Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Schools Since 1944

Standard Bearers or Turbulent Priests?

John E. Dunford

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351563826
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This history of HMI since World War II shows how its independence derives from the work of the 19th century inspectors and examines the relationship between HMI and school, local education authorities and the government. It considers the effect of the 1988 and 1992 Education Acts.

1
The first hundred years: 1839—1939

1839–1862: Up to the Revised Code

Few bodies founded over 150 years ago owe as much as HM Inspectorate to their original principles and early history. The circumstances of its inception, the definition of its role, the character of the early inspectors and the way in which they played their part in the history of education during their first 30 years have, to a remarkable extent, influenced the course which the Inspectorate has taken in the twentieth century.

In the early part of the nineteenth century elementary schools were provided either by private individuals or by one of the religious societies, notably the non-denominational British and Foreign Schools Society (BFSS) and the National Society, which was formed by the Church of England. Dr Bell, the founder of the National system, acted as the National Society’s inspector for several years and the BFSS also had its own inspector. Finding this expensive, the BFSS applied to the Government for a grant in 1823 but, fearing that a precedent would be created, this request was refused by Peel. Ten years later complex Benthamite proposals for a national system of education were rejected in the House of Commons, which then passed a simpler Government measure on a Vote on Supply ‘that a sum not exceeding £20 000 be granted to His Majesty, to be issued in aid of private subscriptions for the erection of school houses for the education of the children of the poorer classes’.¹

There was considerable disquiet over the way in which the societies spent this money and in 1838 the Government asked the National Society to inspect its own schools. However, in the 1838 parliamentary debate on education, several MPs urged the Government to institute its own scheme of inspection for the schools which received a Government grant. Apart from the BFSS and National Society inspectors, there were precedents for such a scheme in Holland, Prussia and Ireland. In Britain there were the factory inspectors, whose reports had revealed the inadequacy of educational provision for children working a 12-hour day.

Factory inspectors had to enforce the regulations in the Factory Acts, but the voluntary nature of educational provision meant that there were no such regulations for school inspectors to enforce. Nevertheless, the Societies did not submit willingly to Government inspection and the scheme which was put forward by Lord John Russell, the Home Secretary, in 1839 was accepted by the religious societies only because of their need for the Government grants which came with it. In the early years of the scheme more than half of the grants offered to National Society schools were refused by the school managers in order to avoid Government interference, even though the 1839 Minute made clear the limitations on the activities of the inspectors:

Inspectors, authorised by Her Majesty in Council, will be appointed from time to time to visit schools to be henceforth aided by public money; the Inspectors will not interfere with the religious instruction, or discipline, or management of the school, it being their object to collect facts and information and to report the results of their inspections to the Committee of Council.²

Although the Church could not prevent the establishment of a system of inspection of its schools, it won the right to influence the appointment of the inspectors, whose names had to be approved by the archbishops, and whose appointments could be terminated if the archbishops withdrew their support. It was also agreed that copies of all reports on National schools would be sent to the archbishop and to the bishop of the diocese in which the school was situated. Religious instruction was to be inspected according to guidelines which had been agreed between the archbishops and the Government. The religious hold on elementary education was therefore confirmed by this Concordat which preceded the appointment of the first inspectors and the opportunity for the Government to introduce a stronger model of inspection, similar to the system of factory inspection, was lost. This was confirmed in the first letter of Instructions to Inspectors which was sent in August 1840:

It is of the utmost consequence you should bear in mind that this inspection is not intended as a means of exercising control, but of affording assistance; that it is not to be regarded as operating for the restraint of local efforts, but for their encouragement; and that its chief objects will not be attained without the co-operation of the school committees; the Inspector having no power to interfere, and not being instructed to offer any advice or information except where it is invited.³

The letter concluded:

My Lords are persuaded that you will meet with much cordial cooperation in the prosecution of the important object involved in your appointment; and they are equally satisfied that your general bearing and conduct, and the careful avoidance of whatever could impair the just influence or authority of the promoters of schools, or of the teachers over their scholars, will conciliate the confidence and goodwill of those with whom you will have to communicate; you will thus best fulfil the purposes of your appointment, and prove yourself a fit agent to assist in the execution of Her Majesty’s desire, that the youth of this kingdom should be religiously brought up, and that the rights of conscience should be respected.

The two men who received this letter had been appointed as Her Majesty’s Inspectors of Schools in December 1839. Revd John Allen, who had been educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge, had spent two years as a master in a proprietary school in Pimlico and three years as examining chaplain to Bishop Otter of Chichester; he was to inspect Church of England schools. Hugh Seymour Tremenheere, a barrister and member of the Central Society of Education, was appointed for the British schools. At 35, Tremenheere was six years older than Allen, but had received a similar education at Winchester and New College, Oxford, of which he was a Fellow. Their early annual reports included some fascinating social comment and they used these reports, as well as their reports on individual schools, to advocate good educational practices, a function which the first Secretary of the Committee of Council on Education, Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth, had emphasised in the 1840 Instructions. Tremenheere’s 1842 report on London schools was too critical for the BFSS, whose secretary wrote a letter of complaint to Lord Wharncliffe, the Lord President of the Council. Tremenheere criticised many aspects of provision, including the poor quality of the teaching, and he reported that he had found only three schools which were efficient. Wharncliffe placated the Society by appointing Tremenheere as an Inspector of Mines and by agreeing to give the Society some control over the appointment of the inspectors of its schools.⁴

The first increase in the size of the Inspectorate occurred in 1844 and it was Kay-Shuttleworth’s intention that each school should be inspected twice a year. This aim was never fulfilled, as the number of schools and the extent of the inspectors’ duties grew. These new duties were outlined by Kay-Shuttleworth in 1844 in a letter to HMIs, who were told to recommend grants for equipment, such as parallel desks and blackboards, which could be used for simultaneous teaching. In this way Kay-Shuttleworth was aiming to reduce the reliance on the monitorial system. In a year when the Factory Act gave increased powers to factory inspectors to disqualify inefficient teachers in factory schools, Kay-Shuttleworth had to use indirect methods to influence the style of education in the denominational schools.

The first executive powers for HMIs came in the Pupil-Teacher Minutes of 1846.⁵ Not only did the HMIs have to carry out tests and administrative procedures at the start of a pupil-teacher’s apprenticeship, they also had to give an annual examination to each pupil-teacher for five years. From 1848 they had to conduct examinations of older teachers for Certificates of Merit. These duties meant that the inspectors had time to visit only the grant-aided schools and were unable to visit the poorer schools where their advice would have been of great value. Throughout the 1850s, Minutes were issued which continued to increase the workload of HMIs and, in spite of the appointment of assistant inspectors from 1850, several HMIs were ill for considerable periods as a result of the strain. One such change was the introduction of capitation grants to schools in certain districts on conditions which had to be established by the inspector through the examination of individual pupils.⁶ Although it was not possible for HMIs to carry out fully this measure, a precedent had been created for the Revised Code and ‘in a sense, the teacher was more dependent upon HM Inspector’s judgement than after the Revised Code, when there was a standardised examination to test his school’.⁷

During the 1850s the number of HMIs and assistant inspectors increased from 17 to 48. It was claimed that too many of the new inspectors were ‘raw young men fresh from college or the country’ with no knowledge of elementary education.⁸ The evidence tends to support this claim. The 1857 intake to the Inspectorate averaged only 29.1 years of age and fewer than a quarter of inspectors appointed up to this time had had any connection with elementary education. All the Anglican inspectors were clergymen and two-thirds had first or second class honours degrees. Although most of the early HMIs had been college fellows or barristers, 30 per cent had had some experience of school education.⁹ The difficulty of recruiting suitable men was compounded by the lack of any structure in the Inspectorate:

Young men, appointed as assistant inspectors, were given their Letters of Instruction, assigned to a full HMI and, with minimum guidance, were sent to inspect the schools in the less congenial parts of his district.¹⁰

The Inspectorate was divided by religious denomination into seven separate inspectorates, but inspectors’ conferences were held from 1846 in order to discuss common problems and modes of inspection. These were stopped in 1859 by Robert Lowe, the Vice-President of the Committee of Council on Education, and there were to be no more conferences for 20 years. In the previous year Lowe’s predecessor, C.B. Adderley, had stopped the voting at these conferences and it was in the 1850s that the central government’s Education Department began to ignore the legislative suggestions which appeared in the inspectors’ reports. This contrasts with earlier schemes, such as pupil-teachers, book grants and capitation grants, all of which had been advocated by HMIs. After Kay-Shuttleworth left office the leaders of the Department lacked vision and were more concerned with administrative detail. The extent to which the Department refused to be guided by its field officers was an indication of the inadequacy of the Department’s civil servants. It was also one reason why the Church retained its hold on the elementary education system.

In 1858 the Newcastle Commission was set up to inquire into the state of elementary education. Although its report mentioned the benefits of inspection, it recounted complaints about the inspectors and their widely differing standards.¹¹ Few HMIs were called to give evidence and the Commission’s fieldwork was carried out, not by HMIs, whom the Commission’s members believed to be biased in favour of the existing system, but by assistant commissioners with little experience of elementary education. In the House of Commons Robert Lowe backed the judgement of the assistant commissioners against that of the HMIs. This contributed to a lowering of the reputation of the Inspectorate which had already been weakened by some of the appointments made in the 1850s. Yet the HMI reports of the time suggest that the inspectors were still trying to be educational missionaries, as Kay-Shuttleworth had intended. They advised on teaching methods, school organisation and buildings. They were greatly concerned about the twin problems of poor attendance and early leaving age of the schoolchildren. They had generally good relationships with school managers and were often a great help to teachers, individually and collectively.

The problems which arose in the period before 1862 resulted largely from the attitude of the civil servants in the Department, who had a very limited view of the roles of the elementary education system and of its inspectors.

1862–1895: A Game of Mechanical Contrivance

Some HMIs were among those who attacked the recommendations of the Newcastle Report and the ensuing arguments enabled the Government to put forward its own scheme for elementary education. Robert Lowe instructed Henry Cole, who had already drafted a similar scheme for the Science and Art Department, of which he was Secretary, to prepare a scheme of payment-by-results in the 3Rs. This first Code met with strenuous opposition from teachers, school managers, training college principals and newspapers. The HMIs were more concerned at the implication that they had not been carrying out their inspections with sufficient rigour and thoroughness. They sent a memorial to this effect to Earl Granville, the Lord President of the Council, who condescendingly reassured the inspectors that they were ‘a most faithful body of very able men, who had acted most efficiently under the existing system, and under the instructions which they had received’.¹²

Many of the criticisms of the first Code were taken into account by Lowe in the second Revised Code, which attracted little parliamentary opposition. Matthew Arnold’s well-known opposition to both versions of the Code has created the impression that the HMIs were against it,¹³ but in fact the Inspectorate was sharply divided.

Table 1.1
Opinions of HM Inspectors on the Revised Code, 1862

	In favour	Against
Anglican	17	8
British and Wesleyan	5	2
Roman Catholic	2	0
Total	24	10

Source: Dunford, 1980

In general, the more experienced inspectors were against the Revised Code although they were not opposed to the principle of payment-by-results.

Under the Revised Code, grants to elementary schools depended on average attendance and on the performance in an examination in ...