Education Reform and Development in Britain, 1918-79

main recommendations of the Lewis Report

school leaving age= 14 .
o county colleges providing vocational training for school leavers up to 18, based on employer day release, which didn't always happen.
o The curriculum was divided into 'practical instruction' for the less able and 'advanced instruction' for the more able.

Education Act of 1918 changing in funding for education?

It transferred most costs from local to central government, marking a watershed moment of centralization.It led to an improvement in teachers' salaries and pensions, which the government hoped would improve standards.

educational provisions 1918,39

educational provisions 1918- 39

two types of schools provided by the 328 authorities

Elementary schools for basic education up to age 14, and secondary and technical schools for further education.

Hadow Committee 1926

Lamented the incomplete records kept by LEAs and the disparity in provision. It recommended:
o Abolition of elementary school and division into primary and secondary, with transfer at 11.
o Raising the school leaving age to 15.

Impact

• Its recommendations were not adopted as responsibility had been devolved to local authorities.

• There was huge variation with some class sizes of 50/60, the focus being frugality rather than quality.

• Some LEAs provided secondary and technical schools.

What was the school leaving age mandated by the Education Act of 1918?

Compulsory education up to age 14.

What percentage of children were in school beyond age 13 on the eve of WWII?

Only 13%.

How many children were in education in 1931?

• 5.5 million in elementary schools

• 600,000 in some form of secondary education.

• the university population was 30,000.

• Only 20% were in some form of secondary education and many of these would leave at 14.

1918 act- Grant funded grammar schools

• sometimes called central schools operated by LEAs.

-The schools charged fees but scholarships were available. They often had entrance exams. They tended to be financially inhibitory for poorer parents who needed their children to earn a wage at 14.
• Civil servants and social reformers recognised the huge variation and felt it reinforced class divisions.
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What did the Beveridge Report of 1942 identify as a major societal issue?

Ignorance, which was considered one of the great 'evils'.

Butler Act of 1944

o State secondary schools stopped charging fees with costs funded through taxation.
o School leaving age extended to 15.
o LEAs were obliged to provide, 'instruction and training as may be desirable in view of their different ages, abilities, and aptitudes.' However the Act created a system that reflected and retained Britain's class system.

Butler act- Tri-partite system

Grammar schools - accessible to all through an exam at 11 and providing an academic education similar to the public system.
Secondary modern schools - educated most of the lower-middle and working class. Generally received fewer resources and less well-qualified teachers. However quality varied with some very innovative in meeting the needs of their cohort.
• 75% of children attended secondary moderns. In 1964 only 318 took A levels.
Technical schools - intended to educate for a technocratic class. Only 3% attended and few were ever built.

Impact of butler act 1944

o Butler intended the 11+ to filter children into one of these 3 streams. In practice the 11+ decided who was good enough for grammar schools rather than technically minded.
o Its effectiveness is much debated, but it did provide a boost for social change in the 1960s and 1970s.

Development of comprehensive education 1944-79

The end of 13 years of Conservative rule, in 1964, an anti-elitist sentiment saw the demise of the Butler Act, 1944 and its replacement with comprehensive education. Wilson wanted to offer 'grammar schools for all'.
• The first purpose built comprehensive school opened at Kidbrooke in 1954, although opinion on the ethics and efficacy of selection remained divided.
• It was found the 11+ was an inaccurate measure of ability and as a predictor of future potential.
• Comprehensive schools were felt to enable children to transfer between streams of ability and different courses.

Crowther Report 1959

• looked at education aged 15-19.

• The government was conscious of 'the changing social and industrial needs of our society, and the needs of its individual citizens'.

• Society had become more meritocratic, less deferential and there were greater opportunities for social mobility.

Crowther Report 1959 recommendations

• Raising the leaving age to 16.

• creating county colleges for post-16 education and creating more technical colleges.

• Attracting sixth formers of the 'highest intellectual calibre'.

• Widening the number of sixth form colleges from the purely vocational to the arts and humanities, reflecting the large number of new sixth formers

• Preparing the most able for university

• Enable all of those capable to take O-levels - the General Certificate of Education was introduced in 1951, divided into O-levels and A-levels.

• Facilitating a large number of new teachers to deliver these changes.
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Newsom Report 1963

examined education provision for the less-able, aged 13-16. The report found serious failings in poorer areas, with high teacher turnover.

Newsom Report 1963 recommendations

o New focus on researching teaching methods suitable for those who struggled at school.
o More attention on teaching deprived children personal and social development, including sex education.
o Setting up a parliamentary party to examine the link between deprivation and poor educational attainment.
o More practical subjects for the less able with requirement to sit exams, if not suitable.

Development of comprehensives- Labour

• The 1964 Labour Party manifesto committed to ending segregation through the 11+ exam. And reorganising education along comprehensive lines.
• In the year of the election there were 3906 secondary moderns, 1298 grammars and only 195 comprehensive schools.
• Anthony Crosland, Education Minister, committed to destroying the grammar school system, although he did come to regret this, seeing it as removing a vehicle for the social mobility of working class children.
• Comprehensives did grow but without any policy to force the conversion. Labour planned this in 1970 but lost the election.

Development of comprehensives- conservatives

• Thatcher, Heath's Education Minister, instructed LEAs that no more requests for the merger of grammars and secondary moderns would be considered. She also increased funding for direct grant schools and spoke of the right to choose private education.
• By the time Thatcher left office in 1990, the number of comprehensive schools had grown significantly, but significant divisions in educational quality remained.

• the number of comprehensives more than doubled from 30% to 62%

Stats

1955= Secondary modern- 3550, grammar- 1180, technical- 302, comprehensive- 16
1980= Secondary modern- 445, Grammar-224, Technical-17, Comprehensive-3297

Development of comprehensives- the dichotomy

• Wilson knew supporting ending funding for non-comprehensive schools would appease the left of the Labour party and the National Union of Teachers.
• The NUT claimed this would take elitism out of education, but often the opposite happened:
o As direct grant school lost their funding they were forced to charge fees which excluded working class and lower middle class children, who made up 50% of their intake.

The education act 1976

did not make abolition compulsory, recognising the decision would be unpopular and a vote loser over an issue not central to their political agenda.

Progressive education: plowden report 1967

o Banning corporal punishment.
o Giving children more freedom within the classroom.
o Encouraging teachers to help and advise rather than lecture pupils.

Schools where progressive education caused chaos

o William Tyndale School, Islington - removed all rules, allowing children to do as they wished. An official government enquiry into its failings found the teachers had placed their own socialist revolutionary ideas ahead of their commitment to teaching pupils.
o The press published the most extreme examples of ideological interference in education recognising and fuelling a backlash of concern.

Black Papers 1969

the first major negative reaction to progressive education, published in 1969.
o Published by two academics - Brian Cox and Tony Dyson who criticised the decline of teacher authority. They were joined by North London headmaster, Dr Rhodes Boyson.

the Yellow Book

James Callaghan ordered a review into Britain's education system, published as the 'Yellow Book'. It was damning, suggesting progressive education had caused immense harm to teaching. It stated that:

What were some criticisms mentioned in the Yellow Book?

o School discipline had declined.
o Many school curricula did not prepare students for productive roles in the economy.
o The government and public had too little say over what happened in schools.

Ruskin speech

based on the Yellow Book's findings and delivered by Callaghan at a college set up to educate working class men.

What did the Ruskin speech suggest

o Progressive education had some merits in the right hands, but catastrophic when not.
o He did not wish to return to the rote learning of the 1950s.
o There should be a national curriculum all schools follow.
o Teachers should be more closely scrutinised and inspected.
• This led to a national debate on education culminating in reforms that began in the 1980s, including the National Curriculum.

Uni in 1920-30

• While Oxford and Cambridge remained largely for the privileged, provincial universities increasingly took on more middle-class and bright working-class students funded mainly through LEA scholarships.
• Recognised Students in Training (RST) - funded by the government if recipients agreed to follow their degree with a commitment to postgraduate teacher training.
• From 1919 funding was under the control of the Treasury.
• Following requests for more funding from Oxbridge the government increased grants but also the amount of scrutiny, although this was not too onerous.
• Government funding made up a third of university income, the rest from fees and endowments.

Percy Reports (1945

o The privileged position of classical education be challenged in favour of science and engineering.
o Expansion to cater for the expansion following the Butler Act, 1945.

Barlow Report 1946

1946 confirmed there were too few scientists and engineering students and argued for government funded expansion of universities. Little had changed with universities resistant to change, prioritising arts based subjects.
• By 1961 only 15% of applications to universities were successful.

1961 Robbins committee

o Britain was lagging behind other countries in terms of university performance.
o The government should guarantee a place to all eligible applicants.

Report recommended

Instruction in skills to ensure a competent workforce.
Develop students' 'general powers of the mind' to ensure a broad education.
Teaching academics should continue to carry out research.
Teaching should impart the 'transmission of a common culture and common standards of citizenship'.

Uni expansion

o The University of East Sussex opened in 1961.
o The University of Kent opened in 1965.
o Both offered a multi-disciplinary approach to learning.
o By 1970 a further 11 universities had opened and an additional 32 'second-tier' institutions or polytechnics were founded focusing on scientific and vocational subjects.
o Both Labour and Conservatives expanded the welfare state to provide tuition fees and student grants.

Uni in 1970

• Thatcher invested heavily in universities, spending more than her predecessors on university and polytechnic funding and increasing grants by 40% throughout Heath's government.
• By 1979 there had been a slowdown in the increase of numbers enrolment, but not an overall decline.
• Heath had set a target of ¾ million students in higher education, even though this was missed by 100,000, the increase had been huge.

Stats on degrees

Year Number of first degrees
1920 4357
1930 9129
1950 17337
1960 22426
1970 51189
1980 68150

Social impact on uni expansion

o Working class Prime Ministers: Wilson, Heath, Thatcher - Oxford graduates.
o Large numbers of men and women were able to join professions previously denied to their class.
o The increased numbers was only possible due to institutional expansion: 53 universities and 30 polytechnics by 1971 with half a million students.
o The lack of financial risk due to grants made the route to university possible for working class people.

Drawbacks

• Pupils from private schools continued to dominate to dominate elite universities, arguably exacerbated by the decline of grammar schools.
• The profession continued to be dominated by the privileged and privately educated Oxbridge graduate.