The Comprehensive School 1944-1970

The politics of secondary school reorganization

I G K Fenwick

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135031251
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Bildung
• Subtopic: Bildung Allgemein

Originally published in 1976, this survey of policy-making in secondary education in Britain from 1944-1977, analyzes the relationship between the politician and the educationist and the part each plays in the policy-making process, paying particular attention to the role of central and local government, the teachers' organizations and the political parties. The volume illustrates how the anticipated importance of the teachers' organizations in initiating changes in policy was ill-founded while the political parties made a valuable contribution.

Chapter One

THE government
of education

The state first became involved in the provision of education in England in 1833, when the House of Commons agreed that a sum of £20,000 should be ‘distributed in aid of subscriptions for the education of children of the poorer classes’. A committee of the Privy Council was set up in 1839 ‘to superintend the application of any sums voted by Parliament for the purpose of promoting public education’. In 1856 the government, with the agreement of the House of Commons, created the paid post of vice-president of the committee who would be responsible to the House for the proper distribution of grants. The 1870 Elementary Education Act empowered the central government actively to remedy deficiencies in educational provision through the agency of school boards. The Department of Science and Art, responsible for technical education, grew up independently during the same period; it was not until 1900 that the central government's interest in education was channelled through one department, with a political head called the president of the Board of Education.¹ This central unification was considered a ‘necessary preliminary to the constitution of any satisfactory local organisation’; this latter need was met by the Education Act of 1902.

Until 1944, the central administration was statutorily responsible only for ‘the superintendence of matters relating to education in England and Wales’ and was not usually in the charge of ministers of the first rank.² The central government's powers were severely limited, and it is only since the 1944 Education Act that there has arisen, other than among local authority associations, the fear that the powers of the central government are too great.

The most obvious change that the 1944 Education Act wrought of itself was in the officially recognized language of education. The ‘statutory system of public education shall be organised in three progressive stages to be known as primary education, secondary education and further education’³ the distinction between different educational institutions for older children had gone, and the most favourably connoted term, ‘secondary’, was to be used quite generally. But such a change of vocabulary would have had little impact on the reality of the state education system if it had not symbolized a reorganization of statutory rights and duties in education in central and local government. This reorganization of education unified the government of education under the umbrella of state control, making the issue of church versus state and public versus private education peripheral to the development of a coherent state system of education,⁴ especially state secondary education.

It would be unwise to over-emphasize the importance of statutes in the development of state-organized services, even when they are as institutionalized as education. The main burden of this chapter is to outline some of the other elements relevant to a full analysis of policymaking in education. But it would be similarly unwise to ignore statutes, especially the 1944 Education Act, when they extend, restrict and redistribute or redefine responsibilities; their effect may be to accelerate the rate of change, and to alter the direction of activity.

The statutory basis of educational government

Even within central government, presumably most closely attuned to statutory limitations, administrative discretion may foster internal recognition of desirable developments in anticipation of statutory sanctification.

The Board of Education gradually moved towards greater ‘territorialization’ of its organization, that is, to an organization based on responsibility for all education within a given geographical area. This was particularly marked after the departure of Robert Morant, the permanent secretary. After the 1918 Education Act, officers of the board up to and including the rank of principal were given responsibility for elementary, secondary and technological education in a particular area, thus simplifying liaison and superintendence of particular education authorities. Within the board, important problems would be referred by the territorial officer to the appropriate assistant secretary.⁵

The 1944 Education Act symbolically upgraded central administration of education by giving its head the rank and title of ‘minister’. Titles mean little, but it brought education into line with the current fashion.⁶ More important, the general responsibility of the new minister was radically different from that of the president of the Board of Education. The minister was to ‘promote the education of the people of England and Wales and the progressive development of institutions devoted to that purpose and to secure the effective execution, by local authorities under his control and direction, of the national policy for providing a varied and comprehensive educational service in every area’.⁷

The remit is perhaps of more political than administrative or legal significance. It attempts to tie the minister's hands in two ways: it makes it difficult for him to argue that any educational matter brought to his attention is not his responsibility, and it characterizes his positive responsibility for a ‘varied and comprehensive educational service in every area’. This section of the Act serves its purpose in providing a rationale for the minister's actions. Other sections of the Act give specific content to the minister's overall responsibility: Section 99 gives him the power to enforce the discharge of any duties placed upon local education authorities by the Act; Section 68 gives the minister power to act at his own discretion against any local education authority which, again at his own discretion, he considers to be acting unreasonably.⁸ Sweeping though this power is, in 1945 it could still be no more than a symbol of a deliberate change in relations between central and local government in education which was made clearer in the gloss given to it by Lord Selborne, speaking for the government in the House of Lords:

... we should all agree that the Minister should have some power of reversing an unwise or an unfortunate decision. My noble friends say that the Minister himself ought to be subject to the check either of Parliament or of a judge. But this is a matter of administration. . . . You could not administer this or any other Act under procedure of that kind.⁹

Even within the terms of the Act, the new minister of education was not expected to formulate his educational policy unaided; a Central Advisory Council for Education in England¹⁰ took the place of the consultative committee of the Board of Education. This earlier advisory body had not fulfilled the hopes of some educationists that it would act as a safeguard against departmental bureaucracy, but it had survived forceful arguments against any diminution of ministerial responsibility.¹¹ It had produced in 1938, under the chairmanship of Sir Will Spens, a report on secondary education which had provided in part the inspiration of the official reformers, and was reprinted in 1947 when it was thought it would be ‘of value to administrators, teachers and students at a time when the new policy is being developed in practice’. Nevertheless it was said that the consultative committee, composed completely of professional educationists, never dared to ask for as much as was in fact given in the 1944 Education Act.

The new advisory council's duties were to

advise the Minister upon such matters connected with educational theory and practice as they think fit, and upon any questions referred to them by him.¹²

A new independence contained in the phrase ‘as they think fit’ was not lost on educationists. Sir Fred Clarke, the first chairman of the advisory council, described the prospect thus:

They would learn to understand the aims and the possibilities of the scheme of national education as set out in the Act, would watch over its development and take the best evidence they could get towards plans for its future improvement. Then in the form of advice to the Minister, they would announce to the country their conclusions, and so help to create a well-informed public opinion.¹³

Butler's anticipation of the role the advisory council would play was more restrictive: it would ‘pay some attention to what is taught in the schools . . . and to all the most modern and up-to-date methods’.¹⁴

The considerable debate in the House of Commons on the constitution and terms of reference of the advisory council indicates that many of the interested members, none of them particularly naïve, saw in the council an important element in policy-making in education. They saw it as one of the main sources of information and advice for the minister, on which he would generally be expected to act. But the information and advice was not only to be that of practising educationists, and it was in anticipation of the role of link between political leaders and the public, and as the holder of a watching brief on the ‘national interest in education’,¹⁵ that the Education Act laid down that the council should include ‘persons who have had experience of the statutory system of public education’¹⁶ without restricting the membership to such professional educationists.¹⁷ The intention of Parliament had certainly been that the council should contain representatives of a wide range of interests, and Butler, as president of the board, had had difficulty in preventing the specification of particular interests to be represented.

In February 1945 the minister ruled that the newly appointed chairman of the advisory council should hold office for three years and the other members for six, one-third of them retiring every two years.¹⁸ The stage was formally set for the Central Advisory Council to play a crucial revised and expanded role in educational policy-making.

If the reorganization of central administration might mean only a change of names and an opportunity for action on a wider front in education, reorganization at local level under the 1944 Education Act interfered much more drastically with established interests. Three hundred and fifteen local education authorities were reduced to half that number, although pressure from the authorities that were to be abolished¹⁹ led to a compromise whereby some of their long-standing concern with education was preserved.

From 1 April 1945 there were 146 local education authorities, 62 county councils, 83 county boroughs and 1 joint board. It was the county authorities who benefited from the reduction in the number of local education authorities; otherwise the 1944 Education Act consolidated the functions of those local education authorities that continued to exist.²⁰

The statutory powers of each local education authority were the same, but in almost every other respect there were very great variations in the characteristics of the different authorities. The role of central government remained, in part, the minimizing of the effects of discrepancies in competence and resources on the uniform provision and development of education.²¹

The existing education committees, statutorily required under the 1921 Education Act, took over the new responsibilities with, in many cases, only minor reforms of membership and sub-committee structure. Part II of the first schedule to the Act makes it clear that the membership of an education committee must include ‘persons of experience in education and persons acquainted with the educational conditions prevailing in the area for which the committee acts’. Co-opted members were already common on many education committees, the proportion averaging just under a third in the late 1940s. The majority of the committee had to be members of the local authority.²²

Every education committee works under a scheme approved by the Ministry of Education. These schemes are embodied in the standing orders of the council of the authority, and they indicate the composition of its education committee and the delegated powers it is to exercise. Within the committee formal power may be variously distributed; it is common practice for authorities to make use of the provision of the Education Act that an education committee may authorize a subcommittee to exercise functions of the committee on its behalf.

The extent to which the council delegates powers to the education committee varies between authorities. Great ‘potential power’ lies with the council and can, on occasion, be used to control committees. Only the power to raise a loan or levy a rate is reserved to the council, but power over expenditure may be and usually is made subject to the approval of the local authority's finance committee, and considerable control is exercised. On the other hand, decisions of the education committee may have to be ratified by the council but will in practice almost invariably receive approval.

The compromise effected between the Board of Education and the Part III authorities required the county education authorities to prepare schemes of divisional administration which would give some executive and advisory powers back to single or grouped second-tier local authorities, without making them in any way independent of the education authority. In addition, some of the very large second-tier local authorities could claim to exercise some delegated powers in education. The Ministry of Education issued some guidelines in its Circular No. 5, Schemes of divisional administration, and to this extent most schemes were uniform. Lancashire's initial thirty-seven was the largest number; some divisional areas were co-terminous with second-tier local authority boundaries, some reflected educational catchment areas, and the minister exempted thirteen English counties from the necessity of operating divisional schemes. Where the divisional boundaries coincided with those of a second-tier authority, as in the case of excepted districts, the administrative services of the divisional executive could fit quite neatly into the general pattern obtaining under the particular local authority; otherwise, as in the majority of cases, the county provided the administrative staff to service what was effectively an ad hoc committee.²³

Until the 1944 Education Act, local education authorities were not compelled to appoint an education officer. Many of them, however, had done so with the permissive powers granted in the 1921 Education Act. The new Act went a stage further in restricting the freedom of local education authorities as to the means employed to discharge their executive duties in education. No chief education officer could be appointed without the approval of the minister, who was empowered to scrutinize short lists and prohibit the selection of particular candidates.²⁴ Of course in most cases there was no immediate effect, since previously appointed officers continued in their posts under the new Act.

While the terms of the Act indicated the importance attached to the choice of a chief education officer, his formal position is nevertheless very much that of a subordinate. The historical origins of the post lay in a period of much less complex administration of education. The functional parallel between the clerk to the governors of a school and the chief education officer is drawn in the white paper Principles of government in maintained secondary schools.²⁵ In this paper the central government seems as much concerned to consolidate the powers newly concentrated in a smaller number of local education authorities as to assign specific areas of responsibility to governors and managers. Preparations of estimates, appointment and dismissal of teaching and non-teaching staff, and general discretion of the conduct and curriculum of the school are all formally within the terms of reference of governors, but all with the proviso that ultimate responsibility lies with the education authority and day-to-day responsibility wit...