Unequal Educational Provision in England and Wales

The Nineteenth-century Roots

W.E. Marsden

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• eBook ISBN: 9781135784089
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Published in 1987, Unequal Educational Provision in England and Wales is a valuable contribution to the field of Education.

CHAPTER ONE

Introduction Approaches to the Study of Nineteenth-century Educational Disparities

There might be equality in the aggregate, and the work of popular education be not more than half-accomplished, from the want of equality in the distribution. In judging of school accommodation, we must look to three things respecting it—its amount, its character and its distribution.¹(Anon., 1846)

INTRODUCTION

The degree of discrimination that is evident in this comment on unequal access to schooling by an anonymous mid-nineteenth-century columnist has often been lacking in subsequent appraisals. The issues embedded in the critique remain relevant nearly a century and a half later, and changes over time would seem to have been of degree rather than of kind. Extreme variations in educational provision were endemic in nineteenth century England and Wales. Their nature is, however, inexactly represented by the polarised distinctions between schooling for the rich and schooling for the poor which reflect much of the literature on the subject. While it is obviously the case that in gross terms the well-to-do enjoyed immeasurably better educational opportunities than less fortunate groups, more finely-tuned appraisals make it equally clear that unequal access, both quantitative and qualitative, existed within each social grade.

In approaching nineteenth-century educational disparities it is necessary to place schooling in a trinity of contexts: of time, of place and of society. Making the connections involves crossing boundaries in the network of knowledge,² taking a comprehensive and eclectic view of the field to be covered, and assembling from diverse sources materials which might contribute to an explanatory synthesis.

In this book, therefore, many of the issues that have been central in much of the historiography of education, such as the role of church and state in school provision, policy-making in Whitehall, education and the industrial revolution, and education and the labour movement, and other aspects which reflect largely the view from the centre, are skirted. It explores rather interactions between schooling and the shifting socio-economic and status groupings and the increasing territorial segregation that were integral parts of the dominating nineteenth-century process of urbanisation. While clearly industrialisation and urbanisation cannot sensibly be separated, the emphasis is on the latter rather than the former. The concentration is on the period in which a secondary (industrial) revolution was merging into a tertiary (services, mostly urban) revolution, rather than one in which the main change was from an agricultural to an industrial society. The differences between the two in terms of educational responses are considerable.

The book also focuses on problems of spatial variation and of scale. It explores the tensions between national and local levels of decision-making, and the educational disparities that resulted. The view from Whitehall was different from that from the Town Hall, and that from the School Board Office not necessarily in tune with feelings in the local community. The attempt is made to uncover group and personal experience of education at this detailed level, and to identify the conflicting and confusing pressures which impinged on individual schools and families in urban areas in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Placing schooling in the contexts of time, space and society suggests the need for a broad conceptual framework, and to this end appropriate apparatus from the urban historian, the historical geographer and the urban sociologist is identified and deployed.

URBAN HISTORY

The extent to which educational historians have neglected the process of urbanisation as central to late nineteenth-century educational development is matched only by the extent to which urban historians have neglected education as a social component. The study of urban history in Britain was spearheaded at the University of Leicester by the late Professor H.J.Dyos, but of his group only David Reeder has given any priority to the investigation of the schools and the children that were such burgeoning features of Victorian city life. Reeder has drawn attention to the ‘taken-for-granted’ attitude of educational historians towards the urban context of schooling,³ and the emphasis on schooling in the city rather than on schooling and the city. It is surprising that the pursuit of urban history, so evidently an academic by-product of the anxieties of the 1960s and 1970s about social conflict and the city, has been so little applied to educational development. Anxieties about urban schooling still loom large. There is a self-evident need for a historical perspective on ‘the problems of the urban present’.⁴

As a framework for an interactive study of education and urbanisation, the American urban historian Eric Lampard’s identification of three basic and overlapping concepts is a useful starting point.⁵ These are demography, the concentration of population; structure, which can be taken to include occupational grouping, social stratification and the social and spatial patterning of the urban habitat; and the urban experience, as expressed in modes of behaviour and thought which might justifiably be characterised as ‘urban’. Such a framework forms the basis of Chapter 3 of this book.

An equally important component in historical interdisciplinary study is the linkage of a wide range of source materials, and in this respect urban historians and historical geographers have found common ground. In any study which purports to establish relationships between the aggregate and the particular; the official line and the hidden agenda; the bureaucratic accuracy of a minuted agreement and the possibly emotive responses of those it affects; or national policy and local experience—it is not enough to be content with a limited range of sources, however good, perhaps as part of a self-denying ordinance to accept only those which were comprehensively and bureaucratically collected, and can therefore be defined as reliable. It may be that the well-tilled nature of the field of literacy studies, for example, reflects the ready availability of marriage registers as sources of data. It has produced some successful work, but inevitably tells us little about the development of schooling. Similarly, the census enumerators’ returns for the mid-nineteenth century contain valuable information on scholar-non-scholar ratios, to be used in Chapter 9, but are by definition less valuable in discussing attendance issues than, for example, school admissions registers. On the other hand, these more pertinent sources are often sadly interrupted and even random in their preservation. It is therefore of some moment when the possibility presents itself of linking the social data contained in the enumerators’ returns and information about schooling in admissions registers, and matching them for particular families, providing the possibility of establishing a detailed relationship between parental background and school attendance and achievement, a type of research underpinning some of the conclusions in Chapter 8.

In conventional histories a chronological signposting has often been provided by major pieces of educational legislation. The impact of such events as the provision of parliamentary grants for educational purposes, of the Newcastle Commission and ‘payment by results’, and above all of the 1870 Act, cannot be ignored. An alternative framework, and one closely though not solely related to urbanisation, is to explore the process of educational development in terms of the increasing rigour of the criteria used in appraising the achievement at successive stages, bearing in mind the inevitable overlap of these criteria as between areas. Thus in the incipient phase of development the mere fact of official and wide acceptance of the notion that mass day schooling was desirable and practicable was a first step in the ladder of progress. This was followed by the actual building of accommodation. The number of places provided could be counted, apportioned by religious body or by geographical spread, and compared. Such enumeration initially revealed the gaps in the highly urbanised counties (Chapter 2). Once the places were provided, however, they might remain only partially filled. The next criterion was enrolment. How many children were there on the books? It was this measure that came nearest to the scholar-non-scholar ratios which can be drawn from the census enumerators’ returns, as it might be presumed that children who were categorised by their parents as ‘scholars’ were on the books of schools.

Many more were enrolled than regularly attended, however, and by the middle of the century there was considerable dissatisfaction over general levels of attendance. Average attendance became an important element in the earning of grant. The streets of towns and cities swarmed with truants, a major source of school anxiety. An associated problem was the length of stay at school. The Taunton Commission used this as a means of grading schools (Chapters4 and 5). Equally, when compulsory attendance was established in the School Board period, different local authorities accepted different levels of exemption from attendance (Chapter 6), which could be achieved at an earlier age if a particular ‘standard’ was reached. Thus average attendance and length of stay became important indices of the success of educational development in the second half of the century.

The concept of ‘standard reached’ was a further and perhaps the most significant criterion of achievement, in being to an extent qualitative. While the Codes changed over the years, the rigidity of the ‘payment by results’ system ensured some uniformity over time and also across areas, to make comparisons relatively strai...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Photographs
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• 1. Introduction: Approaches to the Study of Nineteenth-century Educational Disparities
• NATIONAL VARIATIONS IN PROVISION
• PROVISION AT THE GRASSROOTS EDUCATION IN SLUMS AND SUBURBS
• Index