Educational Policy During Twentieth Century

Author : Mary Anne Winslow
National education policy in Britain from the very beginning of its existence was
significantly determined in its rapidity and route by three elements:
attitudes to social order and equality, concerns about economic and
military strength and financial constraints. This was already apparent
in the process that led to the introduction of universal elementary
education in the late 19th century. The creation of a comprehensive
system of elementary schooling was for long held up not only by a
reluctance to foot the bill for such a large public project but also
by upper-class fears.Elementary education's eventual introduction in 1870 owed much to
concerns that British industry and military were falling behind
Prussia's due to insufficiently educated workers and soldiers.
Furthermore, with the expansion of voting rights, that is, the
increasing equality of British citizens, elementary education came to
be seen not as a threat but as a necessary instrument to instill
loyalty to the state in the lower classes. In any case, it provided
the basis upon which the national education system we know today
developed in the following 100 years.Economic, military and financial concerns all continued to play a
considerable role in educational policy. But in the twentieth century
they were overshadowed in importance by the changing definitions of
equality. The latter provided the real impetus for educational
reforms. To demonstrate the central importance of evolving attitudes
to equality in this matter, I will examine chronologically the
essential documents, books, reports and Parliamentary Acts which
shaped Britain's educational policy in the 20th century. For this
analysis I will focus on class equality since this was by far the most
important and contested issue in educational policy. Yet, it should be
noted that equality of gender and ethnicity also played a role, and an
increasingly important one as the century progressed. However, a
detailed examination of these issues is beyond the scope of this
essay.The first great educational reform of the century was the 1902
Education Act. It was very much a product of the recommendations of
the 1895 Bryce report which had found that"…it is not merely in the interest of the material prosperity and intellectual activity of the nation, but no less in that of its
happiness and its moral strength, that the extension and
reorganization of Secondary Education seem entitled to a place among
the first subjects with which social legislation ought to deal."The Act established the office of a Minister of Education and
transferred the function of the traditional school boards to the new
Local Education Authorities (LEAs). These were given powers to
establish new secondary and technical schools as well as to develop
the existing system of elementary schools. However, the Act was still
very much in the spirit of the 19th century. Secondary education was
expanded, but opportunities for lower class children continued to be
extremely limited. The system remained largely a two-tier one. The
great majority of children received elementary education only, even if
an increasing number of well-off pupils went on to secondary and
higher education.The first change in law to break with this de-facto class-segregation
in education was the so-called Free Place Regulation in 1907. It
obliged all secondary schools receiving grants from the Board of
Education to provide 25 percent of their places to elementary school
pupils who passed a qualifying examination. The Free Place Regulation
introduced some mobility between the dead end road of common
elementary school and the track that led up to secondary and
university education. However, such mobility remained the exception.
When the First World War broke out in 1914, only 56 out of 1000
elementary school pupils aged 10 to 11 went on to secondary education.
Lower class children going to university were still an abnormality
capable of causing quite a stir.The Great War spurred on educational reform in two ways. On the one
hand it reinforced fears of falling behind other nations, notably
Germany whose fighting power and industrial capacity once more
astonished Europe. Even more important, however, was the social
solidarity created by the war.
The 1918 Education Act introduced major reforms. It strengthened the
local authorities, reformed the grant system so that not less than 50
percent of the cost of education was paid for with central government
funds, it abolished all fees in elementary schools, raised the school
leaving age to 14 and eliminated all exemptions from this rule.
However, the two-tier system remained essential in place and despite
the beginning change in attitudes, the Act contained strong remnants
of the old thinking. Fisher, himself an Oxford graduate, was sure that
[The poor] do not want [education] in order that they may rise out of
their own class, always a vulgar ambition, they want it, they want it
because they know that in the treasures of the mind they can find … a
refuge from the necessary hardships of a life spent in the midst of
clanging machinery in our hideous cities of toil.
What is more, the economic difficulties of the interwar years led to a
period of educational retrenchment which showed itself in the
half-hearted implementation of the Fisher Act. Social class continued
to determine most children's education. University intake rose, but
remained the privilege of a small, largely socially selected minority.Universal secondary education certainly was a great advance over
previous policies that had excluded the majority of children from any
systematic instruction between 11 and 15. However, social problems
persisted and the dream of a society where class did not hinder
individual development remained elusive. The secondary technical
schools failed to fulfill earlier hopes placed in them and were soon
abandoned by government planners. Furthermore, it emerged that the
educational quality offered in Grammar schools was greatly superior to
that in most secondary modern schools, the latter often being little
more than a 'depository of the unsuccessful - the rag bag into which
children who have not made the grade are put'. In this context the
11+ examinations which seemed to favor children from middle- and
upper-class background became increasingly controversial. What made
matters worse and more complicated was that even those working-class
children who qualified for Grammar schools were on average less
successful and dropped out of the education system earlier than their
middle class peers.In a sense the driving force behind the comprehensive school
experiment was different from that which had motivated earlier
reforms. No longer was the definition of equality changing, thereby
pushing educational reform ahead. The aim - equality of opportunity
for all - was the same in 1964 as it had been in 1944. Thus, the
motivation behind the introduction of comprehensive schools was the
attempt to find a new structural solution to the persisting problem of
social disadvantage in education. But again it failed. Not only were
comprehensive schools clearly outperformed by the private 'public
school' sector, but in addition a hierarchy emerged within the
comprehensive school system. Because pupils were mainly recruited from
the neighborhood of the school, wealthy areas soon boasted more
successful schools than underprivileged regions such as the inner
cities. Studies in the early 1980s found a resilient pattern of low
achievement on the part of working-class pupils. Thatcher's
government did not address these problems in any fundamental way.
Educational reform in the 1980s did not make any substantial
structural changes but instead focused on educational content and the
reduction of costsIn this essay I have argued that twentieth century British educational
policy was crucially determined by perceptions of equality and the way
in which these evolved. Education, initially seen as a means to
enforce a corporatist social structure was fundamentally transformed
by a change in attitudes that culminated in the emergence of the
'equality of opportunity' ideal by the mid-twentieth century.
Educational policy in the remaining decades consisted mainly of
various attempts to realize this aim in the secondary and higher
education sector. It thus seems fair to conclude that, indeed,
changing definitions of equality lay at the heart of educational
policy during the twentieth century.Mary Anne has been writing for custom essay writing service for 5 years.You can ask her about college esays or dissertation writing service.
Keyword : educational policy, Britain, education act