The Education Act, 1918

Lawrence Andrews

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138214231
• eBook ISBN: 9781315446547
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This study, first published in 1976, evaluates the important contribution of the Education Act, 1918, to the development of education in England and Wales during the twentieth century. The Act aimed to establish 'a national system of public education available for all persons capable of profiting thereby', and in so doing, laid the framework for the subsequent reforms in the field of education. This title will be of interest to students of history and education.

Chapter one
The prologue

Causes for Concern

During the changing, complex, sometimes turbulent but formative period that elapsed between the accession of King Edward VII as British sovereign on 22 January 1901, following the death of his mother, Queen Victoria, and the outbreak of the First World War on 4 August 1914, perceptive observers in Britain became increasingly concerned at the challenge to Britain's supremacy in the world by the USA, Germany and Japan. Britain still possessed, however, the largest merchant fleet in the world, and the strongest navy, and she ruled over and traded within a vast British Empire.

In addition to being disturbed by the ominous advancement in many directions of other nations, successive governments in the United Kingdom before the First World War had to cope with intense political unrest. The calm of the British Empire, for instance, was disturbed by disagreement in Ireland.

Demands by women that they should be given the vote also increased during this period. Up to this time women had been classed with infants, criminals and lunatics as unfit to receive the vote although they might own property and be taxpayers and behave in many respects like Shavian women.

But of even more concern to governments were the strikes that took place, such as the dock and railway strikes of 1911 and the miners' and Port of London strikes of 1912 (Thomson, 1965, 32). During the early years of the twentieth century the members of the lower socio-economic groups increasingly joined the unions, whose position had been considerably strengthened by the passing of the Trade Disputes Act of 1906, in order to express their impatience at the slow progress towards social reform. In their agitation, they were joined by the expanding and articulate suburban white-collar lower middle class (depicted, for example, in the novels of H.G. Wells and Arnold Bennett), who helped to run the Civil Service, the banks, the large industries, and to man the firms dealing with insurance, accountancy and commerce.

Pressures for Educational Reform

Inextricably interwoven into the demands of the lower socio-economic groups for more social reform were requests for more equality of opportunity in education as the value of acquiring a sound education was appreciated ever more keenly. Included in these demands were more opportunities for boys and girls to obtain a secondary education in the exclusive but expanding, fee-paying, county secondary grammar schools founded and maintained by councils following the passing of the 1902 Balfour Education Act. Higher academic work and more variety of curriculum in the many thousands of all-age elementary schools which the majority of the school population attended from the ages of 5 to about 13 or 14 were other requests. The Cockerton judgment of 1900 had limited this (Barnard, 1961, 208-9).

These elementary schools, furthermore, were either provided schools, which meant, under the terms of the 1902 Education Act, that they came under the jurisdiction of the local education authority and in which religious instruction unconnected with the formulary and beliefs of any particular denomination was taught, or non-provided, which meant that they were maintained by the churches. These included the Church of England, Roman Catholic and Nonconformist churches. In the non-provided, or voluntary, schools, religious education of the particular Church was given. This arrangement of provided and confessional schools was known as the Dual System.

A highly competitive, free-place system was introduced in 1907 under Article 20 of the Regulations for Secondary Schools to enable children at the age of 11 to transfer from the elementary school to the grammar school but the numbers who did so were small and did not satisfy demands for more children to receive a secondary education.

There were, during the period before the First World War, movements in state education which attempted to meet the accusations that educational provision did not meet the requirements of the age. Thus Robert Morant's 'Elementary School Code' of 1904 pointed the way to a more enlightened approach to elementary school teaching. He was Permanent Secretary to the Board of Education at this time and had taken an active part in the passing of the 1902 Education Act. His regulations for secondary schools of the same year are considered less successful because it is estimated that they were influenced too much by the curricula and approach to teaching of the endowed grammar schools and independent public schools. To meet the requests for schools with a vocational bias which would enable boys and girls to enter industry and commerce at about the age of 16, central schools appeared from 1911, as did, from 1913, schools variously known as junior technical schools, technical high schools or trade schools (Lawson and Silver, 1973, 376). More attention was directed, besides, to the teaching of science in schools in order to produce more scientists for the country.

A movement in education before the First World War which influenced state education, moreover, was composed of schools now often referred to as progressive schools, such as Bedales, Abbotsholme and Homer Lane's "Little Commonwealth'. This movement sought ways of developing a new freedom for children (Stewart, 1972, part three).

The public schools, as well, with their emphasis on the house system, prefect system, team games and the public school spirit, still considerably influenced secondary education. As ideas of social equality, however, unfolded during the-twentieth century, criticism increased of the public schools for providing an education for a privileged minority. As, too, the state system of education grew after the passing of the 1902 Education Act it was not only felt that the Board of Education should have some knowledge of the number of schools in the independent sector of education but that it should be able to ensure that the education in the private sector did not fall markedly below that of the maintained schools of the local education authorities.

Collectivism

To meet the demands for social reform and to ensure that Britain was not falling behind other countries in so many aspects, the foremost reaction of successive Liberal governments, with large majorities in the House of Commons following the landslide victory in the 1906 General Election, was to hasten the movement towards collectivism. By this was meant more intervention by the state in the lives of the population. The principles of laissez-faire, such as free trade, free currency and free enterprise were still accepted by many politicians, industrialists and civil servants but it was increasingly accepted that a measure of collectivism was necessary in order to safeguard certain vital interests of the nation. Thus, for example, when Herbert Henry Asquith, the Liberal MP for East Fife, became Prime Minister in April 1908, the Old Age Pensions Act was passed in the same year. Soon after, in 1911, the National Health Insurance Act of Lloyd George, the Liberal and Welsh Nationalist MP for Carnavon, and Chancellor of the Exchequer, attempted to solve the problem of ill-health and unemployment.

But it was now also accepted that it was not only necessary to protect and improve the lives of men and women of all ages but that the health of the children in all its aspects had to be improved, developed and protected as well. It was pointed out, too, that it was of limited use building new elementary schools, and improving teaching, when many of the children who attended were unable to benefit because of their inadequate physical health. Since the Second Boer War (1899-1902), when recruitment for the British forces had revealed the low physical standard of many of the men examined, the nation had become increasingly concerned at the problem of physical deterioration.

In order to coinbat malnutrition and ill-health the government provided school meals (but not yet school milk) and introduced medical inspection although not providing treatment. Under the Education (Provision of Meals) Act, 1906, local education authorities were empowered to form school canteen committees which were to provide, by levying a rate not exceeding a ½d in the £, suitable meals at a cheap rate for those children who were unable by reason of lack of food to take full advantage of the education provided (Andrews, 1972, 70-5).

The state system of school medical inspection began in this country as a result of the Education (Administrative Provisions) Act, 1907, which imposed on all local education authorities the duty of providing for the medical inspection of children, immediately before, or at the time of, or as soon as possible after, admission to school, and on such other occasions as the Board of Education might direct.

Authorities were also empowered to establish vacation schools arid classes, play centres, or other means of recreation during the holidays, or at other times, either in the school itself, or elsewhere, for example, in the country. By 1915, all local education authorities had appointed a school medical staff, although these staffs were to be depleted during the First World War (ME, 1950, VI) .

The 1912 Report of the Departmental Committee appointed to inquire into "Certain Questions in Connection with the Playgrounds of Public Elementary Schools' was, however, a sober document revealing not only the very limited amount of playing space available in the elementary schools but also what local authorities and teachers had done, and were doing, on their own initiative, to organise games for children. Co-operation between education and parks committees was therefore encouraged. By the time of the First World War, Birmingham and Manchester, for example, were being quoted by the Board of Education in the Report of the Chief Medical Officer for 1915 as places where there had been successful co-operation between education and parks committees to provide recreational facilities for young people.

The needs of the mentally handicapped were also considered during this period and a Mental Deficiency Act was passed in 1913. In 1908, a Children's Charter set up special Children's Courts for children who had committed crimes. In 1914, under the Education (Provision of Meals) Act, the limit of a ½d rate stipulated by the 1906 Act was removed. The grant providing for school meals was also increased.

The collectivist movement was not viewed favourably by all. Some feared it, seeing it as a symbol of the encroaching, absolute, sovereign power of the 'leviathan' of the welfare state. Thus A.V. Dicey, the eminent jurist, did not support the 1906 Education (Provision of Meals) Act, under which school meals could be provided for necessitous children, because he believed that parents were being deprived of their responsibility for the care of their children by intervention of the central government. In his 'Law and Public Opinion in England' (1914, passim), Dicey did not deny that a starving boy might find it difficult to learn the rules of arithmetic but it did not necessarily follow for him that a local authority should provide every hungry child at school with a meal. Because of this, Dicey submitted that parents should be disenfranchised if they could not pay for the meals of their children. He therefore placed the 1906 Meals Act in the same category as the Old Age Pensions Act, 1908, the National Insurance Act, 1911, the Trade Disputes Act, 1906, the Trade Union Act, 1913, the Acts fixing a minimum rate of wages, the Mental Deficiency Act, 1913, the Coal Mines Regulation Act, 1908, and the Finance (1909-10) Act, 1910, as evidence of the adverse progress of statism in the years preceding the First World War.

Supporters of Dicey's point of view, moreover, maintained that the welfare work that was needed in the nation could be carried out by voluntary bodies such as the Charity Organisation Society, and the application of the Poor Law, as it had been done up until then.

The Employment of Children and Raising the School-Leaving Age

A major obstacle to the creation of an education system in this country and an impediment in the development of a fit nation had been the employment of children outside school hours. But through the Employment of Children Act, 1903, an attempt had been made to regulate some of the anomalies in the employment of children. The Education (Administrative Provisions) Act, 1907, and the Education (Scotland) Act, 1908, also provided the local authorities in Great Britain with officers who could carry out the provisions of the 1903 Employment Act. The 1910 Choice of Employment Act, moreover, had built upon the foundations laid by the 1903 Act, and had enabled local authorities to make arrangements, subject to the approval of the Board of Education, to give assistance to boys and girls under 17 in their choice of suitable employment. It was hoped in this way to protect more the educational interests of children who left the elementary schools and to lessen the number of those who entered 'blind alley' employment. By the time of the First World War, there were still, however, approximately 300,000 children in England and Wales aged under 14 employed in factories, mines and agriculture and in miscellaneous street trading occupations, such as newspaper, ice cream, flower and match selling, organ grinding and railway touting (Keeling, 1914, passim).

Another hindrance to the creation of a satisfactory education system in this country and a check on national progress had been the adverse effects of the half-time system of employment on both children and schools. During the early years of the twentieth century, therefore, there was increasing pressure for this system to be abolished. One voluntary lobby which formed to do this was the Half-Time Council with its headquarters at Rochdale in Lancashire.

By the time of the First World War, the age at which exemption from attending school might still be obtained was 12, although some by-laws of local education authorities allowed this at 11 and 13. Under what was considered the proper half-time system of employment the child attended, say, the mill for half a day and the school for the other half, with the times spent in these places being reversed the following week. There were, however, variations of this arrangement. The half-time system, moreover, was mainly to be found in Lancashire, where children were chiefly employed in the cotton mills, in Yorkshire, where the staple industry was worsted spinning and weaving, in Cheshire and in agricultural districts. By 1914-15, the Board of Education estimated that there were 69,555 half-timers in England and Wales, although difficulty was found in being accurate about these figures (RBE, 1917-18, 13).

But linked to the concern which was expressed about the unfavourable influence of the half-time system of employment on school children, was that about the low and irregular school-leaving age of many of them, when large numbers left at 13 and some earlier. Because of this, there was an increasing desire to raise to 14 the school-leaving age for all children.

Concern for the Very Young Children and the Youthful School-Leaver

As part of the policy of improving the standard of education in the country, enquiries were also carried out during the years before the First World War into the sort of guidance which was provided for very young children, for those who were about to leave school, and for the young wage-earner. Thus, in 1905, women inspectors of the Board of Education reported on children under 5 attending elementary schools and in 1908 a Consultative Committee on the school attendance of children below the age of 5. The over-view expressed was that the physical and mental development of very young children was being impeded by the education that they were receiving. In 1911, furthermore, the McMillan sisters pointed the way to a more progressive interpretation of nursery education with the foundation of their open-air nursery school at Deptford, London.

The problems facing the young school-leaver and the young employee, which had increasingly occupied the attention of the countries in Western Europe and of the USA as the twentieth century progressed, the consequences to the community of neglecting the embryo citizen and worker during what had come to be called 'the critical years of adolescence', were analysed by the 19o9 Report of the Consultative Committee on Attendance, Compulsory or Otherwise, at Continuation Schools. One recommendation of the Committee was that further education should be available for all those young people up to the age of 17 who needed it but it was left to the local education authorities of counties and county boroughs to provide suitable day continuation classes. Attendance at continuation schools was therefore left as a matter of local option rather than being made universally compulsory.

An attempt, however, to abolish half-time attendance at school, to provide for the local education authority raising the school-leaving age to 14 or 15, or alternatively, or concurrently, requiring attendance at continuation classes after leaving school for not more than 150 hours a year up to an age not higher than 16, was made in Walter Runciman's Bill of early 1911 (PP, Liberal Party, 1913). Under this Bill it would have been left open to the authority to arrange compulsory continuation classes either during or after working hours with no limitation being imposed upon the hours of employment of a child who commenced attending continuation classes. The Bill was thus an indication that Liberal thinking was moving towards the conception of day continuation education. Unfortunately, it was withdrawn without discussion because of pressure of time and was not revived because burning questions of the day such as unemployment and health insurance, which have been referred to, were given priority.

Local Government

The difference of opinion as to whether there should be more state intervention or less was inevitably reflected in disputes as to how local affairs should be managed. Schools of thought swayed by the movement towards collectivism had argued that there should be more centralization but others had leaned more towards some form of devolution. Arguing that in industry and commerce there had been a linking together of forces which had led to increased efficiency and economy, the former maintained that such local services as water, transport and police had best served the community when they had been organized over large areas and under one control. The supporters of devolution had stressed that with the increasing demands of administration, and the growing complexities of modern life there was a need for a delegation of responsibility. They were also deeply suspicious of any movement which might interfere with a thriving local public spirit and cherished traditions of self-government. Thus, the borough was feared which m...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Original Title
• Original Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• 1 The prologue
• 2 The Education Bill, 1917
• 3 New lamps for old—the Education Act, 1918
• 4 The aftermath
• 5 An assessment of the Education Act, 1918
• Appendices
• Suggestions for further reading
• Bibliography