones's excellent book Education in Britain 1944 to the present (2003).
References Benn C and Chitty C (1996) Thirty Years On - is comprehensive education alive and well or struggling to survive? London: David Fulton Publishers Blyth W (1965) English Primary Education Vol. 2 London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Board of Education (1905) Reports on Children under Five Years of Age in Public Elementary Schools, by Women Inspectors London: HMSO Cd 2726 Chitty C and Dunford J (eds) (1999) State Schools: New Labour and the Conservative Legacy London: Woburn Press Clarke F (1940) Education and Social Change: an English interpretation London: Sheldon Press Galton M, Simon B and Croll P (1980) Inside the Primary Classroom (The ORACLE Report) London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Gates B (2005) Faith schools and colleges of education since 1800 in Gardner R, Cairns J and Lawton D (eds) (2005) Faith Schools: consensus or conflict? Abingdon: RoutledgeFalmer Giles GCT (1946) The New School Tie London: Pilot Press Green A (1990) Education and State Formation: the rise of education systems in England, France and the USALondon: Macmillan Jones K (2003) Education in Britain: 1944 to the present Cambridge: Polity Press Kogan M (1971) The Politics of Education Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Mackinnon D and Statham J (1999) Education in the UK: Facts and Figures London: Hodder and Stoughton/Open University Norwood Report (1943) Curriculum and Examinations in Secondary Schools London: HMSO Shipman M (1984) Education as a Public Service London: Harper and Row Williams R (1965) The Long Revolution Harmondsworth: Penguin Books 
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Balfour (pictured) warned the House that 'England is behind all continental rivals in education' (quoted in Benn and Chitty 1996).
Indeed, the importance of the Act - sometimes referred to as the Butler Act since it was Rab Butler (pictured) who piloted the bill through parliament - cannot be overemphasised. It replaced almost all previous education legislation.