Education and Policy in England in the Twentieth Century

Richard Aldrich, Dennis Dean, Peter Gordon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134722617
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Didattica
• Subtopic: Didattica generale

In the 1990s education has become one of the major social and political questions of the day. This book has been written to provide an authoritative guide to the issues which underlie the formulation of educational policy. It stands both as a substantial historical study in its own right and as an essential background and introduction to the current educational debate.

Part One

Politics of Education

Chapter One

The Nineteenth-Century Legacy

This chapter provides an overview of the legacy of nineteenth-century politics in respect of education. That legacy is considered under four headings: the politics of central government, the politics of local government, the politics of Christianity and class, and a conclusion. The relationship between politics and the whole sphere of formal and informal educational provision is too broad to be summarized in a single chapter; attention here is principally confined to mainstream politics and to elementary schooling but other areas will be taken up in introductory sections to subsequent chapters.

Central Politics

The politics of central government and education has a long history. Personal interventions by medieval and Tudor monarchs, parliamentary legislation of the mid-seventeenth century, and the very representation of the universities of Oxford and Cambridge in the House of Commons from 1604, are episodes in that history. The major nineteenth-century legacy, however, dates from 1839. In that year a Whig government assumed a new responsibility for education by establishing a Committee of Privy Council on Education. This was created by Order in Council because the Conservative majority (which included Anglican bishops) in the House of Lords ensured that at this time no bill to establish a central government authority for education would be successful. The new Committee was composed of four politicians: the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Home Secretary and the Lord Privy Seal, presided over by the Lord President of the Council himself. A new section was set up in the Privy Council Office and Dr Kay (later Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth) was placed at its head. John Allen and Hugh Seymour Tremenheere were appointed the first two inspectors.

Those who opposed the principle and the fact of a central government authority for education did so on a number of deeply-held political and religious grounds. Some believed that this would be a step on the way to tyranny, it was un-English, an assault on freedom. Others believed that national education was the responsibility of the national (i.e. Anglican) church. Others again, opponents of the Established Church, feared that the new body would discriminate against the schools of other Christian denominations. In 1839 itself there was great political controversy. The Whig government, with the support of the Radicals, narrowly carried the day against the Conservatives in the Commons, by 280 votes to 275. The House of Lords, furious at being bypassed in this fashion, resolved by 229 votes to 118 to present a formal address of protest to the monarch. This was written by Sir Robert Peel, but the Duke of Wellington declined to lead a mob to the palace, whilst the young Queen Victoria was not particularly impressed by the deputation, although she did later remark to Lord Lansdowne that she had never seen so many Tories all together before.

In 1841, however, when Sir Robert Peel and the Conservatives came into office, the Committee of Privy Council on Education was continued. Indeed, although from its inception it was considered to be but a temporary expedient, the Committee lasted until 1899 when the Board of Education Act brought together the Education Department of the Privy Council, the Science and Art Department (established in 1853 at South Kensington as a direct outcome of the Great Exhibition) and the educational responsibilities of the Charity Commissioners. The new Board of Education, however, was a complete fiction. Whereas the old Committee of Council had met occasionally, the Board never met at all.

From 1856 the Lord President of the Council was assisted in his educational duties by a Vice-President who, though having other responsibilities, was principally concerned with education and would represent this concern in the Commons. This appointment, though welcome in itself, only further confused the issue of where ultimate responsibility was to lie. Such confusion was shown in 1864 when the Conservative, Lord Robert Cecil’s, resolution, which deplored the mutilation of inspectors’ reports and the exclusion from them of statements and views adverse to the educational policies of the Committee of Council, was approved by 101 votes to 93. Robert Lowe, the Vice-President, resigned, whilst Lord Granville, the Lord President, who had earlier offered his resignation, withdrew it. Lowe’s explanation was indeed accepted after investigation by a Select Committee, and the original resolution was rescinded, but his resignation stood, whilst Granville, and Lingen who had succeeded Kay-Shuttleworth as Secretary in 1849 and who was probably most to blame, remained in office.

For those who believed that education was not primarily a concern of central government the Committee of Privy Council indeed might seem to be a perfect instrument. Though it provided encouragement for the training and remuneration of teachers and the building and equipping of schools, it did so by grants in support of individual or institutional initiatives. The Committee of Council itself rarely met, perhaps once or twice a year, and much of its work passed into the hands of administrators. Too much indeed in the early years, for in 1849 Kay-Shuttleworth resigned after a breakdown brought on by overwork, whilst one of his successors, Patric Cumin, died in 1890 after but six years of strenuous toil. Ralph Lingen, secretary to 1870 (the others were Sir Francis Sandford, 1870–84 and Sir George Kekewich, 1890–99), survived by adopting a more rigorous control and simplification of procedures which restricted rather than encouraged central initiatives.

Nevertheless the weaknesses of the system were well known, and particular attention was drawn to them by Sir John Pakington’s Select Committee of 1865–66 whose draft report recommended the abolition of the Committee of Council and the role of the Lord President, and their replacement by a Ministry and Minister of Public Instruction with a seat in the Cabinet. Conservative minority governments 1866–68 prepared a bill to establish such a Minister, but it failed to reach the Statute Book, thus leaving the way open for the 1870 Act, the Liberal solution, which introduced local education authorities in the shape of school boards. In 1884 another Select Committee, the Childers Committee, proposed that the Committee of Council should be replaced by a board headed by a President who should be the real rather than the nominal minister. By this time the Vice-President undertook nearly all the business of education and yet was still subordinate to the Lord President. Once again, however, nothing was done. In 1895 the Bryce Commission put the issue into a rather different focus by emphasizing the need for a more unified rather than a more powerful central authority. Lord Salisbury’s Conservative administration of 1895 exemplified the dangers of division, for the Duke of Devonshire as Lord President, and Sir John Gorst, the Vice-President, held widely-differing attitudes towards the subject of the education of the poor.

Finally in 1899 a Board of Education was established which united the Education Department, the Science and Art Department and the educational work of the Charity Commissioners. In future there would be only one minister, the President of the Board of Education, but his status and office would be of second rank, like that of the President of the Board of Agriculture or the President of the Board of Trade. The Board of Education was ‘charged with the superintendence of matters relating to education in England and Wales’, a general statement which might have presaged more had the new office been on a par with those of the principal Secretaries of State. Even in 1944 the first formulation of the new bill proposed that the title and role of President of the Board of Education should continue.

Local Politics

Local politics in the nineteenth century found expression in a variety of ways. In the counties elaborate hierarchies of a feudal nature persisted throughout the nineteenth century. Such a hierarchy might comprise: “The Lord Lieutenant; the Master of Foxhounds; the Agricultural Landlords; the Bishop; the Chairman of Quarter Sessions; the Colonel of the Yeomanry; the Members of Parliament; the Dean and Archdeacons; the Justices of the Peace; the lesser Gentry; the larger Farmers’ (Allsobrook, 1986, p.24). The great county families exercised power over the political, social, religious and sporting life of the shires. Conflict and compromise coexisted. In some areas there was an amicable division of spoils between Tory and Whig families, in others fierce political feuding was the order of the day. Not until 1888 was a system of county councils which provided for election by ratepayers established.

Although in the rural areas, both in the countryside itself and in cathedral and market towns, power tended to lie in the traditional hands of squire and parson, in other urban areas new political forces were emerging. Even prior to the 1832 Reform Act relatively democratic constituencies like Preston and Westminster returned Radical MPs. Chartist petitions received significant support in the House of Commons. Municipal government was reformed in 1835, and this provided the opportunity for members of the Dissenting communities, and those who had made their way by industry, trade, commerce and profession, to achieve power and status in the local councils and in the offices of alderman and mayor.

There were many proposals to use the county as a basis for educational organization – county schools, county examinations, county boards, county rates, county colleges, county degrees. Some of these proposals were concerned with levels of education above the elementary school. The issue of rate-aided elementary schooling featured more strongly in the towns and cities, with Manchester to the fore in the 1840s and 1850s. Private bills were promoted in Parliament to achieve this end, and in 1857 the various contending Manchester parties – Anglicans, Dissenters, Secularists, Conservatives, Liberals, Radicals – threw their combined weight behind a general but permissive bill to enable boroughs and cities to establish education committees, and to raise money for education from the poor rate. The most important recommendation of the Newcastle Commissioners who reported in 1861 was that elected boards for education, empowered to levy rates and to pay grants, should be established both in counties and in large boroughs.

Neither of these schemes was successful and rate-aided elementary schooling was finally introduced by the Elementary Education Act of 1870. Ad hoc school boards were established wherever there were gaps in elementary school provision. Their role was to remedy the deficiency. Apart from London with some 50 members, boards had between five and 15 representatives, elected triennially by the ratepayers. Women were entitled both to vote and to stand as candidates, and a secret ballot was employed. In 1900 London had eight women out of a total of 55 members, Bradford three, and Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester and Nottingham two apiece. In 1903, the final year of the school boards, there were some 370 women members (Hurt, 1979, p. 97). School board areas varied greatly in size. Many rural school boards controlled but one school. At the other end of the scale, by the turn of the twentieth century, half a million pupils were attending London’s board schools, at which date there were some 2,500 school boards scattered across the country. This administrative nightmare was further complicated with the creation of county councils and county boroughs from 1888. An Act of 1889 empowered these new authorities to raise a penny rate for the purposes of technical education, and to establish technical instruction committees to oversee this work. From 1890 ‘whisky money’, raised from a duty on beer and spirits, could also be applied to this purpose. On occasion school boards and technical instruction committees came into conflict over the definition of their respective powers, and the Cockerton judgements of 1900–01 which prohibited expenditure by the London School Board on the North London School of Art, on the grounds that it was expenditure neither on elementary education nor on children, brought these issues into sharp relief. The large urban school boards had become associated in Conservative eyes with the growth of extravagance, radicalism, unsectarianism (indeed the British and Foreign School Society handed over many of its schools to the boards), and even secularism. The new county and county borough authorities, on the other hand, seemed to be more disposed towards financial restraint, conservatism, denominational education and traditional values. The principle of large multi-purpose local authorities, moreover, was a logical one, and the technical instruction committees had shown that education could be incorporated into the general provision of local services. Thus in 1902 some 318 local education authorities were created for England and Wales, comprising 63 county councils, 82 county boroughs and 173 non-county boroughs and urban districts. These latter bodies (the Part III authorities) were given contol over elementary education only. County councils and county boroughs were additionally required to ‘take such steps as seem to them desirable to supply or aid the supply of education other than elementary’. A political storm, however, arose over those clauses which required local education authorities to meet certain costs (including the teachers’ salaries) of voluntary schools.

Education was a local political issue of great importance throughout the nineteenth century, both in rural and in urban areas. It became particularly prominent in the larger cities as municipal growth and reform allowed hitherto excluded groups to break traditional authority patterns (Reeder, 1977, pp. 11–25). Thus in 1835 in Tory, Anglican Liverpool, following the municipal corporations’ reform, Liberals and Nonconformists gained power and opened the Corporation’s schools to children of all denominations, including Roman Catholics. Clergymen of the several communions were allowed to provide instruction to their adherents at specific times in the school day, but otherwise only the reading of Bible extracts was allowed. Education thus became the local political issue of the hour. In 1841 the Tories regained control and restored the schools to the Protestant fold. In the 1840s local educational issues, fired by such campaigners as W.F. Hook, the vicar of Leeds, and the Congregationalist Edward Baines, editor of the Leeds Mercury, spilled over into the national scene and played a significant part in the West Riding parliamentary elections of 1847. Hook himself, a thoroughly controversial figure who appointed Chartists as his churchwardens, promoted the construction of 28 schools and four churches in Leeds during his 22-year ministry. Reference has already been made to the educational controversies of Manchester in the 1840s and 1850s which centred upon the rivalry between the Lancashire (later National) Public School Association and the Manchester and Salford Bill Committee. In 1869 the Manchester-based National Education Union was ranged against the Birmingham-based National Education League, and indeed on one occasion fighting broke out between rival groups of supporters in the Manchester Free Trade Hall.

The school board era, 1870–1902, though heir to a considerable history of education and politics at the local level, provided an immediate and indeed a unique relationship between the two. Since voters had as many votes as there were candidates, sophisticated political organization was required to enable these votes to be used to the best advantage. Thus in a 15-seat school board it was preferable for a party to put up eight candidates and return them all, rather than to allow 15 to stand and to gain only seven seats. In Birmingham, for example, the ‘Liberal Eight’ controlled the School Board from 1873, and pursued consistently radical and secular policies. In 1900 the ‘Church Seven’ defeated the ‘Liberal Eight’ (renamed the ‘Education Eight’) and, with Roman Catholic and independent support, Bishop Knox became chairman of the School Board and introduced religious instruction into Birmingham’s board schools. Those, however, who stood as independents or representatives of minority parties – the Fabian Society, the Social Democratic Federation, the Independent Labour Party – encouraged their supporters to ‘plump’ for them with all their votes. For example, Henry Payne, a trade unionist and building worker, who stood as an ILP candidate in the Leicester School Board election of 1897, concluded his printed election address with the advice ‘PLUMP FOR PAYNE! 15 VOTES NO CROSSES’ (Simon, 1974a, p. 153).

In 1861, in Considerations on Representative Government, John Stuart Mill had argued for multi-purpose local authorities on the grounds that people of ability would not be willing to serve on ad hoc boards. Whilst it would be dangerous to generalize about the membership of school boards overall, important members of the religious and civil establishments, including bishops and even a former governor-general of India in the shape of Lord Lawrence, first chairman of the London School Board, did seek and secure election. Newer political forces were represented by Keir Hardie, first chairman of the ILP founded in 1893, and Philip Snowden, Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Labour governments of 1924 and 1929. Female members of distinction included Mill’s own stepdaughter Helen Taylor, Lydia Becker, Emily Davies, Margaret McMillan, and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson who subsequently became the country’s first woman mayor at Aldeburgh in Suffolk in 1908. School boards and technical instruction committees also necessitated the creation of a corps of local educational administrators, many of whom continued in office after 1902 with the new educational authorities.

Overall, however, the conclusion to be drawn from this section is that in 1902 English education was characterized by local diversity. Local differences in respect of social and economic structures, religious and party politics, had produced significant local differences in educational provision. Such differences were compounded rather than reduced by the school boards. Some schools provided religious teaching, others did not. Some had large playgrounds and apparatus, pianos and other musical instruments, others were run on lines of the strictest economy. Differences were also apparent in local attitudes to further and higher education. Cities like Manchester and Birmingham, as the result of the actions of wealthy and influential citizens, and of municipal councils, were to the fore in the later nineteenth-century movement to establish civic universities.

Christianity and Class

The religious politics of nineteenth-century education took many forms, and reference has already been made to the connections which existed between political and religious groupings at both central and local levels. For example the British and Foreign School Society which favoured non-denominational teaching, and University College, London which had no religious teaching at all, had firm connections with Whig, Liberal and Radical politicians. On the Other hand the National Society and King’s College, London, promoters of Anglicanism at elementary and higher levels of education, were assured of Tory and Conservative support. Such affiliations, however, were neither absolute nor unchanging, nor was there any simple conflict, as occurred in other countries, between Church and State. Indeed in England the head of state was also head of the Anglican Church, whilst bishops, whose appointments were often made on political grounds, sat in the House of Lords.

Politicians and administrators found themselves assailed from all sides. Anglicans believed ...