Education in the Second World War

A Study in policy and administration

Peter Gosden

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134530625
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Originally published in 1976, this substantial study of wartime education, shows how the framework of the present educational system came to be established in the 1944 Education Act.

PART I

MAINTAINING THE SERVICE

1

The period of the phoney war

I Prewar preparation

The depressed condition of the education service in the years before the war was ascribed to economic difficulties. The apparently endless series of obstacles to carrying out the Hadow policy of reorganisation, the everlasting economy in school supplies and equipment, the absence of capital for school building, unemployment among teachers, the reduction in the number of recognised students in training and the closure of training colleges all served to confirm the image of education as a Cinderella. Even the Act of 1936[1] which would have raised the school-leaving age to fifteen from 1 September 1939 had included liberal provision for early leaving for ‘beneficial’ employment. From 1935 there had been a slight easing of restrictions on capital expenditure, but severe retrenchment was again enforced by the Treasury from 1938 because of the need to spend more heavily on preparations for war.

This low priority accorded to the needs of the education service in the 1930s was reflected in the attitude taken by the government to the position of the schools if war were to break out. For many years it had been accepted by the government that London and the larger cities would have to be evacuated in the event of war. The Committee of Imperial Defence held that the likely scale of aerial attacks on populous centres would require wholesale planned evacuation in order to avoid heavy casualities, panic and demoralisation. As early as 1934 a comprehensive report had been produced which included railway timetables and costings for the removal of 3,500,000 persons from London. Departmentally air raid precautions were the concern of the Home Office while responsibility for the evacuation scheme was transferred to the Ministry of Health after the Munich crisis in 1938. It is not possible in this volume to examine the planning in the pre-war years for either air raid precautions or the general evacuation scheme.[2] This book is concerned only with the impact of these plans on education, including the severe disruption of the schools to which they led and the inadequate weight attached to the needs of the education service.

The question of preparations for war first seriously arose so far as the Board of Education was concerned in the early months of 1936 as a result of the efforts which were then being made by the Home Office to encourage local authorities to prepare schemes for air raid precautions. The protection of children attending school presented special problems and local authorities were clearly entitled to expect guidance from the central authority. The current predictions, based upon the forecasts of the Air Staff, were that heavy air attacks would start as soon as war broke out, that these would extend through the day as well as the night, that casualties would be very heavy indeed, and that air raid warnings were to be regarded as alarm signals at which everyone should take cover. After discussions with the Home Office a circular was drafted at the Board. It was further discussed with representatives of local authorities and teachers on 12 February and 30 April 1937. The cabinet postponed its publication until after the ARP Act of 1937 had completed all its stages and general discussions with local authorities on wartime precautions had made further progress. The circular eventually appeared on 3 January 1938.[3]

The circular placed responsibility for any arrangements firmly on the local education authority which was to consult with the ARP authority. Since the primary consideration must be children’s safety rather than their education, it would be best to close schools in vulnerable areas during the whole period in which air raids might be expected to occur, the children then staying at home ‘to share in the general ARP arrangements’. The circular went on to suggest that the ideal solution might be to disperse children to safer districts. In less vulnerable areas ‘it may be thought reasonable to keep schools open’, apart from those to be used as first aid posts, decontamination centres and the like. Children in these areas who could do so should be sent home when an air raid warning sounded, the others being cared for at the school. It was not recommended that structural alterations should be undertaken to strengthen school buildings or parts of them to serve as air raid shelters since children would not in any case be attending school in areas where the likelihood of air raids could be held to justify the heavy expenditure and inconvenience involved. In an emergency schoolchildren would be provided with gas masks which they were to carry with them to and from school, but no practice or preparatory instruction should be undertaken in peacetime ‘which might have adverse psychological or other effects on them or the general public’. Following receipt of the circular, some authorities began to draw up schemes for an emergency, but of course no actual work on the construction of school shelters was carried out up to the time of the Munich crisis.

The worsening of the international situation produced increasing anxiety in the press and in parliament and led to pressure on the government to produce more realistic plans for the protection of the civilian population in case of war. In May 1938 a committee was appointed under the chairmanship of Sir John Anderson ‘to review the various aspects of the problem of transferring persons from areas which would be likely, in time of war, to be exposed to aerial bombardment’. The committee had completed its report by the end of July but the government — fearing for public morale — delayed publication until after the Munich crisis.[4] The report provided the blueprint of a workmanlike scheme and became the basis for the evacuation arrangements of September 1939. Briefly the committee recommended that organised facilities should be provided for the evacuation of people from some industrial areas. They would be billeted in private houses and detailed arrangements for this needed to be made so as to avoid hardship to evacuees and to their hosts. Special arrangements should be made for school children whose parents could not make their own arrangements. It was proposed that they should be moved in groups from their schools in the charge of their teachers.

The government accepted the recommendations of the report and the Ministry of Health established a division responsible for working out evacuation plans in detail. This was staffed jointly by the Ministry of Health and the Board of Education along with three officers from the London County Council.[5] It consulted with other departments and authorities in the course of its work. The Ministry of Health also appointed an advisory committee on the evacuation of schoolchildren which included representatives of local authority associations and of teachers’ organisations.[6] The scheduling of the country into three areas, evacuation, neutral and reception, was completed by the end of the year and announced in January 1939. The neutral areas were not themselves to be evacuated but were not considered to be suitable for the reception of evacuees from the large and crowded areas.[7] Quite apart from schoolchildren, the priority classes for evacuation included women with small children and babies, expectant mothers and the blind. Plans were drawn up on the basis of school children being evacuated on the first day of the operation and the other groups on the second day. The key factor in the operation was seen to be the capacity of the railways to move evacuees from the cities to the most convenient rail heads in the reception areas. Thus it was thought advisable to avoid the additional complication of trying to pair schools in evacuation and reception areas in advance. The only exceptions to this were special, secondary (i.e. grammar) and technical schools whose particular needs could probably only be met by arranging affiliation with schools of the same type and sex in the receiving areas.

Preparations in the evacuable areas included the holding of parents’ meetings in the spring of 1939 in order to explain the arrangements proposed and to encourage the necessary degree of confidence so that parents would be willing to enrol their children for evacuation. The central planning included the drafting of a speech suitable for head teachers to give at parents’ meetings. The fears which the government had for civilian morale were perhaps reflected in the number of qualifying and ‘comforting’ phrases introduced in this draft. On the first of its six pages parents were to be told that ‘the purpose of having this meeting now is not that there is any emergency now, but ...’, four lines later ‘Now like everyone in this room I hope and pray that war never will come but ...’ and a few lines further on ‘Suppose war were to come (please do not think for a minute that I believe it is going to come) ...’. The parents were then to be urged to ‘entrust your children to their teachers to take away to some safer place’, details were to be given of what the children would need to take with them, of the way notice of evacuation would be given in case of an emergency and other particulars. After answering questions, head teachers were to take steps ‘to obtain a written expression of their desires from those who wish their children to take advantage of the plan’ and to find out how many would definitely not allow their children to go.[8]

During February and March 1939 the Board of Education held meetings of representatives of education authorities which would be receiving evacuees. Separate meetings were held for authorities from different parts of the country but much the same points were made at each meeting. The Board’s spokesman made it clear that there could be no guarantee that the number of children to be sent to an area would not exceed the number of children normally resident there, although this was unlikely. While some of the receiving authorities pressed for schools to be matched up in advance this was said to be impossible. The pressure on the railways would be such that it was impracticable to guarantee that any particular school would go to one particular place; it would be a vital necessity to pack the children off by the first available train out of the cities. Each receiving area would be given a total number of evacuees to prepare for and would be told by which main line they would come, but it would be impossible to say in advance who the evacuees would be. The only exceptions to this were secondary and special schools whose limited numbers made matching possible. The education of evacuated children was to be the responsibility of the receiving authority but the cost of their education would be met by the sending authority. Such problems as an adequate supply of pens, pencils, books and other consumables were discussed and the Senior Chief Inspector pointed out that since a double shift system would often be needed, some thought should be given to ways of occupying the spare time that children would have at their disposal.[9]

The decision to divide the country into three types of area and to evacuate children from the cities along with changes in the ARP measures for the civil population since January 1938 led the Board to issue a further circular on air raid precautions in schools in April 1939.[10] It announced that all day schools throughout the country would be closed on the outbreak of war. This decision was taken in the light of the Air Staff’s persistence in its forecast that heavy bombing would occur immediately the war began and that casualties would be so numerous as to require mass burials in cardboard coffins. In evacuation areas schools were to remain closed for the whole period of the emergency, i.e. for the duration of the evacuation. In neutral areas education authorities were to reopen their schools according to the actual experience of air raids and the protection that could be provided. Shelter protection was suggested at all schools in these areas, covered trenches being the most suitable form. In reception areas education authorities were advised to reopen schools as soon as possible after the initial period of closure. The provision of shelter protection was left entirely to local discretion. In rural districts it was stated that expenditure on such protection would not be justified. The circular cleared up doubts as to where responsibility lay for aid raid precautions in the schools by placing it firmly on the local education authorities. On the other hand it did not extend the more generous Treasury grant-aid for ARP services to air raid shelter provision for the schools.[11]

In a further circular issued a month later the Board made suggestions for the education of evacuated children in reception areas.[12] Authorities in these areas were urged to make every effort to secure additional accommodation so that full-time schooling would be possible. Even so, a system of double shifts would often be necessary and evacuated children should then be taught by the teachers who came with them. Both native and evacuated children were to be as fully occupied as possible during that part of the day when school buildings were not available. They were not to be given ‘those opportunities for mischief, boredom or unhappiness which a superabundant leisure may produce’. Massed singing, dramatic work, lantern lectures and needlework for girls were all suggested as suitably informal educational activities to be undertaken at times when no school building was available. Boys might work on food production. Head teachers from evacuated areas were to continue in charge of their pupils unless circumstances prevented this. It was hoped that communal midday meals would be provided for evacuees wherever possible to relieve the burden on householders, although householders would be required to pay for these meals out of their billeting allowances of ten shillings and sixpence (52½p) weekly where only one evacuee was accommodated or eight shillings and sixpence (42½p) each where a householder had more than one. It was hoped to accommodate mentally defective and other special schoolchildren in seaside or country camps or in large country houses that might become available.[13]

The Board of Education also concerned itself with the problems involved in the evacuation of independent schools from the vulnerable areas. No single plan was possible since this group ranged from small private day schools to independent boarding schools which were members of the Headmasters’ Conference. The position of all independent schools was considered by the group which was working on the evacuation scheme at the Ministry of Health.[14] A member of this group, Lowndes, met the Executive Committee of the Public Schools’ Bursars Association on 29 December. He suggested that independent schools in neutral areas should stay where they were since the children of less well-off parents in maintained schools would not be evacuated. Public schools in reception areas might consider whether they could make an offer to affiliate or adopt a public school or grant-aided school in an evacuable area.[15]

In any case government control of accommodation, the limitations of the transport system and uncertainty of the length of prior warning of an emergency made it essential that independent schools should get in touch with the Ministry of Health about their plans. In this way they could ascertain whether the accommodation they intended to occupy was already earmarked for some other purpose. Moreover the Ministry would probably have to put them in touch with the authority responsible for the allocation to entraining stations of the school population in their area. These points were made in a note which was circulated to representatives of independent schools before a meeting on 18 January 1939. The note concluded that ‘Rights and duties will have to be shared as equally as possible by all alike, and it is for these reasons that those who are in some sense privileged are asked to give an example to their neighbours and to assist the government’s plans by cooperating with the ministry and the local authorities’.[16] T...