The Educational System Of England And Wales And Its Recent History

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THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM OF
ENGLAND AND WALES

LONDON
Cambridge University Press

FETTER LANE

NEW YORK TORONTO
BOMBAY ' CALCUTTA " MADRAS

Macmillan

TOKYO

Maruzen Company Ltd

All rights reserved

THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM OF

ENGLAND AND WALES AND

ITS RECENT HISTORY

by
HERBERT WARD, C.B.E.

Honorary Lecturer in Education, Kings College, London;

and formerly Chief Inspector for the Training

of Teacher^ Board of Education

CAMBRIDGE

AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
1935

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN

PREFACE

This book was originally planned by Professor J. Dover
Wilson, of King's College, London, who kindly placed his
notes at my disposal. He contributed the greater part of
the first chapter and almost all the second chapter. But
for the book as a whole I am entirely responsible.

H. W.

CONTENTS

Introduction page i

Chap. I. Education in England and abroad 3

II. The Administration of Education:

A. The Local Education Authorities 23

III. The Administration of Education:

B. The Board of Education 38

IV. The Administration of Education:

C. Finance 56

V. The Elementary School 68

VI. Post-Primary Education 92

VII. The Secondary School 107

VIII. Further Education 131

IX. Further Education: Adult Education 144

X. The Universities 161

XI. Education outside the State System 179 '

XII. The Teaching Body 192

XIII. Health and Welfare 215

XIV. Conclusion 232
Notes 243
Index 254

THE

EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM

OF ENGLAND & WALES AND ITS

RECENT HISTORY

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this book is twofold, to give as clear a de-
scription as possible of the national system of education in
England and Wales and to indicate the main events in the
growth of the system during the present century. The words

* national system ' occur for the first time officially in the Act
of 1918, where it is declared to be the duty of the council of
every county and county borough to contribute to 'the estab-
lishment of a national system of public education available
for all persons capable of profiting thereby*. They mark
the earliest open recognition by Parliament that the public
service of education is a whole with a definite purpose before
it. But the 'educational system 5 in England and Wales may
fairly be treated as covering more than education publicly
provided, as including agencies and institutions which are not

* public ' in the sense of the Act. It may also fairly be called a
national system. System does not necessarily imply a clock-
work organisation: national does not .mean complete state
control or direction from a centre. The phrase does imply
coherence, and an organisation which, if not rigid, is yet with-
out unacknowledged gaps: it connotes the co-operation of
various forces, not the rivalry of contending powers, with the
general public acceptance of ideals and no vital difference
between them. This book will assume that, in spite of ad-
mitted imperfections, there is an educational system in Eng-
land and Wales and that it may properly be called national.

The recent history under survey in this book is that of the
last thirty-five or forty years. The growth of English education

2 INTRODUCTION

during the nineteenth century is adequately treated in large
treatises which cover either the whole period or some parti-
cular aspect of education. It will occasionally be necessary to
refer in the following chapters to outstanding occurrences in
the last century, especially to certain Acts and certain Com-
missions, but only so far as they may throw light upon the
history of the present state of education. The end of the
nineteenth century, if we do not try to define it too accurately,
marks the close of one period in English education and the
opening of another. It was only then that a national system
of public education was really founded, when by the Board
of Education Act of 1899 a Central Authority was established
and by the Balfour Act of 1902 all three types of eduqation,
elementary, secondary and technical, were brought within the
scope of both the Central Authority and Local Authorities.
These two Acts created the framework of a public system,
with the development and the present state of which we shall
be concerned. It will be necessary to describe the reactions
of the public system upon what remained of the system or want
of a system that preceded it, and to show how alongside
public education state education as it is sometimes called
education apart from the state continues and functions in full
vigour. For this union of education directed by private effort
and education directed by public authorities is one of the
great characteristics of the period.

CHAPTER I
EDUCATION IN ENGLAND AND ABROAD

Education in England is at once very old and very young,
There are schools in this country that claim foundation before
the days of King Alfred. On the other hand, the vast majorit}
of pupils and students now receiving instruction receive it IE
schools and colleges of nineteenth- or twentieth-centur)
origin. This combination of antiquity with recent growth
helps to account for the irregular character of English educa-
tion. It is the public part of education which is new; the
older and more imposing institutions are independent of the
state, though not as we shall see entirely beyond its purview,
The universities of Oxford and Cambridge are as old as
Parliament itself. Winchester was founded in 1382, Eton in
1440, Shrewsbury in 1552, Westminster in 1560, Merchanl
Taylors' in 1561, Rugby in 1567, Harrow in 1571, and so on,
On the other side, we have the multitude of elementary
schools, none of any great age, embracing all but a small pro-
portion of the child population and leading on to our modem
municipal secondary schools and our modern technical in-
stitutes and universities of various kinds. The result is a
curious structure, very puzzling to foreign observers. They
find it difficult to realise, for example, that the English central
department of education, which we caU the Board of Educa-
tion, is a mere mushroom in comparison with the ancient
institutions just mentioned, and that it has no control what-
ever over them though the statesmen and officials who direct
its destinies have generally themselves been educated within
their walls.

1-2.

4 EDUCATION IN ENGLAND AND ABROAD

Yet though the 'public schools' and the older English
universities lie outside the state system, that system is built
on to them just as modem shops, factories, villas, cinemas and
banks in many of our older cities nestle about some ancient
castle or cathedral. And the connection is not merely chrono-
logical or geographical, it is spiritual also. New ideas freely
penetrate into our Public Schools from without in spite of
what their critics say, while every elementary school in the
country is different from what it would otherwise have been
had not Thomas Arnold gone to Rugby in 1828. The presence
of these ancient institutions too helps us to realise that
education is not the invention of the nineteenth or even the
twentieth century. The three grades, university, secondary,
elementary, were all present in England in the Middle Ages,
nor are the educational ideas of our time as new as some of us
are apt to imagine. What ts new in the modern world is the
existence of state systems of education based upon compul-
sory attendance.

Before the nineteenth century, education was for those who
liked that sort of thing, or for those who needed it for pro-
fessional purposes priests, doctors, lawyers, administrators.
To-day, education is a universal need and, what is more, it is
claiming a larger and larger share of the life of the individual
citizen. Compulsory education for children did not become
the law of the land until 1880 and complete attendance was
then made compulsory only up to ten years of age. By the
Act of 1918 the age of compulsion was raised to fourteen,
and that Act even foreshadowed part-time compulsory
education up to eighteen, while since the publication of the
First Hadow Report in 1926 we have all begun to be recon-
ciled to the prospect of whole-time education up to fifteen,
though we have not yet been able to afford it. Furthermore,
there is much talk to-day about adult education, an expression
which would have sounded strangely in the ears of our fore-

EDUCATION IN ENGLAND AND ABROAD 5

fathers. The truth Is man is coming to see that education,
rightly interpreted, is a life-long process.

Why should he be coining to see this just now? and for
what reason do modern civilised states impose education upon
their whole populations? These are not idle questions, and it
is well to consider them a little at the opening of a book, the
purpose of which is to describe education in modem England.

It is always dangerous to give simple answers to complex
historical questions, but we may perhaps distinguish two
main causes for the rise of compulsory education in modern
times. The first, in a word, is that tremendous change in
man's whole habit of life and social outlook which we call the
Industrial Revolution. The industrial civilisation of to-day
is so highly organised and at the same time so specialised that
an individual left to cope with it without a special preparation
in other words a special schooling would find life a very
difficult matter. One has only to think for a moment how
essential the ability to read is to existence in a modern city.
A complete illiterate would not easily extricate himself from
our underground railway system if he once got sucked into
it ! In short, education is required for all because of the ever-
widening gap between child-life and adult-life, a gap which
widens as civilisation becomes increasingly complex. It is
more difficult to grow up than ever before.

And the other root cause of compulsory state educational
systems is the rise of strongly marked and often mutually
hostile social groups within the civilised community. We shall
enlarge upon this point a little later, but first of all let us note
a fact that lies behind both causes. One and not the least
important function of education is to act as a transmitter of
social tradition and culture. Without education of some kind
no society could live. Even the most primitive tribe has its
initiation ceremonies, and the further civilisation advances
the greater the burden of tradition and knowledge that must

6 EDUCATION IN ENGLAND AND ABROAD

be transmitted ; until in our own day, as has just been said,
we are beginning to realise that the initiation process is a
lifelong one. We can now see why the growth of strongly
marked social groups within the bosom of civilisation has
tended to stress the importance of education. In the Middle
Ages, Europe was a single community, a Christendom, deeply
conscious of its unity and of its difference from the pagan
world around it, but divided within itself rather by hori-
zontal than by vertical distinctions ; it was grades in the feudal
system that mattered, not national frontiers. There was much
strife and battle, but between the lion and the unicorn
fighting for the crown, rather than between peoples of different
cultures. How different is the world of our time, a world of
nationalities, of religious societies and economic communities,
all highly self-conscious and often hostile one to another !

It was the break up of Christendom in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries that provided the first great impetus to
popular education. Protestant churches saw that only by
securing the transmission of their doctrine through education
could they survive. Moreover, protestantism depended upon
the worship of a book, the book or The Bible, and this meant
that reading acquired an importance greater than it had ever
possessed previously. There are parts of Europe, Lutheran in
denomination, where the people have been able to read for
centuries, for the simple reason that no one could be con-
firmed unless he could read to a pastor and that no one could
be married unless he had been confirmed. Reading was
necessary to salvation in Calvinist and Lutheran countries.
This is one reason why Scotland, Germany, Scandinavia and
Switzerland have been so progressive in educational matters.
It also helps us to understand the enthusiasm for education
in the United States of America.

Catholic countries were at first less eager to adopt popular
education, since the Catholic church does not encourage the

EDUCATION IN ENGLAND AND ABROAD 7

uninstracted judgment of the Individual ; but the reformation
brought awakening here also. It took the form of a counter-
reformation, led by the Jesuits, the militant wing of the church,
the most self-conscious part of the catholic society, who
realised that education was essential to the preservation of the
faith against the ' heresies * of protestants and others, and who
became the great educators of catholic Europe and extended
their activities to the new world and to Asia.

England lies between these two extremes. c The English *,
says Professor Trevelyan in his History of England, * though
in some ways the most religious people in Europe have never
been clerically minded they liked neither priest nor pres-
byter. 5 Ecclesiastically the least self-conscious society in
Europe, we have attached less importance to doctrinal
education than most other peoples, and this is one reason
why we have been slower than some other countries in
acquiring a national system.

The influence of religious denominations and religious
creeds in the field of education is very far from being ex-
hausted. It formed the main obstacle to the passing of the
Education Bill through the House of Commons in 1931 ; it
gave rise to the famous Tennessee case which proscribed the
teaching of modern biological notions in certain parts of
America; it has caused serious difficulties between the Papacy
and the Fascist regime in Italy. Yet everywhere for some
time past the religious denominations have been faced with a
powerful rival in their struggle for the soul of the child and
the gateway to the future. That rival is the state. The out-
standing fact of modern history is the rise of great competitive
national states, highly self-conscious and therefore almost
nervously anxious to preserve their national cultures. The
most striking examples are the two great communities which
through the nineteenth century faced each other across the
Rhine, each organised and centralised for war, and therefore

8 EDUCATION IN ENGLAND AND ABROAD

each possessing an educational system which (i) has con-
trolled and manufactured opinion, (ii) was designed to pro-
duce an efficient officer and official class, and (iii) was itself
immediately responsible to the central authority. For, it
should be noticed, the intensity of life within the social group
determines not only the amount of education it possesses but
also the character of the educational administration. Is
modern education then a by-product of religious and political
animosities, the cynic may ask? It certainly seems to be so in
part, and organisation for war has probably contributed more
than any other single factor in modern history to the foun-
dation and development of national systems of education.
But this does not mean that war is necessary to education.
All it signifies is that education flourishes best in highly self-
conscious societies and that up to the present European
national states have been most self-conscious and most united
in time of war. The abolition of war will not get rid of rivalry
between nations; and we cannot doubt that if the world
succeeds in substituting for the rivalry of armed forces a
rivalry in the things of the spirit, such a rivalry will stimulate
education far more than political animosities have been able
to do in the past. The example of the United States of
America, which we shall presently consider, shows, moreover,
that an ardent national consciousness can express itself
through a system of popular education without a thought of
animosity or rivalry with other nations. Furthermore, it is
interesting to observe that, where war plays its part, national
defeat has often proved as fruitful for education as national
victory, and that while the one tends to stimulate primary
education, the other has usually been followed by advances
in higher education. A few words about the educational
systems of France, Germany and the United States will serve
both to illustrate the foregoing remarks and as an introduction
to the consideration of our own system which follows.

EDUCATION IN ENGLAND AND ABROAD 9

ii

The origin of the educational system of modem France was a
military one. Napoleon founded it in 1808, since he realised
that in education lay his only hope of perpetuating the empire
he was setting up. Napoleon built wiser than he knew; his
system has survived all the political changes since his time
and is to-day one of the greatest and most admirable educa-
tional systems in the world. But Napoleon, whose main
object was to procure officers for his army and administrators
for his new state, cared for little except university and
secondary education ; and French education is still strongest
in these spheres. It was not indeed until after 1870, when
France was beaten at Sedan by the better educated army of
the Prussians, that she came to realise the necessity for
universal primary education, which she made free in 1881
and compulsory in 1882. The lesson Prussia taught her was
a twofold one: first, that an educated rank and file was an
immense asset in a modem conscript army, and second, that
in a time of grave national peril an ignorant and illiterate
population might be both burdensome and dangerous. Prussia
was the first modern state to make popular education an
instrument of national policy, and her sudden dramatic rise
to power was a great advertisement for education, which did
not fail to attract the attention of other states besides France.
The Education Act of 1870 in England actually preceded the
Franco-Prussian War, but the defeat of Austria by Prussia in
1866 had warned British statesmen what to expect and W. E.
Forster's speech introducing the bill was clearly influenced
by the events in Europe. At a later date Japan and other
countries have likewise followed Prussia's lead in education.
The downfall of the Second Empire left France a demo-
cratic republic but a military one ; she is still a military de-
mocracy, and will remain military until some permanent

10 EDUCATION IN ENGLAND AND ABROAD

terms of peace can be decided with her neighbour. Her
educational system reflects this fundamental national necessity
both in its structure and its spirit. It is controlled from top to
bottom by a bureaucratic machine, very efficient but highly
centralised and, though ultimately answerable to the legis-
lature through the Minister of Public Instruction, really in-
dependent of it. The French secondary schools, again, lycees
or colleges as they are called, would seem to most English
boys like barracks inspired by military ideals and controlled
by a military discipline. There is nothing corresponding with
the self-government invented by Arnold and now found in
practically every English school of whatever grade, though on
the side of instruction French education can probably claim
to be our superior. Finally, the influence of Napoleon and
the perpetual menace of war is shown in the absence of any
broad ladder from the primary to the secondary school, a
remarkable feature in a country so democratically minded as
France. There is, of course, no system of schools closed to
all but a special social caste, like our so called * public schools ',
but though figures are hard to come by, it is doubtful whether
it is anything like so easy for a boy with brains to climb from
the primary school to the university in France as it is in
England.

The Prussian educational system has a history at once
similar and significantly different from that of France. Its
origin was likewise war and the needs of war. Frederick the
Great laid its foundations and Wilhelm von Humboldt was
its architect. But unlike that of Napoleon, von Humboldt's
system was devised not to consolidate victory, but to preserve
a nation in the hour of defeat. The result was that, though
university and secondary education were very far from being
neglected, the real emphasis was placed upon the schools of
the people. The battle of Jena, 1806, which laid Prussia at the
feet of imperial France, was the stimulus, and out of that

EDUCATION IN ENGLAND AND ABROAD II

valley of humiliation came the Prussian primary schools which
under the inspiration of Pestalozzi became the wonder and
model of Europe. And as we have seen it was to these schools
in the main that the triumph of Prussia a generation later was
due. Nevertheless, the failure of the democratic revolutions
of 1848 and the very successes of 1866 and 1870 shifted the
emphasis in education in a significant fashion. The new
empire, like all military empires, tended to develop the
secondary and university sides at the expense of the primary ;
and though the Prussian popular school still remained a most
efficient instrument of instruction, it lost towards the end of
the nineteenth century much of its freedom and elasticity.
Furthermore, as in France, the administration of education
was highly centralised, and the Minister of Public Worship
and Education held office as a crown appointment. Thus
Prussian education up to the War was largely a state machine
for the creation of an army, a civil service and public opinion,
while the passage from the elementary school into the sphere
of higher education was even more restricted than it was in
France. Since 1918, of course, there has been a complete
change. Defeat once again proved the mother of educational
progress, the outstanding token of which was the law com-
pelling attendance at the state primary schools from the
children of all parents, whatever their wealth or their rank.
The effects of the new regime under Herr Hitler have not
yet completely revealed themselves.

It is not difficult to see why disaster or a threat of it should
thus work in favour of popular education. At such times a
nation is most keenly conscious of its solidarity; class barriers
become of no importance; distinctions of wealth and rank
appear insignificant; all citizens are felt to be equal when all
are passionately united in an equality of sacrifice and en-
deavour. Even in our own country we have tasted this spirit.
The Education Act of 1902 was not unrelated to the humilia-

12 EDUCATION IN ENGLAND AND ABROAD

tion we received in the Boer War; and the Act of 1918 was
passed through the House of Commons in those months of
the last year of the Great War in retrospect months of
spiritual exultation when everyone was acutely conscious
that our civilisation was fighting in the last ditch and that the
enemy might at any moment break through the Western
Front.

To turn from Europe to America is like turning from a
region of active volcanic action to a smiling pastoral plain ;
and the educational system of the United States symbolises
the difference. In a country without enemies, without
frontiers that matter, a country pursuing its undisturbed
development with the Atlantic rolling between it and Euro-
pean problems, we find a system of education more de-
centralised and more democratic than any other in the world.
There is an extraordinary variety of type and standard as
between different states ; there is an excessive localisation in
administration; and in the schools there is complete equality
of opportunity.

The puritan tradition had a good deal to do with the origin
of education in America and, as we have seen, the puritan
tradition laid great emphasis on the necessity of schooling.
On the other hand the variety of colonial settlements pro-
duced naturally a great variety of institutions, and these
differed from colony to colony according to the traditions and
religious outlook of the colonists. Thus there was an initial
incentive towards difference, and the subsequent development
of the country has emphasised this. The history of the United
States has been called the history of the moving frontier, and
as the new pioneer communities moved across the great plain
they had to live a practically independent existence and to
develop their own schools. Since the beginning of the
twentieth century, however, the continent being now colonised
from east to west, the various state administrations have

EDUCATION IN ENGLAND AND ABROAD 13

every year gained more and more control over the districts,
though as yet there Is no national control of education.

On the other hand, both elementary and secondary educa-
tion are completely free and open to all. Elementary education
is compulsory up to fourteen in most states, while the children
of practically all American citizens attend the elementary
school, which is therefore not an institution for a particular
class of people as it has been in England. Secondary education
is free to all who wish to attend. There is, in fact, not a ladder
of education, but a corridor. The elementary school and
secondary school are end-on to each other. The common
primary school attended by all and the easy access into the
secondary school are the two great distinguishing features of
the American system. Before the War, in Germany about
one in every 10,000 scholars passed from the elementary to
the secondary school; at the same period 2800 in 10,000 did
so in the United States. Yet the balance is not all on one
*side. It is well recognised and admitted by American
^observers themselves, that the general standard of higher
education in America is considerably below that in the great
European states. There are several reasons for this ; but three,
i which are probably the chief ones, may be singled out for
mention. In the first place it is difficult to maintain a high
standard in educational institutions which are open to all of
^whatever intellectual capacity; and the curious system of
Selective studies which allows the parents of the pupil to go
some way towards determining the curriculum he follows
does not make things easier. In the second place, in the
.absence of military conditions and international rivalry, the
United States has never been subject to the necessity of
^building up and maintaining a high standard of intellectual
'equipment for the staffing of an army, a navy and a bureau-
? cracy. And thirdly, America lacks tradition and a system of
social grades, both of which tend to emphasise the importance

14 EDUCATION IN ENGLAND AND ABROAD

of higher education for the select few. A well-known English
Director of Education after a visit to the United States some-
time ago put the difference between their system and ours
in the following words: 'The American system is on a
popular basis, its ideal is to give as much education as possible
to the people as a whole. The English plan is to give an in-
dispensable minimum of education to everyone : beyond that
to select carefully a comparatively small number (not by any
means all) likely to repay education in the full sense, and to
put it within their power by removing financial obstacles J .

The outstanding fact about education in America is that it
is believed in. Indeed, it may almost be called a religion with
the American people, and it would be difficult to find any
country in the world which places a higher value on it. Why
is this, it may be asked, when war and nationalism which
have played such a large part in modern educational develop-
ments in Europe are almost entirely absent across the
Atlantic? The answer is that the United States has a problem
to deal with which forces its citizens to lay an even greater
emphasis upon the transmission of culture than the peoples of
Europe. Not only is it a new country without traditions of
any kind, and therefore obliged to create them, it is also the
melting pot of Europe. It has the almost impossible problem
of digesting immigrants from all parts of the world and
making them into American citizens. The educational system
of America is the national stomach which performs this
digestive process. And its boast is that it can do so within a
single generation.

iii

The foregoing brief historical survey of the educational
systems of France, Germany and the United States of
America reveals two divergent types or tendencies, repre-
senting as it were the poles of educational structure, to one or

EDUCATION IN ENGLAND AND ABROAD 15

other of which education in most modern civilised states, not
excluding those of Fascist Italy and Bolshevist Russia, will be
found to conform more or less closely. These types are (i) a
centralised system, rigid in structure, which though tending
towards a high condition of efficiency and high standards of
instruction, is also open to the charge of inelasticity, together
with lack of initiative, experiment and variety, and which Is
further liable to accentuate social inequality, however de-
mocratic the state may be from the political standpoint ; and
(ii) a decentralised system, very loose in structure, full of
variety and life, making for social fluidity and equality of
opportunity, and yet suffering from excessive provincialism
and lack of a common standard.

To which of these categories does education in our own
country belong? If we could confine our attention to the
public system, that is to say, to educational institutions pro-
vided or supervised by the state, the answer would be that
education in England appears to strike a mean between the
foreign extremes. Our state education is * provided through
and by local authorities ', and so is able to secure diversity,
experiment and even an element of competition. Yet it is
also supervised and to some extent controlled by the central
authority, which means that inefficiency is checked and lag-
gard authorities are kept up to the mark. This does not of
course imply that the English state system is perfect or even
that it is better than the other systems we have been con-
sidering, from each of which we have much to learn. We may
indeed claim that our educational administration is one of the
best in the world; but when we compare it with adminis-
trative systems abroad, we are at once struck with one re-
markable feature its modernity. Educational administration
in England is extraordinarily young, barely thirty years old in
fact! A central department, of a kind, has existed since 1833 5
the Act of 1870 established local authorities, also of a kind,

l6 EDUCATION IN ENGLAND AND ABROAD

known as School Boards ; it was not however until parliament
passed the Board of Education Act of 1899 and the Education
Act of 1902 that this country possessed anything like a com-
prehensive machine, central and local, for the purpose of
public education.

Even so, as we have seen, the most important insti-
tutions of higher education remain outside the sphere of
state action. Viewed therefore as a whole, education in Eng-
land appears to be something unique in the modern world,
although not without tendencies which seem to point it along
the path that other nations have followed. Its salient pecu-
liarity, a peculiarity which distinguishes it sharply from
education elsewhere, is the part that private enterprise and
voluntary association have played in its development, and
still play. In almost every department the endeavour 01
private persons or bodies has preceded public undertaking.
The elementary school is in origin as much the child of
individual effort and pious endowment as the * public school '.
The important field of adult education, only fully opened
up in the present generation, is being vigorously tilled by
voluntary bodies, however much it may gain from the fertili-
sation of public grants. Many technical schools and poly-
technics were originally mechanics' institutes, founded by
missionary effort; schools for the blind and deaf were philan-
thropic in character and not a few still remain so ; the first
nursery schools took root outside the public system; the
ragged schools preceded the evening continuation schools,
and so on. The only institutions indeed in which the voluntary
principle seems to have been absent from the beginning are
the schools of the army and the navy.

This is not the place to recount the intricate relations
between voluntary effort in education and the state during the
nineteenth century. It is important, however, to realise that
behind the tangled history of" parliamentary grants-in-aid, of

EDUCATION IN ENGLAND AND ABROAD 17

payment by results, of the use of rates for education, of
legislation which imposed public expenditure upon localities
with School Boards, of c whisky money 5 diverted into the
channels of technology, there lies one broad general principle,
that the function of the state has been to supplement volun-
tary enterprise. This principle was not reached a priori as the
result of a philosophical examination of the respective duties
of the state and the individual. It arose, as many phenomena
in English history have arisen, from the necessity of taking
action, as occasion called, to meet obvious needs. If there
was any conscious element in the working out of the principle,
it was the Englishman's inveterate dislike of state interference.
The force of circumstance proved however more powerful
than prejudice ; and as that tremendous and involuntary social
transformation which we call the industrial revolution
gathered volume decade after decade, individual effort was
found to be totally insufficient of itself for the tasks of civili-
sation, and the need for state money to be more and more
urgent. Yet the state has never, as in some continental
countries, been allowed absolute power. Even to-day its
place is second; it is an instrument not a master, an instru-
ment useful, essential indeed, but only to be brought in when
the good will of private persons or bodies has proved unequal
by itself for the task.

The principle is disguised at the present time by the official
control of many departments of education, control which
appears on the surface not only to dispense with individual
initiative but actually to prevent it. Closely investigated the
appearance is delusive. In the large sphere of elementary
education, compulsion seems to be supreme. Parents are
compelled by law to see that their children are instructed in
the elements up to the age of fourteen, and local authorities
are compelled to build elementary schools when they are
needed and to aid aH elementary schools which are 'public'.

l8 EDUCATION IN ENGLAND AND ABROAD

But parents are not forced to send their children to the public
elementary school, and no authorities at present have power
over non-public schools, private schools 3 or over forms of
instruction which a parent may choose in order to fulfil the
obligation laid upon him. Similarly, in the important de-
partment of education for the young adolescent, at first sight
it seems as if all continuative education is either actually
provided by education authorities or is substantially aided
and thus partially controlled by them. But there are private
continuation schools on lines similar to those of the evening
schools and institutes, and there is an increasing amount of
private vocational instruction undertaken by business and
industrial firms for their own employees.

We have spoken of the state for convenience, as if it was an
entity as easily recognisable as, say, the Lord Chancellor.
In common speech, state interference, state schools, state
education, a state system, are loosely used with more than a
nuance of deprecation. The state Is confused with the Board
of Education and it is supposed that somewhere hidden in
Whitehall is a dictator who issues edicts or at any rate a
junta which declares policy without challenge. But, properly
conceived, the state In this as in other connections is ultimately
the government of the country, acting through and with
Imperial Parliament ; and Imperial Parliament in the long run
expresses the will of the people of England. At the present
time it is difficult to realise that the bare Idea that the govern-
ment should concern itself with education, as it had concerned
itself with defence and revenue, with the suffrage, with
criminal laws, with industry through the Truck and Factory-
Acts and the like, was novel and even dangerous a hundred
years ago. It was not until the present century that the state
came to concern itself with all grades of education. Since
1902, and especially since the War, there has been a significant
development in the public attitude, a development which,

EDUCATION IN ENGLAND AND ABROAD 19

beginning with a more or less reluctant assumption of new
powers and duties by Parliament, has grown into a positive
interest and concern; and this is gradually becoming a serious
and directive purpose, a transition from the desire to remove
anomalies in detail to the vision of an educated people.

IV

The educational history of the last hundred years cannot be
dissociated from the political and social history of the period.
The Reform Bill of 1832 placed political power in the hands
of the middle and manufacturing classes, the bills of 1867 and
1884 gave a large share to the working classes. The effects on
education were not always immediate, nor were they in-
variably due to direct legislative action: the awakening and
reforming of the old Public Schools, the creation of new
Public Schools and the removal of mediaeval restrictions from
the Endowed Schools, which led to their rapid resuscitation
after 1869, were the outcome not so much of a reformed
Parliament acting by laws as of the whole reform movement.
The Act of 1870 was of course a deliberate piece of legislation,
which was possible and even imperative when the new voting
classes and the industrial people generally were no longer
regarded as a negligible populace, destined only to hew wood
and draw water.

Two Acts especially demand the attention of the student of
present-day education, the Municipal Reform Act of 1835
the Municipal Corporation Act and the County Councils
Act of 1888. They were not educational in purpose at all but
without them the modern developments of state education
would have been impossible, or at least fundamentally dif-
ferent. The first of these Acts established the municipal
authorities of the country, the second applied similar prin-
ciples of local government to the county areas. The first Act,

20 EDUCATION IN ENGLAND AND ABROAD

of which the second was a long delayed sequel, is indeed
epoch-making, for it marks the beginning of local admini-
stration as we see it to-day. Save here and there the principle
has been accepted by all parties in the state. Speaking of the
Acts passed after 1874, when Sir R. Cross was head of the
Local Government Board under Disraeli, Mr G. M. Trevelyan
says: 'Ever since the Reform Act of 1835, Government after
Government down to our own day has helped to build up and
extend the (municipal) system. Gladstone in 1871 had set up
a department called the Local Government Board, on to
which the business of controlling and stimulating the action
of Local Authorities has chiefly devolved. The work of
Cross. . .gave assurance of continuity in the national progress
towards better conditions of life '.

The development of municipalities probably contributed
in the long run to allay the prejudice of many of the individua-
lists of the middle of the century against state action in
education. Matthew Arnold's famous advice ( organise your
secondary and technical instruction' failed to impress the
most progressive among them because he was openly urging
a kind of state education such as was established in France
and Prussia. When he returned to the subject, as he did
incidentally in Culture and Anarchy in 1869, he clearly wished
the country had an English Humboldt with full powers of
controlling the whole of education from London. The idea of
such a governmental system was distasteful alike to Church-
man and Nonconformist, to Liberal an4 Conservative. The
one party feared governmental interference with the liberty
of conscience, a possible reimposition of tests and penalties
but lately removed, clericalism in office; the other equally
feared a summary repression of religious teaching, an anti-
clerical revolution. The Education Department was trouble-
some, no doubt, but it was not quite an engine of govern-
ment and it did little more than distribute grants : it had no

EDUCATION IN ENGLAND AND ABROAD 21

control over education higher than elementary, as the central
governments in France and Prussia had. It is possible that
School Boards, with all the unsatisfactory tendencies they
were accused of displaying, did really help to foster the idea
that education was a local as well as a national concern, and
that, as the pure individualistic spirit of the middle decades
became less insistent, a local individualism might retain it
and become a bulwark against too much centralisation from
Whitehall. The very defects of the school boards certainly
induced their opponents to claim rate-aid for voluntary
schools, and to welcome a local authority which should not
be elected for the sole purpose of administering education.
The * ad hoc ' principle is a c lost cause * in education ; it could
not have been so readily abandoned if the municipalities and
the county councils had not shown the nation what was, in
effect, a new form of government. Arnold's Idea of state
control under an all-powerful Minister of Education had now
no Interest, and was not even dreaded.

The influence of political and social events upon education
was and is by no means limited to Acts of Parliament. In the
present century the Boer War, with its revelation of physical
deterioration in recruiting, gave an undoubted stimulus to
the national concern for public health, and the Medical
Service for schools, started in 1907, has attained large and
complex proportions. The Local Government Board signi-
ficantly was changed to a Ministry of Health in 1919. The
Great War could not but influence education. Apart from
the fact that all schools in one way or another helped the
British cause and felt that they had a part In the struggle, the
ultimate result was a resolve shared by all political parties that
educational opportunities should be widened and the best
possible should be done for the rising generation. The advance
in the last sixteen years, to be described in the chapters
following, is due mostly to this resolve, and the disillusion-

22 EDUCATION IN ENGLAND AND ABROAD

ment which perhaps inevitably is now visiting us has not
spread to education. The general democratic movement
which developed rapidly after 1870 and which is due in part
to the universal education then made possible, has resulted in
a Labour Party with educational ideals and a pronounced
policy. But happily the old religious differences do not now
divide political parties and Nonconformists and Churchmen
now meet to devise agreed syllabuses of religious instruction
and even to discuss reunion. Other significant social move-
ments of thought such as the importance of connecting schools
with industry and commerce, the urgent need felt for training
the adolescent and the call for the education of the adult will
receive fuller treatment in later pages of this book. One of the
greatest of social changes of the last hundred years, oddly
enough, calls for little comment in the period under review,
the change in the position of women. So far as education is
concerned, the * emancipation ' of women was practically com-
plete by 1900. They were already admitted to Universities
though they could not be full members of the University of
Oxford until after the War, and are not yet full members of
Cambridge. But in all other directions there have been no
further barriers to remove and so far as educational adminis-
tration is concerned the two sexes enjoy the same oppor-
tunities.

CHAPTER II

THE ADMINISTRATION OF EDUCATION
A. THE LOCAL EDUCATION AUTHORITIES

In Ms book The Board of Education Sir Amherst Selby-
Bigge, Permanent Secretary of the Board 1911-25, makes
constant reference to the active and constructive partner-
ship' between the Central and the Local Authorities for
education. This idea of a partnership, he says, implicit in the
Act of 1902, was a main idea underlying Mr Fisher's Act of
1918: and it has clearly been kept in view during the years
since that Act. In order to understand the working of
educational administration in England and Wales it is
necessary not only to recognise the principle of partnership
but to be acquainted with the outstanding details of its
working, to know what each of the partners does and what
are the bonds that link them together. The 'administration'
spoken of is of course that of public or State education, the
major portion of the national system but not the whole. As
was pointed out in the previous chapter, a characteristic feature
of English education is the responsibility cast upon local
bodies elected for the general purposes. This kind of govern-
ment is comparatively new in our country, whereas central
government by an elected Parliament is old. Accordingly it
is desirable to begin with the Local Education Authority.

The Local Education Authority, for which we shall use the
convenient and common abbreviation of L.E.A., is the
ordinary instrument of local government upon which educa-
tional functions have been imposed by Act of Parliament.

24 THE ADMINISTRATION OF EDUCATION:

Everywhere in England and Wales there are councils with
various powers and duties, the range of which depends usually
on the extent of the area they serve ; the county council is the
largest and the parish council the smallest. They are repre-
sentative bodies, but everyone is not an L.E.A. : nor, on the
other hand, is any part of the country outside the jurisdiction
of a local authority. After 1870 many places, even com-
paratively large towns, had no school boards : but not even
the smallest village or the remotest settlement is without an
L.E.A., however little in evidence it may be.

It is convenient to begin with the most complete form of
L.E.A., complete because it possesses powers over all the
kinds of education which come within the scope of local
administration and holds them over an area in which no
other L.E.A. has any standing. This is the council of the
county borough. To obtain the status of a county borough, a
municipality must have at least 50,000 inhabitants, though
there are a few very ancient boroughs, such as Canterbury,
Bath and York, which for historical reasons were given full
autonomy by the Local Government Act of 1888 without
reference to their size. The well-known great towns of the
country are all of course county boroughs : but by no means
all areas with over 50,000 inhabitants have secured or even
desired that dignity. Bury in Lancashire has just over 50,000
people and is a county borough; Cambridge with nearly
70,000 is not. There are eighty-three in England and Wales,
and they are thickest in Lancashire and the West Riding.
Middlesex, Surrey and Kent include many districts which
encircle London, and are very populous, but the only county
boroughs are Croydon and Canterbury. Essex, which bounds
London on the east, has West Ham and East Ham.

The autonomy of the county borough in education is fixed
by the Education Act of 1902. In this Act the distinction
between elementary education and other forms of education,

THE LOCAL EDUCATION AUTHORITIES 25

to which frequent reference will have to be made in subse-
quent chapters, was strongly marked. It could hardly fail to
be marked at the time, for the delegation of duties and
functions in respect of higher education was a revolutionary
change; and elementary education had for half a century
been under the Education Department at Whitehall. An odd
consequence in nomenclature resulted from the distinction.
The clauses of the Act dealing with higher education formed
Part II ; the clauses dealing with elementary education formed
Part III. The L.E.A/S competent to administer higher as well
as elementary education are therefore called Part II authorities,
and those whose powers are limited to elementary education
Part III authorities. The county borough councils are Part II
authorities ; so are the county councils. Other L.E.A. 5 s are
Part III authorities.

It is important to be clear about Part III authorities. A
municipal borough with 10,000 inhabitants and an urban
district with 20,000 may be an L.E.A. under Part III. It does
not follow that, whenever the census is taken, every borough
and urban district council with the requisite number of
inhabitants is automatically made an L.E.A. Unless special
action is taken by the district, its elementary as well as its
higher education is administered by the county as before.
In some cases the smaller council never claims the status to
which it is entitled, being content to have its elementary
schools under the control of the county, as its secondary and
technical education must be. Some even surrender the powers
they at first accepted, as Warwick has done to Warwickshire.
Middlesex continues to treat certain well-populated districts
which have urban or municipal councils, with their consent,
as if they were merely large villages. Thus the rapidly grow-
ing suburb of Southgate up to 1933 was an urban district
which, though technically entitled to become an L.E.A., has
not done so : it is now a municipal borough and may still find

26 THE ADMINISTRATION OF EDUCATION:

it more convenient to be governed educationally by the
county. Its population would justify on the score of numbers
alone the county borough rank, but full responsibility for all
forms of education would not be attractive.

The Part III authorities, or the towns which were muni-
cipal boroughs only, caused some embarrassment when the
Act of 1902 was before Parliament. Certain members of the
House, sore because school boards had been abolished and
urging that the special local knowledge which the school
board had found valuable was impossible in an area as large
as a county, pressed the claims of the boroughs in order to
preserve the local intimacy. Some boroughs, though they
had had no school board, resented the idea of coming under
the control of a county if the borough had no powers. Their
pertinacity won the day and there are some 160 Part III
authorities in the country, ranging in size from Willesden
borough with nearly 200,000 inhabitants to Congleton borough
with under 13,000. These Part III L.E.A/S break the sym-
metry of the system and some people would like to see them
merged in the county. But local pride and independence
die hard.

A Part III L.E.A., as has been said, is responsible for
elementary education only. It must maintain its own elemen-
tary schools and build them if they are required, all from the
local rates plus the grants from the Board of Education. The
Part III L.E.A. does not build and maintain or aid the
secondary schools. It does not conduct evening schools or
undertake technical education. If a class is formed for lectures
to teachers in the elementary schools, it is provided by the
Part II authority, that is the county : for this activity belongs
to higher and not to elementary education. It is common
sense to expect the county to keep in close touch with its
Part III areas, to use their buildings for evening schools, to
employ their teachers in such schools, to appoint prominent

THE LOCAL EDUCATION AUTHORITIES 2J

citizens to be governors of schools and in many respects to
act the elder brother. Also as the Part III areas send repre-
sentatives to the county council as part of the county, it not
infrequently happens that a member residing in a Part III
town is one of the leading influences in the county as a whole.
Part III L.E.A.'s vary not only in size but in progressive
spirit and enterprise. Some with a high rateable value are
generous in buildings and staffing and are even accused of
extravagance. Another, known to the writer before the War,
was so impoverished that the appointment of an extra assistant
teacher to increase the inadequate supply of teachers in the
townmeant the addition of one penny in the pound to the rates.
If we have made clear the position of the boroughs, county
and non-county, the great L.E.A.'s of the counties, the county
councils, will be easy to understand. For higher education
they cover the whole country except the eighty or so county
boroughs; for elementary education they control the very
considerable part of the country which is not controlled by
county boroughs and Part III authorities. London, with a
population exceeding that of many states, ranks as a county
and the L.C.C. is the London County Council. Its position
and its relation, so far as education is concerned, with the
boroughs of the metropolis were defined by a special Act of
Parliament in 1903. The couuties naturally differ very widely.
The Isle of Ely, which is reckoned as a county, and Rutland-
shire are very small in area and population. Lancashire and
the West Riding are very large and contain numerous county
boroughs and also Part III authorities. Devonshire and
Wiltshire are mainly rural, Staffordshire has large urban
centres, and so on. But their powers and their functions are
similar. It is now time to show how an L.E.A* works ; what
is said below is true of the Part II authorities whether in
boroughs or in counties and with obvious omissions true also
of the Part III authorities.

28 THE ADMINISTRATION OF EDUCATION:

11

The L.EJL's are the councils, representative bodies elected
by the ratepayers, as members of Parliament are elected by
voters in their constituencies. But whereas, apart from bye-
elections, Parliament is re-elected as a whole upon dissolution,
there are annual elections for local councils, one-third of the
seats becoming vacant each year: a system which tends to
secure continuity of personnel in local affairs. Yet repre-
sentative assemblies, often of considerable size, do not at
first sight appear suitable for administration. The City Council
of Liverpool, for example, has over 100 members, while the
L.C.C. numbers 145. How can a large body of this kind,
elected mostly on party lines, generally without reference to
matters of education, carry on the delicate and daily task of
providing and administering education of all kinds for an
immense urban population? Executive functions require not
only tact and patience but also swift decision, firm handling
and a consistent policy. They are best performed either by one
man, or by a small committee which delegates its authority
very largely to one man. As everyone knows, Parliament has
solved its problem by entrusting its executive functions to
a small committee, known as the Cabinet, containing the
leaders of the party in the majority, which is under the chair-
manship of the Prime Minister. Our local government has
surmounted the difficulty in somewhat the same fashion.
Indeed, it is interesting to note that in most countries the
machinery of local government tends to reflect that of the
government at the centre. In. Germany, for instance, the
local executive rests in the hands of the Burgomeister, who
corresponds to the Chancellor of the Reich, and is himself
appointed by the central government, although he has to
give an account of his actions to a locally elected body. In
the United States again the chief local executive officer is the

THE LOCAL EDUCATION AUTHORITIES 29

Mayor, who Is elected like the Federal President, and like the
President is practically absolute during his term of office. In
England, just as we have a King who reigns but does not
govern, so we have mayors whose functions are mainly cere-
monial, while the executive work of local government is
carried on by committees and especially by the chairmen of
committees. The committees are formed out of the council
by the simple process of fission, though many committees
also contain co-opted members who are not members of
the council. A town council or a county council governs by
splitting itself into as many standing committees as its
various services require. There are such committees for
Finance, for Police (the Watch Committee), for Roads, for
Sanitation (Health), for Parks and so on. But this is not the
end. Further specialisation is obtained by means of sub-
dividing the standing committees into sub-committees to deal
with various branches. Though the principal positions in the
council, for example, the chairmanship of committees, usually
go to the party which has a majority, the committees as a
whole do not, like the imperial cabinet, consist of the ad-
herents of one party. All members of the council, to whatever
party they belong, or if they are independent, are expected to
serve on the committees : a fact of considerable importance,
since it means that party distinctions signify far less in local
than in national politics. The work of the council must be
carried on from day to day and the facts of the daily situation
determine the policy of the committees much more than party
prejudice or doctrine which, though vocal enough at election
times, is little heard within the four walls of committee rooms.
Another steadying influence in committees concerned with
education is the presence of co-opted members who, like the
members of the old school boards, are there because of their
knowledge of education and their interest in it.

But however excellent and hard-working the committee,

30 THE ADMINISTRATION OF EDUCATION:

one fact about it is not to be overlooked; it is simply an
instrument of the council as a whole, upon which no co-
opted persons have seats. The proceedings of the committees
have to be approved by the council, as they are recorded in
minutes duly kept and open to inspection; and if any action
is questioned or criticised in council, it falls upon the com-
mittee's chairman to reply. Thus though the whole work of
local government is actually performed by committees and
sub-committees, it is the council alone which endows the
performance with authority. Finally a vital point the
council from first to last retains complete control over ex-
penditure, no committee having money of its own. It must
make out its estimate for the year and submit it to the finance
committee to be collated with the estimates of the other
committees: the whole as endorsed or modified by the
finance committee will be put before the council for approval.
Thus the Local Authority for Education, the L.E.A., though
it is often spoken of as if it was synonymous with the
Education Committee, is in law the Council.

The system works well, and is much admired by foreign
students of our political institutions. The greatest outside
authority on English local government, an Austrian writer,
Joseph Redlich, notes the remarkable adaptability of the com-
mittee principle to towns and counties of various sizes and
requirements. If a council decides to undertake some new
service or launch some new enterprise, for example a public
library, all it has to do is to form one more committee from
its members. The system again has the advantage of turning
into useful channels the special knowledge and talents of
individual members of the council, and results in the estab-
lishment of a number of small administrative bodies, each
with experience and traditions of its own. The personnel of
these committees tends to become more or less permanent,
and the chairman in particular often continues in office for a

THE LOCAL EDUCATION AUTHORITIES 31

long period of years. Yet new blood Is constantly added by
the annual elections which affect one-third of the council,
while the body corporate remains very much the same.

in

The most important member of a committee is of course the
chairman, elected annually, but as a matter of fact usually re-
elected from year to year. The chairman of an education
committee is almost always a leading figure on the council
and a man of influence in the locality. A good chairman
carries his committee with him and not only so but impresses
the council as a whole, whose main interest does not lie in
education, with the reasonableness of what on behalf of his
committee he brings forward. So with chairmen of other
committees of the council. Most English people are quite
unconscious of what they owe to the devotion and wisdom
of many hundreds of chairmen who are shouldering the work
of local government all over the country. It must be re-
membered that they do not receive a penny of public money
for their services. Yet these unpaid servants of the com-
munity give up half their life, and often more, to the conduct
of public affairs. The chairmanship of a body like the
education committee of Manchester, Birmingham or Liver-
pool is practically a whole-time employment; and it is
estimated that the ordinary member of the L.C.C. education
committee spends at least two full days a week in pure com-
mittee work. Chairmen and members are often business men
and therefore not only give their services for nothing but
forego the pecuniary advantages of attention to their own
business. Some of the chairmen, both past and present, are
almost national figures. They are not necessarily men of high
scholastic attainments but they are sincere enthusiasts and
unflagging workers ; and their education ia the c university of

32 THE ADMINISTRATION OF EDUCATION:

life ' endows them with experience which, with their native
commonsense and practical ability, makes them outstanding
examples of what is best in English public life. The com-
memoration of their names in the schools they have been
instrumental in founding is a small token of the esteem in
which they are held: in their way they are worthy to be
named alongside William of Wykeham and John Colet.

However assiduous or enthusiastic he may be, no chairman
can manage without paid officials to supply Mm with infor-
mation and advice, and to carry out the decisions of his com-
mittee. Every committee has its staff of officials, just as the
imperial cabinet works through the Civil Service. The
principal official of a locality is the Town Clerk, or the Clerk
to the County, who is the legal adviser to the council, the
keeper of the archives and the channel through which the
whole business of the council flows. Historically speaking,
the town clerk is the germ from which the present elaborate
hierarchy of local government has sprung. In ordinary cor-
respondence concerning education he is in the background,
because the secretary to the education committee in most non-
legal matters acts as an independent official. lapi a small
borough the town clerk himself may be the chief bducation
official but more usually it is a member of his own clerical
staff. At the other end of the scale the large borough or the
county can afford an imposing salary of 1500 or 2060 and
command the services of a first rate man. When L.E f A/s
came into being after 1902 the clerks to the larger school
boards became Directors of Education in many places: in
others, especially in counties, men who were already organisers
and secretaries to the Technical Instruction Committees:
again elsewhere new men offered themselves for the new
posts. From the very beginning the service of local education
has been fortunate in attracting at least some minds of high*
quality. One need only mention the honoured and dis-

THE LOCAL EDUCATION AUTHORITIES 33

tlnguished name of Graham Balfour, cousin and biographer
of Robert Louis Stevenson, who was director of education for
Staffordshire from 1903 to 1926^ to make this clear. And there
are others.

The chief education official is naturally the close associate
of the chairman of the education committee. We need not
enquire too minutely whether one has the other *in his
pocket'. There are men who dominate among both chairmen
and officials, and an able and skilful person wins a legitimate
power by suggestion and persuasion, and by quietly doing the
thinking and planning for his committee. Both chairman and
official are in constant touch with the Board of Education,
that is, with the department at Whitehall which is concerned
with the locality and with H.M. Inspectors in the country.
As will be shown in the next chapter, this close connection
between the L.E.A. and the Board has considerable influence
on the policy of the Board itself: and it is ttorough chairman
and official that the connection is made.

IV

Important as are the two personages just now described, it
must not be assumed that the education committee itself is
negligible. In the Act of 1902 when education committees
were to cover the country in place of school boards covering
only portions of it, much attention was paid to the constitu-
tion of the new instrument of government. The council, as
has been said, is the L.E.A. But the Act lays down that the
L.E.A. must establish an education committee which carries
out the educational functions of the council, but does not
of its own power authorise expenditure on education. The
committee was to be formed on a scheme to be submitted
to the Board for approval. The scheme must include a
provision that in county boroughs the majority of the com-
WES 2

34 THE ADMINISTRATION OF EDUCATION:

mittee must be members of the council : they need not be so
in a county but usually are. Every education committee must
include women, marriage being no disqualification: women
may of course be county or borough councillors. Every
education committee must also have co-opted members, men
or women. This provision was meant in part to meet the
reproach that committees of town and county councillors,
competent though they might be on points of building or
sanitation or roads, would be unlikely to include persons
experienced in education. Also, whereas under the school
boards the interests of particular types of schools could be
safeguarded by having representatives elected by the cumu-
lative vote, these interests were in danger under the proposed
new L.B.A.'s. Voluntary schools could and do have repre-
sentatives among the co-opted members. The county and
county borough committees often include representatives of
the universities and of teachers' associations: some L.EA.'s
refuse acting teachers in their own employ on principle,
others do not, but retired teachers not infrequently are either
co-opted or put up for the council itself and contribute a
professional element.

Those who are unacquainted with the actual working of an
L.E.A. would be well advised to read the periodical reports of
some representative authority : in this way and hardly by any
other, can a just conception be gained of the nature and the
functions of an L.E.A. by one who is outside. The range of
activities may be partly understood by the following extract
from the table of contents of the report of a well-known
L.E.A. : the table covers one chapter only and the topics are
indexed alphabetically: Elementary Education. Buildings.
Defective children. Employment of children. Furniture.
Head teachers. Holidays. National savings. Nursery schools.
Practical instruction. Prosecutions (school attendance). Re-
ligious instruction. Reorganisation of schools. School can-

THE LOCAL EDUCATION AUTHORITIES 35

teens. School medical service. Superannuation of teachers.
Teachers' salaries. Teaching staff.

A report of this character will do more than reveal the
complexity of the work of the L.E.A. It will show by Its
statistics and lists of personnel and committees how the work
is organised. For example, the Kent L.E.A. Issue a gazette
from which some illustrative particulars may be gathered.
The county, which has a population of well over a million,
contains the city of Canterbury and sixteen autonomous
areas for elementary education, the Part III authorities re-
ferred to earlier in this chapter. The population of the rural
parts and such urban areas as are not autonomous, Is nearly
600,000, and this Is spread over nearly a million acres. As
elementary schools must be provided so that children need
not travel beyond a mile or so (two miles legally), It will be
obvious that they will be scattered and not concentrated, and
that to administer them all from one central office would be
almost impossible. For elementary education chiefly but not
wholly the county is divided Into districts with local paid
secretaries. Other large counties also adopt the same plan,
with local committees and a small local office. London too has
district offices which, like the county offices of the same kind,
deal principally with minor matters of administration but also
may be consulted upon or may themselves make proposals
of some magnitude to be settled by the main committee.

The Education Committee for Kent has forty-six members,
of whom twelve are co-opted : six are women. Like other
L.E.A.'s the education committee forms standing sub-com-
mittees. Here Is the Kent list: Elementary Education;
Secondary and University Education; Further Education
and Juvenile Welfare; Agricultural Education; Finance and
General Purposes; Buildings; County Council Stores Com-
mittee; Library. Other L.E.A/S would show a slightly dif-
ferent allocation of duties. A little arithmetic will make it

36 THE ADMINISTRATION OF EDUCATION:

evident that members of the county committee must also
serve on more than one of the sub-committees, and very often
there are sectional committees constituted within even the
sub-committees, especially to deal with a particular temporary
problem.

The leading officials and their duties throw a further light
upon the organisation of education in Kent. Under the
Director of Education, Mr Salter Davies, C.B.E., are two
assistant directors for elementary and three for higher
education; a chief inspector with two assistants; a county
educational guidance officer; an agricultural organiser; an
accountant; a chief clerk; a stores superintendent; a librarian.
In addition the L.E.A. has the services of the county medical
officer of health who acts as chief school medical officer with
an assistant; and a county architect with a deputy architect.
Under each of these will be a clerical staff.

v

Enough has been written to suggest the skeleton of the
organisation of a large L.E.A. What all these committees and
all these officials have to do will appear in later chapters ; for
the account of developments in various forms of education
involves the L.E.A. at all points. The L.EJL's do not cover
the whole field of education, as we have had more than one
occasion to remind the reader. They do cover all education
which is maintained by drafts upon the rates and the taxes,
with a few special groups of exceptions ; and they are con-
cerned with institutions which they do not themselves control
but which are also aided by exchequer grants. The national
system of education includes much more than the public
system of education which is a very large part of it, as will be
shown in later chapters. It is the public education which
comes under the L.E.A.

THE LOCAL EDUCATION AUTHORITIES 37

There are some 300 L.E.A.'s, large and small: before 1902
there were nearly 3000 school boards, a decided change for
the better in simplicity alone. The present organisation is not
without its critics. On the one hand, the larger the area of local
government, the more remote the centre of administration is
apt to be ; and the machinery of district committees is devised
to distribute the burden of work and to bring to bear local
knowledge upon local needs and problems. So also Part III
L.E.A.'s are stoutly defended as preserving small but com-
pact areas from losing their identity in a large county. On
the other hand, counties and county boroughs do not always
co-operate or agree. Large towns, which are county boroughs,
have fringes of relatively dense populations which are in the
county. It is not difficult for the county to provide elemen-
tary schools on the spot, but secondary and technical schools
cannot be multiplied and should not be too small. The
adjustment of fees paid by county students, e.g. in a town
technical school, is not easy to make without hardship on the
students. Some would advocate the formation of { provinces *
to include counties and towns, at least for dealing with the
highest forms of education, an idea which appeared in Mr
Fisher's first Bill in 1917. But the powerful county boroughs
took alarm. Manchester and Leeds might be on friendly terms
with Lancashire and the West Riding, but could not stomach
the notion of forming only a part of a large north-western or
north-eastern province. The present anomalies, picturesque
in some respects, will probably long remain. At any rate their
removal would involve a reconsideration of the whole question
of local government and its organisation. A Government would
have to be very free from the pressing anxieties of the present
day before it could undertake any such rearrangement of local
boundaries as would remove the hardships and disputes that
undoubtedly here and there do occur.

CHAPTER III

THE ADMINISTRATION OF EDUCATION
B. THE BOARD OF EDUCATION

The second member of the * active and constructive partner-
ship ' between authorities for public education is the Board of
Education. This is the Central Authority, as distinct from the
Local Authorities described in Chapter n, and it is situated
in Whitehall, in one of the many offices in which government
business is transacted in that region. The Board like its
neighbours, the Home Office, the Admiralty, the War Office,
the Treasury and the rest, is part of the Civil Service of the
country and derives its authority from the High Court of
Parliament. Though the Board is the central authority,
education is not 'centralised' in it, as is the case in some
European countries and some of the British Dominions. How
it exercises its undoubted powers and what the relation of
partnership implies must be made clear in the following
pages.

i

The Board of Education was created as recently as 1900 by
the Board of Education Act of 1899. ^ ^ad long been evident
that a real central ministry of education, with whatever
functions it should be endowed, was needed as a first step
towards co-ordinating the various agencies which assisted
and controlled education both from London and in the
country. The Act was a simple matter, for it did little more
than amalgamate three existing government departments
which, with separate constitutions and powers, dealt with
education from London. The Education Department, formed
soon after 1833, when the first grants were voted, administered

THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 39

elementary education. The Science and Art Department
(1856), housed at South Kensington, fostered by grants and
controlled in some degree by inspection, a sphere which
began with classes in science and art and by 1900 included
technical instruction and such secondary education as could
on the most liberal interpretation be denominated scientific.
The Charity Commission dealt with educational as well as
other charitable trusts. As thus baldly stated the division of
functions does not sound chaotic in itself or even necessarily
liable to friction. But the Bryce Commission on Secondary-
Education (1894-5) had shown how complex were the
agencies throughout England and Wales which had the
management of all forms of education beyond the bare
elements of primary education, how their efforts conflicted
with each other, with overlapping here and grave deficiencies
there, and how the operations of the three departments con-
tributed to the complexity instead of articulating it. Ac-
cordingly the Commission strongly urged the institution of
one Board, c charged [in the words of the Act] with the super-
intendence of matters relating to education in England and
Wales'. Thus the century long reluctance of the English
people to attack education as a national question came to an
end.

The new Board took over the educational trusts from the
Charity Commissioners, but left to the Commission as a
whole the other trusts. It absorbed the two older depart-
ments at once, uniting them under one head, and in due course
the staffs were merged into one. It was not, however, until
the Act of 1902 conferred upon L.EJL's specific obligations
and powers regarding education other than elementary, that
the internal organisation of the Board took its present shape.

It may be asked, what precisely is the Board? Like the
similarly named Board of Trade, but unlike the Board of
Admiralty, its title is something of a misnomer. Technically

40 THE ADMINISTRATION OF EDUCATION:

the Board consists of a few of the principal ministers of state,
all fully occupied in their respective departments and none
specially interested in education except the President of the
Board himself. That is his tide, President, but he is often
referred to as the Minister of Education, which is what he
really is. The Board never meets as a Board, nor are the
members of It consulted individually as such when an im-
portant decision is to be taken. The President with his second-
in-command, the Parliamentary Secretary, and the staff of
civil servants in the Education Office are commonly and not
Improperly regarded as the Board. It is curious, but perhaps
significant, that the Board is assumed to speak collectively in
the plural: 'The Board are prepared 5 ; 'The Board regret';
'The Board have not yet been informed*. One hears a com-
mon jest that the Board's emotions are seldom expressed
except in guarded or tepid language. They frequently
regret but seldom scom or repudiate; they are 'glad to
learn' but rarely applaud with enthusiasm or even with
much cordiality. But a carefully organised department can
hardly be expected as a whole to think with passion or delight.
This does not prevent individuals belonging to it from
gratification over a reform successfully achieved or an im-
pending mischief prevented. There is significance in the
collective use of 'The Board'. For all official letters from
the office, conveying information or delivering decisions, or
issuing instructions or asking opinions, have the authority of
the Board behind them. The President accepts responsibility
for all actions of the Board, even for mistakes in trivial matters ;
and he is liable to be challenged in Parliament to support and
explain whatever has been communicated in the name of the
Board. Closely examined and pursued to its origin, the most
elementary answer in a stereotyped form to a simple enquiry
will be found to be based on a rule or a precedent which
at one time has been dealt with and settled by the Board as a

THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 41

whole. The idea that an irresponsible clerk judges and pro-
nounces is wholly mistaken.

This collective action and this collective responsibility
borne on the shoulders of the minister necessarily means a
systematic gradation of officers and a careful organisation of
functions. As has been said, the minister has a Parliamentary
Secretary, as other ministers have : he or she (for the Duchess
of Atholl held this office for several years) not only has certain
spheres of the Board's work assigned, but also helps and
speaks for the President in the House of Commons, or may
be, in the House of Lords. Both President and Secretary are
members of the government and change when the govern-
ment changes. Nowadays the President is a member of the
Cabinet, and though his salary is not as large as the salary of
some of the ministers in older departments, his position as
one of the great officers of state is assured.

n

The staff of the Board are civil servants, recruited like civil
servants in other departments. Besides typists, messengers
and other subordinates there are two main divisions, twc
classes, the administrative and the executive or clerical. The
former, the administrative class, are First Division civil ser
vants, who are now chosen by examination, but formerly
came in by nomination. Candidates for the First Division are
mainly graduates in high honours, the larger number from
Oxford and Cambridge. The Second Division are also chosen
after a competitive examination of considerable severity.
Neither of the classes is earmarked for the Education Office,
and a successful candidate may be posted to any part of the
service where a vacancy is to be filled. Those who are attached
to the Board usually remain in the Board, but exchanges and
transfers are not infrequent. An able member of the Second

42 THE ADMINISTRATION OF EDUCATION:

Division may be promoted to the First Division. Broadly
the executive or clerical staff have charge of records and
returns, including past correspondence and precedents : it is
their business to send incoming papers to the appropriate
section of the office, and they must be ready to supply the
information required by the Board accurately and at once.
They may suggest replies to enquiries and questions which
frequently recur, and they deal with certain routine matters.
It is evident that this work calls for extreme care and
capacity.

The hierarchy of the administrative class is as follows. At
the head of the whole office is the Permanent Secretary, an
official of the highest rank in the Civil Service. The most
famous of Permanent Secretaries of the Board since 1900 was
Sir Robert Morant, who in a real sense brought the Board
into being, shaping it from the three constituents mentioned
above, and moulding its policy as a central authority for
education. Next in order to the Permanent Secretary are a
Deputy Secretary and four Principal Assistant Secretaries,
each of the four being in charge of one of the four main
branches of the Board's work, the Elementary, Secondary,
Technological and Training of Teachers Branches. Below
these high officials the Administrative side is, as it is called,
'territorialised': that is, each of the main areas into which
England is divided has a group of officers, with an Assistant
Secretary in command, who deal with all general questions in
that area. Thus a particular officer who is territorialised for
Lancashire will take references affecting, say, St Helens, and
will be familiar with all sides of education in that borough.
He will also be in close touch with the inspectors visiting
various kinds of schools, and will be personally known,
through frequent interviews, to the officials and the prominent
members of the L.E.A. Up to about ten years ago each type
of education had its own branch working without close con-

THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 43

nection with the others. The territorialisation has simplified
the contacts of the L.E.A. with the Board.

The Welsh department of the Board has Its own Permanent
Secretary, Independent of the English, but of course main-
taining a close association with him : Wales forms an additional
* territorial' division like the English divisions.

Distinct from the territorial organisation are several special
branches, of which the Accountant-General's department,
the Law branch and the Pensions branch are the chief, all of
course under the suzerainty of the Permanent Secretary. It
should also be said that, like other government offices, the
Board includes bodies of technical officers, whose appoint-
ment does not depend upon success in a written general
examination. Thus the administrative officers of the Law
and Architects departments, the ' Keepers ' of the Science
Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum, the staff of
the Royal College of Art all of which are under the Board
are appointed under competitive conditions by Interview.
The largest section of these technical officers is the inspec-
torate, which will be discussed In a later paragraph. The
Medical branch, part of which is necessarily technical, and
which Is housed in the Ministry of Health, is semi-indepen-
dent, for its chief, Sir George Newman, serves both the
Board and the Ministry of Health.

in

It is impossible to give an analysis of the multifarious types
of business daily transacted by the Board. Much of what
comes into the Board is of a routine nature returns sent in,
notifications of appointments, applications for grants due,
simple requests for information, reports all acknowledged,
docketed and distributed to the appropriate section of the
office to be filed or otherwise dealt with. If a considered

44 THE ADMINISTRATION OF EDUCATION:

reply Is required the papers come before an administrative
officer. If an apparently straightforward application or pro-
posal raises a new point, not covered by established practice,
it is his duty to * refer ' it. He states a case, after sending to
the clerical side for the particulars he may require, and passes
it on, with his suggested answer, to the officer immediately
superior to him, whose experience and riper judgment may
enable him to decide on the spot. When local knowledge of
special circumstances is needed, H.M.L is consulted and he
may be asked to make a personal investigation. If the point
raises a general principle, which will have to be considered
in its bearing on the whole country, the higher officials are
consulted and even the Secretary himself, to whom all major
problems must be referred. The Secretary will decide whether
the case calls for a ruling by the President, who is usually
kept Informed of the major issues under discussion In the
Board.

For example, a proposal for the amalgamation of two
schools under the Hadow reorganisation may be in con-
tinuation of the policy of an L.E.A. already approved, and
so much like previous proposals of the L.E.A. that the heads
of the office need not be brought In. The opinion and advice
of H.M.L, whose business It is to know what his L.E.A.
is intending, would be all-important, and subject to a
possible challenge on the ground of expense, probably de-
cisive. On the other hand a proposal by an L.E.A. to charge
exceptionally low fees in a county secondary school or to offer
an exceptional number of 'special places' virtually free,
would almost certainly be taken as high as the President.

It is to be remembered that a principal part of the day to
day work of the Board is the distribution of moneys voted by
Parliament for the service of education. This is no mechanical
cashier's job. Payments are made on conditions and the
Board has to determine whether these are fulfilled. Thus

THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 45

returns from those who are eligible for grants, L.E.A/s or
governing bodies or individuals, have to be scrutinised and
the expenditure approved ; doubtful cases have to be examined
and the examination may involve further correspondence.
Under the present system of grants, to be explained in the
next chapter, there has been a definite intention to minimise
the scrutiny of details; but even percentage grants on a
large scale cannot be approved without some careful in-
vestigation.

iv

The question is sometimes asked, what is the policy of the
Board and how is it arrived at? The answer may be more
clearly given if policy is considered in two senses, the aims
of the Board in general and the pronouncements issued on
particular occasions. The duty of the Board, as laid down by
the Board of Education Act of 1899, is 'the superintendence
of matters relating to Education in England and Wales J . Put
more concretely this is held to mean that the Board must see
that the duties laid upon the L.E.A.'s by various Acts of
Parliament are duly fulfilled, and that parliamentary grants
are duly distributed. The L.E.A.'s are to provide for 'the
progressive development and comprehensive organisation in
respect of their area' and they are to submit schemes to
show the mode in which 'their duties and powers. * .are to
be performed and exercised'. Shorn of details, superin-
tendence, then, is the main policy of the Board. All this is too
indefinite to be informative. It must clearly depend upon the
government how close the superintendence is and to what
degree the Board stimulate or discourage progressive develop-
ment and comprehensive organisation. To discuss policy
from this point of view is to enter the region of controversy.
It may be said, however, that the Board are actuated by a
sincere desire to carry out in full the spirit of the recent Acts

46 THE ADMINISTRATION OF EDUCATION:

of Parliament and, as remarked in a previous chapter, that all
modem English governments, of whatever complexion, are
anxious to develop and not to retard education, even when
financial stringency demands a slackening of progress.

It is easier to discuss policy in the second sense and to
show how the action of the Board on particular occasions
is determined. Many examples will occur in the course of
succeeding chapters, but some general remarks on procedure,
with a few striking instances, will not be out of place here.
We shall discuss Regulations and Circulars and then Com-
mittees.

An Act of Parliament concerning education, while it pre-
scribes duties and authorises assistance from the Exchequer,
rarely specifies the minutiae of duties or the amounts of
expenditure. The general terms of the Acts require interpre-
:ation and translation into the details of administration. The
iiterpretation takes the form of Regulations, usually accom-
panied by and sometimes preceded by explanatory Circulars.
Perhaps the clearest example of the necessity of Regulations
san be found in those issued for Secondary Schools in 1904.
Here the situation was new. The Board had to announce on
flrhat conditions and up to what amounts they would aid
L.E.A.'s and Governing Bodies in respect of secondary
education. This implied some sort of definition of a secondary
jchool to make intelligible the principles on which the Board
vould recognise and aid some types of school and not others.
3o also with grants. The Act specified no scale of payment
tnd the partial and piecemeal grants previously paid by the
Science and Art Department offered no precedents of great
ralue. A consistent scheme was inevitable in order to avoid
infairness. How the Board met the occasion will be explained
n Chapter vn below. So also when Adult Education came
:o be assisted Regulations were required. The Pensions Act,
o give another instance, gave authority for the payment of

THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 47

pensions to certain teachers on retirement, but it needed inter-
pretation and amplification through Rules. The most famous
or notorious set of regulations has been the Code of Regu-
lations for Elementary Schools, issued as a Revised Code in
1862 and constantly amended from year to year for forty
years. It once bristled with requirements and prohibitions,
laid down in minutest detail, but it is now a smooth and
urbane document at which no one need take fright. It is not
to be forgotten that regulations are drafted for the guidance
of officers of the Board, as well as for the information of
L.E.A.'s and managers: so the old Code, while it imposed
conditions often onerous and annoying, also protected the
schools from caprice and unfairness on the part of inspectors
and managers.

A very important change was effected in 1926 in both the
form and the spirit of the Board's Regulations. In form they
were greatly reduced in bulk in one case from seventy-
eight pages to nine and they were simplified not only by
the exclusion of explanatory matter and of provisions that
had become obsolete, but also by stating the bare require-
ments in the plainest terms. For example, it had been cus-
tomary in successive Codes to lay down numerically the
staff required for elementary schools, indicating how many
children such and such a teacher's qualifications * counted for '
on the staff; for these detailed assessments in the new Re-
gulations was substituted the condition that the L.E.A. 'must
maintain an approved establishment of suitable teachers *, the
distribution of separate grades and of individuals being left
to the L.E.A., subject to the approval of the distribution by
the Board. At the same time, to give another instance, the
former complicated system of institutions aided under
Technical Education was rearranged, and the types of schools
and classes eligible for grant were classified afresh and clearly
set out. The broad effect of the Regulations, as a whole, was

48 THE ADMINISTRATION OF EDUCATION:

to generalise conditions and requirements : words like ' suit-
able', * adequate 5 and "satisfactory 5 were used abundantly.
This, however, does not mean that the main conditions are
relaxed or indefinite. Some are determined by Act of Parlia-
ment, such as the provisions regarding religious instruction
and medical inspection; others, such as the rules for Free
(now Special) Places in secondary schools, are settled by the
considered policy of the Board and ultimately by the Govern-
ment. But, beyond statutory requirements, the present form
of the Regulations gives the L.E.A. and managers freedom to
use their own judgment in the application of general principles.

The Board make extensive use of Circulars. Some of
these, such as those which accompanied the 1926 Regulations,
are expository: it is also convenient on occasion to clear up
some doubtful point in ordinary administration or to announce
some minor modification in rules and regulations by circulars,
just as happens in the working of an L.E.A. But a more
important use is to test the opinion of L.E.A. 5 s and public
opinion when a considerable change of policy is contem-
plated. The circulars, usually addressed to L.E.A. 5 s, are com-
municated to the press and to organisations of teachers. In
recent years, some of them have achieved a certain notoriety,
such as the Circular (No. 1421) on Fees and Free Places in
secondary schools and circulars suggesting economies. The
Board expect and invite comments, and, when Regulations
are the sequel, they are often modified as the result of the
views elicited. At tie same time the Board are in the habit of
consulting the chairmen and officials of the great L.E.A/S
informally, and often at an arranged conference. There is no
Olympian aloofness at the Board.

As an extension of the practice of circularising the L.E.A.'s
may be mentioned that of issuing memoranda, educational
pamphlets and special reports. These are meantfor the dis-
semination of ideas and information and, though they are

THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 49

officially issued for sale, and thus their value is recognised, the
Board do not countersign the particular recommendations
that may be made in them. They are commonly concerned
with education in the schools and not with administration.
For example, valuable memoranda have appeared since 1904
on the teaching of the various subjects in secondary schools,
on the London central schools, on aspects of the continuation
school problem, on Wales, and others too numerous to cata-
logue. The Reports of various special Committees to be
described below reach the dimensions of books. Finally, there
is the Annual Report of the Board. This important document
naturally is chiefly a summary of statistics and other facts
relating to the work of the Board and the L.E.A/S. But it also
from time to time includes chapters which give a historical
resume or a detailed description of some part of the educa-
tional field. Side by side with the Annual Report of the
Board is to be mentioned that of the Chief Medical Officer,
relating the progress of medical inspection.

The Committees to which reference has been made are
very various. The. Board, as an administrative body, is not
divided into committees like the various committees of the
L.E.A., with deliberative functions culminating in resolutions,
the execution of which devolves upon officials. This is not to
say that the Board may not from time to time delegate to some
of their officers the duty of examining some question and ad-
vising upon it, or that regular meetings may not be held, e.g. of
chief inspectors or assistant secretaries. But these are internal
affairs, a matter of convenience ; plenty of personal discussion
takes place in the Board whose members do not communicate
with each other solely by written minutes, as once upon a
time they are said to have done.

The committees whose reports and proceedings interest the
public are either standing committees, like that on Adult
Education or the Bumham Committee on Salaries, and the

50 THE ADMINISTRATION OF EDUCATION:

Consultative Committee, or are specially constituted with a
specific reference by the President or as on some occasions
even by the Prime Minister. The best-known reports of this
second class are the Reports on the Teaching of English
(which in 1912 became a 'best seller' among books), on the
Classics, on Natural Science and on Modern Studies. One
of the most recent was that of the Departmental Committee
on Private Schools in 1932. All these committees are advisory
and their recommendations may or may not be accepted by
the Board : unlike the proceedings of committees of the L.E. A.
they do not formally come up for approval by a superior body.
The Burnham Committee stands apart in some degree, for
the scales of salaries agreed upon at this joint conference of
employers the L.E.A.'s and employed the teachers' panel
must be either definitely accepted by the Board or sent
back for further consideration. The Reports on the teaching
of subjects of the curriculum were addressed rather to the
public than to the Board and were educational propaganda
and not specific recommendations calling for administrative
action by the Central Authority.

The constitution of all the Committees is roughly similar,
except that the Burnham Committee has panels appointed by
L.E.A.'s and teachers, with an independent chairman, now
Lord Onslow. They are committees of persons outside the
Board for the most part, chosen by the President because of
their special knowledge and experience, not specially elected
or sent as representatives by any organisation; the Private
Schools Committee, for example, contained preparatory and
private school teachers, members and officials of L.E.A/S,
three M.P.'s, of whom one had been a teacher and an L.E.A.
chairman, two officers of the Board, and others. Direct
representation of special interests is obtained through the
witnesses whom the committee examines and these witnesses
always include officers of the Board.

THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 51

The standing committee most in the public eye Is the
Consultative Committee, instituted by the Board of Educa-
tion Act of 1899. Its members are appointed for six years,
retiring In rotation. They are appointed by the President and
are not elected deputies. All sides of education are repre-
sented In this sense and their wide experience is pooled for
the common benefit. The Committee Is independent : questions
are referred to it by the Minister of Education, but his own
personal views or predilections, do not direct the conclusions
or guide the lines of treatment, once the 'reference' Is made.
It Is Important to make this clear because some theorists have
held that the Consultative Committee should have a more
positive role, and should be representative by election, and
that Its recommendations, normally and in the absence of
strong reasons to the contrary, should be accepted by the
minister and the Board as a basis of policy. It should, these
persons say, be a real Board of Education. This, however, is
to misconceive the position of the minister and the system of
government of the country. Like other ministers of state, the
President of the Board is responsible to Parliament and he
cannot divest himself of this responsibility by becoming the
spokesman of a consultative or advisory Board: he is not
like the chairman of an education committee conveying the
resolutions of his committee to the borough or county council
for their approval and their financial sanction. He can and
does listen to advice from all quarters and most usefully
from a committee which is consultative by statute : but as the
country Is now governed the minister must alone shoulder
responsibility.

Nevertheless the Consultative Committee carries great
weight. A striking example of its value and of the relations
between Itself and the minister is afforded by what are called
the 'Hadow Reports*, to be described more fully in Chapter
vi below. In order to carry out the implications of the Fisher

52 THE ADMINISTRATION OF EDUCATION:

Act of 1918 regarding 'advanced Instruction' in elementary
schools, the Board opened up the question in 1924 by a
circular urging L.E.A/s to devote attention to the education
of older children, now by that Act bound to stay at school
until the completion of their fourteenth year. This action was
followed in 1925 by a specific reference to the Consultative
Committee, then under Sir Henry Hadow as chairman. In
1926 the first Hadow Report was issued. The Committee
recommended some far-reaching changes in the elementary
system, education up to eleven to be regarded as and called
primary, and subsequent education to be called post-primary ;
not only so, but the Report advocated a gradual reorgani-
sation of elementary schools on this principle. The Board
accepted the main findings and the minister (Lord Eustace
Percy) issued a document 'The New Prospect in Education 5
in explanation of it. Other subordinate findings were not
adopted. The reorganisation is now proceeding.

It will be plain from what has been said how there is a
flow of well-informed opinion into the Board and into the
minds of the public, and how in turn the Board makes known
its policy both on the general movement in education and
upon particular issues that arise.

The members of the Board best known to those who are
engaged in the daily work of public education are the outside
staff, the Inspectors. Like certain other persons in the Civil
Service with the general duty of inspection, they are called
His Majesty's Inspectors when they possess the full rank, a
reminder of the time when they were technically reporting
to the monarch in Council, and not as now to the Board. The
organisation of the inspectorate roughly resembles that of the
inside officials in being territorial in the main. H.M.I. is

THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 53

responsible for a * district *, that Is for inspecting in an area
all schools which are elementary, if he is assigned to the
elementary branch; or secondary or technological, if he be-
longs to one of these other branches ; for cookery and laundry
centres, if a woman inspector appointed for that purpose.
There are also nine Divisional Inspectors whose business it
is to co-ordinate the work of all the branches and to exercise
general supervision, and a Chief Inspector for each of the
principal types of education with a Chief Woman Inspector.
In addition there are Staff Inspectors, for special subjects,
and for the training of teachers. The Welsh inspectorate is
a separate organisation.

The function of these external officers of the Board is
often misunderstood, and it is seldom realised by those out
of intimate contact with it, what inspection implies. Un-
doubtedly there still lingers some of the dread which attached
to the inspector's visit fifty years ago when it meant the
individual examination of every child and a grant varying
with the success of the children in passing the ordeal. The
principal business of H.M.I, is to know his schools, and his
district with its good points and its needs; this necessarily
means some adjudication of the teaching as well as the
machinery of organisation in them, but not now an annual
set investigation with an annual report. H.M.I. has a double
function of some delicacy. By his personal predilection and
training and by the tradition of the service nowwell established,
he is anxious to see his schools following good methods of
teaching and improving: in this capacity he is an advisor and
counsellor more than a critic. In the greater part of the
country he also has the duty of informing the L.E.A. by
reports how the schools they control are faring. Some of the
large L.E.A/s, like London, Birmingham, Manchester and
Liverpool, employ a corps of inspectors of their own, and the
Board's staff is correspondingly diminished and devotes itself

54 THE ADMINISTRATION OF EDUCATION:

more to general problems and less to particular assessments :
duplication of inspection would be obviously wasteful and
confusing. But elsewhere the Board's Inspectors virtually
work for the L.E.A. Elementary schools are reported upon"
about once in three years. In secondary and schools under
the Higher Education Committees there are Infrequent but
regular Full Inspections, where a school Is carefully inspected
by experts in various subjects as well as by the district
inspector, and a detailed report Is sent through the Board to
the L.E.A, or Governing Body. The report not only deals
with the general organisation of the school and discusses how
far It fulfils its declared object, but also gives an opportunity
for the consideration of the curriculum and the best ways of
dealing with it. Such full Inspections and reports are rare in
elementary schools, and their place is sometimes taken by
wider enquiries centring on the teaching of some subjects
in a number of schools or round some problem of general
Importance. Apart from routine inspections, H.M.I, may
report to the Board on some striking instance of neglect or
on the tardiness In dealing with defects of premises or In-
adequacy of staff. But for the most part ELM J. acts as
advisor both to teachers and to the L.B.A., as a disseminator
of new ideas and of what he has seen of successful experiments.
In remote schools especially his visits give the isolated teacher
a welcome chance of discussing difficulties and experiences.
He is not the supervisor of the teachers, for he does not em-
ploy them, nor, as in former times he has done, does he issue
recommendations which were then indistinguishable from
commands. Indeed in some degree his visits are a safeguard
to the teacher, whom his approval may protect against
criticism from the L.E.A. His position as one who watches
over the interests of the children, to see that they are being
taught under decent conditions and not neglected, is now
somewhat in the background, when all elementary schools

THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 55

e maintained by an L.E.A. But the responsibility is not
itirely abrogated. He acts as a sort of liaison officer
etween the district with its L.E.A. and the Board, and, as
Lentioned above, is constantly referred to by the Board and
>nsulted on every important action by the L.E.A. It is also
ot to be forgotten that his original raison d'etre has not
isappeared, that of satisfying the government that the
iiblic moneys spent on education are disbursed under
roper conditions.

CHAPTER IV

THE ADMINISTRATION OF EDUCATION
C. FINANCE

What may be called the spiritual link between the two
members of the partnership in education is the common pur-
pose that animates both L.E.A.'s and Board of Education,
that of training the youth of the country to become worthy
and serviceable citizens in the community. It is now necessary
to explain the material link that binds the Authorities,
Finance. The subject is complicated and forbidding, but
apart from the personal interest the reader should take in it
as pupil, teacher, administrator or rate- and tax-payer, there
are certain general principles and certain difficult problems
the understanding of which is essential to a clear compre-
hension of the educational system as a whole.

The present generation has grown so accustomed to the
alliance of state and locality for all sorts of public services that
we are apt to take it for granted, and to regard control from
Whitehall and subventions from Whitehall along with local
activity and initiative and local contributions from rates as
existing in the very nature of things. Few people realise how
recent is the development of this system of government, and
how different it is from the systems employed in other well-
organised countries, France, our own Dominions, the U.S.A. ;
and fewer still are acquainted with its origins and the prin-
ciples which lie at its roots. It is just about 100 years ago
that * Grants-in-aid *, as they are called, began to be given
for national purposes to be achieved through local agencies,

FINANCE 57

at least on such a scale as admitted of expansion. They arose
when national purposes began to shape themselves and to be
formulated within spheres hitherto left to local enterprise.
The maintenance and use of naval and military forces, the
administration of justice beyond the region of petty trials,
the upkeep of the Court and the machinery of the central
government had for centuries been state and not local
business ; but assistance to the poor, roads, sanitation, policing
had been locally administered. Education was under the
charge of the Church or of individual bodies or persons. In
the early nineteenth century, however, owing partly to the
growth and redistribution of population occasioned by the
industrial revolution and partly to the philanthropic and
religious movements of the period, the necessity for con-
certed action in order to overcome certain acknowledged evils
began to be felt. At the same time it had become evident
that local government needed reform. England was no longer
an agricultural country for which landowners and bodies of
tradesmen could provide a roughly adequate local govern-
ment; there were large agglomerations of population in the
new towns for which the old arrangements through magis-
trates and small corporations were insufficient. Hence the
Municipal Corporations Act of 1835 an< l t ^ ie -P or Law of
1834. Grants-in-aid did not accompany these Acts automati-
cally or at once ; nor were they thought out beforehand as part
of a preconceived system. Mr Sidney Webb in his book on
Grants-in-Aid (1911) says:

What we had to find was some way of securing national in-
spection and audit, and the amount of national supervision and
control that was required in the interest of the community as a
whole, without offending the susceptibilities of local autonomy,
and without losing the very real advantages of local initiative and
local freedom to experiment. Without theory, without science,
and, indeed, almost without the notice of political students, a

58 THE ADMINISTRATION OF EDUCATION:

solution has been found in the device of Grants in Aid. The
National Government, in the course of the three quarters of a
century from 1832 successively 'bought' the rights of inspection,
audit, supervision, initiative, criticism, and control, in respect of
one local service after another, and of one kind of local governing
body after another, by the grant of annual subventions from the
national Exchequer in aid of the local finances, and therefore, in
relief of the local rate-payer. By the unself-conscious invention of
Grants in Aid, we have, in the United Kingdom, devised a new
kind of relation between local and central government.

The method of working of this relation is now to be
explained, as it is exemplified in the finance of education.

11

The first education grant was made almost by accident in
1833, a sum of 20,000 being voted, to be shared between,
the two great societies, the National Society in connection
with the Church of England and the British and Foreign
School Society, and to be employed in helping to build
elementary schools. The grant was a state grant but the
recipients were of course not L.E.A/s, for these did not exist
until 1870. Yet the principle of stimulating local effort by
state contributions was there, for it was always a condition
that a school subsidised by education grants must prove that
it had local subscriptions. In due course an Education De-
partment was formed to administer the grants and inspection
was one of the rights it claimed and secured as its share of the
bargain. Under Dr Kay-Shuttleworth, though its sphere of
action was small and the resources at its disposal were slender,
the Education Department became a real central authority of
an admirable kind, encouraging and developing the local
enterprise of persons well-disposed towards education, ad-
vising rather than directing, through a body of inspectors
who were educational missionaries inspired by Kay- Shuttle-

FINANCE 59

worth's own zeal and enthusiasm. An abrupt end to this
state of things came when Robert Lowe introduced his new
Code with payment by results. Some details will be found in
the following chapter. From the point of view we are now
examining the effect was to paralyse the missionary efforts of
the inspectors and convert them for the most part into
examiners assessing results and to make the Department little
more than a paymaster's bureau. In both the conception and
the actual functioning of his office, Kay-Shuttleworth and his
staff were more like the present Board of Education than the
Education Department under its various chiefs was at any
period between 1862 and 1900.

The Act of 1870 brought no financial change so far as the
method of paying state grants was concerned. The money
was calculated on the basis of attendance and on the results of
the annual examination, alike for voluntary schools and for
board schools. The local contributions for the one set were
subscriptions and school pence, for the other the rates with
fees. The use of rate-aid for education was an innovation, the
importance of which needs no emphasis. The School Board
rate was expected to be small and some optimists even
hoped that very shortly it might be unnecessary. But the
compulsory provision of elementary schools, the central
feature of the Act of 1870, proved more costly than at first
seemed likely, and even the gigantic efforts of the voluntary
societies failed to meet the whole demand for school places,
now legally enforced. The policy of falling back on the rates
was seen to be inevitable and voluntary schools began to
claim to participate in this source of supply. Their difficulties
were temporarily eased by the Fee Grant in 1891, and again
by the Aid Grant in 1897. But these were not enough and
Mr Balfour in 1902 boldly extended rate-aid to all public
elementary schools, thus making possible a real and fair
system of elementary education. Meanwhile, without any

60 THE ADMINISTRATION OF EDUCATION:

substantial alteration in the method of assessing government
grants, the total amount annually paid grew with the vastly
increased number of children in attendance, and this with
other changes described elsewhere in this book led up to the
conception of education as a national enterprise to which both
the state and the locality contribute.

The partnership between L.EJL's and the state faintly
adumbrated in 1870 was very partial and imperfect. L.EJL's
the School Boards existed only where they were needed
to provide schools where the supply was insufficient; in any
case the L.E.A. controlled only board schools and only
elementary education. The grants were piecemeal, for about
twenty years based on attendance of scholars and on their
success in the annual examination; and when by successive
changes payment by individual results was replaced by a kind
of block grant, after 1900, the block grant itself was estimated
and paid on each school separately. The same principle of
payment for work done had also prevailed in the very various
grants by which the Science and Art Department had for
long stimulated the teaching of science and art in grammar
schools, technical schools, evening classes and the like. The
basis varied from time to time, sometimes calculated on
successes in the examinations of the Department, sometimes
on qualifications of teachers and, later, on hours of attendance,
but it was always reckoned school by school, class by class,
if not always pupil by pupil. So also after 1902, when grants
were paid mostly to L.EJL's and not to individual bodies of
managers : grants to elementary schools were undisturbed as
a whole: grants to secondary schools were at so much per
pupil though here the opportunity was taken to absorb the
miscellaneous grants available for education not elementary
in a new and larger allowance per head : grants to technical
and evening schools were calculated as before.

FINANCE 6l

iii

These particulars, now of little more than antiquarian interest,
are outlined in order to bring out the importance of the
change to the present mode of paying state grants to L.E.A.'s.
This is the percentage plan, introduced in 1919 to become
completely operative in 1922. It is easiest to understand by
considering first higher education. The Act of 1902 made a
broad division between elementary and higher education, and
it will be remembered that the Part III L.B.A.'s described
in the second chapter have no powers or duties beyond ele-
mentary education. Under higher education is included the
maintenance of secondary schools, and other post-elementary
schools, whether technical or continuative, scholarships, adult
education, training colleges and classes for teachers, and also
subsidies to local universities. The amount and complexity of
the book-keeping in both government and local offices, when
dealing with claims school by school, can be easily imagined.

The percentage plan is that the state and the locality con-
tribute half each to the net expenditure by the L.E.A. on
higher education. When income (chiefly in the shape of fees)
has been deducted from the total cost, the Board of Educa-
tion give a grant of fifty per cent, of what remains. This is
called the Deficiency Grant. The expenditure on which the
Deficiency Grant is paid must be 'recognised 5 by the Board.
That is, the Board must * approve' the staffing of schools,
including the Burnham Scales of salaries, and the fees of
fee-paying pupils, the number of Free Places (or since 1932
of Special Places), the quality of school buildings and the cost
of new schools, as well as the general (efficiency of the arrange-
ments of the L.E.A. for higher education.

A simple fifty-fifty procedure for elementary education was
out of the question. Already under the older systems the
state was paying more than half the cost, at least since

6a THE ADMINISTRATION OF EDUCATION:

1902. The income from fees was negligible before 1919 and
the last remnants were swept away by the Act of 1918. The
provision of buildings by managers of voluntary schools after
1902 was, it is true, a real relief to the rates, but the relief
could not be shown on a balance sheet. The supply of
facilities for higher education was elastic, and though it
could not be easily reduced when once established, the rate
of expansion was not legally fixed : but the supply of elemen-
tary education was compulsory on the L.B.A.'s as it had been
on school boards. A percentage allocation like that for higher
education would have imposed too heavy a burden on the
rates. Accordingly, for elementary education a special formula
was devised. In the 1919 scheme the Board paid 60 per cent,
of the teachers' salaries. Under the plan at present in force
the change taking place in 1931 50 per cent, of the cost of
teachers* salaries, of the school medical service, of other
special services and maintenance allowances, falls on the
Board: for loan charges, administration and other expendi-
ture, the Board pays 20 per cent. In addition to this the
L.E.A. receives a capitation grant of 45^., reduced by a sum
equivalent to the product of a jd. rate.

IV

The two formulae just described do not exhaust the state's
contribution to educational expenditure. Besides the De-
ficiency Grant the Board pays a Direct Grant in certain cases,
but not to L.E.A/S. Conceivably the Act of 1902 might have
set up a rigid system in which only schools provided by the
L.E.A. were to be aided by the state and no others. Such a
system exists in some of the British Dominions, where various
schools usually established by religious organisations receive
no state grant and no local grant. But in England and Wales
the voluntary principle as the original principle of education

FINANCE 63

was so firmly established that few save some extremists wished
to see it abandoned and the schools penalised under the new
organisation that was contemplated. The Act of 1902 in-
structed the L.E. A. J s to * aid ' the provision of education other
than elementary. From the first, aid was understood to mean
not only creating new schools but assisting by grants the
existing grammar and similar schools. Proprietary and private
schools were not eligible for this local aid : but schools which
would admit representatives of the L.E.A. on their governing
bodies and would accept a conscience clause were eligible
conditions so easy that numerous secondary schools fulfilled
them. In the same way the Board also paid a grant per
capita to such schools. When the Deficiency Grant scheme
was in operation, it soon appeared that the Board was paying
twice over, once by the capitation grant and again by the
50 per cent, of the net expenditure of the L.E.A. on higher
education, which, as stated above, included aid to schools.
Consequently schools eligible for public aid were called upon
to elect whether they would receive a grant, usually a lump
sum, through the L.E.A., or a capitation grant from the
Board. They could not receive both. The schools in question
receiving a Direct Grant are certain secondary schools, training
colleges under voluntary management, and technical schools
which the L.E.A. has not taken over completely, such as the
Polytechnics. The capitation grant for secondary schools is
7. 7$. per pupil, for training colleges ^43 or .25 accord-
ing as the student is resident or non-resident, the tech-
nical schools a kind of block grant. A very small number of
elementary schools, chiefly orphanages, also receive a Direct
Grant.

The change from the older system of grants to the per-
centage system alters the relationship between the central and
the local authorities in several respects. In the last century
the state encouraged education by offering subsidies which

64 THE ADMINISTRATION OF EDUCATION:

were almost bribes. Establish and teach a class in mechanics
or chemistry and you shall have a grant, said in effect the
Science and Art Department. Teach cookery, said the
Education Department, and we will give you so much a head.
Something of the same attitude was for long observable in
certain subsidiary services. In certain departments coming
now under the medical branch of the Board, as will be shown
in a later chapter, L.E.A.'s have been encouraged to under-
take new responsibilities, e.g. with reference to the mentally
defective, by the offer of grants in the first instance. The
complement to this practice was the power to reduce or
refuse grants if the work for which they were offered was
imperfectly done or neglected. Both of the older departments
exercised the power freely through differential grants or re-
ductions which amounted to fines zs. a head if the geography
was good, is. if it was poor, nothing if it was worthless. On a
percentage system it is difficult in practice to fine or to deduct
and in fact the Board rarely does so. The relationship of pay-
master and recipient has quite definitely been abandoned. If
in the partnership that replaces it, the L.E.A., the partner
that has the initiative, performs his duties, statutory and
other, unsatisfactorily, the Board has rather to rely on per-
suasion and the pressure of public opinion than on the drastic
action of former days. The Board has the legal power to
'disallow' expenditure and to refuse the percentage share of
it contributed from the Exchequer; but the power lies in the
background. The percentage system works well when the
country is prosperous and L.E.A.'s need little encouragement
to embark upon fresh undertakings. In a period such as the
present, when economy is expected, neither the Board nor
the Government can do much beyond slowing down the rate
of progress : in 1931 the Government summarily reduced the
heavy item of salaries and the Board have advocated small
economies of staffing.

FINANCE 65

This consideration brings us to a region into which it
is beyond the province of this book to enter. Whether the
present system of finance distributes the burden equitably
between the taxes and the rates, whether the state should
assign a fixed all-over grant in block to education, retaining
the power to expend or reduce the total periodically, whether
the money devoted to education locally and nationally bears
the right proportion to the national income and expenditure,
these are questions which would require a volume to them-
selves and must here be passed by. The purpose of this
chapter will have been served if the essentials of the financial
connection between the Board and the L.E.A. J s have been
made clear.

This chapter would be incomplete without some account of
the amounts which are involved in the foregoing sketch of
the finance of public education, and some estimate of the
growth of expenditure in the last two generations. No balance
sheet with classified items can be presented because the * year '
of the Board is the financial year of the Budget, and the year
of the L.E.A.'s is different. Also there are miscellaneous
additions and deductions, the explanation of which would
defeat our aim to be clear and intelligible.

The total present expenditure in the public system of
education in England and Wales is estimated at 91 million
for non-university education. The bulk of the expenditure
is naturally on elementary and secondary schools, on
technical education and on the training of teachers. But
the sum also includes the cost of the Board's administration
and that of L.E.A.'s, state scholarships, pensions to teachers
and some agricultural education. The principal items may
be mentioned in round numbers: elementary education
million, secondary education n^ million, technical
WES 3

66 THE ADMINISTRATION OF EDUCATION!

and further education 4^ million, training of teachers
ij million, pensions to teachers 6 million, loan charges
5 million, administration 4^ million. To balance this
expenditure, about 84 million comes from public funds,
that is, in 1932, 43,627,821 from Exchequer grants and
40,350,444 from local rates. The remainder Includes con-
tributions by teachers to the pension scheme, over 2!
million, fees in secondary and other non-elementary schools
nearly aj million, and various contributions from endow-
ments, etc. The salaries paid to teachers in elementary schools,
which are separately assessed in the published returns, amount
to almost 39 million. It will be seen that on this estimate
not quite 50 per cent, of the whole expenditure is met from
state contributions, and that the proportion of such con-
tributions borne by the taxes is 53 per cent, or over and that
borne by the rates 47 per cent, or under.

It is to be remembered that these huge sums represent the
money expended on the education of about 7 million persons,
of whom 5 J million are in elementary schools, over 400,000 in
state-aided secondary schools and over 900,000 In technical
and allied schools. The estimated population of England and
Wales in 1931, of persons up to and including twenty-one
years of age, was 13,700,000 and over. Thus about half the
population under twenty-two years of age is under instruction
of some kind.* The number of those over twenty-one who are
receiving education is appreciable but does not affect the
general statement; it is also calculated that some 400,000
children and young persons are under private instruction. A
figure based on reckoning the average cost per person under
instruction is not of much practical use. More pertinent are
the average cost per annum of educating a child in ele-
mentary schools (12), and the average cost to public funds
of boys and girls in secondary schools which are part of the
public system (28-30).

FINANCE 67

Another comparison of not much value would be a detailed
estimate of the growth of the cost of education since the
'sixties of last century, if the comparison rests on figures alone
without the recognition of the main causes of the expansion.
The Act of 1870 made the provision of school places obliga-
tory throughout the country; and the number of schools
added by voluntary bodies and by school boards necessarily
increased in consequence; so of course did the Exchequer
grants. A further addition to state expenditure was neces-
sitated by the grant in lieu of fees in 1891. The allocation
of "whisky-money 3 in 1890 to technical education was a
windfall from the state, but it brought with it a further
expansion of state as well as of local contributions. The Act
of 1902 by imposing the maintenance of voluntary elemen-
tary schools on the rates and by prescribing the development
of secondary as well as of other forms of higher education,
added to the charges on both local and central funds. The
War increased costs generally, and salary scales on a more
generous basis along with pensions for teachers committed
the nation to a permanently heavy budget for education. With
these facts before one, comparisons between total costs before
the War and present costs do little more than confirm the
general awareness of the enormous cost of education. The
actual increase in the ten years 1923-33 in the total expenditure
from central sources was from .40 million to 42 million and
from ^30 million to ^40 million from the rates.

3-2

CHAPTER V
THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

The five chapters which follow will deal with the different
kinds of schools, classes and institutions which are the con-
cern of the L.E.A.'s and the Board of Education in the public
system of education in England and Wales. It is best to begin
with elementary education: the number of children and of
teachers involved and the cost of elementary schools make
this side of educational work the most important in point of
magnitude ; and further in a real sense, as we hope to show,
elementary education is the foundation of the whole structure.

The school called in England and Wales a public elementary
school has different names in other countries. In France it is
une ecole primaire and the instruction given in it is called
I' instruction primaire. ' Primary' is accurate and logically
implies 'secondary* and the French are consistent in fol-
lowing primary instruction by P enseignement secondaire.
' Elementary ' is also accurate enough but suggests c advanced ',
a term less susceptible of precise definition administratively
than secondary. The German word is volkschule, the people's
school, descriptive indeed and even picturesque, but not
suggesting very clearly what parts of the community are not
of the folk. In some quarters in this country 'primary' is
preferred to elementary and, as will be shown in the next
chapter, the Hadow Report advocates the technical use of
' primary school ' for schools taking children up to the age of
eleven plus and 'primary education' as denoting all education

THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL 69

up to that age, whether given in publicly maintained schools
or elsewhere.

But elementary education and elementary school are the
official terms in England and Wales, legally established by
successive Acts of Parliament. They imply a very distinct
sphere. The Board has an Elementary Branch, with a high
official in charge, and inspectors allocated to the Branch.
Some small L.E.A/s, the Part III L.E.A.'s, as we have seen,
are authorities for elementary education only, and the county
authorities have distinct Elementary Education Committees.
Elementary education has its own official Regulations separate
from the regulations of other departments: they alone are
still called a Code of regulations, a survival of the Codes
of 1 86 1 and 1862. The finance of elementary education is
peculiar to itself. The reasons for the special treatment of
elementary education are not far to seek. Apart from historical
origins they lie in the two facts, first, that education up to
the age of fourteen is compulsory, and second, that to apply
compulsion to nearly six million children of the obligatory
school age is evidently impossible without public provision
and governmental aid. Hence the public elementary school
supplies a fundamental need of the community in a sense not
true of any other educational institution at the present time.

The developments of the last six or seven years bid fair to
displace the older simple and homogeneous elementary school
and to establish in its place a double institution, the primary
school up to eleven plus, and the post-primary school under
its various names. It will be convenient in the present chapter
to treat only of the traditional undivided elementary school
and to leave all forms of post-primary education, some of
them still officially * elementary', to subsequent chapters.

7O THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

11

The public elementary school the official designation of the
school recognised as providing elementary education is
public because no child of the appropriate age can be refused
admission on the grounds of class, wealth or poverty, religion,
attainments or even nationality. It is public now in another
sense, because it is maintained, though not always provided,
by public Authorities, national and local. Theoretically, all
children up to the age of fourteen could claim to be educated
in the public elementary school. Actually, some five and a
half million are now in the schools, while about a million
are being educated in other schools, some of them under state
control, others independent of it, or are educated privately
at home or abroad. The English elementary school is not like
the grundschule of post-war Germany, a channel through
which all children in theory should pass : nor has it been, as
in the United States, 'end-on' to schools of a more advanced
type, secondary or high schools. It is expected to offer a
complete education of its kind, elementary education. It is
difficult if not impossible to define * elementary education'
with any precision. For long it covered little more than
reading, writing and arithmetic, with needlework for girls.
In 1899, as will be described in the next chapter, the London
School Board was brought sharply to book for transgressing
the limits of what was then held to be elementary education.
That day is past, for the L.E.A.'s have powers over other
forms of education besides the elementary form, and the
school boards were never given these powers by statute.
Elementary education is still undefined except as that which
is given in elementary schools which are recognised as such
by the Board of Education. At the same time the common
sense of L.E.A.'s and of the public, the natural limitations of
young pupils and the general financial provisions for elemen-

THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL 71

tary education Impose effective restrictions against extrava-
gance and eccentricity. If it is pushed to a point, even the
strictly legal interpretation of elementary education appears
to be obscure. If a parent was challenged to prove in court
that his child was being efficiently educated though not in a
public elementary school, a magistrate would probably be
bound to accept adequate evidence that the child could read,
write with reasonable accuracy and do simple arithmetic:
what the exact standard of ability would be is extremely
doubtful.

Elementary education is now entirely free, and no fees are
chargeable in the various post-primary schools which are still
officially 'elementary'. The age of compulsory education
begins at five, in a very few areas at six, and children may be
admitted at the age of three. The proposals frequently made
to exclude children under five, and even to raise the age of
compulsion to six, have been unsuccessful so far because of
the resistance of L.E.A.'s which have to deal with the poorer
population of large towns. Attendance is now obligatory up
to the end of the term in which a child completes his four-
teenth year. Many European countries prescribe a definite
school period of six or eight years of attendance and invariably
begin the period at six and not below. One striking result
of the admission into schools of children of five years old
and younger is the English infants' school", which has no
exact parallel abroad.

The main portion of the traditional elementary school is
* for older scholars ', to use the official phrase. This may be
a mixed school with both boys and girls, or may be two
separate schools or departments, for boys and for girls. Co-
education has never been a vexed question in our elementary
schools. Whether older boys and girls are taught together or
separately in a particular place has depended on a variety
of circumstances, tradition, convenience, economy, the pre-

72 THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

dilection of managers, or, more rarely, the conviction of
principle. There are curious differences in the same area and
no generalisation is possible. Large town schools tend to be
in separate departments: for instance, the London School
Board usually built schools in three storeys, for boys, girls
and infants respectively, but other school boards erected large
mixed schools. The typical village school is mixed, with a
small infants' division : yet one may find in some places boys'
and girls 5 schools of no great size in different parts of a village.
A small school board established a mixed school for economy
and convenience. Church schools, when they are large, tend
to have the sexes separate and so do Roman Catholic schools
in towns. But in the North of England there are many quite
populous church mixed schools, for the Sunday schools there
are also mixed. The undenominational schools were pre-
dominantly of the mixed order, though in the early * British '
monitorial schools boys and girls were taught separately.
Some L.E.A/S have anticipated the Hadow Report in a
fashion by horizontal division into Junior Mixed and Senior
Mixed departments, thereby adding another, and at the
present time a rather embarrassing variety.

From a historical point of view the most striking fact con-
cerning the English public elementary school is the continued
existence of the dual system established by the Act of 1870.
Before 1870, it will be remembered, all elementary schools
were in the first instance built and established by voluntary
effort. The Act of 1870 created other schools which were
built by school boards from moneys coming from the rates.
Subsequent Acts have not disturbed this dualism of origin
and there exist side by side in the same area, and often in the
same village, schools whose buildings are publicly owned and
schools which are in other hands. Maintenance, as distinct
from provision and ownership, was subject to the same
dualism up to 1902. The voluntary schools were maintained,

THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL 73

their running expenses In salaries, apparatus, rent and repairs
were paid by the managers from what they received in govern-
ment grant, in fees, in subscriptions, and in rare cases also
from endowments. In board schools the cost of maintenance,
like the cost of building and repairs, was met from govern-
ment grant, from fees, and from the rates. Neither board nor
voluntary schools received any grant except for instruction.
Since the Act of 1902 all alike have been * maintained* by the
L.E.A. with the help of government grants as explained in
the preceding chapter. The two types are called officially
6 provided ' and ' non-provided 3 schools : provided schools are
so called because they are provided by the L.E.A. The names
are not happy, because they leave in ambiguity the source of
the provision. Here it will be clearer to use the terms council
school and voluntary school.

The difference between the two kinds of schools besides
that of ownership, turns on two points, management and
religious instruction. The two are intimately related; in
voluntary schools it is the managers that determine the re-
ligious instruction. The managers of these schools, though
by the Act of 1902 they are relieved of the main burden of
maintenance, the payment of salaries and the replacement of
furniture and apparatus, still retain many of the responsi-
bilities of their predecessors before 1902. They are normally
for each voluntary school six in number, four of whom are
foundation managers, according to the terms of the trust deed,
and two are appointed by the L.E.A. They must keep the
fabric in good condition, subject to an allowance for wear and
tear, and must themselves be responsible for extensions and
substantial alterations. As has just been said, they settle the
kind of religious instruction that is to be given in the schools ;
and as a corollary, they appoint the teachers, subject to such
staffing rules as may be issued by the L.E.A. Thus the
managers of a Church of England school will appoint a

74 THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

churchman or churchwornan as head and will see that the
assistant staff is competent to give a religious training of which
they approve. So the managers of a Roman Catholic school
will appoint teachers of the same faith, and they may, subject
to the approval of the L.E.A., which is very seldom refused,
engage members of teaching orders on the staff. Managers
of Jewish or Wesleyan, or purely undenominational schools
have the same powers. It is hardly necessary to say that the
clergyman and the priest are among the foundation managers
of schools attached to their respective churches. The L.E.A.
has the power of vetoing the appointment of a teacher upon
educational grounds but has no kind of veto on the character
of the religious teaching. Managers of council schools have
a much less responsible role. They are appointed by local
authorities, not wholly by education authorities, according to
rules which vary with the kind of area. Many county boroughs
such as Manchester and Salford have no managers for in-
dividual schools. Whatever the particular form of manage-
ment the L.E.A. has the supreme control over every council
school. Where bodies of managers exist they are expected to
watch the general interests of their school, sometimes helping
in the choice of staff, and always striving to let teachers and
children feel that the school is something more than a
machine.

Though the differences between voluntary and council
schools are, in respect of management and religious teaching,
of fundamental importance, the two sets of schools belong to
the same system, have the same problems and are to be con-
sidered as working for the same ends in general education
and by the same means. The L.E.A. has full control over
'secular education' in voluntary as in council schools, and,
as has been said, it maintains all of them, paying the teachers
and supplying apparatus, stationery and furniture to all alike.
The figures given in the appendix will show that the voluntary

THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL 75

schools are in no Insignificant minority as they are in Scotland,
the U.S.A. and many British Dominions, but form an integral

part of national elementary education.

in

The fact that the elementary school lies at the base of our
public education has been only tardily recognised, and it is
hardly completely recognised even now. Its beginnings were
philanthropic and up to the end of the last century it retained
many traces of its origin. True the Act of 1870 made the
universal provision of elementary schools obligatory, and the
Acts of 1876 and 1880 finally introduced compulsion on
parents to give the elements of instruction to their children,
thus appearing to establish elementary education in an all-
embracing organisation. But many factors in the thirty years
after 1870 disguised the real position of the schools, as they
obscured their real function. The incidence of School Board
rates, the rivalry of board and voluntary schools, the calls
upon the purse of those who supported voluntary schools,
were all obstacles to the popularisation of the schools, and all
tended to keep alive the idea that elementary education was a
regrettable necessity, not far removed from the disagreeable
duty of maintaining the indigent poor. Moreover, for the
greater part of the century, even after 1870, the elementary
schools were in effect isolated from forms of education con-
sidered to be superior ; and this in spite of educational ladders
which were set up in many places. The schools virtually
formed a closed circle, almost a close corporation, the subject
of special legislation ; they were administered by an Education
office which itself had few or no connections with education
beyond elementary education. Few children left the elemen-
tary for other schools, and the teachers, as pupil teachers and
as students in training colleges, were under the elementary

76 THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

regime with seldom a glimpse of teaching or of training out-
side the elementary system.

Apart from its isolation elementary education lay under
two heavy disabilities, both lightened if not wholly removed
in the last forty years. The first lay in the consequences that
followed the Act of 1870 when board and non-board schools
worked often actually side by side, but with very different re-
sources. Differences in comfort and convenience, in stability
and security were inevitable. Though not all voluntary schools
were poor and ill-found and though many School Boards
were niggardly, board schools in general were better built
than voluntary schools, better staffed, the teachers better
paid, the rooms better equipped. As board schools increased
and as the standard of education rose, voluntary schools felt
the strain to be unbearable, and the conviction grew that it
was beyond the powers of private enterprise fully to share
in the provision of elementary education on the terms that
were then unescapable. For our present purpose, and looking
mainly at externals, we stress the differences between the two
kinds of schools which made the elementary system before
1902 a system of divided interests, of two irreconcilable types
of institution, with rivalries and on one side a feeling of
injustice. It must not be forgotten, of course, that entangled
in these differences were the controversies between opposing
parties on religious education which kept alive the general
unrest and dissatisfaction. This book does not enter into an
examination of these disputes. It is desirable, however, to
point out that so long as there were two sorts of elementary
schools, markedly distinguishable, there could be no public
recognition of elementary education as one consistent activity
in which the whole nation is concerned.

The Act of 1902 had results which were not specifically
contemplated during the tumultuous debates which accom-
panied Mr Balfour's Bill through Parliament. The supporters

THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL 77

of the Bill wished to put voluntary schools on an equality with
board schools by giving them rate-aid and thus relieve the
* intolerable strain' under which they were undoubtedly
suffering. But the Act of 1902 accomplished much more than
mere relief. The conception of the elementary school as a
species of charity faded away when all the common schools
were under one local authority and were maintained from one
common fund. Rivalry between provided and non-provided
schools did not wholly disappear but it was no longer em-
phasised by manifest inequality of resources. It was now
possible to look upon the elementary schools as one body of
public institutions, a necessary and now not an unwelcome
element in local autonomy. They became the schools of the
people in a sense never before fully realised. For the first
time since 1870 they were homogeneous, as since 1870 they
had been universal. The English elementary school system
was not fully established until 1902.

Under the new unified administration at the centre and in
each area the isolation of the elementary schools was also
finally broken down. The actual measures by which the
schools were linked with other forms of education fall to be
described in subsequent chapters, but they may be summarily
indicated here. One of the first actions of the KE.A.'s was
to initiate scholarships to secondary schools and to extend
and popularise those which they found already established.
In 1907 the Liberal Government, actuated partly by the
desire to redress the balance which they held the Act of 1902
had weighted against the development of popular education,
introduced the Free Place procedure, by which normally
25 per cent, of admissions into state-provided and state-aided
secondary schools must be offered free to children from
elementary schools. In 1904 the Board of Education, though
not summarily destroying the pupil-teacher mode of training
candidates for the teaching profession, introduced an alter-

78 THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

native plan through which the young future teacher should
be taught in a secondary school : this process was now possible
when an articulated system of secondary schools was being
actively created. Elementary schools had always been the
feeders of evening schools, but since 1890 the two sets had
been under different central and local authorities, and after
1902 they were governed by the same authority. It was now
more easy to develop a means of approach up to the highest
technical education. In sum the elementary school was now
a full member of the comity of colleges and schools.

The second disability lay in the relations between the
central authority theEducation Department, as it then was
and the schools. These were founded on the principle of pay-
ment by results. The Department laid down in the Code a
scheme of work to be accomplished by all schools as a con-
dition of grant ; and the amount of grant bestowed depended
in large part on the ability of pupils to pass an annual ex-
amination. Up to 1895 all children above six years of age
were tested by H.M. Inspector individually and ' earned > for
the school sums proportional to their success. The idea of
prescribing in detail what subjects should be taught and in
what stages, what books should be read and how many, will
not strike a foreign observer, accustomed to the ordinances
of many European states, as strange or oppressive. But the
method of apportioning grants not according to the general
efficiency of the school, but according to the individual per-
formances of the children in the three R's, will seem oddly
commercial. Further, grants were hedged round with pro-
hibitions and conditions. The teaching was necessarily as
much on a piecemeal plan as the payment of grants. In a
well-found school, board or voluntary, the obligatory sections
of the prescribed syllabus could be mastered at the cost of
industry and hard work, for they were not too onerous. But
where a school had a small and ill-qualified staff, where

THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL 79

attendance was bad and the children got no help from their
home surroundings, payment by results was positively wicked.
A school was poorly provided and consequently produced
poor results ; it received therefore low grants : it was penalised
for its poverty and became poorer still. It requires little
imagination to picture the effect on teachers and children;
the supreme importance of the annual test, on which so
much, often even the teacher's salary, depended ; the drill in
reading, in arithmetic and in spelling that preceded it; the
pressure brought to bear on the slow, pressure that tempted
and led to punishment; in short a whole atmosphere of con-
straint. The absence of freedom to vary subjects and methods
galled the thoughtful and independent. The minimum of re-
quirements for each item in the schedule of grants once faith-
fully fulfilled, there was no financial inducement to go beyond,
and no ideal of what elementary education should be was
laid down in the official codes. Some bold spirits taught
lessons which did not 'pay' in grants, but most were too
busily occupied in making sure of what was demanded to
venture into fields into which they were not positively directed.

The pernicious policy of payment by results, criticised
from the beginning in 1862 by men like Matthew Arnold and
Kay-Shuttleworth, was constantly assailed by the National
Union of (Elementary) Teachers, founded in 1870, as well as
by outside observers. But an important Commission the
Cross Commission which the government of the day set up
in 1886, would not hear of any substantial change in principle
though they urged a greater elasticity in administration. The
most odious features were gradually modified and in 1895
inspection began to replace examination. But piecemeal
grants and a fixed syllabus remained until the end of the
century, and their summary abolition in 1900 marks the
beginning of a new era in elementary education.

Not to leave too unfavourable an impression of the last

8o THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

thirty to forty years of the century, one or two observations
may be permitted. The elementary system, narrow as it was,
had the advantage of being clear and precise; it evolved a
technique of its own, decidedly effective for the purpose for
which it was designed, a technique, moreover, not without
influence upon other forms of teaching. It aimed at acquire-
ments, positive knowledge and information, as indeed did
contemporary teaching in secondary schools for the most
part, and not much at the deliberate development of powers
and interests, at instruction and not so much at education.
The results, if often evanescent, were certainly produced for
the examination, and they furnished the tools of learning,
which, in spite of shocking examples to the contrary, have not
lain idle and unused. If the English nation cannot be called
a * literate* nation in a scholarly sense, the stigma of illiteracy ,
as it is generally understood, has been removed. The dis-
cipline of the schools, to which the rigour of payment by
results undoubtedly contributed, helped to civilise large
portions of the youthful population hitherto apt to run wild,
and impressed on everybody the conviction that schooling
was essential to the upbringing of the generations as they
arrived. The Boer War, while it revealed the physical de-
ficiencies of the common people, also revealed their intelli-
gence and adaptability, and the Great War confirmed the
possession of these qualities.

IV

It is appropriate at this point, and before proceeding to the
'recent history* of the elementary school, to describe the
changes in the inner working of the schools which resulted
from the disappearance of the plan of payment by results*
with the accompanying schedule of requirements. Relaxations
in the stringency of requirements and, as related on a previous

THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL 8l

page, in the frequency of examinations had taken place in
the years preceding 1900. But it was the Code of 1900 which
opened the new era. The fact that this Code was promulgated
on the eve of the discussions which preceded the Act of 1902
was little more than a coincidence, but a happy coincidence,
for the relief that Mr Balfour's Act gave to the voluntary
schools enabled the teachers in these schools to take advantage
of the new freedom.

The Code of 1900 summarily removed the piecemeal
grants: in schools for the older scholars 14?. or 12$. 6d. for
general efficiency, is. 6d. or is. for discipline, zs. or is. for
no more than each of two ' class subjects ', is. or 6d. for singing
and other grants for 'specific subjects'. Instead of these
there was substituted an all-over grant of zzs. or zis.
according to the inspector's estimate of general efficiency.
It was easy a little later to abolish the discrimination between
schools earning 2is. and those earning 22^., as in infants 5
schools to cease to classify into 17^. and i6s. schools. With the
block grant was necessarily linked a ' block ' curriculum, and
the old distinction between elementary, class, and specific
subjects was swept away with the peculiar nomenclature. All
schools were expected to teach the usual subjects in normal
circumstances ; and instead of the subjects themselves being
split up with sections for each 'standard ', their general scope
and purpose were stated in a series of carefully written
Articles which anticipated in brief the later 'Suggestions'.
Further, in the Code of 1904 there appeared a noble preface,
understood to be the work of Sir Robert Morant himself,
which in language both dignified and generous set out the
function of the elementary school in the life of the nation.

Thus in a quiet way a revolution was affected, the magnitude
of which can only be appreciated by comparing the elemen-
tary school of the 'seventies and the 'eighties as sketchily
drawn in a previous page with the school of to-day. The

82 THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

change had nothing to do with the Act of 1902 and was
quite remote from the political storms that accompanied the
passage of that Act. But without the easier material con-
ditions which that Act procured for most schools, the benefit
of the change could hardly have been fully enjoyed. The
change was twofold, not only bestowing freedom on the
teacher, but also emphasising the new attitude of the Central
Authority. The Education Department had prescribed the
detailed conditions of Parliamentary grant and had adminis-
tered the Code in a legal spirit. The Board of Education,
without surrendering the control over Parliamentary grant,
took up the position of director and advisor, both of the
L.E.A/S and of the teachers. The very title of the document
which embodied this new policy Suggestions for the Con-
sideration of Teachers and Others typified the new attitude.
These suggestions, first issued in 1905, were rewritten in
1912 and again in 1926. They are based on the experience of
the Board's inspectors in the best schools. They are definitely
'suggestions' and invite 'consideration', imposing no obli-
gation to accept them.

The teachers took advantage of the new freedom slowly and
cautiously, fearing a reaction and the reimposition of the
ancient tests. Some L.E.A.'s, following the practice of certain
school boards, had codes and examinations of their own, in
which many of the bad features of the original Codes were
retained, and it took some years before their distrust of their
own teachers was dispelled. In general, however, the sense of
real freedom spread, and the comprehensiveness, the variety
and the easier discipline of the elementary school of to-day
were attained. The common verdict of observers of the schools,
managers, inspectors and teachers, was that there was a
definite loss of the old 'accuracy', so laboriously won for the
examinations and so precariously preserved, with a note-
worthy increase in intelligent teaching and intelligent learning.

THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL 83

A whole book would be required to describe the resultant
changes in detail, but a few salient examples may here be
indicated.

The infants' schools were the first to profit by the new
conditions. A few enterprising teachers had previously sought
to make the schools places of happy natural activity instead of
being mere preparatory departments for the first standard of
the senior schools. New methods began to replace the older
drill, and the kindergarten idea, which had frequently been
misinterpreted and had produced a dull mechanical routine
carried out at the word of command, took on a new meaning.
The medical influences now brought to bear on the schools
and the growing interest in the psychological study of child-
hood contributed to destroy the old-fashioned school in
which for the most part children sat on benches and spoke,
often in chorus, when they were spoken to, and rarely in-
dulged in the free movement natural to them in real life.
Partly, but not wholly, owing to the vogue of Mme Montessori's
doctrines, the formal class method of teaching was abandoned
in favour of group and individual methods, and teachers
gladly used the discovery that young children would eagerly
teach themselves under guidance. The result has been a real
transformation of the infants* school. The nursery school
movement also has had effects far beyond the few schools
actually called by that name. It has been generally perceived
that the teaching of infants is not mainly an affair of intro-
ducing them to the elements of book-learning, but of training
and developing their bodies and minds in every direction.

The bookishness of the elementary school, as of other
schools, has constantly been a matter of reproach, and under
the old Codes there was no escape from it. The modern
trivium which should be a quadrivium, with drawing added
to the three R's makes a certain amount of bookishness
inevitable. But it has been beneficially modified, not only by

84 THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

the spread of instruction in handicraft, gardening and the
domestic arts, but also by more c practical ' methods of dealing
with subjects formerly considered to be mainly literary : the
association of handwork with arithmetic and geography, the
out-of-door observations in nature study and visits to note
geographical phenomena and to see objects of historical in-
terest, are examples. All this kind of teaching was impossible
under the former conditions, and could be only rarely under-
taken now without the active sympathy and the enlarged
resources of the L.E.A/S, The content of the separate subjects
has been altered with the rise of new methods of dealing with
them, and the old geography, for instance, is very different
from the modern in almost every important respect. The
most striking change is in English, which once officially meant
English grammar with a little recitation, reading in school
having little or no direct connection with English as now
understood. Children learn poetry and not ' recitation ', read
books and not 'readers', use school and public libraries
and have some simple introduction to first-rate literature.
Surely Matthew Arnold, with his constantly reiterated plea
for humane letters, would have rejoiced over the oppor-
tunities of the present-day elementary school. The revolution
of the last thirty years must not, of course, be exaggerated.
Tradition dies hard, and not all the foolish practices and
the illiberal conceptions of the old regime have disappeared.
Moreover, elementary instruction, if not quite as simple a
matter as Arnold once thought, must correspond with the
capacities of the young and answer to imperative social needs ;
an elementary school is still an elementary school, but it has
not only altered in numberless particulars, it has acquired
so new a spirit that its ancestor of half a century ago would
now appear to be a very curiosity.

THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL 85

In the foregoing sections an attempt has been made to
describe what the elementary school in England and Wales
now is and how changed it is from the elementary school of
fifty years ago. In bringing about the transformation there
sketched the Central Authority the old Education Depart-
ment and the Board of Education was the principal agent.
In some accounts of the events round about 1900 insufficient
honour is done to the Education Department and to the
liberalising attitude towards elementary education which its
leading personalities undoubtedly cherished: for the Code
of 1900 and the substitution of inspection for examination
were the work of the Department, when it was a separate
office ; and Sir Robert Morant in the new Board had but to
broaden and extend the path already laid out by his immediate
predecessors. When it was absorbed by the Board, the De-
partment had already shaken itself, as well as the schools, free
from the traditions of the old regime. The 'recent history',
however, of the elementary school is not confined to the story
of the emancipation from shackles, or to the efforts of the
Board to harmonise the curriculum. The L.E.A/s have
played a great part, and since the Act of 1902 public opinion,
both lay and expert, has moved in new directions. In the
present section it is proposed to relate how the new L.EJL's
discharged their onerous task.

The task before the L.E.A.'s after the Act of 1902 was
indeed formidable in the sphere of elementary education
alone. They had to * maintain 5 all public elementary schools
in their areas, not only the comparatively well-found board
schools in London and some other towns, not always large,
but also all the voluntary schools, the prosperous and the
struggling alike. Maintenance meant obviously that some-
thing approaching an equal standard should be aimed at in

86 THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

matters of staff, equipment and ultimately buildings. The
very first undertaking was to see that all schools had an
adequate amount of teaching material in books, stationery and
the like in readiness for the appointed day in 1903, or for
London, 1904; for many of the schools were notoriously ill-
equipped. Some malicious observers expected a breakdown
when the day came and a period of confusion which should
bear witness to the incapacity of the new L.B.A.'s. But no
catastrophe occurred and the teachers in many a poor school,
voluntary or board, found themselves supplied with a suffi-
ciency of material to which they had never been accustomed.
Scales of staffing and of salaries soon followed, and it is fair
to say that the old < intolerable strain* which bore upon
managers, and still more on teachers and children, was at
once or very rapidly mitigated if not removed. Much re-
mained to be done in subsequent years, and as the standard
rises, still much remains to be done especially in the reduc-
tion of the size of classes. But the comparative ease with
which the new machinery began to work swept away the
sense of grievance under which managers and teachers had
laboured and certainly added to the comfort of the scholars.
The L.E.A.'s won public confidence at the outset.

Larger questions than those of adjustment and the removal
of patent inequalities in material and staff exercised the
L.E.A.'s from the first. Like the school boards they had
the duty of supplying school accommodation where it was
required. Unlike the school boards they had the power of
refusing to maintain voluntary schools which in point of
building and accommodation were gravely deficient and of
calling upon managers for improvements and repairs as a
condition of maintenance. Accordingly all L.E.A.'s made
some kind of survey of the existing schools, superficial in
some instances, very thorough in London, Durham County,
the West Riding and certain other L.E.A.'s. The monumental

THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL 87

survey of the London Authority covered 43 3 voluntary schools,
and conditions were laid down under which these could be
accepted as permanent schools: as a result very substantial
improvements were made in most of the schools at the expense
of the managers and only twenty-three were closed entirely.
But the problem was far from being as simple as this bare
statement suggests. The closure of a school usually meant
replacement by a new school and replacement was not only
costly in itself but often extremely difficult to carry out in
a congested area. The L.E.A.'s inherited an extraordinary-
variety of schools: some recently built, commodious and
well-situated, usually board schools: a certain number of
old schools originally well designed and suitably placed or
adapted to the needs of the time by managers or school
boards: old but stoutly built board schools planned in the
early days with huge schoolrooms and classrooms to hold
seventy or eighty children, almost hopelessly unsuitable for
modern teaching : old voluntary schools, including some but
not many church schools, recently transferred to the school
board by managers who could no longer even maintain them
in a decent state of repair, but too useful in providing at least
floor space to be summarily closed down without being
replaced: voluntary schools of all ages and designs which
managers were resolved to keep alive at all costs. With the
prospect of a general Act of Parliament, in the near future,
improvements had been slow for some years, though by no
means negligible ; there had been a great reluctance to provide
new schools where the pressure of population called for them.
No L.E.A. could adopt a precipitate policy in the circum-
stances, and with the strong position the voluntary schools
had gained by the Act of 1902, no authority could ride rough-
shod over them. The first immediate need in many places
was to supply new accommodation which was plainly wanted
in order to close the worst of the transferred buildings or to

55 THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

relieve serious overcrowding; and this was especially true
of towns which had had no school boards, and in villages
developing industrially in the country. Thus in the early
years after the Act many new council schools were put up in
all parts of England and Wales and many of the worst of the
old schools were finally closed.

The improvement of existing premises and fabric was taken
in hand by some vigorous authorities, such as London, but
for the most part the initiative in it was assumed by the
Board of Education. The old Education Department had
exercised pressure on managers and school boards to remove
defects in school buildings. But the pressure had been in-
termittent, conveyed usually through the annual reports of
H.M. Inspectors. Now, when there was one comprehensive
authority in each area, it was possible to pursue a systematic
policy. Basement rooms were condemned there were
shocking examples in some towns and ceased in due course
to be used as classrooms. In 1908-9 the 'accommodation' of
every school was reassessed, so as to give every older child
at least ten square feet and each infant nine square feet of
floor space. This was carried through in spite of some resent-
ment where the accommodation of voluntary schools was thus
curtailed. In 1908 what is known as the Black List enquiry
was undertaken. H.M. Inspectors were asked to classify all
schools in their districts into three divisions : schools which
had no defects of such magnitude as to call for urgent atten-
tion, schools which had serious but remediable defects, and
schools so unsatisfactory that they should be closed. The
Board presented the Black List to the L.E.A.'s, not as a
schedule of demands to be insisted upon at once but as a
review of the ultimate liabilities of the L.E.A. The Board of
course urged that the worst cases should be dealt with as
promptly as possible. But the general policy of the Board in
all departments of education has been to expect the L.E.A/S

THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL 89

to think out long-distance schemes of improvement and
development and to have a reasoned programme on which to
proceed. This was a very decided advance on the former
almost inevitable method of piecemeal demands on individual
schools with no relation to wider problems. Considerable
progress was made before the War in reducing the number of
hopeless schools and iii improving others. But many con-
demned schools have lived long after their sentence of death.
Indeed in some populous towns they still live because their
closing involves problems of replacement all but insoluble.
Now and then a slum area is invaded by industry or com-
merce, its population migrates, and an old school, often with
wholesome traditions amid its shocking surroundings dies a
natural death. In other cases schools are saved at the last
moment by an ingenious architect ; or again a site offers itself
in the centre of a town and upon it a school may be built to
take the place of three or four buildings beyond the powers of
the most skilful to recondition for permanent use. After the
War, which suspended operations, the Black List policy was
resumed in 1924 and the Annual Reports of the Board record
the steady progress towards the elimination of the worst
schools on the List.

The policy just described could have had no success if the
L.EJL'shad not recognised its essential justice and if managers
of schools and the ratepaying and subscribing public had not,
however reluctantly, acquiesced. It is no doubt true that the
standard of the Board has been rising from period to period ;
but it is also true that the public standard has also risen. When
Mr Acland in 1892 had a special enquiry made into school
amenities, such as cloakrooms, he met with a storm of protest
and his action was construed as an attack on the voluntary
system. But no one now questions the necessity of cloak-
rooms, of proper provision for washing, of the means for
drying wet outdoor clothing and boots, or of other decencies

90 THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

which Mr Acland dared not suggest. The rising standard is
due in large part to the growth of a keener hygienic conscience
generally, and this again is owing partly to the association of
the medical service with the schools. This topic is treated in
greater detail in the chapter on Health in the School.

The most troublesome problem in dealing with schools in
themselves sound and capable of being improved in respect
of lighting, heating and ventilation has been that of class-
rooms. The L.E.A/s here had an oppressive legacy from the
past. The original suggestion of the early Education Depart-
ment that a barn was no bad model for a school was meant for
schools on the monitorial plan, where a school would have
one adult teacher with a staff of monitors, or later, pupil
teachers under his eye. When adult teachers had become more
numerous, the idea that each school should possess at least
one large schoolroom still prevailed, as it had prevailed in the
old public school, where several masters taught in Big School.
This principle suited voluntary schools attached to a church
or chapel which required such a room for Sundays, and it
was extremely popular in the north of England, especially in
Lancashire. Many board schools, built after 1870, copied it
to this extent that besides the few classrooms there was one
huge room regularly occupied by several classes. Before 1902
some progress had been made in increasing the number of
classrooms, by addition or more frequently by partitions.
Partitioning was effective up to a certain point, for at least it
separated classes. But, except by accident, it did not solve
the difficulty of the awkward size of many classrooms. At a
time when staffs were increased and it was possible to reduce
the swollen classes of an earlier day, classrooms to hold seventy
or eighty entailed much waste space, and if further subdivided
were too small. The process of conversion was necessarily
slow. London undertook a comprehensive scheme to bring
all the old council schools up to modern needs by structural

THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL 91

changes which would result in classrooms for forty older
children and for forty-eight younger. Other L.E.A.'s im-
proved here and there, as opportunity offered. In general it
may be said that the L.E.A.'s have responded remarkably well
to the demands of the situation as they found it in 1903, and
that the ideal of a classroom not overcrowded for each class is
in most quarters realised.

The need for economy in public expenditure has stimu-
lated enquiries into methods of constructing schools other
than with bricks and mortar, but no resounding results can be
recorded. At the same time many critics have suggested that
school buildings should not be too substantially constructed,
lest with the possible changes in educational methods and
ideas, future authorities may be as much embarrassed by the
possession of them as many L.E.A.'s have been in the last
thirty years. The question is too complicated to be discussed
here. We must be content to record, however sketchily, what
has been done in this generation to add to the comfort of the
pupils and to the convenience and efficiency of the teachers.

CHAPTER VI
POST-PRIMARY EDUCATION

The account of the English elementary school in the previous
chapter has been intentionally confined to the school in its
simple form, a free school attended by the mass of child
population from the age of five or earlier up to the age of
thirteen or fourteen. Higher Elementary and Central Schools
have been left for separate treatment, as have the special
varieties of schools for the physical and mentally defective.
The latter group will appear in a chapter devoted to the
Medical Service. The tendencies and ambitions which gave
rise to the former must have some detailed treatment, not
only because of their intrinsic interest, as illustrating the
development of educational ideas, but also because the move-
ments they exemplify have come rapidly to a head within the
last ten years and have resulted in practical measures which
are apparently destined to transform the face of elementary
education in England and Wales. These measures, alluded to
from time to time in preceding pages, are the schemes of
reorganisation associated with the name of Sir Henry Hadow.
The central idea behind them is that all education up to the
age of eleven plus should be regarded as 'primary' (in what-
ever kind of school it is given), and that the various forms of
subsequent training being strictly 'post-primary' should be
thought of as such; where education is continued within the
elementary school itself, it should be separately organised and
the post-primary period should be recogni/ed as a stage with
its own ideals and its own framework and methods.

POST-PRIMARY EDUCATION 93

Though the name is new, the need for some organised post-
elementary education was felt as soon as elementary schools
became universal after 1870. The grammar and endowed
schools were remote and could be reached only by a few
winners of scholarships, the public schools still more distant
and entirely inaccessible from the elementary school. But no
sooner had the board schools become firmly settled than the
best pupils easily mastered the standard work prescribed by
the Code and were ready to go beyond the standards and to
attack subjects not attempted in the ordinary schools. The
larger boards set up Higher Grade Board Schools with some
mathematics, French and science in addition to the three
R's. Similarly some prosperous voluntary schools called
themselves Higher Grade, partly on the strength of a higher
fee and partly on the more advanced instruction imparted
in them. Certain school boards deliberately adopted the
policy of encouraging the higher grade type of school and
were more or less openly invading the field of secondary
education. A kind of crisis occurred in 1899 when the Local
Government Auditor (Mr Cockerton) challenged the right of
the London School Board to spend money upon education
that was not elementary the science and art classes in
higher grade schools and upon the education of pupils
beyond the compulsory school age in evening schools for
youths and adults and in pupil teacher classes. The Cockerton
judgment was upheld by the House of Lords and its obvious
effect was to paralyse the work of the progressive school
boards. The impasse thus created had to be met by annual
Acts to permit the school boards to spend public money as
before for what was now pronounced to be illegal purposes.
But such conditions clearly could not continue indefinitely,
and the famous judgment coming after a period when the

94 POST-PRIMARY EDUCATION

need for organising secondary education was becoming in-
creasingly urgent undoubtedly led to the Act of 1902.

The history of the agitations concerning the future of
education beyond the elementary schools during the score of
years at the close of the nineteenth century belongs strictly
to that century, though some references will have to be made
to it in the following chapter. The various troubles were
due at bottom to the general pressure of elementary schools
upwards and to the great reluctance of the nation to follow
Arnold's advice to ' organise your secondary instruction \ He
was right in the 'sixties when the local grammar schools were
still bound by the statutes and schemes of government of an
earlier day. He was equally right in the 'seventies when the
endowed schools had begun to flourish again. But meantime
there was a new class of people requiring education beyond
the standards, for whom the resuscitated grammar schools
were not adequate. For Arnold had in view not the well-to-
do people whose sons could stay at school till eighteen or
nineteen, but those less well-to-do whose school period ended
at fifteen, sixteen or seventeen; he wanted more middle
schools and advised the nation to undertake this highly
important kind of education in a systematic way. Perhaps it
was well that his advice was not hurriedly adopted, for a well-
entrenched secondary system erected independently of the
school boards and before the new county councils had settled
down to work might have been more difficult to absorb into a
national system than the scattered school boards were. But the
long delay meant endless friction and controversy, and mean-
time the claims of the rising working classes went unsatisfied.
The Act of 1902 solved the difficulties by creating L.E.A/S
empowered to organise secondary education and not forbidden
to extend elementary education. The miscellany of Higher
Grade Board Schools, Schools of Science, and Pupil Teacher
Centres at once passed into the sphere of secondary education.

POST-PRIMARY EDUCATION 95

But the solution was not complete. It left untouched the
growing numbers of elementary scholars able and willing to
go beyond the usual elementary instruction but unable to
take a full secondary course. As will be shown in the next
chapter, the official definition of a school which was to be
eligible for secondary grants had to be strictly drawn in the
interests of the new schools themselves. In fact the Board
of Education had to adopt for a time a rather drastic attitude
towards many schools which put forward claims to be con-
sidered secondary, because they had been called higher grade,
and to discourage some specious attempts in elementary
schools to teach subjects supposed to be secondary, like
French and science, without any real prospect of success. It
seemed as if the charge made by the opponents of the Act
of 1902, that the Act aimed at depressing popular education,
was to be justified after all ; elementary schools were to be
elementary and nothing more. To meet the situation and to
provide a kind of advanced education for elementary schools,
the Board created a new type, the Higher Elementary School
fochilckeixfrom ten to fourteen; this was before the Act of
1902 had really cleared the air administratively. This sort of
school was to receive grants on a higher scale than those of
the ordinary school, but the conditions were stiff and, as the
leaving age was fourteen, the new schools could in no way
satisfy the obvious need for a higher primary type of educa-
tion. In 1905 the Regulations were recast and a fresh kind
of school was permitted, with an age-range from twelve to
fifteen. Again the conditions, though easier than before, were
rigid; but a certain number of L.E.A/s, chiefly those with a
comfortably circumstanced suburban population, established
a small number of such Higher Elementary Schools. But the
larger LJBJL's, like London, Manchester and Liverpool,
would have nothing to do with the scheme. They kept the
schools formerly regarded as * higher grade* but not suitable

96 POST-PRIMARY EDUCATION

for conversion into secondary schools, experimented with
various forms of advanced instruction and definitely refused
to earn the higher grants available for Higher Elementary-
Schools because of the cramping rules which accompanied
them. This action, which was not concerted but grew out of
the circumstances in each area, is of considerable importance,
for the experience of these Central Schools, as they were
usually but not universally called, especially the experience
of the London Central Schools, clearly guided the Con-
sultative Committee in the Hadow Report. The special
Higher Elementary Regulations were withdrawn in 1919 with-
out protest, when the present grant system was instituted.

n

The higher elementary schools were so few that they made
no weighty contribution to the problem of providing suitable
education for children who were ready to stay at school
beyond fourteen. Though the demand for opportunities of
advanced education to be open to children of elementary
schools continued and even strengthened, the question be-
came less immediately acute before the War, as the activities
of the L.E.A.'s took effect. The rapid provision of cheaper
secondary schools in part satisfied the need. When scholarship
systems were set on foot and when the free place requirements
were made in 1907, more and more elementary school
children passed regularly into secondary schools, while for
many who did not the central schools supplemented the
secondary provision in many large towns. By 1914 the
irritation caused by the Cockerton judgment had completely
died down, and with it the suspicion of dark designs on the
extension of popular education.

Up to the War no specific action beyond what has just
been described had been taken in the direction of post-

POST-PRIMARY EDUCATION 97

primary education. The Consultative Committee, it Is true,
were invited to consider higher elementary schools in 1905
but their report in 1906 did not carry matters much further
forward, and it was followed by no official action either by
the Board or by the L.B.A.'s. The L.E.A.'s were absorbed
chiefly In consolidating elementary and secondary education
with their concomitant pressing problems. The Great War,
which stopped expansion of all kinds for the time, gave
an extraordinary stimulus to popular interest in education.
The scholars in all schools felt themselves to be partners
with the whole nation in the long struggle, and both
combatants and non-combatants cherished a determination
that the next generation should have better chances than the
generations that were fighting and suffering. The last rem-
nants of political opposition to educational progress, very
little in evidence in the previous dozen years, disappeared,
and all the political parties were committed to advance, if not
to particular lines of advance. The general readiness to accept
Mr Fisher's Act of 1918 is significant. The Act was accepted,
not as a set of detailed provisions, for the continuation schools
were not to be put into operation at once, so much as a
national gesture, as a declaration of rights and duties. In
great Acts of Parliament it sometimes happens that the
crucial clauses and those which are most debated have less
ultimate effect than clauses which on the surface are of little
account. Thus the provisional and contingent sections of the
Act dealing with day continuation schools have been in-
operative for the most part; while the second clause of the
Act, requiring L.E.A.'s to 'provide practical instruction suit-
able to the ages, abilities and requirements of the children*,
and 'to organise. . .courses of advanced instruction for the
older and more intelligent children', has had as a result, and
that not indirectly, the reorganisation now in progress.
The expectations of progress after the War, which had
WES 4

98 POST-PRIMARY EDUCATION

been cherished as it drew to an end, were not fully realised in
other spheres of national life besides education. When the
period of financial depression set in, it became evident that
we were not ready for the day continuation school, or really
persuaded of its value. But the trend towards a longer school
life continued unchecked and indeed was reinforced by the
growing conviction that the adolescent population needed
attention. Amid general approval, Mr Fisher had included
in his Bill the long overdue reforms in the law of school
attendance, abolishing half-time and other exemptions and
compelling attendance up to the end of the term in which
the child reaches fourteen. The Labour Party, in office for
a time in 1924, which never cordially liked the continuation
school policy of Mr Fisher, began to talk of raising the school
age to fifteen universally. Mr Fisher's Act had in fact
empowered L.E.A/s to raise the age to fifteen in their own
areas, but only two or three had used the power. In 1924 the
question was remitted to the Consultative Committee, who
were asked to report upon 'the organisation, objective and
curriculum of courses of study suitable for children who will
remain in full-time attendance at schools, other than secondary
schools, up to the age of fifteen 5 . The question was far more
ripe for discussion and decisive action than in 1905. L.E.A/S
which in various ways had attempted to carry out their duties
as to advanced instruction wanted a lead. It was felt that in
too many cases the older children in the ordinary elementary
schools were marking time and that schooling merely ceased
instead of reaching a well-understood end. The Consultative
Committee, under Sir Henry Hadow, rose to the occasion
and issued in 1926 a Report on 'The Education of the
Adolescent'. This was followed in 1931 by one on 'The
Primary School' and by another in 1933 on 'Infant and
Nursery Schools '. The three are now usually known as the
Hadow Reports.

POST-PRIMARY EDUCATION 99

ill

The kernel of the Hadow Reports lies in the advocacy of a
'clean cut' in education between the ages of eleven and
twelve to use the convenient and accepted phrase, at eleven
plus. The Committee were led to the principle chiefly by
evidence which showed that teachers and administrators had
already reached it as a result of practical experience ; scholar-
ship schemes and free admissions to secondary and central
schools were almost universally based on it. In the second
Report the Committee were at considerable pains to justify
the conception of a 'primary* stage of development in
children ending about eleven plus by quoting in detail the
considered judgments of modern physiologists and psycho-
logists. They urged that the break which was found con-
venient and efficacious for scholarship children should be
applied to all children in public elementary schools. A fresh
start is needed for every one at eleven plus. Up to that age
education is to be considered as primary ; beyond eleven plus
it is secondary or at least post-primary. This is to be true for
the ordinary child and not for those only who succeed in a
competitive test, for the less intelligent equally with the more
intelligent. If the principle is accepted, it amounts to much
more than an instruction to managers and teachers to adopt
a fresh outlook for children above eleven. It involves also a
reorganisation of the traditional English elementary school,
and the Hadow Reports boldly face the problem.

They suggest three main types of post-primary education,
the Selective Central School, the Non-selective Central School
and the Senior School. The Central School types are pre-
ferred by the Committee, but the third, it is recognised, may
be necessary where material obstacles to the first two are too
stubborn to be overcome. The names partly explain them-
selves. Where conditions are favourable, a selective central

IOO POST-PRIMARY EDUCATION

school, entrance to which is gained by a competitive ex
animation, is a type of organisation with most promise
because the successful candidates will be of such provec
intelligence that a very definite course of future study can be
safely laid out for them ; it may be directed broadly towards
industry or towards commerce, or it may include both kinds
of instruction. A selective school will ordinarily be fed from
many contributory schools and in the nature of things will not
usually be 'end-on' to any particular junior primary school.
Such a method of selection leaves behind all those who fail
in the competition, and for them a non-selective central school
is suggested, a school which will take all and sundry who are
eleven plus, again normally receiving pupils from several
schools, and thus being ' central \ A non-selective school will
have to be organised so as to deal with both the abler and the
duller of its pupils. It may happen in a particular locality
that there is no selective central school into which cleverer
children are creamed off, and that all varieties will be sent to
a non-selective school ; and it is by no means to be assumed
that a non-selective school has inferior material to handle.
The senior school is a name suggested for the upper depart-
ment of a large elementary school which remains self-con-
tained, usually neither contributing to a central school nor
receiving contingents from primary schools not in the same
building. It is a species of non-selective school, end-on to a
primary school, and possibly under the same head teacher.
Superficially it seems to be the traditional school with standards
unchanged. But in it, as in both selective and non-selective
central schools, the Report urges that (after a real break at
eleven plus) there should be a fresh organisation and a fresh
conception of the curriculum of the older children planned
to cover three if not four years. It is obvious that, if the
slower children are no longer to be in the primary school but
are to join their equals in age in the senior or central school,

POST-PRIMARY EDUCATION IOI

the old practice of standard promotion, with laggards left
behind, must be discarded. A reorganisation of teaching is
as essential as a reorganisation of schools, and the Consul-
tative Committee explain in some detail what form the new
outlook must assume.

The principles just described have been adopted as a
definite policy by the Board of Education and the LJLA.'s,
and by now considerable progress has been made in carrying
them out. The difficulties are not to be underestimated. The
existing schools for older children, built for the most part
to accommodate children from about seven to thirteen or
fourteen, rarely lend themselves to an easy subdivision into
blocks or suites of rooms for two departments, a primary and
a senior department. Nor is it always easy to pool the children
of neighbouring schools so that juniors go to one or more,
and another becomes a central school, though this has been
frequently done. New schools may be and very often are
planned to meet the new organisation. All varieties of
organisation may be observed in different localities : selective
central schools alongside of non-selective and senior schools ;
non-selective alone with here and there a senior department;
several schools 'decapitated' to feed one large central or
senior school; a simple pooling arrangement between two
schools adjoining; in rural areas, one conveniently placed
school treated as central, usually non-selective, with a number
of small village schools feeding it; sometimes an entirely new
central school for a wide rural area, to and from which children
are conveyed by omnibus or ride on cycles.

As might be expected, the dual system of voluntary and
council schools prevents an easy paper solution of the problem
in many areas. It is partially settled in places either by the
choice of one church or Roman Catholic school to serve as a
central school for others of the same persuasion; or, in a
gratifying number of instances, by a combination of church

IO2 POST-PRIMARY EDUCATION

and council schools into one organisation ; in this case special
provision is made for religious instruction for Church of
England children transferred to a council school, while an
agreed syllabus of religious teaching is used in both. The
Roman Catholics decline to join in this arrangement and seek
to have central schools of their own, where possible, under
their own complete control. The high authorities of the
Church of England have shown a generous spirit of co-
operation with the L.E.A.'s, and the relations between church
and council schools are in marked contrast with the relations
before 1902 under most of the school boards.

IV

The Hadow Report of 1926 contained a recommendation, as a
corollary to their main recommendations, that the age and
compulsory attendance at school should be raised to fifteen.
The Board of Education could not make this a part of their
new policy, for it would require legislation. The proposal to
extend compulsory attendance had been often put forward
by ' advanced ' thinkers and had the general support of the
Labour Party before it was endorsed by the Consultative
Committee. Apart from the desire to prolong education on
theoretical grounds, the idea chimed in with the growing
feeling that adolescence needs further control and with the
views of social reformers who wish to postpone the entry of
young wage-earners into industry in the interests of the adult
worker. The practical difficulties lay in the increased cost of
elementary education and in the alleged impossibility in many
districts to find room for a whole age-range of children in the
schools. The Labour Government of 1929 prepared to over-
come a further obstacle in the supply of teachers by urging
the training colleges to take in larger numbers and the
Minister of Education, Sir Chas. Trevelyan, brought forward

In 1929 a Bill to raise the age, coupling with It maintenance
allowances to children over fourteen. It was at once obvious
that the Bill would impose a burden upon managers of
voluntary schools, for very many schools had no room for a
new class, and proposals for reorganisation added to the
complexity of the situation. The government were prepared
to authorise L.E.A.'s to contribute 75 per cent, of the cost of
reconditioning voluntary schools, provided that the appoint-
ment of teachers, subject to certain reservations regarding
religious instruction, rested with the L.EJL's. This raised
afresh the old question of building grants for non-provided
schools, a question looked upon as settled in 1870 ; and there
were the makings of a controversy recalling the struggles of
1870 and 1902. The issues were fairly clear: on the one hand
the supporters of voluntary schools, especially the Roman
Catholics, claimed that as an integral part of the national
system, fully recognised for fifty years as indispensable, they
were entitled to help in building besides the maintenance
granted in 1902; on the other, their opponents stood by the
principle of full public control over Institutions now main-
tained and in future, if the Bill passed, to be built almost
entirely by public moneys, and public control meant among
other things the choice of teachers. Sir Chas. Trevelyan
entered upon discussions with the representatives of the
Church of England, the Roman Catholic and the Free
Churches to see If a working agreement could be reached. He
failed to achieve a concordat, both sides remaining Inflexible
on control. Different Bills, with and without the controversial
clauses, but with the extension of the age of compulsion, were
Introduced in 1930 and 1931. Finally in the spring of 1931
Roman Catholic members of his own party voted against the
President and he resigned. The financial crisis in the late
summer of 1931 and the subsequent political changes have
postponed the raising of the school age for an indefinite

104 POST-PRIMARY EDUCATION

period. It may be remarked that the controversy, so far as
It concerned building subsidies and control, did not reach
the dimensions of a public dispute because the negotiations
were conducted in private and came to an end when the
President resigned: the atmosphere of acrimony which ac-
companied earlier discussions appears to have been noticeably
absent.

There are some subsidiary but important points to be noticed
in the Hadow Reports and the developments arising out of
them. The Committee suggested a new nomenclature for
schools above the primary: the schools that are officially
'secondary* should be called Grammar Schools, the central
and other elementary schools should be known as Modern
Schools. So far the suggestion has received neither official
nor popular sanction. The two terms are still appropriated
by individual schools nearly all older than the present century.
Secondary education was expressly excluded from the
terms of reference to the Consultative Committee, but they
could not escape the consideration of the pertinent question :
How is post-primary education in central and senior schools
to be distinguished, if at all, from secondary education? The
question is indirectly answered by the detailed discussion of
the curriculum proposed for post-primary schools and by the
large section of the Report in which the scope and treatment
of suitable subjects are analysed and fully treated. A set
uniform course Is not only undesirable but impossible of
achievement. Experiment is urged and two dangers are to
be avoided. One is an unintelligent copying of the ordinary
academic secondary school programme, the other is a re-
imposition of the routine standard syllabuses from which the
older elementary school had not shaken Itself wholly free.

POST-PRIMARY EDUCATION 105

The post-primary school is expected to show a new way,
to develop primary education for two years and to have a
4 bias * in the third and fourth year, usually towards commerce
or industry, the whole to be realistic in the best sense, with a
living connection with the needs of the community. The call
for independence and individuality is apparently contradicted
by a further specific recommendation, required it is true by
the terms of the reference, that the schools should be tested
by a kind of leaving examination conducted by regional boards.
This recommendation by general consent has been entirely
disregarded.

The Hadow Reports and the reorganisation that has
followed their acceptance by the Board and the L.E.A.'s
constitute the most remarkable development since the
L.EJL's whole-heartedly began the enterprise of providing
secondary schools. Their ultimate bearing on secondary
education and on Further Education cannot at present be
estimated. The general position is to be further examined by
the Consultative Committee, now under the chairmanship of
Mr W. Spens since the retirement of Sir Henry Hadow.
The terms of reference require the Committee ' to consider
and report upon the organisation and interrelation of schools,
other than those administered under the Elementary Code,
which provide education for pupils beyond the age of eleven
plus; regard being had in particular to the framework and
content of the education of pupils who do not remain at
school beyond the age of about sixteen'. The reference
formally excludes all elementary schools, whether primary
or post-primary : the Hadow Reports have dealt exhaustively
with these. It appears to embrace secondary schools up to
the stage when the First School Examination is taken and
various schools, full-time and part-time, which come under
the head of Further Education. They are all post-primary in
the full sense of the term. They have come into existence, as

106 POST-PRIMARY EDUCATION

the following two chapters will show, in response to different
needs and they cover the period of adolescence, to which the
attention of the nation is increasingly drawn. The Committee
may be expected to suggest at least how some of the problems
they present may be solved.

CHAPTER VII
THE SECONDARY SCHOOL

It is comparatively easy to explain what an English elementary
school is and how it came to reach its present status in the
educational system, to show how it differs from or resembles
the corresponding schools in other countries. Its bounds are
determined in part by legislation but mostly by adminis-
tration, and its general aims are understood. Yet an attentive
reader of the previous chapter may wonder whether the recent
developments of the elementary school do not cover some of
the ground hitherto loosely called secondary and may press for
a definition of secondary education and of a secondary school.
He will get no nearer than that a secondary school is one
which is officially recognised by the Board of Education as
such. The schools so recognised are very various in origin
and government. They include the great Public Schools and
most of the Endowed and Grammar Schools, founded by
pious benefactors in the distant past or in modern times ; also
the new municipal or county, schools established by the
L.E.A.'s in the present century; also schools usually known
as private schools, whether corporately owned or the property
of individuals. It will be the business of the present chapter
to show what are the common characteristics of these different
types which make them eligible for official recognition, and
so to arrive, if not at a precise definition, at an understanding
of what in England and Wales is meant by a secondary school.
The most convenient way to proceed will be to relate the
history of the establishment of the state-aided schools which
constitute the public secondary school system, leaving the
consideration of schools which are independent of the public
system to a subsequent chapter.

I08 THE SECONDARY SCHOOL

The 'recent history' of secondary education in England,
though not in Wales, begins with the Royal Commission on
Secondary Education appointed in 1894, under the chair-
manship of Mr James Bryce. The Report of the Commission
appeared in 1895, and it must be regarded as a landmark in
English educational history. The conditions in the country
which called for a public enquiry were, in the favourite
language of reformers at the time, chaotic, but the temptation
to describe them must be resisted. Nor is there room to
discuss in detail the findings of the Commissioners. Indeed,
some of the specific recommendations were either disregarded
ar absorbed in proposals and legislation of a wider scope than
the Commission was entitled to consider. But two principal
recommendations had far-reaching results. The Bryce Report
urged that a real Central Authority for education should be
formed, and in 1899 the Board of Education Act was passed
establishing the Board as we know it. The Report further
pressed for a Local Authority for Secondary Education, with
rate-aid, and this was carried out in principle, though not in
the actual form suggested, in the Education Act of 1902.
Without these two primary reforms a coherent educational
system would have been impossible.

The Commission was instructed 'to consider what are the
best methods of establishing a well-organised system of
Secondary Education '. There was no definition of secondary
education in the terms of reference ; advisedly, for there was
ao field clearly delimited to which the term might without
challenge apply. Not that there was acute controversy, but
the instructed public, including eager advocates of a regular
organisation of secondary education, were content with a
irague understanding that somewhere in the region between
the elementary school and the university lay secondary

THE SECONDARY SCHOOL

education, clearly superior to the former and clearly not to
be Included In the latter, but not so clearly distinguishable
from higher elementary education or from education of a
specifically technical character. In France I'enseignement secon-
daire is differentiated from f instruction primaire in a marked
way ; in Germany, before the War, the class distinction, if not
crystallised in a general term, was equally manifest. In Eng-
land and Wales there Is still no accepted agreement on what
'secondary* really connotes.

The Commission interpreted their reference liberally, and
in consonance with public expectation. They acknowledged
that technical education was logically to be considered as
essentially secondary, that is, as beyond the elementary or
primary, but they set it aside as outside their immediate
business. But they examined with great care and with no
narrow outlook the very miscellaneous types of schools, from
the oldest Public School to the newest Higher Grade School,
Pupil Teacher Centre or Organised Science School, that had
arisen during the previous twenty-five years. No formal de-
finition was reached, and yet they laid down the lines adopted
by the Board of Education a few years later (1904) on which
schools could be officially recognised as secondary schools.
The education was to be general, as opposed not only to
technical education but also to the orientation of schools to-
wards a premature specialisation in the supposed interests of
business and commerce. It was to be literary and linguistic
as well as scientific and mathematical, and not either narrowly
classical or confined only to science as understood by the
Science and Art Department. Thus it was able to embrace
both the Public Schools, in which by this time science had
already found a place, and the Higher Grade and Organised
Science Schools, many of which needed to have their courses
of teaching broadened.

The Commission very carefully examined the question of

110 THE SECONDARY SCHOOL

age. Here they cautiously followed the principles of the
earlier Commission of 1864-7, the Taunton Commission,
which had distinguished three grades of schools according to
the length of stay. Schools of the first grade kept boys up to
eighteen who generally had professions in view : schools of the
second ended at about sixteen and schools of the third at
fourteen: it is to be noted that in the 'sixties the elementary
school rarely kept children beyond twelve at the latest. That
this was too absolute a division was fully recognised by the
Bryce Commissioners of 1894, for among other things the age
boundaries had already shifted. The third grade was hardly to
be separated from the elementary school, where in theory
education was by now continued up to fourteen. Attention was
thus focused mainly on the range of age covered by the older
second-grade school, and both in the recommendations of the
Commission and in the action of the Board of Education it is
evident that secondary education was to be regarded as
education suitable for boys and girls prepared to stay at
school till sixteen at least and beyond. What needed organising
was the supply of education especially up to sixteen and the
co-ordinating of all the various agencies through which some
such education was already attempted. Education of the first
grade was on the whole not inadequate, save here and there :
education of the second grade was both sporadic and in-
sufficient.

As has been said, the wide definition of secondary education
was accepted by the Board of Education and, reduced to
regulations for the sake of orderly administration, has been
acted upon for about thirty years. Nevertheless we are no
nearer an accepted and an unassailable definition than in 1 894.
For one thing, the age limits have once more become confused ;
elementary education, ending at twelve or under in 1867,
and ending at fourteen or under in 1895, now reaches forward
up to sixteen in the central schools, as we have shown in the

THE SECONDARY SCHOOL III

previous chapter. The new municipal and county secondary
schools do not now finish somewhat summarily at sixteen,
but through Advanced Courses continue for many pupils to
eighteen and connect with the universities. The division into
three separable grades has gone. Moreover, the Labour Party
have adopted a policy of 'secondary education for air and
claim that what we have called higher primary education is
really secondary. In fact the Hadow Reports foreshadow a
new dividing line, between primary education up to eleven
plus and education beyond eleven plus, whether called secon-
dary or not. This unfortunate word is subject to further ill-
treatment. As the new rate-aided schools have grown into a
position in which they can compete with the old Endowed
schools, e.g. for university scholarships, a fashion is creeping
in of distinguishing them deprecatingly as secondary schools
in contrast with the loftier Public or Endowed schools to
which no specific term is assigned. Those who teach in many
private schools are in two minds: some would claim that
however young their pupils are, the education they receive is
secondary, and not to be confused with elementary or
primary; others that the schools are not secondary because
they are outside the state system. We are not called upon to
decide what is or what should be called secondary education,
but to describe the development of secondary education since
it obtained a firm official footing.

11

The Act of 1902 did not specifically mention secondary
schools as such, or indeed secondary education under that
name. Nor have any subsequent Acts of Parliament mentioned
secondary schools save in one passing reference. The new
Part II L.E.A.'s, described in the second chapter above,
had certain duties prescribed: 'they shall take... steps to

112 THE SECONDARY SCHOOL

supply or aid in the supply of education other than elemen-
tary ' ; they shall also ' promote the general co-ordination of all
forms of education *. Wide though this language is, there was
no doubt of its import. That part of education other than
elementary which could properly be called technical was
already more or less organised by the Technical Instruction
Committees which had been at work for over ten years. It
needed expanding, no doubt, and further co-ordinating, but
the general lines of advance were already laid down. It was
the rest of education other than elementary for which a
definite policy was required. The L.E.A.'s, which were
generally eager to begin to satisfy the public demand for
some kind of secondary education, must know under what
conditions schools would be officially recognised as secondary,
and what Parliamentary grants would be available.

The Board had already since 1900 been inspecting secon-
dary schools 'with their consent ', for the Board of Education
Act anticipated the Act of 1902 by assigning the Board this
power. A special staff of inspectors for secondary schools was
now constituted and a special Branch of the Board to deal
with secondary education was established, to take rank be-
sides the Branches for elementary and technical education.

The first Regulations for Secondary Schools were issued
in 1904. They set forth what was to be the kind of school to
which the Board would give grants* A secondary school is
one which offers to its scholars a general education of a
wider scope and higher grade than that of an elementary
school, given through a complete progressive course of
instruction continuing up to and beyond the age of sixteen*.
Such a school must provide ' at least a full four-year course
in a group of subjects so selected as to ensure due breadth
and solidity in the education given '. The subjects are English
language and literature, with geography and history, a language
other than English, mathematics and science, both theoretical

THE SECONDARY SCHOOL 113

and practical, and drawing. There should be some provision
for manual work and physical exercises, with housewifery for
girls. The Board are here clearly following the lines suggested
in the Report of the Bryce Commission. These Regulations
are of the utmost importance in any account of the present
English educational system, for they have been the basis of
the Board's policy and the principle behind the activities of
the L.EA.'s during the present century. They remain un-
modified. A secondary school must assume that its pupils
stay till sixteen at least and must provide an organised course
lasting four years. The course must be a course of general
education not of specialised education. Such a general
education must be balanced, with no undue predominance of
literary and of scientific subjects. It must include a language
besides English, and English is an essential constituent.

This definition of a secondary school is artificial in the
sense that it is an administrative definition of such schools
as, under suitable circumstances, can participate in the
Parliamentary grants voted for the purpose. It is not an
educational definition, arrived at by a consideration of educa-
tional principles except indirectly. Administratively it may
have to be revised, if the recently organised post-primary
schools develop. At present, if logically assailable, it is
practically workable, and, more than this, its limitations do
not interfere with the natural growth of schools which stand
outside it.

In their Annual Report for 1908-9, which contains a useful
review of the work of the Board since 1903, the Board are
solicitous to explain that while they adhere to the main
principles of the Regulations, they wish them to be inter-
preted in an elastic sense and not to be understood as im-
posing a rigid uniformity. The practice of the Board was
indeed conceived in this spirit. It would have been possible
to refuse recognition to all but the best schools, on the plea

114 THE SECONDARY SCHOOL

that it was better to have a few very good secondary schools
than many which had not yet reached a high standard, and to
discourage L.E.A.'s from building or taking over schools
unless they could conform to a high standard. Remem-
bering the later history of the schools and the steady develop-
ment of the public demand for higher education, an observer
will conclude that the Board judged accurately what was
required in the national interest. They accepted schools
which * offered ' a general education to all their scholars, even
if few at the time took full advantage of the offer. Classical
schools in which science was taught were eligible for re-
cognition and the organised science schools, if they added a
language and broadened their curriculum generally. Certain
higher grade schools which were clearly more than elementary
schools ending at fourteen were accepted. Numerous pupil
teacher centres formerly conducted by school boards, ex-
penditure on which had been the origin of Mr Cockerton's
censure, formed the nucleus of a secondary school when
pupils other than intending teachers were admitted.

The result of these early steps in the administration of the
Act of 1902 was to bring a highly desirable clearness and
definiteness into the hitherto confused sphere of secondary
education. A standard was set up to which schools on the
border line should conform and which should act as a guide
to L.E.A/S in planning new schools. Many schools of the
indeterminate higher grade type were not acknowledged as
secondary schools: the school life in them after the age of
fourteen was too short and with no prospect of extension : or
they were in elementary school premises with a huge elemen-
tary school inextricably bound to them: or the instruction in
them in spite of the teaching of French or Science was still
very elementary. Some teachers and managers were aggrieved
no doubt, and the occasionally ruthless refusal to acknow-
ledge well-meant efforts towards a superior education appeared

to regard as unimportant the problem of extended elementary
as distinct from definitely secondary education. But at this
stage precision was essential : a secondary school must em-
brace a four-year course, must have small classes and large
staffs, must enjoy amenities unrealisable in elementary schools,
could not be merely an Institution end-on to the elementary
school, beginning where the latter left off at thirteen or so.
If the effect was to cause some jealousy and some fears that
the new schools were to be as remote from the people's
schools as in many places the older Endowed schools had
been, this was soon mitigated. It was obvious that no class
distinction between types of teachers was intended, for many
of the newly recognised secondary schools, the best higher
grade schools and those founded on pupil teacher centres for
example, were staffed entirely by teachers trained for elemen-
tary schools, who proved their competence. The new schools
also offered a decided spur to ambition both for scholars who
wished to advance and for teachers anxious for promotion.
The scholarship systems became administratively more easy
when there were two separate grades of schools, and, as one
of the first enterprises of the L.EJL's was to regularise and
extend the existing scholarship schemes, a wider pathway
was at once opened for the children in elementary schools,
before the Free Place principle was introduced in 1907.

Among the schools recognised at once as secondary were
the Welsh Intermediate Schools. These were not inter-
mediate in the sense frequently given to the word, that is, in
scope lying between the elementary school and the public or
grammar school, a sort of middle school : they were intended
to be a link between elementary school and university college
and in fact, have very largely supplied students to the
university colleges of Wales. From the point of view of
popular education they were in advance of the English schools
of the time. The Welsh Intermediate Education Act of 1889,

Il6 THE SECONDARY SCHOOL

which made them possible, created education committees on
which county borough councils were represented, and
authorised a small expenditure from the rates on the schools,
years before the Education Act of 1902. Seeing that older
secondary schools were relatively few in Wales, the new
schools, rapidly created, filled a want which had become
acutely felt.

iii

The history of the state-aided system of secondary schools
since 1902 is not one of successive and well-marked phases,
signalised by introductory official decisions or regulations, so
much as one of steady endeavour to realise the conception of
secondary education which the Board set up at the beginning.
The two occasions on which that conception was amplified,
namely the introduction of the Free Place system and the
specific encouragement of Advanced Courses may be looked
upon as natural developments rather than as violent changes.
Important as they are, they give no clue to the numerous
and pressing problems which faced the Board and the L.E.A/S
thirty years ago, and which still in some degree are urgent.
It will conduce to clearness to deal with the latter general
problems first.

Finance was by no means straightforward in the early
years. The L.E.A/s could raise no more than a 2d. rate with-
out special application to the Board and that for all purposes
of higher education. Though progressive authorities had
little difficulty in securing the approval of the Board to an
increase, their own ratepayers were not yet accustomed to
the new charges. Consequently even the best L.EJL's
found themselves in difficulties. They wished to provide
schools with low fees, schools which were imperatively needed,
but low fees together with the government grant by no means
met the necessary expenditure on secondary schools. In

THE SECONDARY SCHOOL

particular, the new schools demanded staffs on a scale more
liberal than those in elementary schools, with teachers of
higher qualifications and proportionately larger salaries. It
was notorious from the evidence laid before the Bryce
Commission and available elsewhere that secondary school
teachers were ill paid and in many cases ill qualified, and the
Board had to press for improvement and in places for higher
fees to justify it. The higher grade board schools now pro-
moted to be secondary could no longer be free or nearly free
and new schools, even if planned to satisfy a population which
required a middle school type of education, had to impose an
adequate fee. After 1907 the Board eased the situation to
some extent by the increased grant to meet the expenditure
on Free Places, but the financial pressure did not substantially
lessen until 1919 when the Deficiency Grant, described in an
earlier chapter, was instituted, about the time that the
Burnham scales placed the salaries of teachers on a more
satisfactory basis.

At the same time the state-aided schools grew in number
with remarkable rapidity. In the first years the bulk of them
were the old Endowed schools which retained their inde-
pendence but gladly accepted the per capita exchequer grants
or lump sums from L.EJL's or both: some of them had
previously received partial grants from the Science and Art
Department but this source of income though useful, was
inadequate. These schools had no difficulty in fulfilling con-
ditions such as those of representation which LJE.A.'s might
impose. Very many were thus saved from the utter extinction
that was threatening them. In 1914 they constituted just over
one half of the schools aided from public funds and in 1932,
as new L.E.A. schools have grown, the proportion was about
five to eight, though in the meantime this type of school, the
non-L.E.A. secondary school which is still an integral part
of the public secondary system, has nearly doubled in

Il8 THE SECONDARY SCHOOL

numbers. In process of time entirely new L.E.A. schools
were planned and built and L.E.A. schools old and new now
form the majority of state schools. But they have neither
extinguished nor made useless the nonL.E.A. schools, and
the secondary system, like the elementary system, is a fortunate
combination of voluntary and council schools. It is also to be
remarked that aided, as distinct from provided schools, include
a number of convent schools, which found themselves able to
accept the conditions as to representation on their governing
bodies and as to religious instruction which the Board felt
bound to lay down.

The problems of organisation within the schools themselves
were no less perplexing than those of finance. The Board
aimed at securing at least a four-year course between the ages
of eleven and seventeen and expected that pupils should stay
at school at least till sixteen. It appeared, however, that in
many of the recognised schools these aims were far from
being achieved, and the attention of the Board was directed
for some time towards securing as the first improvement a
lengthening of the school life within the secondary schools.
The average leaving age in grant-earning schools even in
1908-9, when the entirely new schools had been active for
some years, was still under sixteen; and it is to be remem-
bered that the average is obtained by reckoning not only
many grammar schools with an established tradition of
relatively full senior forms, but also the schools which in-
cluded many intending teachers who were bound to stay till
seventeen under the newer Pupil Teacher Regulations of
1907. But worse than this: at the same date the average
duration of school life within the four-year course was not
yet three years. In fact, a new habit and a new conception
of the real scope of a secondary education had to be created
in the classes which the secondary schools were intended to
serve. There were many causes why progress had been slow.

THE SECONDARY SCHOOL 119

The business world had not yet begun to expect a secondary
education as a qualification for employment, as has been done
to a greater extent since the War. Parents were apt to look upon
the schools as finishing schools, to add a polish to an education
presumed to be complete already. But the main reason for
the shortness of the time spent within the four-year course
was the late age at entry. It was still taken for granted that
the secondary school was so much a simple continuation of
elementary work that the age of transition from one kind of
school to another was a matter of indifference. Teachers in
other schools were naturally reluctant to let their pupils go.
The defect was combated in various ways, besides argument
and official pressure. The schemes for scholarships included
a definite age of entry and enlightened L.RA.'s gave
preference to candidates of twelve or below. When Free
Places came in, it was possible to lay down conditions of
admission with some firmness. Some L.E.A/S required an
undertaking from the parent to keep the pupil at school for at
least three years. In spite of pleas of * late development ', the
conviction gradually grew that a child entering a secondary-
school at fourteen certainly could not obtain the greatest
benefit from a course which ought to be an organic course of
four years, and that a child of thirteen could only rarely make
up for what was really lost time. The standardisation of the
school examinations, to be described below, helped by
spreading the idea that the First Schools Examination was the
terminus ad quern the normal secondary school should any-
how aim: and the age for this examination was ordinarily
sixteen and a half or seventeen and a half. Finally, after the
War, eleven plus became accepted as the age of entry to
secondary schools, and the Hadow Reports of 1926 and 1930
found the public of parents and administrators ready to
accept a "clean cut' at eleven plus. The latest statistics still
show a certain number of first admissions to a secondary

120 THE SECONDARY SCHOOL

course above the age of twelve from schools lower in status
than secondary schools, but not principally from elementary
schools. They show also a slow increase of the average age
of leaving. The standardisation of the secondary course, and
especially its close connection with examinations, has not
escaped criticism : these will be considered later. Also it is
to be noticed that in the roughly parallel system of Public
and Preparatory Schools, the age of transfer as determined
by the Common Entrance Examination, is round about
thirteen. This point is considered in a later chapter. In the
state system, the practice of entry at eleven plus seems to be
fairly established.

iv

The two most significant changes in the Regulations affecting
secondary schools were the introduction of the Free Place
System in 1907, so often alluded to above, and the provision
for Advanced Courses in 1917. The Free Place policy,
though political motives may have been behind it, was no
rash interference and no ill-considered move to popularise
the secondary schools. It was accompanied by a much needed
revision of the basis on which grants had been paid, and by
certain requirements in the management of aided schools which
removed the suspicion that public moneys were being paid to
schools without any public representation on the governing
bodies. The state-aided secondary schools were now public
secondary schools, in respect of government and in respect
of religious instruction, in the same position, mutatis mutandis,
as the provided public elementary schools. It was now laid
down that 25 per cent, of admissions in a single year must be
reserved for pupils who had spent at least two years in an
elementary school and that these pupils should be free from
paying fees while they stayed in the secondary schools.
Schools which could not comply with the requirement re-

THE SECONDARY SCHOOL 121

celved grants on a lower scale (2. 105. per pupil) instead
of grants at ^5 per pupil. The term Free Places was genera-
lised to include all scholarships, bursaries and the like which
carried with them the remission of fees, with the stipulation
that 25 per cent, of the pupils admitted free should be ex-
elementary scholars. An upward limit of 40 per cent, was
assigned to fee-charging schools, and the percentage in both
calculations was based on the admissions of all kinds in the
previous year; the Labour Government of 1929 raised the
upper limit to 50 per cent.

Thus the various scholarship schemes were in some degree
consolidated, and were certainly in effect greatly enlarged.
From the point of view of, say, 1880, this would have seemed
almost a revolutionary measure. But already in 1907 rather
more than half of the pupils in state-aided schools were in
fact former elementary scholars, the fee payers and the
scholarship holders among them being nearly equal in num-
bers. So far had the popular demand for higher education,
upon which we have elsewhere laid stress, proved itself to
be genuine, and widespread. In the northern industrial
areas considerably more than half of the pupils in secondary
schools had been pupils in elementary schools, a fact which
indicates among other things that the elementary school had
grown out of the stage when it was the school of the very poor.
The new regulation bore more hardly upon aided schools in
some areas where the local grammar school was mainly fed by
pupils who had not passed through the elementary schools.
In extreme cases the percentage was permitted to be less than
25 per cent. In these quarters particularly there was some
natural alarm at the influx of elementary pupils, on account
of their supposed unpreparedness, with the fear that they
would leave early, and would not fit in with the social
atmosphere of the schools. The L.E.A/S showed themselves
sympathetic where schools stood to lose financially because

122 THE SECONDARY SCHOOL

the increased grants did not balance the loss of fees. But the
system soon became established. The Free Placers justified
themselves. They were found to be equal to and often better
than the fee payers in attainments and ability. They stayed
longer at school. They readily fell in with the changes which
have been made in the discipline and the social life of the
schools. Further they supply no small proportion of the
pupils from state-aided schools who have gone forward to
the universities and won academic distinctions.

The policy just described was abandoned, in its original
form at least, by the National Government in 1932. In the
autumn of that year the Board of Education issued a famous
Circular, No. 1421, in which they announced that in the
interests of public economy Free Places as such in secondary
schools receiving Parliamentary grant should cease to exist.
It was to be assumed that all pupils should pay fees in the
absence of good reasons to the contrary. The Board tried to
mitigate the bad impression that the sudden change of policy
would naturally create by announcing that L.E.A.'s were as
free as before to offer Special Places to the same extent as or even
to a greater extent than Free Places had been hitherto offered.
But from this time a parent who accepted a Special Place for
his child in a secondary school must pay for it according to
his means. L.EJL's were invited to assign a scale of fees to
be paid according to the annual income of the parent. "Under
such a scale the very poor parent would pay nothing, the
well-to-do parent of a Special Place winner would pay the full
fee and others would contribute according to their finances.
It was tentatively suggested that .3 to 4 a week was the
upper limit beyond which some payment was to be expected ;
and further that L.E.A.'s and Governing Bodies should raise
the fees of all pupils up to 15 guineas, as a rule, and that the
Board would be unwilling to approve even a fee of less than
9 guineas. The two main arguments used by the Board were

THE SECONDARY SCHOOL 123

that many pupils winning Free Places under the current
conditions of competition came from homes which could
well afford the fees ; and that in any case the full fee bore a
small proportion (about a half when the fee was 15 guineas)
of the cost of secondary education on public funds.

This proposal was very unfavourably received at first in
educational circles. It was alleged that the immediate result
would be that a very deserving class of children now accus-
tomed to seeking admission into secondary schools would be
almost automatically excluded from them by what was not
improperly called a * means test 5 : namely those from families
on the border-line, families with ambitions and prepared to
make some sacrifice but not able to stand the strain of a
terminal or weekly contribution. It was feared also that the
discouragement which would accompany a means test would
in effect deprive many of the children certainly capable of
profiting by secondary education of the chances they have
had since 1907. The Board in a second circular (No. 1424) and
the President in the House of Lords were at pains to make it
clear that the principle that no deserving child shall be pre-
vented by the imposition of fees from profiting as before by
Special Places was still to be maintained, and that L.E.A.'s
and Governing Bodies were not being dragooned into a
uniform rate of scales without reference to local conditions.

At the time of writing the worst fears of the critics seem not
to have been realised. The L.E.A.'s have taken the matter
calmly, and, relying on their local knowledge and experience,
as well as being secure in the position they enjoy in relation
to the Board, are administering the new regulations as seems
best for their areas. They use an elastic means test which
is not necessarily that of circular No. 1421, collecting fees at a
reasonable rate, not universally up to ^15 or even always up
to 9 guineas a year.

124 THE SECONDARY SCHOOL

The next important step in the development of state secon-
dary schools was taken in 1917, when Advanced Courses
were officially stimulated. By this time the four-year course
was so firmly established that it became a problem what to do
with the now numerous body of pupils who had completed it
and wished to stay longer at school. The larger aided schools
had long included regular Sixth Forms : and the smaller aided
along with the newer Council Schools were also * growing at
the top'., The difficulty was mainly one of expense. A
reasonably staffed school would not have one teacher, or the
equivalent of one teacher free among the number of specialists,
for a small group pursuing studies beyond the First Schools
Examination. The Board accordingly offered a special grant
of 400 if an Advanced Course was organised and approved.
This was not to be a course of general subjects but one of
the following: science and mathematics, classics, modern
studies : to these were added later the language and literature
of Greece or Rome (with some modern history) and geography
(with science or history). The idea behind this allocation of
subject groups was both to encourage specialisation and to
keep the specialisation broad and not narrowly restricted to
one subject. It was, further, to check the tendency for small
upper forms to consist of individual pupils each pursuing a
different set of studies and each coached as opportunity
offered. The Advanced Courses were a direct stimulus to-
wards work with universities in view ; and by the time they
were instituted grant-earning schools which started or had
lived under the handicaps described in the last section were
beginning to look forward to the university connection so
long the characteristic of the older, chiefly the Endowed,
schools. It was now abundantly plain that the secondary
state system was not to be a system of intermediate schools

THE SECONDARY SCHOOL 125

with no ambitions beyond a solid education up to sixteen.
There was no reason why the humblest of the schools, what-
ever its origin, and however closely linked with elementary
schools, should not take rank alongside the great schools of
the country in supplying universities, especially now that
they were numerous, with pupils. After the War, the Govern-
ment responded to the growing desire to develop secondary
education by instituting State Scholarships for pupils who
had done well in the Second Schools Examination and who
wished to go forward to universities. These, after a short
suspension during the period of economy, 1922-3, continue
and statistics amply prove that by their means a large number
of pupils from the very classes Matthew Arnold had in mind,
including the working classes, were passed on to univer-
sities, where again they have justified their selection and the
aid they have received by successes and distinctions and by
their subsequent careers. It must be remembered that there
have always been means by which poor boys could get to
universities, but the path was narrow and those who could
use it were a fortunate few; now there is a wider road, not
quite a highway along which all may pass, but at any rate an
undisputed thoroughfare.

Reference has been made in the foregoing sections to the
First and Second Schools Examinations. The present official
Regulations concerning these were first issued in 1918. The
Board require that no external examinations be taken by
pupils in grant-earning schools during the four-year course
and that the examinations at the end of the course must be
one conducted by an approved agency. Eight examining
bodies are approved for this purpose, all of them connected
with Universities. The Second Schools Examination is to be
entered usually two years after the First, and forms a natural
finish to an Advanced Course ; the same examining bodies are
approved for this purpose. A general equality in the con-

126 THE SECONDARY SCHOOL

ditions of entry and in the requirements for a certificate is
secured by the whole being under the supervision of a
Secondary Schools Examinations Council, an advisory body
which, mainly representative of universities and schools, re-
commends and reports to the Board but has no power to
issue directions. The same body with the co-operation of the
Board, arranges for periodical investigations, in order to
secure adequacy and evenness of standard, both in the type
of questions set and in the marking of them.

Thus barely described the scheme has the appearance of
stereotyping the teaching in grant-earning secondary schools,
analogous, if at some considerable distance, to the old Code
examinations of elementary schools. It does indeed come
under much criticism as trenching on the freedom of the
teachers and as laying down too uniform a procedure for
schools which vary in situation and in history. For although
there is a wide choice of subjects and no two examining bodies
have precisely the same syllabuses in detail, and although
certain compensations are allowed whereby weakness in one
subject may be counterbalanced by strength in others, some
general conditions must be observed if a certificate of success
is to be won: there must be a language other than English,
and some mathematics or science ; a pass requires a reasonable
proficiency in three main groups, each of which includes
several subjects from which choice can be made. The fourth
group containing music, arts and crafts is not one of the
essential groups. These conditions are said to bear hardly on
a worthy type of pupil who is good in one or more of the
fourth group subjects but is lamentably weak in a second
language or in mathematics or science, the pupil whose
interests are practical and not academic.

Whatever be the effects of the ordinance at the present
time, the Board felt themselves fully justified in taking action
when it was issued* Prolonged deliberations and discussions,

THE SECONDARY SCHOOL 127

Including a reference to the Consultative Committee, pre-
ceded it. It was necessary in order to carry out the original
and unchanged conception of what a publicly aided secondary
school should provide: an organised and coherent course of
study directed to a definite objective. In fact the schools were
found to have too many objectives in the third and fourth
years, because of the multiplicity and diversity of the external
examinations their pupils were tempted or were obliged to
take. Not only were the University 'Locals' open to them
but London Matriculation, and the examinations of the
College of Preceptors, the oldest of school examinations ; also
a great variety of examinations required by numerous pro-
fessional bodies, as preliminary to the courses of study
organised by the professions. The Board set a good example
by forbidding secondary school pupils to enter for their own
Preliminary Examination for the Certificate, which had been
for many years under a different name the main examination
for entry into training colleges and for recognition as an
assistant teacher; the Board now expected the intending
teacher, when a pupil in a secondary school, to enter the
training college by way of the First Schools Examination.
Professional bodies gradually dropped their own special tests,
and though they are not bound to demand the school certifi-
cate and no other substitute, accept that, as well as certain
certificates of the College of Preceptors, as evidence of general
education, suitable for their purpose.

On similar grounds, that is, to consolidate still further the
four-year secondary course, schools were forbidden to enter
for the Junior and Preliminary Examinations of the Locals
and the College of Preceptors. These intermediate tests had
served a useful purpose, still welcome to many private schools,
which are not under public inspection : they helped, and still
help, many schools, in which the teachers prefer to lean on
the support of external bodies of established repute and of

128 THE SECONDARY SCHOOL

long experience. But they were held to be out of place in
schools competent to construct a course which would lead to
one of the recognised First Schools Examinations, without
assistance from outside. Thus the criticisms levelled against
the examinations turn on the alleged lack of flexibility in the
test, and not so much on its desirability and value as a focus for
the teaching throughout the course. Another result which was
hardly expected has unfortunately followed. The various uni-
versities have accepted the Schools Examinations, under par-
ticular conditions, as exempting the holders of certificates from
a further test for matriculation. This is defensible enough, but
too often the desire of a few to obtain exemption from matri-
culation has tended to govern the choice of subjects for all
entrants in a form, with the consequence that the fourth-
year course is apt to be dominated entirely by the legitimate
requirements of universities. This is to relinquish the advan-
tages which the various examining bodies offer by the
numerous alternative subjects in each group and to stereotype
the teaching. Moreover, business houses have set or adopted
the fashion of expecting the young entrants from secondary
schools to have 'got their matriculation*, whether they are
proceeding to a university or not. The evil, so heartily
criticised in many quarters, must not be exaggerated. After
all, a matriculation test is not rigid and narrow, and the
examination, with some definite prescriptions, includes many
alternatives. It is a test of general education, definitely
biassed, it is true, but not specialised to an alarming extent.
The truth seems to be that a * general education * under the
influence of tradition, with both learned and unlearned mem-
bers of the public, still connotes a training in languages,
science and mathematics; the substitution of training in
practical arts and crafts has not yet won its way to universal
acceptance.

THE SECONDARY SCHOOL 129

VI

The previous sections have dealt with the development of the
organisation of secondary education in England and Wales
and with the various problems that have had to be attacked.
Secondary education does now mean something far more
definite than was the case thirty years ago, and the state-aided
system is well established. At the same time remarkable
changes have occurred in the actual teaching and discipline
of the schools. It would require a whole book to explain the
changes in detail. They are partly due to movements of
thought outside the schools, partly to the official action of the
Board, but mostly to a growing interest in the technique of
teaching and to a general consciousness among teachers in the
schools that old methods needed serious revision. The changes
began towards the end of last century when, for example,
the Direct Method of teaching modern languages had power-
ful advocates, the newer conceptions of good mathematical
teaching, especially of geometry, were spreading, geography
took its place in a modernised shape as a substantive subject,
and the heuristic method of teaching science came as a reaction
from the book-learning practices of earlier times. English
has become a prime subject, where once it was neglected
entirely or treated mainly as a grammatical grind. The Board
of Education have issued many memoranda on special points
of teaching in which the inspectors found weakness and mis-
conceptions. A body of literature on methods of teaching
grew up. Four valuable Reports were issued by Govern-
mental Committees, on Science and on Modern Languages in
1918, on Classics and on English in 1921.

Prof. Archer in his book has a chapter on The Age of the

Prophets. Reviewing as he does a whole century and that a ,

period when the English people required to be weaned from

false gods and shaken out of ancient ways, lie is able to single

WES 5

130 THE SECONDARY SCHOOL

out giants such as Spencer, Huxley, Ruskin, Thring and the
Arnolds and point to their influence. If there are no such
giant personalities in the years with which this book is
dealing, there have been and are a number of minor prophets,
men and women of character and penetration who, in their
several spheres, have stimulated educational thought, experi-
mented, challenged accepted opinion and given both light
and leading. It is invidious to name living individuals, but
Sanderson of Oundle and Howson of Holt may be men-
tioned as examples of those who flourished in these years and
who have unfortunately died.

CHAPTER VIII
FURTHER EDUCATION

In previous chapters the place of elementary and of secondary
schools in the English educational system has been described,
in both cases with reference only to the official and adminis-
trative definition of the schools. There remains a third set of
institutions, schools and classes, distinguished from the other
two by special Regulations officially issued, and by a special
Branch of the Board of Education as well as by special com-
mittees and officers in the larger L.E.A.'s. They cannot be as
succinctly described as can schools, elementary or secondary.
They were at first, after 1902, subsumed under the general,
if rather misleading, designation of Technical (sometimes
Technological) education, a title changed later to that of
Further Education. In 1924 one important department of
Further Education was separately treated as Adult Education,
with Regulations and special grants under that name. The
present and the following chapter are to deal with the many
types of Further Education and, as a supplement, with Adult
Education.

The work recognised as affording Further Education and
aided as sucbuis extremely varied, and covers a very wide
range. It embraces at one end what is done in highly organised
Technical Schools, which may have a direct contact with a
university; it also includes simple evening classes for youths
and girls who have just left school or classes in cookery
in a village women's institute. There is also the very specific
training in a Junior Technical School or Trade School by
the side of a Senior Evening Institute, with literature and the
arts as its main attractions. At the same time it must not be
hastily assumed that Further Education is a name to cover

132 FURTHER EDUCATION

a mere hotch-potch of educational work which is not capable
of being classified otherwise. The two names given to it.
Technical and Further Education, really explain the scope of
what is attempted. For in the main what is now known as
Further Education is continuative or technical, in one aspect
manifestly extending day school education in directions not
ordinarily open to day schools, in the other furnishing those
engaged in or hoping to enter industry and commerce with
special training and a scientific basis for their practical
activities. The two sides are not mutually exclusive. Adult
Education has a different aim, seeking to provide for leisure-
time study with little direct application to the needs of the
working life; and some of the evening institutes have a very
similar object in view.

It will conduce to clearness if we give an account of the
various types of class and institution separately. Adopting
the nomenclature of the Board of Education in their Regu-
lations since 1926, but not following strictly the order in
which the schools appear in them, we shall describe first the
schools which are definitely post-primary, the Junior Evening
Institutes, the Day Continuation Schools, the Junior Tech-
nical and Junior Housewifery Schools. Then will follow an
outline sketch of technical education as it is seen in Senior
Evening Institutes and in the organisations grouped round
and within the great 4 Colleges for Further Education *. Adult
Education must be treated apart.

The recent history of Further Education is of less importance
to the student of present-day education than an understanding
of the scope and aims of the diverse types of schools and
classes which are encouraged under that name. The older
history of the movements in support of further and of
technical education from the mechanics institutes onwards

FURTHER EDUCATION 133

is indeed fascinating, among other things because of its
association with the scientific movement of the nineteenth
century. But it must be left aside. The salient events since
1870 may be very briefly told. Technical education began to
excite attention after 1870, and it may be remarked that
Matthew Arnold urged that * your technical instruction * was
as much in need of organising as * your secondary instruction *.
Several results followed. Leaders in industry and commerce
secured the establishment of quite numerous technical schools,
in small as well as in large towns where a kind of civic pride
in them developed. Polytechnics were set up in London, and
the great City Companies, through the City and Guilds of
London Institute, not only founded many schools but fostered
technical education in numerous other ways. Almost at once,
after county councils were created in 1888, they were given
powers over technical and manual instruction by an Act in
1889. Thus at a stroke technical education was recognised as
a definite sphere of activity for which both Parliamentary
and local grants were available, and which was to be under
the control of local authorities. The precedent for the Act of
1902 is obvious. The transition from the Technical Instruc-
tion Committee or Board of a county authority to a full
Education Committee was not violent, and in many cases the
officers engaged by the former became the education officers
of the L.E.A. education committees, Further the Technical
Instruction Committees were allowed to interpret their duties
very liberally and almost all kinds of education other than
elementary were undertaken by the Committees or supported
by grants from the Department of Science and Art, to which
technical and scientific education had always been attached.
The absorption of the Science and Art Department in the
Board of Education in 1900 made no substantial difference to
the situation before the Act of 1902 came into operation.
That Act made no specific provision for technical education

134 FURTHER EDUCATION

as such. It was assumed to be included in. the 'education
other than elementary' which the new L.E.A/S were to
supply or aid, and which they were to coordinate. For a few
years they did little more than take over the work of the
former committees, as well as the evening schools and the
organised science schools which had been under the school
boards. A great deal had been accomplished by the com-
mittees in the way of preparatory and introductory classes
leading up to technical education proper in the technical
schools, and some technical day classes had been started. The
L.E.A.'s could continue, extend and consolidate this organi-
sation as well as establish connections and acquire influence
in the institutions devoted specifically to technology. But
they were too much engrossed in the duty of filling up gaps
in the elementary system and in initiating a supply of secondary
schools to have time and money for embarking at once on new
schemes of technical education.

During the last thirty years the principal developments and
events affecting technical and further education have been
these: the gradual abolition of the Government examinations
in science and art which, under the old South Kensington
Department, had been the principal machinery for aiding and
encouraging schools and classes; the absorption of evening
continuation schools in the system; the abortive attempt to
set up compulsory continuation schools by Mr Fisher's Act
of 1918 ; the recognition of Adult Education as a fruitful field
of operations; and in the later years a closer linking up of
technical education with the requirements of groups of in-
dustries and of commerce. These topics will naturally fall
under the sections which follow. The finance of Further
Education, after many changes now unnecessary to describe
was settled in 1919 when the arrangements for Deficiency
Grants and Direct Grants, as set out in the fourth chapter,
were approved by Parliament.

FURTHER EDUCATION 135

il

The most numerous type of schools recognised as supplying
Further Education are those which were long known as
Evening Schools, earlier as Night Schools, then as Evening
Continuation Schools and now, since 1926, as Evening
Institutes. They are officially distinguished from Day Con-
tinuation Schools on the one hand, because they are held
after 5 p.m., from full-time day schools of a vocational kind
because they are part-time schools. They are nearly all
directly provided by L.E.A.'s and are usually in premises
used as day schools. The Board distinguishes between Junior
and Senior Evening Institutes, the former containing classes
for boys and girls under about seventeen who require in-
struction which is introductory to technical work proper or
is of a general type extending or recapitulating elementary
education. Senior Institutes will be treated in a later section*
Both kinds were known as Evening Continuation Schools up
to 1926.

This name was given in 1893. Odd as it may now seem,
the evening schools, as distinguished from miscellaneous
science and art classes, up to that date were merely ele-
mentary schools conducted in the evening, exactly like the
day schools in syllabus and admitting, for grant at any rate,
of no pupil over twenty-one : the pupils were instructed in
standards and examined in them like the day scholars. In so
far as they continued the incomplete education of their pupils
they were continuative; but the aim was no more than to
supply deficiencies due to slow progress up the elementary
school, or to early leaving. They continued to be under the
Education Department until 1900 when the administration
of them passed to the Technical Branch of the new Board of
Education. The evening continuation schools could then be
fitted in with the organisation of the Technical Instruction

136 FURTHER EDUCATION

Committees, especially in counties where there were no large
school boards. When the Act of 1902 became operative, the
new Part II L.E.A.'s absorbed virtually all the evening
continuation schools, whether they had been formerly under
school boards or technical instruction committees or under
private agencies ; and thus the link between continuative and
technical education was definitely established.

The L.E.A.'s were as generous as the most advanced school
boards had been in providing cheap and even free evening
continuation schools for those who entered them straight
from the day schools, and as ready to set up schools in villages
on the outskirts of towns so as to be easily accessible. They
were also willing to provide classes to meet various tastes and
requirements without forthwith creating a hierarchy of graded
schools such as, it is understood, exists in Germany. After a
few years, however, about 1907, it was found desirable to
check the exuberance of some authorities and to introduce
more order into the uncoordinated efforts of the well-inten-
tioned promoters of evening schools. The Board of Education
urged the adoption of what was called the Group Course
System. Where previously students in evening continuation
schools had been able from the classes provided in a large
school to select subjects at will, however unrelated to each
other and to any definite end, under the grouped course
system they were restricted and constrained to pursue a
systematically arranged series of subjects directed towards
either industry, commerce, domestic duties or rural pursuits.
The grouped courses were offered to all applicants in a district
but were definitely imposed only upon those who had just
left school. Each group was divided usually into two stages
and the hope was that after preliminary instruction in work-
shop arithmetic, technical drawing and elementary science
or handicraft (along with English the normal industrial
course), or in English, commercial arithmetic, shorthand and

FURTHER EDUCATION 137

>ook-keeping (the commercial course), the student would
>ass into the carefully organised technical courses in the
dvanced schools where these were to be taught.

The grouped courses still characterise the evening cont-
inuation school, especially in the industrial North. They
isually involve attendance for three evenings a week and for
wo hours on each evening, at any rate in the industrial and
he commercial series. The domestic course is looser, an
ssemblage of classes in needlework, cookery and laundry-
^ork (if feasible) along with English, rather than a graded
ourse looking forward to advanced technical teaching. The
ural course hardly exists in its intended form. In large towns
vhere the day school premises are commodious there will
Iso be provision for miscellaneous detached classes, e.g. in
anguages or handicraft, open to individual students with
pecial ambitions, but, as a rule, in the industrial districts
aost of the students under seventeen pursue some kind of
grouped course, partial or complete. There is of course no
ompulsion to attend at all, or having embarked to persevere;
nd it is to be feared that pressure and persuasion often fail
a the face of the calls of business as Christmas and spring
pproach and of counter attractions; less than half of the
nnual leavers from the day schools go on to the continuation
chools and only about a quarter see the two-year course
hrough, and even fewer if the course is planned for three
winters. It is becoming increasingly doubtful in the minds
f those who are familiar with the schools whether the con-
tnuation school for juniors in the organised form described
j either the best means of prolonging the educational life of
tie juvenile adolescent or the right procedure for creating a
echnically trained industrial population. The point will rise
gain in these notes. In the meantime one may remark that
tie extension of post-primary education in the central and
enior schools has an obvious bearing on this question; for

138 FURTHER EDUCATION

on the average the boy or girl now spends a year longer under
full time instruction than was the case thirty years ago.

The group course system in its more rigid form finds much
less favour outside the industrial North. London discarded
the old name of evening school for the name evening institute
some years before the Board adopted the present nomen-
clature; and the word institute was meant to suggest a more
general kind of provision, a club rather than a school. The
booklets issued for circulation in the various districts of
London are headed 'spend your leisure time wisely'. The
Junior Institutes in London are very various; some offer
subjects preparatory to technical instruction, others com-
mercial subjects or those which are demanded in Civil Service
examinations. But they are subjects rather than a course and
some are general and not specific, while certain institutes
frankly aim at attracting students by physical exercises, music,
crafts and the drama. Women's Institutes also are for general
culture as a rule, with instruction in the domestic arts. It
appears probable that the problem of the education of the
young adolescent, so far as it is to be met by evening schools,
will in the long run be more satisfactorily solved by institutes
of the London type except for those who by ability and
ambition are ready to embark upon the more specific pre-
paration for industry or commerce.

The solution of the problem was thought to be at hand in the
exhilaration of the last year of the war and after the Armistice.
It was to be the Day Continuation School. Examples of such
schools were quoted from German practice in certain districts
where trades were well marked and young people in them
were compulsorily sent to continuative classes during working
hours, classes mainly vocational in type. There were also

FURTHER EDUCATION 139

riking instances in England, in which certain well-known
mas in Birmingham, York and elsewhere regularly organised
>ntinuation schools in the daytime for their younger work-
*ople: these were in the main non- vocational, for the
iture of the daily occupation of the pupils called for little
istraction of a specifically technical kind, and the undoubted
rimary aim of the promoters was to cultivate the general
ell-being of their employees and not directly to stimulate
teir technical efficiency.

Mr Fisher's Act of 1918 contained clauses, to be operative
hen the time should be deemed appropriate, by which it
as to be compulsory on all employers of labour to release
Dys and girls up to sixteen, and seven years later, up to
ghteen, to attend day continuation classes for 320 hours, or
L certain cases for 280 hours per annum, and compulsory on
>ung persons of these ages, not otherwise under day school
.struction to attend. The day continuation schools were to
s provided by the L.E.A. The clauses were accepted by
arliament in the provisional shape in which they appeared
. the Act. After much persuasion employers were induced,
reluctantly, to face the reorganisation which they involved
id a rapid enquiry among the L.E.A/S showed that to find
:commodation was not impossible even without elaborate and
^pensive schemes of building. L.E.A/S began to get ready
x their new duties and various schemes were carried out
r preparing teachers for the contemplated new schools,
ondon and West Ham put the compulsory clauses into
Deration for a time, but the reaction that followed the first
citation of 1918 compelled them to abandon compulsion
id discouraged other L.E.A.'s from attempting it. The
Dard could not go counter to public feeling and fix * appointed
tys ' for L.E.A/S obviously unwilling. Thus the operation
the famous clauses, which contemplated the gradual spread
obligatory day continuation schools, has been indefinitely

140 FURTHER EDUCATION

postponed. There is one area, Rugby, where they are still
carried out. In London and West Ham, day continuation
schools remain in smaller numbers than originally planned
and are voluntarily attended ; and in various places, such as
Birmingham, York, Bolton and elsewhere, voluntary schools
continue with partial compulsion imposed by certain firms.
The total number of students attending them is nearly 17,000.
Meantime, as already suggested before in this book, the
situation has changed, by the reorganisation of elementary
schools under the Hadow scheme, and by the spread of a
growing conviction, not only in Labour circles, that the age of
leaving school should be raised to fifteen.

It is the considered opinion of some observers that by the
failure of Mr Fisher's courageous measure the nation has
missed a great opportunity of retaining the youth of the
country under educational influences, and of experimenting
with forms of education for them untrammelled by the usual
procedure of the day elementary or secondary school. Many
people hoped that the compulsory day continuation school
would not be mainly technical or too closely linked with pre-
paration for industry or commerce, but cultural in a wide
sense and * humanistic', aiming to educate through physical
training, the crafts, domestic and others, music and literature ;
in fact much as some of the evening institutes are now
conducted. The idea of giving further education to the mass
of young people through pursuits appropriate to leisure is
decidedly attractive: whether it would have been overborne,
as some experiences indicate might have happened, by the
demand of the students themselves for utilitarian subjects, is
uncertain. With the present set of opinion in favour of pro-
longed full-time education, the result is likely to be at best
conjectural. Meantime the humanistic ideal is not totally
submerged. It appears in the wide conception of the function
of the central and senior school, and more and more in the

FURTHER EDUCATION 141

stual teaching of schools specifically called technical. But
le universal compulsory day continuation school seems at
resent unlikely to be recalled.

IV

o far we have dealt with part-time classes for young persons
r ho have left school and must be therefore beyond the
scemption age. There are also certain full-time day schools,
ailed now officially Junior Vocational and Junior House-
ifery Schools. The former are better known under their
Ider names of Junior Technical Schools or Trade Schools.
The Junior Technical Schools, of which there are now
ixty-seven in England and Wales, arose before the war and
rare officially recognised as distinct institutions in 1912. They
re a kind of $cole d'apprenttssage, or better a pre-apprentice-
hip school, taking boys at thirteen or fourteen and giving
lem advanced instruction in subjects of technical value in
idustry, not only mathematics and handicraft, but also
ppropriate science and technical drawing. The course is
ormally for two or three years. By its very nature it cannot
e undertaken by the merely average or mediocre boy, and
tie standard of admission is necessarily high. Though the
las of the school is quite definitely technical, the general
ducation of the boys is continued in English and history,
/ith emphasis in history on the social and economic side ; and
; is satisfactory to know that the non-technical subjects are
allowed with as much eagerness and zest as the others. The
rend of the technical training is most commonly towards the
ngineering and building industries, for these are to be found
a any town of considerable size. But there are also schools
?hich have localised industries in view, textiles, mining, furni-
ure, ship-building, tailoring and, in London, even a school
or chefs and waiters. Many of the large technical colleges

142 FURTHER EDUCATION

have junior technical schools as part of their organisation,
especially where the major part of their work for older
students is specialised, for example, in boot and shoe manu-
facturing. In a sense the junior technical school is an aristocrat
among post-primary schools, with its carefully selected pupils,
its clear objective and its close connection with the industry
it serves*

The corresponding type of vocational school for girls usu-
ally has in view the needle-trades, dressmaking and ladies'
tailoring, embroidery and the like, when it is often known as
a trade school. Some schools organised on the same general
plan as these, but rarely for more than a one-year course, are
schools of domestic subjects or home management, and are
officially known as Junior Housewifery Schools. It is to be
remembered that any school which has students under four-
teen is bound to continue the general education of the pupils
as well as offer them some special technical training.

Junior Commercial Schools, for girls, or for both boys and
girls, occur here and there, sometimes covering three years.
There seems to be a less urgent need for special schools of
this type. This is partly because commerce is not easily
divisible into sections, as industry is divisible into groups of
related industries for each of which a coordinated course is
readily formulated. For pupils of the age under consideration
a course consists of useful separate subjects generally required
in every business, subjects of which shorthand and book-keep-
ing with typewriting are the staple, and these are adequately
provided in some central schools, in some departments of
secondary schools and in many evening schools. It is well
known also that certain private establishments cater for the
humbler kind of shorthand typists. Again, roughly corre-
sponding to junior technical schools are the day courses for
junior pupils in Schools of Art; in them the junior work will
consist of different kinds of technical preparation along with

FURTHER EDUCATION 143

a continuance of general education appropriate to the age of
the young students.

The sketch of Further Education given in this and the
previous sections illustrates the diversity of the forms of
continued education open to young persons up to the ages of
sixteen or seventeen if they are not in secondary or in central
schools ; it also reveals the absence of any obvious governing
principle and of any very clear relation between the various
types. The new reference to the Consultative Committee, of
which mention was made at the end of chapter vi, speaks of
the organisation and interrelation of schools, other than those
which are covered by the Elementary Code. Presumably the
kinds of schools described in the present chapter will come
under review, since the Committee is to concern itself with
pupils over eleven plus and not ordinarily continuing their
education beyond about sixteen '.

CHAPTER IX

FURTHER EDUCATION:
ADULT EDUCATION

After dealing with forms of Further Education which are in
the main, though not exclusively, continuative, and provide
for the young adolescent, it is proper to consider the education
of older youths and girls and of adults. This will be again for
the most part technical but also cultural in a wide sense. It is
tempting to make a fresh basis of classification, and to point
out that while the previous chapter undoubtedly concerns
students whose previous education has been in the elementary-
school, schools and classes described in the present chapter
require students to have had an education beyond the age of
fourteen and beyond the elements. Though it is true that the
advanced technical instruction to be now mentioned certainly
could not be profitably undertaken by persons with nothing
more than even a good elementary education, the implied
contrast between elementary and secondary education would
be fallacious. Much of the work for adults, for example in
women's institutes, can be accomplished without further
preliminary school education beyond the usual age, requiring
indeed some experience of home and the world and interest
but not learning. Moreover it is manifestly absurd to talk as
if education and training were acquired only in day schools.
Technical education has been in the past and still is in the
present successfully followed by many whose schooling has
ended at fourteen or even earlier. But success in the advanced
work depends not only upon perseverance and ability but also
on positive acquirements beyond those of the standards. These
have been gained in some cases by attendance at evening

146 FURTHER EDUCATION

long standing, or they may be a newly formed collection of
classes for older students grouped in a suitably situated build-
ing. They will rarely have laboratories or special and extensive
equipment of machines and tools. The term may even cover,
for administrative purposes, the work in a village Women's
Institute. Whatever it is, the senior evening institute is much
less of a preparatory school than the junior institute is apt to
be. The mere time-table of classes in a large institute at first
sight is bewildering. But the students no longer need to be
compelled or persuaded to follow an organised course as in
the junior institute. They are older and come with a definite
purpose, and they are usually advised, where advice is needed,
by the responsible teacher of the institute as to the classes
which will best serve the purpose they have in mind. Sometimes
also they wish to prepare for a specific examination. Often also
students select classes in single subjects, e.g. in a language or
a craft, which for their own pleasure they wish to pursue.
An example or two will illustrate the nature of the work
of an evening institute. In a small county borough classes
in mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, building,
commerce with commercial law, French and office subjects
are offered and some 300 students attend : in Liverpool, which
has a very large Technical and Nautical School and a School
of Commerce, an evening institute with over 700 students
provides classes in commerce, office subjects, French, Spanish,
domestic subjects and women's trades. These cannot be called
typical because the variety and extent of what is done in
evening institutes forbid one to say what is a norm or type.
The second of these has no technical or trade classes for men
for they are provided elsewhere, and relies on classes in
commercial subjects along with domestic crafts. The first
quoted, in a town without a full Technical College, combines
both technology and commerce.
The senior evening institutes of London exhibit certain

FURTHER EDUCATION 147

interesting features. The technical classes proper are found in
the larger institutions now called Colleges for Further Edu-
cation. It is obvious that only in a place of some magnitude
and specially built can there be equipment of a permanent
kind, often involving power, and that even introductory
advanced work to be properly done involves application to
practice. Ordinary evening institutes, used by day as day
schools for the most part, cannot accommodate more than a
modest amount of apparatus. Accordingly, in the classified list
of L.C.C. evening institutes, technical institutes under that
name rarely appear except in outlying districts. There are
however numerous commercial institutes for persons over
eighteen with classes in accountancy, law, geography, eco-
nomics and languages, as well as the more mechanical office
subjects. A similar distribution of functions may be found in
some large towns with a fully equipped technical school.
London is peculiar in providing Literary Institutes under
that name, where very varied classes are held in literature and
languages, art and architecture, economics, music and philo-
sophy. In these the aim is cultural in general and the Literary
Institutes are a kind of social club with further education as
the principal object. Some Men's Institutes also exist for a
similar purpose but the classes are less advanced. On the same
lines Women's Institutes are found where home crafts are
taught as well as hygiene, nursing, first aid and the like: these
institutes, like some of the men's institutes, also teach music,
literature and physical exercises.

The Colleges for Further Education, mentioned in the last
paragraph, constitute the highest rank of the institutions
recognised as eligible for Parliamentary grant as supplying
technical and other forms of * Further' education. They are
held to be *of major importance', as compared with the

148 FURTHER EDUCATION

evening institutes, which, although some are called technical
institutes and have a history behind them, are frequently
reconstituted by the L.E.A. year after year but have no
separate corporate existence. The Colleges for the most
part contain day classes, even if the bulk of the work is done
in the evenings. They are commonly in buildings constructed
or at least adapted for the purpose. Some were the product
of the movement for technical education which arose in the
iSyo's ; and some, like certain evening institutes, originated in
the enthusiasm for mechanics' institutes of an earlier date.
A considerable majority, independent maybe in foundation,
have been wholly taken over by the L.E.A.'s or were absorbed
before 1902 by the Technical Instruction Committees.
Others, with an independent management, are ' directed ' or
'controlled', so far as technical education is concerned, by
the L.E.A. A few, such as Reading University (evening work
only), the Merchant Venturers' College at Bristol and the
Working Mens' College at St Pancras are 'non-controlled';
these receive Direct Grant, like those secondary schools which
are neither provided by nor aided through the L.E.A. It may
here be specifically remarked, as may have occurred to a
reader of the preceding chapter, that to a very large extent the
Further Education which comes under the supervision of the
Board of Education is provided by and directed by the L.E.A. 's.
The advantages of organising so complicated a process as
technical and commercial education through an authority
which governs a large area are clear. Pure voluntary effort
would be sporadic and often unstable; yet a careful examina-
tion of individual institutions, from large colleges down to
humble evening schools would reveal an astonishing amount
of voluntary initiative and co-operation, which makes the
organisation of further education, though a system indeed,
not a scheme devised by a bureaucracy and imposed upon a
people who have no share in shaping it. A later chapter will

FURTHER EDUCATION 149

indicate certain aspects of further education which lie wholly
outside both the Board and the L.E.A.'s.

It is impossible within the limits of this chapter to describe
all that is implied in technical education and all the many
kinds of work in a College for Further Education. Even a
skeleton outline would have to take industry by industry and
tabulate the kind of training appropriate for various grades in
each ; and this is out of the question. The complexity and the
variety are such that a few illustrative particulars and some
general observations alone can be offered.

The programme of a Technical College about fifty years
old in a county borough of some 130,000 inhabitants will
suggest some pertinent | characteristics. It has over 1500
students, all but a few part-time students. The only full-time
course is a commercial course of one year for girls of senior
standing, not the merely introductory subjects taken in a
junior institute. Other day classes are as follows : mechanical
engineering apprentices and electrical engineering apprentices
(three years), building trades' apprentices (two years), phar-
macy (three years), chemistry (three years). These are attended
by persons in employment who have time off in their working
hours. It will be found that the first three kinds of classes,
for engineering and building, occur in nearly all the non-
specialised technical schools. These industries occur in most
of the populous centres of the country, for one thing ; and for
another, they lend themselves more easily to real technical
education, to practical skill combined with scientific know-
ledge, better than certain other industries. Not only so but
once entered upon a course of technical training a student can
proceed from grade to grade with a national certificate in
view. The significance of a National Certificate will be ex-
plained in a following section. In the College chosen for
illustration there are regular evening courses in mechanical
and electrical engineering, building and chemistry, directed

150 FURTHER EDUCATION

towards the National Certificate, as well as technical classes
for the * trades' as they are called, that is the various employ-
ments which are subdivisions of the vast and complex in-
dustries concerned. The college, which is in a textile district,
has also evening classes in cotton spinning and weaving,
besides classes in grocery, tailor's cutting and typography.
It thus caters for a very wide variety of students, but curiously
enough, the hatting industry which prevails in the neigh-
bourhood does not seem to be represented. On the side of
commerce, besides the full-time day course mentioned there
are evening classes in accountancy, commercial law and
modern languages, as well as the usual office subjects. Further,
domestic subjects and women's trades find a place.

The Board of Education in their Regulations recognise that
the Colleges for Further Education may prepare students,
usually in evening classes, for the stages of a degree. In the
college chosen there are courses for the intermediate and final
examinations for the B.Sc. in engineering, with a preparatory
matriculation class: these are part-time day classes, as is
another for the intermediate stage of the R.LB.A. in archi-
tecture.

Broadly the institutions dignified by the name of Colleges
for Further Education resemble the college just described.
The larger Technical Colleges provide numerous full-time
courses in advanced technology lasting two, three or even
four years, though the actual numbers attending are small in
comparison with the thousands of pupils in part-time courses.
Some of these aim at university degrees in Science and
Commerce, and even Arts. Some few again have affiliations
with provincial universities as Huddersfield has with Leeds.
The highest work of the Manchester College of Technology
forms the Department of Technology of Manchester Uni-
versity. But the bulk of what is done in the largest colleges
is in evening classes and in part-time day classes. Besides

FURTHER EDUCATION

the generally prevalent classes In the branches of engineering
and building the colleges will provide similar types of in-
struction in industries which are specially prominent in the
neighbourhood, e.g. mining in Wlgan, Staffordshire and
elsewhere, pottery in Staffordshire, boot and shoe manu-
facture in Northampton, hosiery in Leicester, textiles in
Lancashire and Yorkshire. In London there are special col-
leges devoted to one industry and its branches : the Leather-
sellers' Company's Technical College in Bermondsey for
leather manufactures, the Cordwainers' Technical College in
Finsbury for boot and shoe manufacture, the L.C.C. Ham-
mersmith School of Building, the L.C.C. Lambeth School
of Building, the L.C.C. City School of Lithography and the
Southwark School of Painting, and the Shoreditch Technical
Institute for the furniture trades are examples.

The colleges known in London as Polytechnics rank for
the purposes of Further Education as general technical
institutes, each with a wide and varied programme of classes,
part-time and full-time, day and evening. Their purpose was
indeed technical in the first instance, but the famous Regent
Street Polytechnic was also religious and philanthropic in
origin and has preserved expanded activities resembling those
of the Y.M.C.A. All of them, and in some degree also most
of the technical institutes, cultivate the social side as well as
the technical, and are colleges in reality besides being now
colleges in name.

The types already mentioned do not exhaust the varieties
of colleges for further education. In London and the largest
towns are Schools of Commerce, such as the City of London
College, with full-time senior courses, part-time day courses
and an array of evening classes. Similarly certain Schools of
Domestic Economy are aided on the same terms and are
constituted on the same lines as the technical institutes.
Further, in London, but rarely elsewhere, there are colleges

152 FURTHER EDUCATION

like the Morley College and the Working Men's College,
which deal with general subjects, economics, literature,
languages, history, art and music, without attempting subjects
commonly considered more utilitarian.

iii

A question naturally suggests itself after a survey such as the
preceding; on what principle or principles are the contents of
the wide range of classes and subjects determined? Primary
education, fixed for a long time by successive Codes, is now
well established by practice and tradition. The standards of
secondary education are based in part on tradition and in part
on recognised examinations, which again in part lean upon
the requirements of universities. What of technical and com-
mercial education? It is impossible to take the greatest
common measure of the personal preferences of individual
students, who are not necessarily aware of what is best to
secure their own avowed aims. As was explained in the pre-
ceding chapter, it was found necessary in the junior institutes to
press beginners into organised courses and to lay down in some
detail what should constitute each course. So more advanced
work must somehow be organised in detail and the organisa-
tion accepted by those, employers or employed, to whom
technical and commercial education is of value. To a large
extent this object is secured and teachers are guided by
examinations and by the recommendations of Advisory
Committees.

The old Science and Art Department at South Kensington
encouraged classes in science and art chiefly by examinations.
Grants were paid on the success of individual passes in
examinations of separate subjects taught by teachers whom
the department recognised and upon syllabuses laid down in
separate stages announced by the department. These were
available also for the scientific and mathematical side of

FURTHER EDUCATION 153

evening schools and technical schools when they began to do
systematic work. But they were not technological. Mean-
time the City and Guilds of London Institute, founded in
1880 by a union of the great Livery Companies to promote
technical education, had built up a huge system of examina-
tions supplementing the science and art examinations on the
side of technology, and the Royal Society of Arts had also
long issued certificates in commercial and other general
subjects. The three bodies, the Department, the Institute
and the Society, were at hand to guide further education in
evening schools and furnish students with the kind of visible
guarantee that a formal certificate affords. But the certificates
were for separate subjects and subdivisions of subjects, and
though they seemed to set up a quasi-national standard in
each, they were necessarily uniform and did not suit all
conditions. The Board of Education, which had absorbed the
science and art department, gradually dropped the science
examinations after 1911, but were ready to endorse well-
balanced courses which were tested by other bodies : this was
to give greater liberty to teachers. At the present time, certain
large L.E.A.'s like the West Riding and Kent, issue their own
certificates: a very large Union of Institutes in Lancashire
and Cheshire and others in the Midlands not only suggest
syllabuses but issue certificates of success in their own
examinations. The City and Guilds of London Institute and
the Royal Society of Arts continue on as large a scale as
before. The importance of the participation of all these bodies
is that they are able to bring into technical education through
Advisory Committees the skilled advice of teachers, officers
of L.E.A/s and persons fully acquainted with industrial and
commercial requirements. Thus an influential body of expert
opinion has been gradually created in a region which at first
sight* appears to be unarticulated and amorphous.
Apart from university degrees the high-water mark of

154 FURTHER EDUCATION

success in technical education is the National Certificate.
National Certificates are awarded by the Board of Education
in co-operation with certain professional Institutions, those
of Mechanical Engineers, Electrical Engineers, Chemistry,
Builders and Naval Architects: the Institution of Gas
Engineers has a similar certificate. It will be noted that these
are industries the leaders of which are highly organised. The
certificates are based on the highest type of work in each
industry, courses of which are approved by the Institutes and
the Board ; they are tested by carefully devised examinations
in which the Board and the Institute take part. Many of the
Colleges for Further Education have had their courses in
preparation for the National Certificate approved but naturally
enough the actual number of students who succeed in the
test after a prolonged course is small. But the existence of a
National Certificate and all that it implies is a capital instance
of great industries taking a share in and controlling the
education of their most highly qualified entrants. Most of the
industries are not organised in the same way as those men-
tioned, and National Certificates are not yet available for
them. A National Certificate for Commerce is now (1934)
under consideration. On the other hand chartered bodies,
such as the Institutes of Actuaries, Bankers, Accountants and
Secretaries, have their own examinations, like the medical and
legal profession, and some technical colleges have classes for
the various stages. In this way, too, technical education is
systematically directed, tested and rewarded by diplomas of
recognised value.

iv

It will have been noticed that for the most part pure technical
education has been concerned with the industries of pro-
duction. But of late years courses have been formed for
training in the distributive trades. Salesmanship has been
very much in the public eye and c publicity ' has begun to rank

FURTHER EDUCATION 155

as a specific calling. As particular examples of the technical
preparation for distribution may be quoted certain classes in
retail distribution as applied to drapery and furnishing as well
as more general courses in grocery. In the same wide category
may be placed the London classes for chefs and waiters,
already mentioned.

No account of technical education should omit the im-
portant subjects of Art and Agriculture, though it may be
difficult to be at once adequate and succinct. Training for
Agriculture, by one of those oddities of allocation of functions
that may be found in English life, does not come within the
very large sphere over which the Minister of Education
presides. Agricultural education is the province of the Board
of Agriculture, as military and naval education is ruled by
the War Office and the Admiralty. The Board of Education
keeps in touch with the Board of Agriculture so far as schools
are concerned, but the connection between them in ele-
mentary and secondary, and even technical education is slight
and indirect, covering little more than an interest in rural
subjects as desirable components in a general education. Thus
gardening, bee-keeping and simple work with poultry are
popular in elementary schools, and those not only in the deep
country ; and some training colleges give special attention to
these subjects in training teachers. But agricultural education,
so far as it is fostered and encouraged by grants from the
Board of Agriculture, is carried out in special Agricultural
Colleges for students beyond the usual school age; and these
colleges are comparable in status with University Colleges.
Reading University has a special department for Agriculture
and Horticulture, with degrees and diplomas, and other uni-
versities are active in a less special way. But agricultural
education, though it is to be considered as a part of the
national system, is curiously remote from what may be called
the main currents.

156 FURTHER EDUCATION:

Education in Art is historically the oldest form of technical
education aided by government grant. There was a Normal
School of Design under the Board of Trade in 1837, and
when, after the Great Exhibition of 1851, science came to the
front, the famous Department of Science and Art at South
Kensington came into being. What has been said earlier in
this book of the encouragement given by South Kensington
to the teaching of science applies also to art. Under the Board
of Education art has been a section of the Branch which
dealt with technology in general and has had its own in-
spectors and rules. In the classification of institutions of
Further Education eligible for grant which has been used in
the present survey, Art Schools and Junior Departments in
Art Schools find a place along with technical schools or
evening institutes. The junior departments have already been
mentioned in chapter vm. Art schools are found in most of
the larger county boroughs and also in some smaller areas
under counties. As in technical schools, the number of full-
time students varies extremely, from a mere handful to a
hundred and more, but the great bulk of students are part-
time students, not necessarily all in evening classes. Drawing,
artistic crafts and design are the staple of the curriculum.
Art schools, however, are not so closely bound up with
training for industry as are technical schools, and much of the
teaching is of individuals or of small special groups. But in
the larger schools particularly a connection is maintained with
industries, such as pottery, textiles and certain metal trades,
where artistic design and execution have scope. The Royal
College of Art in London stands at the head of the art schools
which are aided from government funds; it is actually part
Df the Board of Education like the Science Museum and
iie Victoria and Albert Museum, its neighbours in South
Kensington. The College of Art grants diplomas and, without
iny close organic connection with local schools of art, acts

ADULT EDUCATION 157

as a kind of university to which students of art may aspire.
These terms must not be pressed too narrowly, for art schools
cherish their individuality and their independence. Nor must
it be forgotten that, apart entirely from art instruction as
fostered by the Board of Education and L.E.A.'s there are
schools of art, such as the Slade School and others, which
have a national, not to say a world-wide reputation.

Adult Education

A branch or department of Further Education which has
been officially distinguished from the rest of that very com-
prehensive sphere is known as Adult Education. Since 1924
it has had its own official Regulations and a system of require-
ments and grants peculiar to itself. Adult education, for
administrative purposes, is something different from the kind
of education described in the previous sections of the present
chapter, though these have dealt in the main with persons no
longer legally under age. It is 'liberal education' as distinct
from vocational training; it is advanced because it assumes,
if not high intellectual attainment in its students, a maturity
of thought and of reflection along with a willingness to under-
take serious study for its own sake. The various institutes
and classes which have hitherto been mentioned as providing
instruction of a general and cultural kind are not included
among the special groups which the Board's Regulations for
Adult Education are designed. Adult Education then for
official purposes has a specific connotation. At the same time
it is significant that two important bodies, the Adult Educa-
tion Committee, an advisory standing committee set up by
the Board of Education, and the British Institute of Adult
Education, a voluntary body of sympathisers, conceive of

158 FURTHER EDUCATION:

adult education as something much broader than the cate-
gories which are eligible for aid from public funds.

Adult Education, in the narrower and official sense, is
the product of two main movements. University Extension
Lectures, beginning in the '70*8 with Cambridge, were
adopted also by Oxford and by the newer universities as they
grew. They were intended to meet the needs of audiences
outside universities by providing courses of lectures, chiefly
in history and literature, to be given by university teachers.
Some of them formed the foundation of University Colleges,
as at Reading. In the present century the university com-
mittees responsible for extension courses have expanded into
regular departments of universities and university colleges,
departments of Extra-mural Studies. This was an approach
to the problem from the teaching end. An approach from the
students' end was the formation by Dr Albert Mansbridge
of the Workers' Educational Association in 1903. The W.E.A.
(to give it its familiar title) definitely aimed at introducing to
working men and women studies of university standard,
directed by tutors of university training. The conjunction of
these two movements is the basis of the greater part of the
adult education that is being here considered.

The highest type of course for which the Board offers a grant
is a tutorial class lasting three years ; it is expected to aim at
the standard of university work in honours, an aim which
experience has found to be possible of achievement in a
gratifying number of cases. Classes are held at least once a
week for twenty-four weeks in each of three years at least.
Each class is to last two hours. They are to be tutorial; a
lecture usually opens the class, to be followed by discussion,
the reading of essays by individuals, or what is known as
seminar work. The tutor is in charge and responsible for the
lecture, for directing reading, for assigning the written work
he is entitled to require and correcting it, and for guiding the

ADULT EDUCATION 159

discussion. All this means serious study and hard work on
the part of teacher and taught. The favourite subject of these
courses has been economics or economic history, but literature,
philosophy and sociology are also popular.

In the nature of things a course such as thus sketched,
covering three years and calling for regular application is not
for every man, however interested he may be. Accordingly
the Board recognises one-year courses, and terminal courses,
and also even shorter vacation courses. The general aims and
conditions are the same but the standard must obviously be
more limited. The three-year tutorial classes, the most highly
developed form of adult education with one exception, are
under the management of Extension Boards of Universities
or University Colleges, most commonly, in conjunction with
the W.E.A., through joint committees. This extra-mural
university work also includes preparatory classes to deal with
students as yet unfitted for the strenuous three-year tutorial
course, and advanced tutorial classes for students who are
capable of proceeding beyond; it also includes the long
standing type of extension lectures, which are officially re-
cognised for grant if, as part of a wider audience, a group is
formed for tutorial work after and bearing on the usual public
lecture.

Apart from the specifically university tutorial classes,
others, almost entirely one-year or terminal courses, are
initiated by various organisations, of which the W.E.A. is
the chief. In addition vacation courses, necessarily of short
duration, are recognised and aided by the Board. Further, it
is interesting to note that a Residential College, which offers
full-time instruction to adults may be so recognised and aided.
This provision was doubtless meant to bring under the aegis
of the Board the well-known Ruskin College at Oxford, an
institution which for many years and amid many vicissitudes
has afforded working men the opportunity of prolonged study

l6o FURTHER EDUCATION: ADULT EDUCATION

under university auspices. Two other colleges, the Coleg
Harlech in Wales and a small women's college, are helped
under the same conditions as Ruskin College, the chief of
which are that the work must be of university standard and
should include at least a year of full-time study.

It must again be emphasised that Adult Education com-
prises much more than is implied in the official regulations
just discussed. The two bodies mentioned earlier, the Adult
Education Committee and the Institute of Adult Education,
are interested not only in the promotion of systematic study
but also in educational activities like the drama and broad-
casting. So other associations, such as the Y.M.C.A., not only
provide vocational classes of the usual kind but also foster a
good deal of adult education of a ' liberal' kind if not so
precisely organised as the tutorial classes of the W.E.A. and
universities, and a liberal education does not consist entirely
of the study of economics and history. The L.E. A. 's too, under
the general name of further education, have the interests of
the studious adult in mind. Some of them set up Adult
Education Committees and assume responsibility for the
finance and aid in the management of the officially recognised
classes, while most of them assist such classes without
attempting to administer, besides aiding in various degrees
the development of adult education in its most general sense.

CHAPTER X
THE UNIVERSITIES

In any description of the educational system of a modern
country the Universities will be rightly accounted the crown
of the edifice, however loose and unco-ordinated the main
structure below them may be. In countries like France and
Germany, where education is regulated more ostensibly by
the state than it is in Britain or the United States, the supreme
position of the universities is easy to perceive. But the position
is not less assured in our own country, though it is less strictly
defined and though the universities have no legally fixed place
in the official organisation of education, which has been the
main subject of the previous chapters of this book. For the
universities are undoubtedly a part of the national system,
which, it may be said once more, is not coterminous with the
state system. Apart from the history of the two old and
venerable universities, which is intimately bound up with the
history and life of the English people, and the growth of the
newer universities which is no less intimately associated with
the social development of the last hundred years, the uni-
versities are closely connected with the state system itself, as
will be shown in due course. The educational ladder which
successive administrations have tried to strengthen ends at the
universities. Through them mainly is opened up access to the
great liberal professions and in another direction is offered
the prospect of advance in industry and commerce.

There are twelve universities in England and Wales. Oxford

and Cambridge enjoy pride of place in virtue of their hoary

tradition and their contribution to the history of the country.

WES 6

162 THE UNIVERSITIES

Durham, enlarged by the addition of the Newcastle colleges,
and London are about a century old* Manchester, Leeds and
Liverpool, once united as the Victoria University, have been
independent since 1903, and Birmingham since 1900. Wales
had its charter in 1893, Sheffield and Bristol later, and
Reading in 1926. With the universities must be associated the
University Colleges. Those of Nottingham, Southampton and
Exeter are recognised as such, those of Hull and Leicester are
recognised in part.

It is not strictly true to say that universities and university
colleges are wholly outside the state system, as private schools
of various types may be so accounted. What is true is that the
kind of control which the previous chapters of this book have
described as being exercised by the state and the L.E.A.'s
over the great mass of elementary and Further Education and
over a large part of secondary education does not extend over
university education. The Government of the country is not
powerless to intervene in university matters, indeed, but it
does not intervene through the Board of Education. During
the last 100 years it has effectively influenced university
education through special reforming Commissions and through
specific Acts of Parliament, for example the Universities
Tests Act 1871. Moreover the granting of charters to new
universities, though not a matter for parliamentary discussion,
is in effect determined by the Government, Again Parliament
allots Treasury grants for university work, assigning a lump
sum, but this is distributed through a special committee,
appointed by the Treasury, and not through the Board, called
the University Grants Committee. Unlike the Board this
Committee, appointed first in 1911, issues no set of regula-
tions or conditions of grant to be fulfilled. Nor is it a body
of civil servants acting as a department; it consists of a
number of eminent men familiar with university work, who
from time to time pay informal visits of enquiry, and are kept

THE UNIVERSITIES 163

in touch with the needs, projects and claims of each university.
Oxford and Cambridge stood aloof for some time, but ac-
cepted grants in 1922 after Royal Commissions had reported
on them. It is desirable to add here, although an English
reader needs no reminder, that in England and Wales, or in
fact in the British Isles, there is nothing resembling the
governmental control of universities which is found in some
countries abroad. The Government cannot dictate to a uni-
versity what it shall teach, or dismiss a professor whose
teaching may be unacceptable. The independence of the
universities is very real.

It is no contradiction of this independence to mention the
numerous points of contact between the Board of Education
and the L.B.A.'s on the one hand and the universities on the
other. There are certain services which the universities
render for which the Board pays as it pays to other bodies
rendering similar services. The most conspicuous of these are
the training of teachers and adult education. Every university
and every university college has a Training Department, and
each training department is allowed to take an assigned
number of * recognised ' students, on whose behalf the Board
pays a capitation grant to the department on account of
tuition fees besides a personal grant for maintenance to the
student. It is not too much to say that the provincial uni-
versities in their struggling years, and the university colleges
all along, owe very much to the presence of a large body of
training students whose attendance at degree courses was in
a sense guaranteed. The Board naturally lay down require-
ments and conditions especially as to professional training;
but the self-determination of the universities on the academic
side remains unimpaired, and the Board's supervision of the
professional work, save for certain requirements to ensure
parallel or equivalent standards, is extremely light. The
Board's financial interest in adult education was explained in

6-2

164 THE UNIVERSITIES

the preceding chapter. Without anything but very indirect
control, the Board contribute further to university resources
through State Scholarships and through the general Deficiency
Grants to L.E.A.'s, which include the expenditure of L.E.A.'s
on scholarship schemes to assist local students in their uni-
versity careers. The LJB. A. 's on their part share in the expense
of the scholarships they grant. If they do not on their own
authority pay a definite contribution to a university as educa-
tion committees, the councils which, it may be remembered,
are the ultimate authority, vote sums of money to the local
university. Thus the London County Council, as well as the
City of London, has voted large subsidies to the building of
London University. The Councils are usually represented on
the Governing Bodies of London and the Provincial Uni-
versities, and University representatives serve as co-opted
members of education committees, except in London, in the
areas in which a university stands. It may be added that the
connection between the University of Wales with its four
constituent colleges and the L.E.A.'s of the Principality is
more than usually close.

ii

Such are the financial and official links between the universities
and the authorities which control and manage the public
system of education in England and Wales. The connection
with the schools of the country is of course closer and more
intimate than these bare facts would of themselves suggest.
It became closer in the nineteenth century when the practice
of the private education of boys of the upper classes by tutors
fell into almost entire desuetude. Schools had always sent
boys forward to Oxford and Cambridge, even poor boys, like
Dr Johnson, but the regular progress from school to uni-
versity was not fully established till the Public Schools began
to multiply and the older foundations to be completely roused

THE UNIVERSITIES 165

from the lethargy of the preceding century. The endowed
schools, especially in large towns, which revived after the
'sixties, took advantage of the scholarships now no longer
closed and contributed a steady stream of middle-class and
even humbler students, and the 'educational ladder* was
broadened. Meanwhile also Oxford and Cambridge had been
freed from the restrictions in the shape of religious tests
which had kept all but members of the Church of England
from real membership. London had imposed no tests from
the beginning : indeed that freedom was its raison d'etre, and
the rising provincial colleges were also free from tests. Thus
all the universities have become national in their accessibility
to persons of all stations and of all creeds. After 1902 the new
state Secondary Schools began to fill the provincial universities
first, and soon to secure a share of the privileges of Oxford and
Cambridge. The Free Place system and the enlarged scholar-
ships of the L.E.A.'s brought in a number of students who
came originally from elementary schools. These had never
been actually wanting under the more aristocratic regime;
but the path of approach was further widened. At the same
time the universities themselves, the old and especially the
newer, opened up contacts with other forms of national life
besides the learned professions of the church and the law.
The great medical schools attached themselves to universities
and the scientific movement of the nineteenth century stimu-
lated the demand for training in many branches of science,
to which may be added in more recent years technology. The
expansion of both elementary and secondary education, as
already suggested, meant a large increase in the teaching
service. But behind all this there has lain the growing
demand for opportunities of more and of superior education,
a demand to which the very rapid growth of the newer
universities and university colleges was the response. So
university education has grown to be an object to which the

l66 THE UNIVERSITIES

able and ambitious of all ranks may aspire, and one which no
longer leads only to the church or the leisure of a country
gentleman but to participation in all the higher walks of the
nation's business.

The brief sketch so far has seemed to concern men only.
But, since the beginning of the present century, it has been
true in the main of women. Women were admitted to the
classes of the university colleges and, when charters were
secured, to the full membership of the provincial universities.
London accepted women for degrees in 1878. The Oxford
and Cambridge colleges for women began sixty years ago, and
Oxford in 1920 admitted women to full membership of the
university both as undergraduates and as graduates. Two
years later Cambridge gave "titles for degrees' but does
not yet recognise women as members of the university. So
far as examinations and university distinctions go, women are
treated exactly as men: women have won university prizes
and a woman once was above the Senior Wrangler at
Cambridge. But in the two senior universities women are at
a disadvantage, because their colleges are fewer, and not only
are there fewer open scholarships but also there is severe
competition to secure even a place. In London, on the othet
hand, there are colleges open only to women such as Bedford,
Holloway and Westfield, as well as large colleges like Uni-
versity, King's and East London freely open to both sexes.

Enough has been said to justify the claim that the uni-
versities are essentially a part of the national system of educa-
tion in England and Wales. They are the crown of the
structure, which is broadly built on a genuine national
foundation. They influence but do not dominate what lies
below them. Some critics consider that in some ways the
influence is too strong, that through tradition which sti*!
permeates public opinion and through the examinations de-
scribed in a previous chapter, an academic ideal is fostered

THE UNIVERSITIES 167

which is not in the best interests of the large majority of pupils
who attend secondary schools of all kinds. However that may
be and we are not concerned in this book to do more than
relate the facts there is no doubt of the prestige of the
universities in the educational world or of the very sub-
stantial contribution they make to the national welfare.

in

A broad distinction is sometimes drawn between Oxford and
Cambridge on the one hand and other universities, in that the
former are residential and the latter not. The distinction needs
to be used with care. At Oxford and Cambridge a student is
a member of a college besides being a member of the uni-
versity ; and at some period during his years of study for a
degree he is expected to live in college. The existence of
a non-collegiate body and of the Oxford Society of Home
Students (women) only emphasises the rule. But none of the
men's colleges can accommodate all the undergraduates for
the full period, and a year or more, often two or three
years, must be spent in officially licensed lodgings where the
student is under university and college discipline. Yet with
negligible exceptions the students do not live at home. The
provincial universities at the outset were necessarily local
(except that Durham was on the Oxford and Cambridge plan
in part), and the students attended daily from home, often
travelling for some distance. There was no 'coming up' or
'going down' at the beginning and ending of term at first;
and for large numbers, especially of men, this is still true. But
one of the constant ambitions of all the universities and
university colleges has been to provide hostels into which
even students living near may be encouraged to enter and
which give so much valuable experience of university life.
Reading has consistently kept down the number of students

l68 THE UNIVERSITIES

in lodgings or at home and, thanks to generous supporters,
has housed the majority of its students in hostels. Other
universities, including the colleges making up the University
of Wales, have made strides in the same direction, as have
the colleges of Nottingham, Southampton and Exeter.
London is peculiar. A few of the constituent colleges like
Holloway, Bedford and Westfield are mostly if not wholly
residential for women. Others like King's, University College
and East London are day colleges, with a hostel or two. It may
be noted at this point that the largest of the London colleges,
such as King's and University, are in themselves as large as
some of the provincial universities, and in their relations with
the university as a whole are in a position of independence and
self-government analogous to, though in many points differ-
ing from, the position of colleges in Oxford and Cambridge.
Another generalisation, to be treated with equal care, is
that the teaching at Oxford and Cambridge is predominantly
tutorial, and the teaching at other more modern universities
is predominantly professorial, to classes often large, rather
than to small groups or individuals. It is true that the
existence in Oxford and Cambridge of separate colleges, each
a corporation by itself, opens up possibilities which are hardly
realisable elsewhere. A college will have actually within its
walls, or within easy reach, a body of tutors in most of the
main subjects, to whom groups of students can be assigned,
and who will not only advise on lectures to attend and books
to read but will personally criticise and discuss essays and
written compositions. The tutorial intimacy does not mean
that the college is wholly self-contained, for students are sent
to outside lectures bearing on" their work: science men must
go to laboratories which as a rule are not college but uni-
versity institutions. In spite of seminars and other oppor-
tunities of discussion, the tutorial association cannot well be
as close in a modern university. Hostels, valuable as they are

THE UNIVERSITIES

on the social side, cannot do what colleges can on the
Intellectual side. One need not enlarge on the subtle influence
of belonging to a college, the common dinner in hall, the
chapel, the college societies, the many relations between dons
and undergraduates and the feeling of a community of in-
terests and purposes. In a modern university, students are
apt to be united in * faculties ' and, except to some degree in
London, not in colleges. Yet in these universities there is
much that is done to discourage the isolation of students by
sports, various societies, the Union, the common library and
by as much personal contact between students and teachers
as the circumstances permit.

It has been convenient to use the term Provincial Uni-
versities, chiefly in order to distinguish these new universities
from Oxford and Cambridge. The term is not free from
ambiguity. Oxford and Cambridge in fact are geographically
in the provinces and London is not. Though it is true that the
other universities, even London as a teaching university, are
in a sense ' local ', while Oxford and Cambridge are not, they
are open to all comers, and the value of their degrees depends
upon their individual history and prestige and not on their
geographical situation. The universities in the North naturally
attract students from the northern counties, and corre-
spondingly those in the Midlands and London. Reading,
itself not the centre of a large population, has drawn students
from all quarters, and English students have always been
numerous in Wales. But the idea which finds favour in some
circles that Manchester and Liverpool, Durham, Birmingham,
Leeds and Sheffield might be considered as the academic
crown of a province, ultimately perhaps to become an ad-
ministrative province for education, makes little headway in
face of the undoubted obstacles. These lie not only in the
difficulties of delimitation but also in the watchful attitude of
the established L.E.A.'s who look with suspicion upon any

170 THE UNIVERSITIES

proposal which seems to threaten their independence. The
only university of a province is that of Wales, where the whole
people take a prominent part in university management
through their own councils and feel a personal pride in a
university to which they contribute students and money. The
University of Wales is an expression of the Welsh enthusiasm
for education.

The history of the new universities and university colleges
shows to what an honourable degree they are local. The funds
which enabled them, in the first place, to be started and to
prove that they were financially deserving of a charter were
furnished by local benefactors, including local councils. Their
Chancellors have been men of local, as well as often of national,
influence, such as Lord Derby at Liverpool, the Prince of
Wales as Duke of Cornwall at Exeter, and the Duke of
Wellington at Southampton. They do not, as do many of the
colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, depend for their resources
upon estates in the country, bequeathed by benefactors ; but
they have had substantial endowments from men and women
of wealth, such as the Wills* family which has built a mag-
nificent university at Bristol, the Palmers and Suttons at
Reading, Lord Trent at Nottingham, and more recently Mr
Ferens at Hull. The original names of the university colleges
commemorate the founders, Owens College in Manchester,
Armstrong College in Newcastle, Mason College in Birming-
ham, Firth College in Sheffield, each of which was the nucleus
of a university. Some of these at first emphasised the science
rather than the arts side, for Mason College was reluctant to
admit the classics. But it was soon clear that no one-sided
college would have a chance of becoming a university, and in
fact all the universities and university colleges possess a strong
arts side, in which even the Greek and Latin classics have a
firmly established reputation.

THE UNIVERSITIES

IV

It is impossible to survey all the many-sided activities oi
universities, but a few striking features may fitly be men-
tioned. Oxford and Cambridge, as has been already said,
retain their old prestige. The School of Literae Humaniores
at Oxford, that is the study of ancient philosophy and history,
with Plato, Aristotle and the Roman and Greek historians as
the staple along with modern philosophy, retains its title oi
the * Greats ' school. A newer rival, c Modern Greats J , resting
on political and social philosophy, attracts many students as
being more consonant with the times. In Cambridge the
former glories of the Mathematical Tripos bid fair to be
outstripped by the present-day reputation of the famous
Cavendish Laboratory, where remarkable advances in the
study of physics and the ultimate constitution of matter are
being periodically announced. In both the supremacy oi
classics and science is challenged, but by no means success-
fully, by the schools and triposes in History, English and
Modern Languages. Latin is still required for matriculation ;
but compulsory Greek has gone, first at Cambridge and later,
amid much opposition, at Oxford. Newer developments are
Forestry at Oxford and Anthropology at Cambridge.

London became a Teaching University in 1900. From its
foundation in 1836 it had been a degree-granting university,
whose students might be attached to a college such as Uni-
versity College or Bedford College, but might equally be in
other institutions, such as training colleges and even schools,
or again might be working privately. The effect of the change
to a teaching university was to divide examinations with theii
issue in degrees and also students into two groups, the
* internal* and the 'external*. * Internal* students are those
who belong to one or other of the large number of colleges
which are incorporated in the university, and who are therefore

172 THE UNIVERSITIES

under instruction recognised as university instruction. They
are registered as members of the university, much as students
in Leeds or Liverpool are ranked. Their professors, lecturers
and tutors have some share in the various boards which decide
the contents of their studies and conduct the examinations,
as elsewhere. Parallel to the internal examinations the uni-
versity maintains its External side, but it has no control over
externals beyond prescribing the details of the various
curricula and conducting the examinations, nor have tutors
and lecturers in external colleges where these exist any voice
in the degree courses or in the regular tests.

As may be imagined the problems arising when the many
London colleges were merged into one huge university have
been intricate and troublesome. The colleges are scattered and
the building used now as a university centre is the Imperial
Institute at South Kensington. But with government aid and
help from the Rockefeller foundation, the university is to have
a new and permanent home in Bloomsbury, which will in due
time become a University quarter. This does not mean that
the thousands of students will flock for instruction to Blooms-
bury, as the students at Sheffield and Bristol assemble in the
university buildings. For the constituent colleges, some out-
side the central areas of London, retain a large measure of
independence as do the colleges at Oxford and Cambridge,
an independence to which there is nothing quite corre-
sponding at Leeds and Liverpool or even Durham. The
professorships are in a way duplicated : for example there are
Professors of Physics at University College, King's, Birkbeck,
the Imperial College of Science, and East London College,
and Professors of Psychology at University College, King's,
and Bedford College, each with his laboratory and his
assistants, doing parallel work for the same internal London
degrees. The size and situation of these colleges, apart from
the circumstances of their origin, necessitate some such plan :

THE UNIVERSITIES 173

indeed it is a matter for admiration that the colleges, which
are inevitably rivals in many respects, should have consented
to be associated in one university. The larger colleges under-
take most of the forms of academic work which are found in
a modern university, besides having branches peculiar to
themselves. Thus University College has a department of
Egyptology and another of Phonetics ; King's has a depart-
ment of Theology, and one of Education. The University
includes all the great Schools of Medicine, and also a School
of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine: the London School of
Economics is another constituent; so also the School of
Oriental Studies. The newest additions are the Institute of
Education and the Courtauld School of Art, Some of these
will ultimately find a permanent home in Bloomsbury, where
also the University Library and a Grand Hall as well as
administrative buildings will be provided. Numerous smaller
institutions such as certain theological colleges are counted as
schools of the university and are admitted to certain privileges
with their students as * internal ' students. The character of
some of the colleges and schools suggests, what is indeed true,
that the university is more than a university for London.
Since its reconstitution in the present century, and especially
since the war, London University has become an Imperial
University. All the universities have links more or less strong
with the empire, as witness the Rhodes Scholars and the
Indian Institute at Oxford, and receive students from any
part of it. But the special provision for oriental languages,
phonetics, economics, tropical medicine and education, and
the attraction of London itself mark the London University
as pre-eminently the Imperial University of the future.

174 THE UNIVERSITIES

The term * University College ', used in the present chapter,
is best understood as applied to those institutions which are
counted as eligible in the judgment of the University Grants
Committee to receive Treasury grant. Colleges like the
Manchester College of Technology and the Merchant Ven-
turers' College at Bristol, in spite of their connection with
universities, the Manchester College being the Technological
Department of Manchester University, are not university
colleges in the conveniently narrower sense. As stated in an
earlier paragraph, the recognised university colleges are those
of Nottingham, Southampton and Exeter, the comparatively
new college at Hull, and the slightly older one at Leicester.
On the other hand, the four colleges in Wales Aberystwyth,
Bangor, Cardiff and Swansea retain the name. Unlike the
English colleges, they do not themselves seek to be inde-
pendent universities, for they form a university, the Uni-
versity of Wales, which apart from them can hardly be said
to have a material existence.

The Provincial Universities, except Durham, began as
university colleges, and each of the present university colleges
aspires to follow in their footsteps, and in due time to become
a full university. At present none of them can grant degrees,
nor is any one affiliated to a university. Affiliation in fact
meets with little favour in universities. It is an indefinite
word and the nature and extent of the connection which it
may connote may be different on different occasions. The
theological college of Lampeter is affiliated with the Uni-
versity of Wales in one sense, Codrington College in Barbados
with Durham University in another. Reading when springing
up from its lowly position of a university extension centre had
links with Oxford, but there was little of the tangible relation
of parent and child in them. Thus the university colleges,

THE UNIVERSITIES 175

unable to offer degrees on their own authority, are bound to
use the London University external ' degrees or be content
with diplomas of their own. Before the present constitution
of London University was established, the Royal College of
Science, now the Imperial College of Science and Technology,
issued diplomas of associateship, A.R.C.S., which were held
in esteem not inferior to that of the London B.Sc. But
university colleges could not in practice pit any diplomas of
their own against degrees, issued by universities and re-
cognised as emblems of success in a regulated progress of
studies. They must needs sacrifice their independence in
order that their students may leave with the accepted standard
of graduation.

The external degrees of London, it will be recalled, are
open to duly matriculated students in any institution or
working privately. The degrees available, the syllabuses of
requirements for them and the examinations, are all prescribed
and conducted by the external department of London Uni-
versity. Thus the professors and lecturers in the university
colleges, however distinguished, have no voice in deciding
the requirements for degrees, or, except by accident, in the
examinations. Nothing but a certain variety and elasticity in
the courses prescribed could make the position tolerable.
London University exercises no control save through the
examinations. Each college determines what departments of
study it should undertake, has its faculties and its professors
on the model of a university. None of them embraces so wide
a range at present as a university : for example, none has a
medical school. It is interesting to note that Reading secured
its charter m 1926 substantially because its financial resources
were sufficient to guarantee its stability, and it had already
a supply of students doing advanced work, but also because
those who were responsible wisely limited their projects to
what was feasible in their situation. Abandoning all idea of

176 THE UNIVERSITIES

founding either a Medical or an Engineering School, they
concentrated on a sound provision in arts and sciences, with
a special department of Agriculture along with departments
for Horticulture and Fine Art. The lines of development of
the university colleges will probably be different, rather in
the direction of a federation of institutions than the establish-
ment of a self-contained university. With Nottingham may be
linked Leicester as a parallel, and Loughborough Technical
College as the engineering section; with Southampton the
Portsmouth Technical College; and with Exeter, Plymouth
Technical College and the Agricultural College of Newton
Abbot. But the outlook is far from clear.

VI

The total number of full-time students in the Universities of
England and Wales is nearly 40,000, It is estimated that i in
1 6 of pupils leaving grant-earning secondary schools after the
age of 14 proceeds to a university; if all secondary schools
are included, the proportion is about i in 9. Whether this
proportion is the right proportion in view of the national needs
is arguable, the solution depending on the interpretation of
national needs. The professions, including teaching, call for a
steady supply of graduates. Industry and commerce absorb
a certain number, but not so many as at one time they promised
to do. Though at Oxford and Cambridge the leisured classes
continue to furnish men, and to a less extent women, who
need not be anxious about the future, the large majority of
university students in general are training for a career. So of
course they were in the mediaeval universities for the most
part. Consequently the main business of the universities
must be imparting knowledge or instructing the student how
to acquire for himself the knowledge he needs. Tljis seems
obvious on the face of it, yet no university is content with

THE UNIVERSITIES 177

being nothing but a dispenser of knowledge. Research is the
magic word, and in each department men and women, in the
highest posts at least, are expected to work at the extensfon
of knowledge and the communication of the results to the
world. The remarkable achievements of science in the last
century, and, in another field, the hardly less remarkable
discoveries in archaeology, have stimulated the thirst for
exploration of both the present and the past. The competing
claims of teaching and research are not easy to reconcile ; a
compromise is inevitable. Some men find themselves able to
make an effective combination of most advanced research and
real teaching: others modestly are lecturers and tutors only:
a few are devoted almost exclusively to research.

Another result of the presence of so many in universities
preparing for a career in modern times is the predominance
of science departments which include a good deal of tech-
nology. Some unkind critics have called the newer uni-
versities little more than glorified technical schools. This
criticism amounts to a declaration that a university should
provide only general culture with no contact with the working
world. But common sense distrusts a view which would seem
to discountenance the practical instruction of a student of
science in the manipulations of a laboratory or a dissection
chamber, or the training of a teacher through work in a
classroom. The claims of the practical sciences have made
themselves felt in the older universities: in Oxford with a
School of Forestry, in Cambridge with Engineering; much
more are they evident in the local universities, where
metallurgy is studied in Sheffield, textiles in Leeds and
Manchester, mining in Newcastle and agriculture in Reading.
If these practical subjects involve training which is technical,
which uses the hands and tools as well as the eyes and books,
why, there is no help for it. At least one school of thinkers on
education holds that education which does not call for the use

178 THE UNIVERSITIES

of the hands is incomplete. In any case it is too late in the day
for universities to decry certain needs of modern education as

* banausic' in the fashion of ancient Greece. Their function
is rather to ascertain and work out the ultimate scientific
principles and to base the knowledge of the most 'practical 5
sciences upon them.

A danger which arises from the situation just sketched is
often deplored by critics not only outside but in the uni-
versities themselves. That is the danger of over-specialisation.
Any honours course is bound to be to some extent specialised,
but some subjects, as commonly pursued, admit of a breadth
of treatment which may be fairly called * liberal ' or f cultural ',
while others do not. The specialist in history is bound to read
widely in some directions if narrowly in others ; the specialist
in physics must be familiar with many branches and cannot
go far without the ability to read French and German con-
tributions on his subject. An evil arises when students with
no real prospect of being first-class men are eager to take
honours courses for which they are not properly qualified:
they do not get the valuable training by which abler men can
profit and they miss the wider experience which a more
generalised course, aiming at the less ambitious goal of a

* pass ', would give them. The evil is accentuated when under
pressure of competition for scholarships specialisation is be-
gun in the schools and too early. The solution of the problem
here raised seems likely to lie in some modification in the
sharpness of the distinction between 'pass' and ' honours',
and a raising of the dignity of the pass degree. It is felt that
the business of a university is to send out men and women
with a liberal education, though a liberal education need not
be understood as confined to the traditional academic studies :
a scientific education may be liberal and cultural without a
close acquaintance with the ancient tongues.

CHAPTER XI

EDUCATION OUTSIDE THE
STATE SYSTEM

The earlier chapters of this book have been concerned prin-
cipally with education as controlled and financed by the state.
But even those who most thoroughly believe in the necessity
and the value of the state system would be the last to arrogate
to it the attribute of * national ' to the exclusion of other kinds
of education. The state system is recent, it has grown piece-
meal, and, wide as it is, it is imperfect. The national system
of course, if less definite, is far wider; in essence it is ancient
in spite of modern developments. It must be held to include
colleges and schools, institutions and classes which have
either preceded the present series under state control or have
grown up side by side with it, and which, like the state system
itself, represent what the nation thinks should be covered by
education and the aims which education should achieve. It
seems desirable, therefore, to survey briefly the very numerous
agencies and institutions engaged in education which are
wholly or almost wholly outside the purview of education
authorities, both central and local. A close examination will
show that, independent as they are in origin, in government
and administration as in finance, they cannot help being
influenced by ideas and movements which have had their rise
during the development of the state system itself, and which
sometimes are due to official stimulus and suggestion. It
would be hard to find a school or college or class that is wholly
remote from the currents which have dominated educational
thought and even have governed the educational administra-
tion of the country. Private initiative and voluntary enterprise

l8o EDUCATION OUTSIDE THE STATE SYSTEM

will always, it is to be hoped, act as a criticism and a stimulus
to public endeavour, but they cannot be entirely dissociated
from the society in which they are exercised.

It is not necessary or desirable to seek a definition of the
English national system of education by assigning limits. The
universities are obviously national, as was assumed through-
out the previous chapter. And their substantial independence
of state control no one would seriously challenge. The aid
they receive from the Treasury and the services for which
they are subsidised by the Board of Education do not bind
them to the state system so as to interfere with their essential
freedom. They are outside the state system but within the
national system properly conceived. In other departments of
education there is a kind of dualism, or at least parallelism ;
side by side with state controlled classes and schools there
are classes and schools wholly independent and private. The
dualism does not apply to universities for there is no state
university, even in Wales where the links between local
government and university are perhaps closest. The education
of the officers of the Army, Navy and Air Force, at the same
level of age, is an apparent but not a real exception, bringing
out the force of the generalisation but not impairing its truth.
The higher training for the three great professions of law,
medicine and the church seems to stand outside the national
system of education, broadly interpreted, as it certainly does
stand outside the state system. The conditions of entry into
each of these are determined apart from the government and
are wholly dissociated from anything like popular control.
Yet in theology and medicine at least, and partly so in law,
there are numerous cross connections with the national
system. Universities have schools of jurisprudence and theo-
logical faculties while the great training schools for doctors

EDUCATION OUTSIDE THE STATE SYSTEM l8l

are mostly university institutions. If the universities do not
themselves formally register medical practitioners, call to the
Bar and ordain ministers of religion, they provide a large
portion of the specific training upon which admission to the
professions depends. The association of the industrial pro-
fessions, engineering and others, with the national system
both through universities and through the technological
branch of the Board of Education has already been indicated
in a previous chapter.

There is a region of educational activity independent of the
state and seldom noticed in surveys of English education,
which may appropriately find mention at this point. This is
the region of higher commerce, where Chartered Institutes,
e.g. of Bankers, Actuaries and Secretaries, watch over and
to some extent control the entrance into these professions
through qualifying examinations and diplomas. The training
and preparation for the professional tests is done partly by
the professions themselves (e.g. in Insurance), partly in
technical colleges and evening institutes, partly in some of the
modern universities, where there are chairs of Commercial
Law and Banking, and partly again by private * coaches'.
Some would like to see modern universities undertaking more
of this kind of training for commerce and would extend the
provision of courses for degrees in commerce in the direction
of specific training.

ii

It is in the sphere of secondary education and in the school
education of the upper and middle classes that the duality of
the national system is most manifest. It is estimated that of
about 600,000 boys and girls in secondary schools, some
432,000 are in state-aided schools and some 250,000 are in
schools independent of state and local control. Although the
administrative distinction between the two kinds is clear, a

EDUCATION OUTSIDE THE STATE SYSTEM

foreign observer is puzzled not only by the nomenclature but
also by the odd variety of apparently dissimilar types to which
the various names are applied. When a school is called a Public
School, though it is neither publicly managed nor by reason
of its very high fees really open to the public at large, and
another school controlled by a teaching order of nuns is not
a private school for it accepts aid and some representation
from a L.E.A., while a third drawing its pupils substantially
from the same social classes is quite definitely private and
proprietary, some misapprehension and confusion are pardon-
able. The best service to be rendered by a chapter on schools
outside the state system is to describe the leading features of
several of the principal groups and to show how they are
related to the state organisation, if at all, and how far they
ought to be considered as helping to constitute the national
system of education.

The Public School is well understood by the English people.
Eton and Harrow are as familiar as Oxford and Cambridge.
We may leave aside the ancient disputes as to which schools
have a prescriptive right to the title, and take it for granted
that not only Cheltenham and Clifton, Stonyhurst and
Kingswood, but also new schools like Stowe can be included.
They are all independent and self-governing and they neither
need nor solicit aid from state or local authority. They are
nearly all boarding schools and non-local. A few like St Paul's
and the City of London are attended chiefly by boys in or
near London : but Merchant Taylors (following the example
of Charterhouse and Christ's Hospital) has recently moved
out to a distant suburb and has become partially residential.
The fees of the boarding schools are high, and there is much
competition to secure admission.

Allied to what may be fairly called the Public School
system is that of Preparatory Schools. They began to grow
up towards the end of the last century when the Public Schools

EDUCATION OUTSIDE THE STATE SYSTEM 183

under pressure of numbers were obliged to refuse very young
boys. Preparatory Schools are usually small and are also
usually set up in the country or at the seaside, though St Paul's
has one near the school itself, and there are a few other similar
examples. A Common Entrance Examination, established in
1903, must be passed at or about thirteen and the Preparatory
Schools restrict their aims to preparation for this and, for the
abler boys, for the scholarships offered by the Public Schools.
At the same time they not only try to give a sound grounding
in the elements of the usual school subjects but to pay special
attention to health and exercise, with good food. They are
naturally expensive.

Public Schools and Preparatory Schools do not constitute
so close a corporation as perhaps what is said above might
seem to imply. The Headmasters' Conference, founded by
Edward Thring in 1873, includes the heads of the Public
Schools, but it also admits heads of the great town Grammar
Schools; to be a Conference School, a school must have a
regular connection with Oxford and Cambridge, habitually
sending its sixth form boys to the universities. Some of the
schools, for example Bradford Grammar School and St
Olave's, Southwark, are decidedly part of the state system
though they are aided by Parliamentary grant and rates but
not entirely controlled by the L.E.A. So also while the
Preparatory School Association consists mostly of non-local
schools with few links except with the large Public Schools,
there are numerous suburban private schools which are pre-
paratory for secondary schools in general, private or public,
but not so closely tied to the Common Entrance Examination.
These are better discussed in a later section.

The education of girls has little to show exactly corre-
sponding to the Public Schools with their auxiliary Pre-
paratory Schools as a system. There is not, of course, the
same length of tradition. Certain schools Eke Roedean and

184 EDUCATION OUTSIDE THE STATE SYSTEM

Wycombe Abbey are independent foundations : certain others
such as St Paul's Girls' School and the City of London Girls'
School are associated with the parallel Boys' Schools, as are
certain Girls' Grammar Schools with town Boys' Grammar
Schools. These and certain Company's schools might be
called Public Schools for girls, but that name has not in fact
attached itself to them. For the most part they do not depend
for their pupils, as do the Public Boarding Schools, upon a
body of schools specifically devoted to preparatory work and
no other. There is no Common Entrance Examination and
many of the schools have junior or preparatory departments
of their own. Thus there is no Headmistresses' Conference
and no Preparatory Schools' Association parallel to those of
schools for boys. The Headmistresses' Association embraces
the heads of girls' secondary schools, whether private or
public. In short there is no Public School system for girls in
the same sense as there may be said to be a Public School
system for boys. With few exceptions the large girls' schools
are much less well endowed than are schools for boys and
many of the most eminent accept a direct grant from the Board
of Education or are aided by the L.E.A.

A striking phenomenon of the present century has been the
breaking down of the old isolation of the Public Schools. They
are no longer to the same extent a class remote from the rough
and tumble of popular education. So to say, they have come
out into the open, admitted their consanguinity with the
grammar and other secondary schools, defended themselves
under criticism and expounded the Public School tradition
of which they are legitimately proud. Their supremacy in
many directions has been frankly acknowledged and their
spirit and practices have been as frankly imitated in girls'
schools, in secondary schools of all kinds and even within
the more modest range of the elementary schools. The
imitation is no mere straining after an artificial reproduction

EDUCATION OUTSIDE THE STATE SYSTEM 185

of the machinery of a Public School under conditions widely
dissimilar but a sincere attempt to create a corporate spirit
and a type of liberal training in their way as genuine as the
original. The Public Schools by reason of their history are
still the schools of the wealthy, and the educational ladder
does not pass through them ; but they are no longer as it were
schools for nobles, aloof in sentiment as in situation from the
community as a whole. They are essentially a part of English
national education.

in

Although the Public Schools and Preparatory Schools are
'private' in the sense of being outside the state system of
education in England and Wales, the word private school is
not applied to them in common parlance but rather to the
very large number of schools, for boys and girls alike, which
are the personal property of one or a few individuals, or a
community and, as such, have no share in Parliamentary
grant. The Act of 1902 authorised the new L.EJL's to take
into account schools of all kinds, including those under private
management, in estimating the needs of an area, and private
schools as well as Endowed Schools and Public Schools were
included in the larger surveys of Mr M. E. Sadler. But in
fact private schools, as usually known, were for the most
part little considered. The Public Schools, perhaps naturally,
stood apart from an estimate by the L. A.E. of its responsibilities
in secondary education, as they do still. The endowed and
grammar schools were soon incorporated in the local system,
the majority of them through representative governors and
by financial aid. Thus in London, St Paul's, Westminster, the
City of London School and Merchant Taylors remained out-
side the L.C.C. scheme, but a large number of schools, many
of some antiquity, like St Olave's, the Stationers' School and
the Central Foundation School, came in as aided schools.

l86 EDUCATION OUTSIDE THE STATE SYSTEM

Most of the latter had for long received government grants
through their science departments from South Kensington.
Their entrance into the county system, with all that this im-
plied of connection with elementary schools by scholarships and
free places, and also by some kind of public control, not only
prevented the misfortune of a quasi-school board secondary
organisation, isolated from the independent secondary schools
of the well-to-do, but added a dignity as well as a variety
to secondary education under direct or indirect popular
management.

But this course of action marked off more decisively the
private schools, on the whole to their detriment, or to the
detriment of public education broadly conceived. They take
legitimate pride in their freedom from interference and
bureaucratic control, in the intimate personal relationships
that masters and mistresses maintain with parents and pupils,
in the opportunities of training in manners and character
which their privacy affords and which are less generally
available in the mixed communities of more public schools,
and in the feeling that they satisfy the reasonable desires of
a body of parents who are willing to pay for a kind of educa-
tion they prefer. The isolation of the private schools brings
with it certain disadvantages: their pupils cannot profit by
scholarships open only to pupils of state-aided schools ; the
teachers do not come under the Superannuation Acts ; their
financial situation may be unstable and they have no L.E.A.
to fall back upon; they rarely have endowments through
which their distinguished scholars can be helped to a uni-
versity education; they do not to a l^rge extent employ trained
teachers and they have no training organisation of their own.

The variety of the private secondary schools is not always
realised. A broad distinction may be drawn between those
which have a body of responsible governors, though they may
not be under Charitable Trusts, and those which are the

EDUCATION OUTSIDE THE STATE SYSTEM 187

personal property of a single individual, commonly the head
teacher, a partnership or a family. The best examples of the
first class are schools conducted by a religious community or
society. These indeed range from schools like Downside and
Kingswood, which are Public Schools, down to small convent
schools. The type we have in mind is rather parallel in aims
and achievements to the grammar and other state-aided
secondary schools, aiming at the First Schools Examination
and even from time to time sending a pupil to the university.
As has been said on an earlier page, some of the convent
schools are part of the state-aided system, e.g. in Manchester
and Liverpool. But for the most part these schools are not.
Nor are certain schools established by societies to propagate
certain educational doctrines and practices, e.g. the King
Alfred School at Hampstead. Grouped with these from the
point of view of management, though humbler in scope, may
be named schools established for benevolent purposes such as
the Warehousemen's Schools and the Commercial Travellers*
Schools, a type which met with scorn from Matthew Arnold
as offering the wrong sort of lower middle class education.
An odd example of a private school under governors is the
City Freemen's School, which, though conducted by the
Corporation of London, is not a L.E.A. school. The schools
of the Girls' Public Day Schools Trust (G.P.D.S.) and the
Church Schools Company are frequently schools aided by
Direct Grant from the Board of Education.

There is no complete census of other private schools, those,
that is, under the personal management of the principals.
They are the property of the owners who are under no legal
obligation to L.E.A.'s or parents to maintain them and who
cannot be compelled to change or to close them. A number
of them unite to form the Independent Schools Association
to watch over their interests. The name Independent replaced
the original name Private, which it was felt was apt to suggest

l88 EDUCATION OUTSIDE THE STATE SYSTEM

an unpleasant exclusiveness. The term proprietary is also
applied, and it is strictly accurate, but in the minds of some
it has acquired a derogatory sense, as if the proprietary school
were always a species of commercial enterprise, undertaken
for gain and money-making only. It may be remarked that
Public Schools like Clifton were called ' proprietary ' at the
time of the Schools Inquiry Commission in the 'sixties because
they belonged to the promoters and were not ancient endowed
foundations. In the present hard times independent school-
masters rightly resent the imputation of profit-hunting; they
are only too pleased if they make a living.

These schools are varied in scope. Some are preparatory
only, though not so closely linked with the Public Schools as
the type previously described. Many are in towns and suburbs,
charging moderate fees and having few or no boarding
arrangements. Others though mainly preparatory keep a
certain proportion up to sixteen or seventeen and have in view
training for a business career, with or without the First Schools
Examination. They claim with much justification to be able
to deal successfully with boys whose health is delicate or
whose earlier education from any cause has been retarded.
Others again are honourable survivals or present-day repre-
sentatives of the kind of private schools that, in the days when
endowed schools had not yet awakened from the torpor of the
early or middle nineteenth century, supplied the needs of the
middle classes, and formed the nucleus of the College of
Preceptors. These schools have fared badly at the hands of
novelists and of critics like the commissioners of the Schools
Inquiry as well as Arnold and Mr H. G. Wells. But there
were schools where solid work was accomplished without
pretentiousness and it is to be estimated that the charlatanism
so often scathingly exposed has few examples to-day.

The private girls' schools are much less secluded than they
were, but they tend to be complete in themselves, with their

EDUCATION OUTSIDE THE STATE SYSTEM 189

own preparatory departments and their own upper forms.
Something of the older type of * finishing school * remains and
many still lay stress on the musical education they offer as a
kind of accomplishment appropriate for young ladies. But
again large numbers are virtually the private counterparts of
schools which are fully in the public system. One thing it is
safe to generalise about. The very private school described by
Herbert Spencer, confined to a genteel and rigid but inactive
isolation, is surely extinct. Fresh air, games, dancing and a
healthy life are now taken for granted as essential to a girl's
education.

Mention should be made of the very numerous Kinder-
gartens which exist, if they do not flourish, in towns and
residential districts. Their quality no doubt varies. In a quiet
way many of them keep abreast of good modern methods and
give a sound infant ' training. Some few, as in the shocking
cases a little while ago reported in the Press, are little more
than baby-farms. The majority, however, of the small boys
and girls one sees flitting from home to school and back do
not appear to be badly treated. The scandals mentioned
affected not the usual kindergarten but schools which boarded
young children. In suburban kindergartens the chief defect
is probably structural, for the dwelling rooms of a not very-
large house are not built with light and air enough to be good
classrooms even for a small handful of children.

IV

The Board of Education took a wise course early in their
history in not limiting their function of inspecting secondary
schools, conferred upon them by the Act of 1899, to schools
which were in direct connection with L.E.A.'s. The new body
of secondary inspectors evolved a procedure of full inspections,
which they applied regularly to schools receiving state aid,

EDUCATION OUTSIDE THE STATE SYSTEM

but also extended to other schools which desired to be in-
spected. Thus a large number of Public Schools and many
independent or private schools have been officially inspected
at their own request. The Board issue from time to time a list
of Efficient Secondary Schools, that is of schools inspected by
the Board's officers and judged to be fulfilling the conditions
upon which secondary schools are recognised as such and, if
otherwise eligible, are entitled to receive Parliamentary grant.
On this list appear not only county secondary schools and
grammar schools aided by the state, but also schools like
Harrow and Malvern and private schools. Schools which do
not provide the normal course of four years between twelve
and sixteen or seventeen are not 'efficient' in this sense; and
the guarantee of efficiency when bestowed on private schools
which are recognised naturally includes a guarantee that the
instruction is sound. In 1917 the Board ^Iso took cognizance
of Preparatory Schools and added a separate list of Pre-
paratory Schools duly inspected and approved. This re-
cognition is by no means confined to the type of residential
Preparatory Schools described in a previous section ; a town
school aspiring ultimately to develop into a full secondary
school may meantime be recognised and tested as a pre-
paratory school. Thus by the participation in the inspection
work of the central authority many varied types of inde-
pendent schools become associated in a formal manner with
the national system. The association is confirmed by the fact
that these schools are regularly represented in the Teachers'
Registration Council.

Many schools, however, remain in a real sense outside the
community of schools which may be called the national
system. There is a mass of obscurer private schools, with
hardly even a local reputation, about which the public, and
with the public the Associations of Independent and Pre-
paratory Schools have begun to be exercised. The concern

EDUCATION OUTSIDE THE STATE SYSTEM 191

centres rather on the hygienic conditions under which children
are taught than on their educational efficiency, though the
latter is not overlooked. Certain scandals in 1930 provoked
the Government to set up a Departmental Committee on
Private Schools, the Report of which appeared in the summer
of 1932. The Committee deliberately restricted itself to
* private schools ' in the common meaning and to children of
the legal ages for which instruction is obligatory. Some
natural alarm was felt lest the establishment of the Com-
mittee might foreshadow some drastic governmental action
and some invasion of the independence which private schools
claim to exercise. The Report was perhaps unexpectedly mild.
Inspection indeed was recommended to be conducted either
by the Board or by the L.E.A. ; it was to be of a liberal kind
and not to be standardised in any official way, to be concerned
with seeing that the health conditions of the schools were
satisfactory and that the education complied with the legal
requirements which govern compulsory elementary schooling.
Powers were to be given to the L.E.A. to close a totally un-
satisfactory school after due warning. But several weaknesses
upon which critics have laid stress were left untouched.
There was to be no interference with the freedom of any
individual, however ill-qualified, to open a school, though if
inspection came into force the owner would run a certain
risk. Nor did the Committee advise any conditions regarding
the qualifications of any teachers employed. Thus the situation
remains unchanged, though the question has been to some
extent ventilated. Legislation would be required to bestow
upon the Board and the L.EJL's the powers which would be
needed to carry out even these mild recommendations to the
full ; and the Board are unwilling to incur the cost of a survey
by inspection which would seem to be a necessary preliminary
to any concerted action.

CHAPTER XII
THE TEACHING BODY

In 1934 it Is possible to speak of a teaching body without
forcing a general term to cover very heterogeneous particulars,
and of a teaching profession without appearing to be pre-
tentious. Fifty years ago lecturers and tutors in universities
and masters in Public Schools would not have relished being
included in the same scholastic world as teachers of a humbler
sort. But alongside of the co-ordination of schools which is
our national system of education, there has developed a co-
ordination of those who teach. Teaching is not yet a profession,
closed like the legal and medical professions, self-determining
and self-governing, and, considering the indefinable nature
of the craft neither will be nor should be. But, in a sense not
previously reached, teachers form a body conscious of the
same ideals and interests, and united by many common
sympathies. It is not a hierarchy with ranks out of which no
one may step ; one may find former pupil-teachers and ele-
mentary scholars on the staffs of Public Schools and uni-
versities and highly educated and qualified women teaching
in elementary infants 3 schools and nursery schools. The Royal
Society of Teachers with its Registration Council works
towards a union of teachers of all grades and seeks to establish
a definite status, to be publicly understood and recognised,
for those who, in spite of their divergences, are engaged in a
common task, and who possess qualifications, training and
experience adequate for the purpose. The Society does not at
present include all the teaching body, and it puts forward no
extravagant claims to authority over the profession it re-
presents. But its success, amid many difficulties, is an indi-
cation that teachers are uniting and a promise that a national

THE TEACHING BODY 193

system of education will have as an essential corollary a
national corporation of those who teach in it.

It would be impossible to give to an enquiring foreigner a
succinct account of the teaching body in England and Wales.
He would find, perhaps to his astonishment, that there is no
such thing as a general licence to teach ; there is nothing in
legislation, public or local, to prevent anyone from opening
a school. In fact there is very little legislation at all about
teachers as a whole. In one large department, that of public
elementary schools, it is true there are official regulations
which are definite enough, but outside these schools the
standard of staffing, and the qualifications of teachers are
either determined by tradition, emphasised by public opinion
and official pressure, or are left undetermined. The exigences
of practical necessity govern that extensive series of institu-
tions and classes which come under the head of Further Edu-
cation, in technical schools, evening institutes, works 1 schools
and the like ; no cut and dried scheme of approving teachers
would be feasible, and in any event, an incompetent teacher
is soon deserted by his voluntary class. The standard of
schools in the public service partly influences the private
schools that are in competition with them. But in many
schools, not susceptible to public opinion and outside all
official supervision, incompetence may reign unchecked.
Dr Blimber and Mr Creakle are not quite extinct and it is to
be feared that their humbler counterparts still lurk in certain
quarters.

i

The teachers in public elementary schools must be treated
first, because the conditions of appointment are clearer
and more easily described than those of teachers in other
spheres. Up to 1890 the elementary system was virtually
self-contained. Access to it was available only through the
elementary school. The intelligent and ambitious pupil be-
WES 7

194 THE TEACHING BODY

came a pupil-teacher, was annually examined on a prescribed
syllabus, and at the end of his four or five years qualified by
the Queen's Scholarship Examination for a post as assistant
teacher, or if he were in the first or second class for admission
to a training college. The colleges, which were mostly de-
nominational and all residential, could take in only a relatively
small proportion of the thousands qualified and those who
failed to obtain admission became assistant uncertificated
teachers. The successful passed two years in college and
came out Certificated Teachers, competent to take charge of
schools as well as to serve under head teachers similarly
qualified. A certain number of uncertificated teachers
annually qualified for the Certificate by entering for the same
examination but without training. The history of this ele-
mentary system is the liberalising and widening of the narrow
course of training by links with universities and a close con-
nection with secondary schools.

The first great step was in 1890 when, as the outcome of
the Cross Commission (1886), day students were admissible
to residential colleges, and day training colleges were approved
in universities and university colleges; students in the new
training departments might read for degrees, as, under con-
ditions, students in residential colleges also were allowed to do.
This remarkable departure from the older practice had two
fortunate results. First, it created a supply of graduate teachers,
who took service at once in the higher grade schools, pupil-
teacher centres and the other schools which were springing
up outside the elementary schools proper, and to some extent
in public elementary schools themselves. Second, as the move-
ment grew in popularity, the university training departments
increased and furnished a welcome supply of students to the
rising provincial universities. When after 1902, staffs were
immediately necessary for the new secondary schools, the
young graduates were available in considerable numbers.

THE TEACHING BODY 195

Such was the demand in the L.E.A. secondary schools that
university trained graduates, as well as those who graduated
in the ordinary training colleges, though they were ostensibly
trained for elementary schools, found no difficulty in obtaining
posts in secondary schools. In return for the personal grants
given to students in training the Board required an under-
taking that the recipient would teach in an approved school.
But approval was wisely not limited to elementary schools and
no objection was raised to service in secondary schools. Thus,
in a left-handed way, the secondary schools were largely
staffed with teachers with elementary antecedents and a
further real bond of connection between the two grades of
schools was confirmed.

Linked up with this movement was a series of changes in
the recruitment of young pupil-teachers in 1903 and 1907.
The general aim in 1903 was to broaden the earlier stages of
the education of future teachers by raising the age of ap-
prenticeship to sixteen, by limiting active teaching service to
half-time, it had once been thirteen by encouraging pupil-
teacher centres, and more than all, by urging that before
apprenticeship the boys and girls should be educated in
secondary schools. It was now possible to contemplate the
disappearance of the pupil-teacher system in its original form.
In 1907 an alternative was put forward. The boy or girl in
a secondary school, who was an 'intending teacher', might
remain to seventeen or eighteen as a 'bursar', and at the end
of the bursarship period, during which he was attending
the secondary school full-time, either proceed straight to a
training college or become for one year a student-teacher,
employed as to half his time in learning his business in an
elementary school, and as to the remaining half, receiving
further instruction in a secondary school. The exact division
of the time between teaching and being taught varied in
different areas, as it still does. The bursar and student-teacher

7-2

196 THE TEACHING BODY

plan gradually superseded the older practice and is now
universal save in some rural areas: but the pupil-teacher
practice died hard in one or two places. Coincident with
the development of the modern system, the former ex-
amination for entry into colleges the Queen's, later the
King's Scholarship Examination was changed. After 1922
intending teachers within secondary schools were to qualify
for college through one of the University Local Examinations ;
a Preliminary Examination for the Certificate replaced the
King's Scholarship examination for pupil-teachers and others
outside secondary schools, and in its turn this Preliminary
Examination Certificate was abolished in 1928: since that
date rural pupil-teachers qualify by a special scheme enabling
them to use the First Schools Examination under special
conditions.

Thus died the remarkable English institution of pupil-
teachership. Matthew Arnold in his Report on continental
systems in 1 8 64 had called pupil-teachers * the sinews of English
primary instruction*. So they were when he wrote. There
was nothing exactly like them in France or Germany, but, on
the other hand, French and German teachers instructed large
schools of So to 100 children of all ages above six without help.
The monitorial idea from which the pupil-teacher system in
part developed had this much of soundness, that it implied
small classes ; when as a system it was moribund, the standards
of Lowe's Code resuscitated it and introduced the English
conception of an annual syllabus to be covered year by year.
The unit of the English method was the class or 'standard',
not the school. At a time when adult teachers were few and
relatively expensive, Lowe's Code, with its inevitable sub-
divisions could not have been carried out without a teacher
of some sort to each class in schools of any size. And the
pupil-teachers, in however modest a way, were qualified. The
system had merits which those who regret its disappearance

THE TEACHING BODY 197

do not fail to insist upon. It gave future teachers a technique
in both discipline and instruction. When mature they could
'handle a class', for the weaklings had dropped out on the
way. They were accustomed to work hard in their schools and
in their studies alike. In many schools, and those often of
humble pretensions, there was a kindly, almost filial, relation-
ship between master and mistress and the family of pupil-
teachers, and the personal contact with a head teacher of
character and good sense was no element to be despised in
what otherwise was a strenuous career. But, valuable as it
may have been in the past, the system is indefensible to-day.
It set children to teach children. Children do, of course, teach
other children every day at home and in play with admirable
effect. But young pupil-teachers had charge of classes, taught
all day, and were expected to bring their pupils up to an
adequate standard. The ' teaching ' was commonly instruction
of the most mechanical kind, effective up to a point, but
rarely reaching beyond competent drill, and in the meantime
the youthful teacher's own education was acutely suffering.
When the plan was instituted by Kay-Shuttleworth, though
there were objections to its continental origin, no one challenged
the idea of apprenticeship. Like the practice of payment by
results, it chimed in with the views of the age. Early ap-
prenticeship was natural; the textile trades of the country and
agriculture would be ruined if children did not learn to spin
or weave, or to work in the fields long before their teens.
c Inured' was a favourite term of the time; pupil-teachers
became inured to teaching. It is worth while remarking that
at the present day the discarded monitorial and apprenticeship
ideas show signs of revival: the most modern methods of
teaching do not exclude the possibility of children helping
each other, and there is a strong feeling that in the training
of teachers a new form of what is substantially apprenticeship
should be encouraged. But both monitorial plan and pupil-

IQo THE TEACHING BODY

teachership in their old and essential shapes are happily dead
beyond recall.

Side by side with the changes affecting young teachers
and connected closely with them were other phenomena and
movements, all bearing on the effort to create a full and well-
qualified staff of teachers for elementary schools. The Edu-
cation Department before 1900 and more decidedly the Board
of Education after 1900 set themselves to reduce the size of
classes and to increase the number of certificated and trained
teachers. The details of the various stages in the progress are
now of little interest. A staffing scale was introduced in
1882 and a limit was placed on the size of classes in 1897.
Both these requirements were gradually strung up and at
the same time the numbers of totally unqualified teachers
were materially reduced and pupil- or student-teachers ceased
to * count' on the staff. In the Revised Regulations (the Code)
of 1926 scales disappeared entirely: it became absurd to
particularise to large L.E.A.'s how they should dispose of
their staffs and since 1926 the staffing arrangements in an area
are judged as a whole. As to size of classes, the maximum
aimed at for a time was sixty on the roll : it is now fifty and as
statistics show, the number of classes with more than fifty is
annually being reduced. The extent of this quiet reform can
be realised only by comparing all the staffing figures for 1900
with those for 1931. The schools are by no means all supplied
with fully certificated teachers, and the uncertificated and
even the supplementary teachers are likely to be retained for
some time, fulfilling a useful if not an ideal function in the
humbler spheres in which they are still employed. The long-
standing Certificate Examination by which the untrained
uncertificated teacher gained the certificate was dropped
after 1926.

THE TEACHING BODY 199

11

The provision of training colleges had remained substantially
inchanged since about 1850, for the University Training
Departments, popular though they were becoming, held out
ao certain prospects of furnishing a steady stream of teachers
who would serve in elementary schools. In any case, as has
been said, the new graduates were rapidly absorbed in the
secondary schools as they were increased after 1902. The need
x>r more teachers threatened to be urgent. The Act of 1902
*ave the L.E.A.'s power, by a clause expressly inserted in the
kct, to train teachers; but they were soon so deeply com-
mitted to expenditure on schools, elementary and secondary,
:hat they could not afford to build training colleges. In 1907
:he Board at the instance of the Liberal Government an-
aounced that they would pay three-quarters of the cost of
establishing L.E.A. training colleges and a number of active
L.E.A.'s took advantage of the grant almost at once. As many
is twenty-two L.E.A. colleges were founded in most cases in
entirely new buildings. They served a double purpose. For
not only did they make it possible to secure a permanently
enlarged provision of certificated and trained teachers, but
they finally removed the old grievance that Nonconformist
candidates could with difficulty become trained. All but a
few of the existing two-year colleges were denominational
and, in spite of regulations which ostensibly opened them to
dl comers under a conscience clause, they were ordinarily not
attended by persons not of the denomination of the college.
The new L.E.A. colleges were undenominational like the
L.E.A. schools, and they had the further advantage in the
eyes of those who still looked askance at the Act of 1902 of
being under public management.

The position thus reached before the War has remained
undisturbed in its general features since the conclusion of

200 THE TEACHING BODY

hostilities and the resumption of normal conditions. The
numbers in the University Training Departments have in-
creased and there is a longer and a steadier flow of graduates
from them into the elementary service. The two types of
colleges, voluntary and L.E.A., which normally train teachers
in a two-year course, continue, but, as will shortly be shown,
with much closer connections with both schools in the national
system and with universities than was the case before 1902.
The most striking general movement in training college
organisation has been in the Church of England colleges,
which are now more directly under the supervision of the
National Assembly of the Church, losing some of their in-
dependence as diocesan institutions though retaining an
intimate diocesan interest. It has been found desirable to
close two large colleges and to concentrate attention on re-
building two others on fresh sites as well as effecting improve-
ments and enlargements in others. Within the period since
the War also, a Roman Catholic college for men, a Wesleyan
college for women and an undenominational college for
women have been transferred from their old cramped situa-
tions in congested town areas to new buildings specially
designed or adapted nearer the open country; a fourth
voluntary college, undenominational and for women, is
shortly to follow these examples.

It will be clear from what has been said that the external
framework of the English training system as it concerns
elementary teachers is now more or less stable. It has not
escaped criticism. Some reformers would work for the
staffing of elementary schools wholly with graduates, passed
through universities and trained. Others would restrict
training to the strictly professional preparation of teachers
whose academic preparation has been completed elsewhere,
and would therefore confine the training course to one year.
An important Departmental Committee reporting in 1925

THE TEACHING BODY 2OI

examined the question as a whole, but did not recommend
any radical change in the mode of recruitment; an influential
minority, indeed, urged that the special grants hitherto
devoted not only to the professional training of intending
teachers but also to their academic training, even from entry
into secondary schools, should cease and be merged in the
general scholarship schemes of L.B.A.'s that the profession
should no longer be bounty fed; but the Committee as a
whole refused to accept the revolutionary proposal and con-
tented themselves with suggestions that the special bursaries
in secondary schools up to the age of sixteen for young people
intending to become teachers should be abandoned. The
Board accepted the recommendations of the majority and thus
a recognised student in training, whether in a two-year college
or in a University Training Department, is eligible for grants-
in-aid for maintenance and tuition during the whole period
for which he is recognised.

The reluctance of the Departmental Committee to disturb
the existing general framework of the system of training was
due chiefly to fears concerning the supply of teachers. The
problem of supply had been quiescent for forty years. At the
time when almost the only chance of obtaining a further
education open to the aspiring elementary school boy or girl
was through pupil-teachership, there was no fear that the
profession would need artificial recruitment. The number of
pupil-teachers was so great that, when the ambitious had left
teaching for some career more promising and the failures had
disappeared, there was still no shortage. But when after 1903
the path to teaching led through the secondary school, the
supply diminished. The Board and the L.E .A.'s grew alarmed.
Hence the earmarking of intending teachers among the
entrants to secondary schools by means of the bursaries
mentioned above. The shortage was growing acute before the
War and the fears of a recurrence undoubtedly affected the

2O2 THE TEACHING BODY

Departmental Committee after the War. Added to the appre-
hensions was the obvious desire to keep up and increase the
number of certificated teachers and to diminish that of un-
qualified and half-qualified, that large mass whose existence
had disguised the real needs of the schools ; and not without
influence was the feeling that the open market idea would
seriously stand in the way of one of the principal careers open
to elementary scholars and free-placers. Of late years the
problem of supply has taken on a new phase, for one result
of unemployment in industry and commerce has been largely
to increase the candidates for training colleges, so that they
begin to approximate in numbers to those which used to
offer themselves for the Queen's Scholarship examination.
When Sir Charles Trevelyan was President of the Board of
Education, he hoped to get through Parliament a bill to raise
the age of compulsory education to fifteen, and in order to
have the additional supply of teachers that would be required
he authorised a special increase in the admissions to training
colleges. He failed, as was described in an earlier chapter,
and the extra number of teachers thus trained have not been
rapidly absorbed, A further factor affecting supply has been
the knowledge that the school population of the country,
increasing after the War, would considerably decrease in the
next few years and that fewer teachers would be required.
In addition the financial crisis of 1 93 1 with its call for economy
prevented any expansion of the teaching service through
smaller classes. At the time of writing (1934) the Board have
felt obliged to reduce somewhat the numbers permitted to
be trained, and therefore available for service in the elementary
schools.

THE TEACHING BODY 203

ill

After the foregoing account of the changes in the supply and
in the provision of training of teachers in elementary schools
effected in the last forty years, it will be convenient to describe
certain developments in the internal organisation of the
colleges and to add a note on types of training which formed
no part of the process as it was understood in the last century.
As has been already said, the first breach in the older tradition
was made in 1890 when Day Training Departments were
instituted and when permission was given to residential
students to read for stages of degrees. Important consequences
followed. Hitherto the whole course of training, from early
pupil-teachership up to certification, had borne a close re-
semblance to the work for the standards in the elementary
school; and a prescribed syllabus with an annual examination
offering little opportunity for variation had been the rule. The
rigidity was necessarily relaxed for students reading for degrees
and in due course greater freedom was allowed to the majority
who were still examined by the central office in the Final
Examination for Training Colleges. At the same time a third
year was added to the usual two for selected students in the
residential and for most students in the University Training
Departments. The universities established diplomas in edu-
cation and thus freed themselves from close control on the
professional as they were naturally free on the academic side
of training. Other alternative examinations were gradually
recognised by the Board in place of their own final test in
ordinary training colleges and the Board's test itself with the
syllabus on which it was based admitted of far more liberty
than had been accorded the colleges in earlier days. Finally
in 1926 for the intermediate steps need not be particularised
the Board decided to give up their own examination entirely
and to accept in its place examinations conducted by Regional

204 THE TEACHING BODY

Boards into which the various colleges could be grouped;
the Regional Boards were to be composed of representatives
of the colleges, universities and L.E. A.'s with H.M. Inspectors
in an advisory capacity. This delegation of powers so long
exercised by the Board was part of a deliberate policy, applied,
as has been mentioned, to other examinations also. It was
desired not only to give a voice to the staffs of the colleges
but also to associate with the colleges the L.E. A.'s as the
prospective employers of the teachers under training and the
universities. The Board do not wholly surrender the power
of certifying teachers for the elementary service ; leaving the
details of the actual test with the syllabuses to the Regional
Boards, they exercise a general superintendence through an
advisory committee and through their own inspectors, and
thus preserve an equable standard which is not stereotyped.
The association of training colleges with universities is not
confined to the participation of both in Regional Boards. At
first after 1890 selected teachers in training necessarily took
the London external degrees, the only ones for which they
were eligible. Durham introduced a new procedure, whereby
students in colleges within reach sent qualified students in for
Durham degrees. The question of residence and attendance
at lectures was easy, for there were three colleges in Durham
city itself and Newcastle and the one outside, at Darlington,
sent individual women for a third year to a hostel in Durham.
All this was before 1900; since then the Durham Colleges
have been almost a part of the university, so far as students
capable of pursuing degree courses are concerned. In a
similar way, but much later, students in training colleges in
Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham have been linked
with the universities. Since the War the London colleges
have also been admitted into the university circle to the extent
that their students proposing to graduate are attached to one
or other of the constituent colleges of the university and now

THE TEACHING BODY 205

can take the internal degrees. One London college, West-
minster, has ceased to admit ordinary two-year students and
has become virtually a training hostel for men who take the
whole of their academic work in a college of the university.

The steady growth of the practice of training graduates has
not been without its difficulties. In the University Training
Departments the chief of these was the strain of combining
with the pursuit of degree courses the professional preparation
for teaching. The admission of c education ' as a degree subject
in some universities only partially eased the pressure. Both
sides of the training suffered, and perhaps the professional
side the most. In 1911 the Board, which had set up a special
branch to deal with the training of teachers, announced their
readiness to pay grants for four years instead of three, on the
condition that the last year was to be devoted to training
proper, that is, it was to be post-graduate training. All the
University Training Departments fell into line in due course
and now the four-year course is the normal procedure; it
has been recently permitted to the training departments of
university colleges.

At this point a comment on the certification so often men-
tioned in these pages will be relevant. The Certificate was
originally an authorisation, obtained by examination in both
academic and professional subjects, to take charge of an
elementary school receiving government grants. As certifi-
cated assistant teachers increased in number, it became the
diploma of the elementary teacher in general, advanced on
suitable occasions with legitimate pride. As such it had a
staff and salary value. For long it could be obtained only
through an elementary training college or by passing the
parallel special examination for c acting* teachers not under
training; when the University Training Departments began,
their students were examined by the Board in principles of
teaching like the rest. The acceptance of alternative examina-

206 THE TEACHING BODY

tions by the Board in place of their own gave the certificate
a new meaning. It no longer connoted a fixed kind of training
and a uniform test through which its possessors had passed,
but rather a licence to teach. It lost the specific application
to the elementary school. Half of the teachers in state-aided
secondary schools are trained, and the large majority of them
either hold the actual certificate or, on the strength of their
diplomas, could obtain it if they wished on application to the
Board. Yet the Certificate, or licence to teach, is neither
required by the Board nor required by governing bodies as
a condition of appointment in any schools, save elementary
schools. In the latest and most elastic Regulations, those of
1926, the Board do not relinquish the requirement that the
standard qualification of a teacher in an elementary school is
the certificate. The principal reasons for retaining the con-
dition have been no doubt the vast numbers of children in
elementary schools and the fact that as the Board are bound
to see that compulsory education is carried out, they are
therefore bound not to let it fail through lack of suitable
teachers. The Certificate affords a guarantee that the great
service of elementary education is performed by persons
competent for the task.

The Certificate has always been a licence to teach in general
and never an authorisation which limited the holder to a
particular type of school, stage or subject. But women
students have been usually roughly divided into those who
wish to teach younger children and those who prefer the
senior classes and, since choice of subjects was permitted,
have elected to study what was most appropriate for their
purpose. After the War certain colleges, devoting themselves
to the teaching of younger children, primarily on the lines
advocated by Froebel, have been officially recognised by the
Board and the special examination for the certificate of the
National Froebel Union has been accepted as qualifying

THE TEACHING BODY 207

under conditions for the Board's Certificate. So also a few
colleges which train more specifically for nursery schools have
been absorbed in the national system of training. There are
in addition colleges which train teachers of handicraft and
domestic subjects, and recently a college to train instructors
in physical training. Handicraft teachers specially trained in
colleges possess the general Certificate: other teachers of
handicraft earn recognised certificates of competency in their
own subject. All these examples illustrate the variety of the
system of training which is not inconsistent with unity of aim
and service.

It might be supposed that the Hadow reorganisation would
materially affect the training of teachers and possibly the
supply. But in fact no disturbance has occurred. The Board
have not found it necessary to relax their requirement of
certificated teachers for elementary schools and the conditions
under which the certificate can now be acquired are elastic
enough to permit the variety in training and in attainment
which the post-primary schools demand.

IV

The training of secondary school teachers has had a chequered
history in England and Wales. In the later years of the last
century the question was canvassed from time to time, but
the need for some kind of professional training was not com-
monly recognised by men teachers at all. The association of
training with what was known of the elementary training
colleges was most unfortunate. It seemed to imply a narrow
and specific preparation on the academic side and a training
in rigid technique together with a study of cloudy psychology
and dull theory on the professional. The graduate did not
need the former and the c practical ' man had no use for the
latter, The * certificated teacher' in the eyes of the public and

2O8 THE TEACHING BODY

grammar school master was a type entirely unacceptable.
Women, at that time not yet fully admitted to academic
equality with men, were less prejudiced. A few pioneers
started training institutions for women, like the Maria Grey
Training College. They were rather fascinated than repelled
by the study of psychology in its bearing upon teaching and
they had few traditions regarding old established methods of
instruction. The Board of Education took no overt steps to
encourage training for secondary schools till 1908 and even
then this kind of training was treated as something intrinsically
different from the training appropriate for teachers in a lower
sphere. There was some reason for the distinction at the time ;
for the avowed purpose of the elementary training college
was to fit the teacher for the general teaching of all subjects
to a class, whereas to a large extent in secondary schools the
teachers were specialists and needed a training with experience
and practice applicable to specialists in one or a small group
of subjects. The University Training Departments took up
training for secondary schools but were neither able nor
willing to make a sharp discrimination between the two types.
Moreover, as has been already said, the students trained in
the Elementary Training Department were very readily ab-
sorbed in the rising secondary schools. In fact secondary
training, if not under that name, was firmly established in the
universities, though subsidised by grants which ostensibly
were voted for elementary training only. The education
diplomas were the same for all who sought them, with no
essential differences. In 1926 the Board, which had tacitly
acquiesced in the actual fusion of the two kinds of training in
universities, openly abolished all distinctions and qualifica-
tions in their regulations and officially treated the process of
training as one process, and all the training institutions of
which they took cognizance, as university or other, secondary
or elementary, as training colleges sans phrase. la consonance

THE TEACHING BODY 209

with the general spirit of the 1926 series of simplified Regu-
lations, details and particulars were left to the colleges. The
Board retain some provisions regarding the length of school
practice, as a condition of recognition, but they accept the
University Diplomas in Education without question and with-
out control or supervision. The old feeling against training
persists in many distinguished quarters, and it takes the form
especially of a distrust of the theory and the philosophy of
education, and of training institutions in general. But an
alternative scheme of school-centred training, in which a kind
of probationership in teaching is recognised and subsidised,
has met with little favour in schools for which it was designed.
The question of training has been administratively simplified
and many anomalies have been removed: but the whole
question is still a matter of controversy, while teachers in
training fill the training departments and pass steadily into
the schools.

We have dealt so far with institutions specially devoted to
the training of teachers. But it must not escape notice that
a very great amount of what is emphatically 'training', that
is, contributes by deliberate effort to the professional efficiency
of the teachers, has taken place apart from the recognised
colleges and their sessional courses. The reluctance of many
to accept the principle of preparatory training has by no
means been an intransigent opposition to attempts to improve
the content and quality of teaching. During the whole of
the period with which this book deals, there have been
animated discussions on what should be taught in schools and
what methods should be pursued. The whole curriculum in
fact has been examined and re-examined, and rival schools of
thought have contended in conferences, in common rooms
and in print. The comparative stagnation and apathy of
previous generations have mostly vanished and the resultant
interest has done a great deal to spread the community of

210 THE TEACHING BODY

feeling which marks a united profession. Holiday courses,
short and long, and teachers' classes have been the principal
means of instruction, and the Board have not only aided such
courses and classes but have also organised them and con-
ducted them by their own officers. Nor have the teachers in
other institutions than secondary schools been backward,
week-end conferences being a favourite and convenient
method of spreading knowledge and criticism. The residential
universities, too, have frequently welcomed bodies of teachers
in conference within their colleges in the vacations. It is
clear that, whatever shape the preparatory training of a
teacher may take, the principles and the methods of teaching
are a matter of life-long study and that this is training in the
fullest and most serviceable sense.

The position of teachers in the national system was con-
solidated by three administrative decisions which now fall to
be mentioned, dealing with scales of salaries, superannuation
and registration. Two of them, superannuation and registra-
tion, required Acts of Parliament, and the third, salaries,
was a matter of negotiation and agreement, accepted by the
government for schools which receive state-aid.

It has been shown in the chapter on Finance that the Board
of Education pays through the Deficiency Grant what may
be regarded as roughly half of an L.E.A.'s expenditure upon
salaries in schools other than elementary, and 60 per cent, of
salaries to teachers in elementary schools. Accordingly the
Board have a decided interest in the rates of pay to which they
contribute so considerable a proportion. But for the Board
(or the Government) to fix rates of pay would be contrary to
the general principle on which the central authority is con-
ducted, and would approach dangerously near converting the

THE TEACHING BODY 211

profession into a part of the Civil Service. The well-known
Burnham Scales were reached by negotiation begun in 1919
for elementary teachers and shortly after for secondary and
technical teachers. The first complete Burnham Scales were
issued in 1921. The machinery through which they were
reached was a Committee constituted of representatives of
the L.E.A/s the employers and the teachers the em-
ployed; it was under the valuable chairmanship of Lord
Burnham until his death in 1933. The chairman is now the
Earl of Onslow. The scales are operative for a fixed number
of years before the end of which they have to be reviewed.
There have been sundry readjustments in details and amounts
in successive revisions. The present scale, due to end in 1931,
has been extended to 1932 and now to 1935. Although the
scales appear to be of the nature of a contract, the National
Government in the crisis of 1931 decreed a 12^ per cent,
reduction, on the recommendation of the May Committee on
National Expenditure; this was modified to 10 per cent., half
of which deduction was restored in 1934.

In the trying years since the War the scales have been a
blessing, but a mixed blessing. Before the Act of 1902, the
salaries of all grades of teachers were deplorably low and the
early efforts of the L.E.A.'s to raise them produced a sensible
relief; but the resultant pay neither corresponded to a rising
standard of living nor was worthy of a profession which was
more and more becoming recognised as a profession of national
concern and importance. The new scales were not only con-
siderably higher but stable instead of fluctuating and, together
with superannuation, have given publicly employed teachers
security. But the effect of salaries graded according to quali-
fication and length of service is to immobilise teachers by
discouraging that free passage from post to post which, within
some limits, is a safeguard against petrifaction. The scales
belong to teachers in schools aided by the state : but they have

212 THE TEACHING BODY

also had the consequence of bringing up to the same standard
or near it the salaries of teachers in other schools, particularly
schools under regular governing bodies.

The Superannuation of teachers is not a new practice, for
part of the slender attractions to teaching offered in the early
days of elementary schools was a small pension at the end of
service. But regular pensions were suspended from time to
time though breakdown allowances continued. There was no
question of the public provision of superannuation for teachers
outside elementary schools, for until the end of the century
these were not directly in the public service. In 1918 the
principle of teachers' superannuation was definitely accepted
by the government and a final Act, now operative, was passed
in 1925. The lowest age for retirement is 60: a pension is
paid which is based upon the teacher's length of service and
salary during the last years of service and a lump sum is
granted on the same basis. Teachers in universities are not
eligible but the universities have a federated scheme for the
same purpose. Nor are teachers in schools which are not
grant-aided pensionable under the Act: but many of the
larger schools have schemes of their own and so have some
associations of independent schools.

The registration of teachers became a live topic with those
who sought for the improvement of education in the middle
of the last century. The College of Preceptors, founded in
1846 and given a Royal Charter in 1849, declared registration
to be one of its principal aims. The College was an association
of private schoolmasters and mistresses, conscious of the
criticisms to which they were exposed and aware that their
reputation as a body of teachers suffered from charlatans
and incompetents. They wished to guide the public in dis-
criminating between qualified and honest teachers and pre-
tenders. Besides taking active measures to establish teachers'
diplomas, the College consistently pressed upon successive

THE TEACHING BODY 213

parliaments the need for the registration of teachers. They
won a considerable amount of support, but nothing positive
was done until the Board of Education Act of 1899, which
authorised the formation of a Register and of a Council to
administer it. The Register was not a success. Promoters of
the idea had had in mind chiefly teachers in secondary schools,
for, by the Board's Certificate examinations, elementary-
teachers were already in a sense registered and recognised.
The two classes were therefore registered separately in
Columns A and B, the first consisting of certificated teachers,
the second of teachers held to be qualified, usually but not
exclusively by graduation, to be eligible for secondary schools.
Teachers of special subjects, teachers of young children, and
teachers in technical schools were left out. All this was clearly
unsatisfactory. It seemed as if the authorities were afraid of
a united profession. The Register was dropped in 1906 and
a new Teachers' Registration Council was authorised by the
Administrative Provisions Act of 1907. It was not finally set
to work until 1912, when the present Register really began,
absorbing the old Register but making no invidious dis-
tinctions between classes of teachers. A further change was
made in 1927 when the basis of appointment to the Council
was altered so as to make it representative of teachers
actually registered and not of associations or bodies outside
the Register. In 1930 the teachers registered were constituted
the Royal Society of Teachers.

Registration is voluntary and about half of the teachers in
the country have not joined the Royal Society of Teachers.
But the society admits all types of qualified teachers, whether
engaged in universities, technical institutes or schools, and
whether they are in privately managed or in state-aided in-
stitutions. The Council have pursued a cool and careful
policy, that of bringing into one society teachers as teachers,
without trenching on the ground occupied by various sectional

214 THE TEACHING BODY

organisations of teachers, and without claiming either to train
aspirants or test applicants, or to control the profession as
doctors and lawyers govern their respective professions. The
Council has done very great service in bringing into close and
intimate contact classes of teachers whose work lies widely
apart and in promoting a real corporate feeling. It is con-
sulted by all commissions and committees which examine
current educational questions and its non-partisan constitution
gives its evidence and its opinion great weight.

Thus registration has won a real, but at present only a
partial victory. The English nation rises, but slowly, to the
conception that if education is a national concern, if the state
takes power to impose on parents an obligation to have their
children instructed up to the age of fourteen, the state should
also assure itself and the parents whom it in a sense coerces
that those who undertake to instruct should be qualified to
do so. Only registration, which implies a licence to teach
and this is not necessarily an obligation to fulfil uniform and
stereotyped requirements can effectually guard the public
from inefficiency and imposture. This is no infringement of
personal liberty and no imposition of a rigid standard. Until
registration in some form, preferably elastic, is secured,
teachers cannot form a great profession.

CHAPTER XIII
HEALTH AND WELFARE

In the preceding chapters the national system of education
has been considered as if it aimed only at the cultivation of
intellect and character. We have been concerned with what
the Greeks would have called Mousike. But the Greeks held
that fjLov&iKrj was only half of the process of education ; be-
sides the training of die mind, there was also the training of
the body, gumnastike, yv^vcLariKr\. If the two terms be broadly
interpreted, the former to mean schooling in the usual sense,
and the latter to cover attention to the physical condition of
the pupil, it may be fairly said that the English national
system fulfils, or is in the way of fulfilling, the Greek ideal
of a combination of * Music ' and * Gymnastic '. The former is
historically old, a development and a vast expansion of what
has long existed in this country. The latter is almost wholly
new, the product in fact of the last fifty years, having its
original roots in the health movement of the early and middle
years of the last century. The great current of sanitary reform
which started then and which made the cynically indifferent
cry, sanitas sanitatum, omnia sanitas, continues with un-
abated force in its own channels, apart from education. But
in the last fifty years it has also mingled with the current of
educational reform, with remarkable results. Solicitude for
public health has now for some time been part of the national
consciousness. It is the business of the present chapter to
show the very many directions in which this solicitude touches
education and co-operates with the more recently acquired
solicitude for public education.

The developments now to be considered are wider than the

combating of disease and physical imperfection. They include
health of mind as well as health of body. They are responsible
for Nursery Schools and Play Centres as well as for School
Canteens and schools for the Blind. In fact they are better
summed up under Welfare than under Health, welfare as
distinct from but not as opposed to instruction. The re-
sponsibility which the nation now feels for education in the
broadest sense covers welfare as well as instruction; and
knowledge is only one of the aims of the national system of
education. In the previous chapters attention has been drawn
from time to time to the importance in the social, including
the educational, history of the English people, of the creation
of Local Authorities, in which are united almost all the
different activities which local government involves. Nowhere
is this unification of greater value than in the region of public
health and public welfare. It is a happy circumstance that
care for the health and welfare of school children is not
dissociated from the concern of Local Authorities with the
general welfare of the whole community.

In what follows it will be necessary to resist the temptation
to describe measures for social welfare which are allied with
but are not strictly part of the national system of education,
as we have hitherto defined it. Thus the schools of the Home
Office, once called Reformatory and Industrial, henceforward
to be known as Approved Schools, which though their main
purpose is remedial, are educational also, must be left aside
with a bare mention. So also the specific educational efforts
which now characterise the administration of prisons and the
procedure in dealing with young offenders, must be passed
by, as must the numerous agencies by which young people
are placed in appropriate employments. Without these
examples of welfare, the sphere is sufficiently large and
variegated and the proper examination of it is bound to be
lengthy.

HEALTH AND WELFARE 217

What was afterwards to be known as the School Medical
Service began with the attention given to abnormal children,
the Blind, the Deaf, the Physically and Mentally Defective
and the Epileptic, in a comprehensive phrase preferred if not
invented by one of the earliest supporters of official action, the
Afflicted. Institutions and schools for the blind and deaf had
been founded many years before any legislative action took
place, as one of the many results of the philanthropic impulses
of the eighteenth century. They were no doubt extensively
used but when the school attendance Acts, passed in 1876
and 1880, were more and more completely enforced, the
numbers of deaf and blind or nearly blind children requiring
special teaching were revealed. The first Act, concerning these
children, without any preparatory Act to empower local
authorities, and thus pave the way for compulsion, laid it
down at once as the duty of the authority responsible for
school attendance, to see to the education of blind and deaf
children in suitable schools from the age of seven to that of
sixteen. A corresponding obligation was laid on the parents
to send their children to schools, and so far as they were able
to contribute to their support. This was passed in 1893, three
years after a similar Act had been passed in Scotland. It was
only partially effective. The large town school boards as a rule
recognised the obligation and fulfilled it by sending deaf and
blind boys and girls to the certified schools and in some cases
by instituting special classes or schools in their own areas. But
the smaller school boards and the school attendance com-
mittees of the Poor Law Unions were much less active, and
the Education Department could not in effect enforce the
Act against dilatory or reluctant authorities. No further Act,
however, has been required, for the new L.E.A/s displayed
the same interest as the larger school boards, a small but

2l8 HEALTH AND WELFARE

significant example of the value of a single and unified
authority. Much progress has been made. London is perhaps
exceptional from the extent of its area and its resources : it
has schools for the blind and the partially blind and for the
deaf and the partially deaf, and no child so afflicted need miss
his appropriate education. Other authorities are as assiduous
and as thorough as their opportunities offer. It may here be
remarked that when the Act of 1893 was passed, the teaching
of the Deaf was entering upon a new phase. What was known
as the Oral Method was coming into vogue: deaf children
were taught not only to speak themselves, for very few are
really dumb, but to understand the speech of others by lip-
reading. The oral method, at first confined to individuals who
could afford a long training and very expert tuition, was now
adopted in the institutions and even in day classes for the deaf.
It excited some controversy, for those who had given an
extraordinarily good training in English (reading and com-
position) under the older method of finger and sign speech
feared that the new method would take up too much attention
and diminish the content of the earlier education ; and also
alleged that the oral method, in the best circumstances in
which it would be used for large numbers, would cut off the
deaf from the society of their fellow sufferers who * signed*
without enabling them to join fully in the society of ordinary
speaking people. The oral method proves worth while, how-
ever, if it does not restore the deaf quite to a full membership
in ordinary life : at the lowest it stimulates the mental activity
of the pupils and helps them in many of the common occur-
rences where simple exchange of conversation is required.
At the best the pupil's deafness can hardly be detected except
by the rather unreal intonation.

HEALTH AND WELFARE

Ill

The next step was to deal with a more complex problem in
a tentative way, that of the Defective and Epileptic Children.
An Act the Elementary Education (Defective and Epileptic
Children) Act was passed in 1899 empowering education
authorities to ascertain how many children of these un-
fortunate types existed and to provide suitable instruction in
schools and classes. The power was converted into an obliga-
tion by a similar Act, 1914, the obligation lying, as with the
deaf and blind, upon both authorities and parents. As before,
the large school boards took the matter in hand and the
weaker authorities did not: the L.E.A.'s of the Act of 1902
have done much on their side, but the problem is by no means
finally solved. We may leave aside the Epileptic, as a matter
requiring medical expertise. The Defective divide themselves
into two main groups, the Physically and the Mentally De-
fective. The former were originally chiefly crippled children
for whom some large school boards made special provision.
But since the institution of a school medical service in 1907
physical defect has embraced so many other types that the
whole treatment is better discussed in a following section.

The general practice since 1899 has been to distinguish as
mentally defective (M.D.) children who are feeble-minded
from some congenital deficiency, but are not so weak as to be
incapable of being educated at all. In an ordinary class they
cannot keep pace with normal children even in acquiring
simple reading and calculating: the speed of children much
younger than themselves is beyond them: their memory is
weak and the power of consecutive attention is very small:
they may be lethargic and dull or restless and unstable. But
they are not imbecile and those of a higher grade can make
remarkable progress under slow and patient instruction, es-
pecially on lines of manual work. This class of unfortunates

220 HEALTH AND WELFARE

can hardly become fully responsible citizens, and the aim of
their training is to give them enough stability and interest
together with enough of common acquirements to enable
them to work at humbler tasks under supervision. Though
they are not bad enough to need segregation in the interests
of society, they cannot be neglected with impunity. Impatient
and busy teachers have naturally confused with the M.D.'s
dull and slow children, who are backward enough but do
possess the wits of the normal child in an undeveloped way.
These are ' retarded ' children, and their retardation is due to
external and not to innate causes, prolonged illness, mal-
nutrition, irregular attendance, bad hearing or bad sight,
general low vitality. Are these really to be reckoned as M.D. ?
Up to recent years the M.D.'s were treated as a group apart
requiring a special organisation of classes and schools, which
were relatively so costly that the merely backward children
could not be accepted. The early difficulty was to exclude the
ineducable, admitted under a falsely optimistic hope that
they might benefit.

The situation has changed since 1928 when a valuable
Report was issued by a special Mental Deficiency Committee
of experts under the chairmanship of Mr A. H. Wood.
Various causes suggested the urgency of reconsidering the
M.D. question as it affects schools. It was clearly part of the
larger social question of mental deficiency which was being
canvassed at the time, but the relations between L.E.A.'s and
local M.D. Committees, acting under the Board of Control
(instituted in 1913) were not very precise and it was far from
clear at what point of defect the mentally feeble should be
'certified' and come under the Board of Control. Nor was it
at once obvious how the M.D. schools would stand when the
new reorganisation of elementary schools, recommended by
the Hadow Report, was put into effect. Further, the general
validity of intelligence tests being accepted as a guide if not

HEALTH AND WELFARE 221

a determinant in classifying children, medical officers were
ready to make a closer use of them in establishing standards
of comparison between different grades of children. Once
more the observable results of the experience of some thirty
years of MJX Special Schools were not so reassuring as to
justify a large extension of that kind of organisation. The
Wood Committee came to some striking conclusions, based
to a large extent on a series of careful investigations into the
incidence of deficiency in typical school areas. These in-
vestigations decidedly suggested that mental deficiency was
increasing rather than diminishing and they were made in no
alarmist spirit. The two conclusions of the committee relevant
to our present purpose are, first, that the M.D. and the back-
ward be regarded as one unit, a group of Retarded children
in the educational system ; second, that their education should
be conducted so far as practicable in the elementary schools.
The first conclusion, if it is accepted, absorbs the dull and
backward, whose education has been a constant concern to
teachers and increasingly so of late, into a larger group of
* retarded ' children, of whom there are probably now some
400,000 in the country. On the other hand the M.D/s proper,
who form over a quarter of the Retarded, are no longer
stigmatised as 'softies' but are considered as a specially
difficult type of retarded children, only to be segregated where
along with retardation they have other defects in physique,
in temperament or in home surroundings. It is taken for
granted that the same methods will help both the Defective
and the Backward ; in any case it is recommended that, like
the normal children, they be reviewed on reaching the age
of eleven. The discrimination by tests of intelligence, and not
by tests of knowledge, should distinguish those who are bright
but backward only in the three R's, and who require a little
special individual coaching, from those who are decidedly
slow. The second conclusion points to the ultimate dis-

222 HEALTH AND WELFARE

appearance of the Special School as the standard method of
dealing with M.D.'s. They cannot be merely drafted back
into ordinary classes but so far as possible they should be
grouped in classes within the usual school framework. They
will need specially skilful teachers but they should form a part
of the ordinary school community.

This important Report has not yet been officially acted
upon. It occasions some controversy, teachers urging that the
mentally abnormal pupils should not be taught within schools
planned for normal children.

IV

In chronological order the next development in welfare as
associated with education is the formal establishment of the
School Medical Service. It will have been evident to a reader
of the previous sections that at an early date the various Acts
and events described postulated something more than a piece-
meal handling of separate problems. The Education Depart-
ment appointed an inspector with medical qualifications in
1898. The larger school boards also had medical officers who
broke ground in many of the directions now taken by the
School Medical Service, such as schools for the Blind and
Deaf, MJD. schools, and medical inspection. The actual
institution of a regular procedure with appropriate officers
took place after the passing of the Administrative Provisions
Act, 1907. This oddly named Act, introduced to clear up
some doubtful points in the 1902 Act and to supplement that
Act, contained a sub-section which placed upon the L.E.A.
the duty of medically inspecting children on entrance into the
elementary school and at other times as the Board of Educa-
tion may direct, and the power of * attending to the health
and physical condition of the children educated in the public
elementary school'. These two clauses, supplemented by the

HEALTH AND WELFARE 223

Acts previously referred to and by other provisions, e.g.
regarding verminous children, are the legislative basis of the
wide-spread medical service. Additional measures which bear
on the same general policy of physical welfare are mentioned
in subsequent sections of this chapter. The Ministry of Health
Act of 1919 more definitely associated the medical work in
schools with the public health service and transferred the
headquarters of the medical staff of the Board of Education
to the Ministry of Health.

A large volume would be required to recount the successive
developments of the school medical service and to describe
the full scope of its activities. A brief summary is all that
can be attempted. Medical inspection of individual children
normally takes place three times in the school life, that is
from admission at five or six or below, up to fourteen. An
inspection on entry is followed by another at about eight and
a final one before leaving. Inspection is in itself valuable to
the parent, who is invited and advised or reassured, and to
the Health Authority as revealing the extent and incidence
of defect and disease. It is of course essential as a preliminary
to treatment, but without treatment would be in the air.
Broadly speaking, the treatment is provided for children who,
without this public provision, are unlikely to receive the
medical attention which they need. It is found that just over
20 per cent, of those examined require some remedial treat-
ment. The most prevalent defects are those of vision, enlarged
tonsils and adenoids : the next group are skin diseases, specific
eye diseases, malnutrition and sundry deformities. The in-
spection detects the children who need separating for the long
process of dealing with epilepsy, crippled limbs, and tuber-
culosis, and these are usually treated in special institutions or
in local hospitals. Apart from these major abnormalities,
medical treatment in the school service is principally con-
cerned with less serious ailments, which nevertheless reduce

224 HEALTH AND WELFARE

the physical efficiency of the child and militate against his
education. In nearly all areas, it requires a staff of school
nurses who carry out many of the doctor's orders and follow
up cases which require attention. School Clinics are usually
to be found and there is a liaison with the local hospitals.
A considerable staff of dentists is engaged, some of them in
the counties travelling from village to village. In most cases
of defects of vision spectacles are supplied at a cheap rate.
Under certain large L.E.A.'s X-ray and orthopedic treatment
is given: and a large number of L.E.A.'s arrange for the
removal of adenoids.

If the first results of this far-reaching and complicated
organisation appear to be depressing, for they seem to reveal
a disturbing prevalence of disease in the young population,
there is a more hopeful side. The aim of the school medical
service as a whole is twofold. Primarily it seeks, within its
inevitable limits, to remove or alleviate some of the existing
handicaps which prevent ailing children from receiving the
full benefit of their schooling. Sir George Newman, the
Chief Medical Officer, stresses this aim again and again in
his valuable Annual Reports; which, significantly enough, are
Board of Education Reports. But the service, as part of the
public health service, also aims at stopping in their early
stages, when they are most easily attacked, the onset of
diseases which may very adversely affect the children after
school and in adult life. In the long run, to check, for
example, eye strain or caries in teeth before adolescence may
and will be of incalculable benefit to the population at large.
There are some positive results to record. Ringworm has been
all but stamped out. Verminous children are fewer and
general cleanliness improves. In conjunction with other ac-
tivities of the service, such as the Provision of Meals, Physical
Exercises and Hygiene, and the advocacy of fresh air and
sunshine in schools, and allied with the more specifically

HEALTH AND WELFARE 225

medical Child Welfare and Maternity Clinics, the general
standard of health of the young population has been un-
doubtedly raised. It is very instructive to compare photo-
graphs of classes in poor districts, taken in 1932, with the
photographs of the same classes in an unchanged district
taken fifty years ago. The contrast is striking, and for it the
credit must be shared by the medical services with teachers
as a whole, who are themselves an auxiliary health force, with
the LJB.A/S, which have vastly improved the material con-
ditions, and with all the other agencies and movements which
have contributed to an undoubted rise in the standard of
living.

v

Sir George Newman regretfully points out that, compre-
hensive as the school medical service is, it is lacking in two
directions. It ends when the child leaves school and does not
at present cover the earlier years of adolescence, a period
where continued attention might clinch the benefits already
conferred. It also hardly touches the dangerous years before
the child comes to school, when seeds of disease are often
sown; or to be quite accurate, while Infant Welfare Clinics
and the like afford help to mothers for children in infancy,
there is little statutory provision for attention to children from
about two up to school age. Mr Fisher's Act of 19 18 authorised
L.E.A/S to set up Nursery Schools, and grants were offered
in 1919. As customary, this official action was preceded
by voluntary experiment which, though very small in scale,
attracted much interest and attention. These pioneer schools
established certain general methods, since accepted with little
question. The children were to be looked after physically,
trained in habits of cleanliness, taught to play, allowed to
move freely in the school and to perform small duties for
themselves, made to rest in the afternoon and given a simple
lunch to be taken in a tidy and mannerly fashion; no formal
WES 8

226 HEALTH AND WELFARE

teaching of even the elements of instruction was attempted.
The actual number of schools set up is small, less than fifty
in the country, and they have been the first progressive
ventures to be postponed during the periods of financial stress
since the War.

No account of the Nursery School movement can omit the
name of Miss Margaret McMillan, whose Open- Air Nursery
School at Deptford is known throughout the world. Boldly
abandoning the first conceptions of a nursery school as a
small community of twenty or thirty children and therefore
relatively costly Miss McMillan showed that with adequate
room she could accept about 300, distributing them into
groups of thirty or so in warm but airy sheds, and not in
ordinary classrooms, and conducting the training very much
in the open air. 'Nurture', which is her conception of the
function of the Nursery School, embraces baths, play, rest
and three meals at the centre. The children are there from
8 in the morning till 5 o'clock. Their improvement in health
is remarkable, and happiness and well-being go without
saying. Parents in this poor neighbourhood contribute what
they can and the mothers, indirectly and through personal
contact, are educated in the care of their children's health.
Before her death Miss McMillan had the satisfaction of seeing
the Queen opening a training college for teachers in Nursery
Schools in association with the Deptford Open- Air Nursery.

Though the Nursery Schools, officially so named and aided,
are so few, the nursery idea has had very definite influences
on infants' schools in general. Manchester, besides helping
some nursery schools, transformed the babies' classes in many
poor districts into nursery classes, conducted on the lines of
the Nursery School proper. More than this, in schools where
special equipment and isolation are difficult, the whole mode
of handling the youngest children has been affected for good
by the spread of nursery methods. The methods of teachers

HEALTH AND WELFARE 227

trained on Froebelian lines approximate more and more to
nursery methods. Training colleges which specially train
women for teaching young children, including the Froebel
colleges and Gipsy Hill, advocate nursery methods for the
youngest pupils.

vi

The participation of teachers and pupils themselves in
measures to promote health training was slow in coming. It
was not until the Code of 1900 that instruction in hygiene
and regular physical exercises were included in the normal
curriculum suggested for elementary schools. Before that
time indeed the best schools had varied the usual routine by
occasional drill in classroom or playground, and some of the
larger school boards engaged drill instructors for their own
schools and a few appointed school medical officers. Also
some elementary teaching of hygiene was a constituent of the
ordinary * school-method ' in the training colleges. But there
was little that was systematic and purposive until after 1902.
The evidences of physical degeneration which recruiting for
the Boer War revealed had startled the public, which was now
prepared to accept the co-operation of doctors in education.
Worthy managers of schools might at times scoff at tooth-
brush drill as an element in education but the practical
benefits of the growing medical service soon dispelled any
prejudice. The Board of Education appointed men and women
to stimulate and direct specific physical training and in 1909
issued a syllabus, based upon the Swedish system and by no
means resembling an old fashioned type of company drill.
The syllabus, since frequently re-issued with additions, was
no mere catalogue of 'jerks ' but a reasoned guide with graded
exercises and ample illustrations, a standard book on scientific
principles, capable of being used not only by experts but by
the ordinary teacher in the ordinary school. Instruction in
the use of the syllabus was also made an essential part of the

8-2

228 HEALTH AND WELFARE

curriculum of training colleges. Thus physical training wa
definitely established in the elementary schools of the country
It has not been enough to suggest or prescribe forms of sue
training. The Medical Branch of the Board have urged th
appointment of specialist organisers in large areas who shoul
not only see that the official courses are faithfully followe
and train teachers by periodical refresher courses, but als
control and encourage other forms of physical training an
do their best to have the material obstacles removed. In 193
a training college at Leeds was opened to provide sue
organisers and there is some hope that the whole busines
will soon be conducted universally on expert lines.

For the systematic organisation of physical training, thu
briefly sketched, is not all that has been done on the ' gym
nastic' side of education. The Board of Education in 190
gave a practical illustration of the new freedom of the ek
mentary school by permitting f organised games * to be take
during school hours. For this purpose parks and open space
have been freely used, and some L.E.A/S have been able t
acquire special large plots of ground as playing fields fc
elementary schools. Games in which large numbers coul
take part, and not merely selected teams, have been intrc
duced. Athletics as such are cultivated rather by inter-schoc
athletic contests and competitions. Swimming has also Ion
been encouraged in schools.

In sum a very great deal is now done by the schools in th
open air. Not only are classes taught in the open air to a
extent once hardly conceivable, but organised excursions e?
tending over a week or so are frequently undertaken by who!
classes or groups; these are planned for various purpose
with geographical features or historical scenes and building
or natural history in view, or a combination. An occasion;
holiday excursion is even arranged for a visit abroad. Scho<
camps have been organised by some authorities but the extei

HEALTH AND WELFARE 229

of this activity is naturally limited. The outside public only
faintly realises the extent to which the elementary school
regularly carries out its educational activities outside its own
walls and the extent to which its pupils ' see the world '. Still
less does the public ordinarily appreciate the amount and the
multiplicity of the work willingly done by teachers in addition
to teaching in classrooms. Teaching in school was not so long
ago a narrow routine, it is now an important social service,
broadened in purpose and performance as the national con-
ception of what is due to the rising generations has broadened.
The Boy Scouts, Girl Guides and similar movements have in
the main a parallel aim and they are here and there actively
connected with the schools ; but very wisely their organisation
is kept independent and free from being entangled in any
system of education. The efforts also of the Playing Fields
Association, directed to securing open spaces for play both
in and out of school hours deserve mention, for they have a
direct bearing upon the physical training in the schools.

Before leaving the elementary schools, with which the
preceding paragraphs have been concerned, mention should
be made of Evening Play-Centres with which are associated
vacation schools. These owe much to the enthusiasm of Mrs
Humphry Ward, who wished to provide for young children
in crowded areas something analogous to what is provided
for older children by clubs for boys and girls, a place where
they could find shelter and interesting occupations out of the
streets and their own cramped tome surroundings. She ad-
vocated the use of day school premises in the evening, when
otherwise they were empty. The odd but valuable collection
of clauses in the AdministrativeProvisions Act of i^oyincluded
one to enable the L.E.A/S, then only a few years old, to
establish vacation schools and play-centres. Grants were first
paid in 1917. Play-centres are very varied, but there is
no attempt to copy the usual procedure of the classroom.

230 HEALTH AND WELFARE

Children's games, toys and books are provided, and the
children are "kept going 5 or allowed to read and play quietly
or busy themselves with handwork of a simple kind, as they
would in a well-conducted home.

Another measure, which does not strictly fall under the
general subject of this section or of the sections preceding
may be noticed at this point. This is the Education (Provision
of Meals) Act passed in 1906. It had been remarked that a
certain number of children in schools in the poorer areas
were so ill-nourished that they could not profit by the teaching
in schools. The subject was brought forward in several private
bills which failed to win the approval of Parliament before
1906. The government Act of that year authorised the L.E.A.'s
to set up or to support Canteen Committees which undertook
to supply meals (usually dinner) to necessitous and underfed
children. Contributions are collected from parents so far as
possible. The number of children fed has varied from time
to time, chiefly according to the recurring crises of poverty.
The Act was confirmed in the early years of the War and
extended to include holidays and other non-school days. It
has been found of great service in periods of prolonged
distress. At the present day attention is paid especially to
the distribution of milk among school children in close
association with the milk boards recently established.

vii

What has been written in this chapter refers to elementary-
schools. The Education Act of 1921, which codified previous
Acts, contained clauses which laid upon L.E.A.'s the duty of
medically inspecting pupils under higher education, in county
and municipal secondary schools, continuation and other
schools under the L.E.A. No scheme as extensive as that
which prevails in elementary schools was contemplated, with
periodical inspections and simple treatment, but the pupils

HEALTH AND WELFARE 23!

were to be seen on admission and if below a satisfactory
standard advised to consult their own doctor. At the same
time powers similar to those employed in the elementary
schools were granted. The happier conditions both in the
homes and the schools of most day pupils who come under
higher education make the health question perhaps less urgent
than in elementary schools. Secondary schools, both new and
old, usually have ampler playing fields and there is a tradition
of games in the older schools which the new L.E.A. schools
are not slow to adopt. The boys and girls are usually better
nourished and enjoy more opportunities of fresh air. Yet the
Board's Chief Medical Officer has good grounds for urging
that the school medical service should concern itself with
pupils in all schools, secondary as well as elementary, in the
general interest of national welfare. Such inspections as have
taken place reveal defects, not in alarming but in regrettable
amounts. It is to be presumed that the parents of the more
comfortable classes are better able to do what is required for
their children than parents of a humbler sort; but evidently
the vigilant eye of the school doctor is needed in many cases
to detect what requires remedying. The extended powers of
the L.E.A. may prove of great value as the new instruction
centres for the juvenile unemployed develop.

Private schools may take advantage of the L.E.A. service,
if they will. It is one of the drawbacks of the isolation of such
schools that they are not yet reckoned habitually as forming
an integral part of the educational service of a locality, for
which the L.E.A. on the side of health should feel a certain
responsibility. The larger independent schools often have
their own medical officers and, as a rule, the Preparatory
Schools, usually non-local, pay close attention to the health
of their pupils. But there are many schools, outside the sphere
of L.E.A. work, which would undoubtedly benefit by a closer
connection with the L.E.A,

CHAPTER XIV
CONCLUSION

The educational system of England and Wales in its modern
shape has now been passed in review, and it remains to recall
and summarise its main characteristics and briefly to sketch
some of the problems that still await solution.

The principal concern of the previous chapters has been
with public education, and the supervision of public education
lies almost entirely with the Board of Education as a great
department of state. Yet, comprehensive as the function of
the Board is, it does not embrace the whole of education that
is controlled and aided by the state. Not only have the War
Office and the Admiralty each an educational system peculiar
to itself, for soldiers and sailors and their children, but the
Home Office, the Ministry of Labour and the Ministry of
Agriculture have educational responsibilities within the king-
dom; and the Foreign Office along with the Colonial Office
in various ways have to do with British subjects outside the
British Isles. The Treasury, as paymaster, keeps a watchful
eye on all, and even has an education section of its own in the
University Grants Committee. It has not been possible to
do more than allude in passing to some of these forms of
public education in this book. They are not completely shut
off in jealous independence from the Board. For the Board
has established natural links of co-operation with other
departments of state in the country and the experience of
the Board's officers is placed at their disposal and is used
in various ways. We have not the space to describe the work
of Army Schools, Juvenile Instruction centres, schools for

CONCLUSION 233

delinquents and prisoners and others, though these institutions
are of great interest, The close connection of the Board with
the Ministry of Health has been noted in the chapter on
Health and Welfare.

This book has also of necessity left aside comparisons and
contrasts with Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Irish Free
State. Though the general framework in England and Wales
does not differ from that of the other countries in the British
Isles so much as it does from that of France, Germany and the
United States, there are peculiarities in each, both in respect
of historical development and in present practice which to be
fruitfully depicted would call for explanations too lengthy to
be feasible. Scotland, for example, with a long tradition of
popular education has a much closer connection between
primary and secondary education than England, though Wales
now approaches Scotland in this respect. Northern Ireland
has not yet completely solved the problem of the relation
between voluntary schools and council schools and between
the central office and local administration. The Free State has
its own ambitions, among them to establish Irish as the native
tongue and to set up universal vocational education. But to
institute parallels and suggest inferences would take us too
far afield.

ii

The earlier chapters of this book were designed to explain
the main lines upon which our educational system has been
built. It rests upon the recognition of education as a public
service which is vitally necessary in modern times. The re-
cognition came piecemeal and tardily. Until near the be-
ginning of the present century it was not clear that the state
need seriously concern itself with doing more than giving
fragmentary and occasional financial aid, at any rate beyond
elementary education. The two far-reaching Acts, the first

234 CONCLUSION

creating a Central Authority and the second Local Authorities,
called into being the present organisation that has been
described. Both central and local authorities were given wide
powers, but neither overrode what had been accomplished
without their help. For the principle upon which public
authorities have acted, in this as in other departments of
national life, has been to supplement private and individual
enterprise, to fill up acknowledged deficiencies and to carry
forward progress beyond the point at which unaided efforts
ceased to be effective. The older principle of self-help without
governmental interference had fallen into the background
after the middle of the nineteenth century. It was clearly
inadequate when the necessities of modern life and the
ambitions of the working and the middle classes called em-
phatically for more and better education. An organised public
system became inevitable and the delay in framing it was due
as much to the uncertainty what shape it should take as
to the remaining unwillingness to abandon the attitude of
laissez-faire. By a fortunate coincidence the great question
of local government had been settled in 1835 for the popu-
lous boroughs and in 1888 for the counties. It required
an act of bold statesmanship to use them so soon as local
authorities for education.

At the same time the public system of education has never
been so thoroughgoing as some advocates would desire. It
has remained true to the conception that the business of
education authorities is fundamentally not to originate but
to aid and supplement efforts which have their source outside.
The fact that the bulk of elementary and further education,
and a good deal of secondary education is carried on by public
authorities does not invalidate this generalisation. One of
the most striking features of English education is the inter-
mingling of public and private enterprise in what may fairly
be called a national service. On many occasions in this book it

CONCLUSION 235

has beenpossible to point out instances of the relations between
the state organisation and institutions or movements of in-
dependent origin and to show how they range from intimate
connection to remoter but yet real subtle influences.

The actual machinery of the public system has been fully
explained. The association of central with local authorities,
as has been said, is one of constructive partnership. The policy
of the Board of Education, while the Board performs its duty
of dispensing Parliamentary grant with due guarantees that
it is properly expended, is to leave to the L.E.A.'s a large
measure of freedom and responsibility. When the L.E.A/s
were new to their work the older tradition of detailed pre-
scription was continued to a certain extent but the kind of
control over minutiae which once prevailed has been much
relaxed in recent years and under the present regulations is
very little in evidence. The role of the Board is rather that of
adviser and guide than that of mentor. It must necessarily
set standards, encourage the active and stimulate the reluctant,
while checking extravagance and eccentricity, but it does so
without laying down hard and fast lines, beyond what is
required by clear and intelligible administration. Some
critics, at the time when the Act of 1902 was being discussed,
thought it was a mistake to place so heavy a burden as
education promised to be upon councils chosen for the general
purposes of local government. Their fears have proved
groundless. The success of the L.E.A.'s has been such as to
induce Parliament to add another function to the councils,
that of Public Assistance, formerly administered by the Poor
Law Guardians^ The relations in the partnership between
central and local authorities in England and Wales cannot be
paralleled exactly either in the Dominions or abroad. As was
shown in the relevant chapter above, the success of the
L.E.A/S is due very largely to the English habit of working
through committees and we may here refer once more to the

236 CONCLUSION

extent and value of the unpaid services rendered to the com-
munity by men and women engaged in the work of local
government.

iii

The years here under review have seen an enormous ex-
pansion of public education, and indeed of education generally.
Not only have the numbers of pupils in schools substantially
grown but the types of institution have multiplied and the
opportunities now available to persons of all ages and classes
are indefinitely extended. The very conception of the scope
of education has been enlarged. The chapter on the health
services will have shown how closely education is now
associated with welfare, as well as with the acquisition of
knowledge. Sixty years ago education in the public mind
meant little more than schooling, a period ending for the
majority at thirteen or less and rarely continuing beyond.
Now the nation is gravely concerned with the years of ado-
lescence and anxious that in some form or other educational
influence should be brought to bear upon boys and girls in
their teens. Further Education reaches beyond maturity, as
has been shown, and in its wider sense embraces more than
pedagogic instruction. At the other end increasing attention
is being paid to the years before the child goes to school at
all, to what is called pre-school education ; for it is recognised
that if a proper foundation for the education that is desirable
in after years is to be laid, the earliest years, even from birth,
must not be neglected. At this point education merges into
health, but neither here nor later can the two now be
dissociated.

The most striking example of the expansion of education in
the present century is undoubtedly the growth of secondary-
schools. This has meant not only the creation of entirely new
schools where none existed before, but the increase in size,
numbers of pupils and stability of the schools already in

CONCLUSION 237

existence. In fact a new habit has arisen and new ambitions
have been encouraged in classes which heretofore were content
with an education ending at fourteen. It had long been felt,
by Matthew Arnold among others, that what industrial and
commercial England needed was cheaper secondary education
and more schools. The Education Acts of 1899 and 1902, with
the approval of Parliament, made it possible to supply both.
There are over 400,000 pupils in secondary schools which are
in receipt of government grant, nearly 1 1 for each 1000 of the
total population. At the same time the Public Schools have
increased in number and size and the private schools seem
to have suffered no sensible diminution. Nearly half of the
pupils in state-aided schools receive their education free or
nearly free, through scholarships and special places; and
thus the poorer child has within its reach an education with
its opportunities for advance which was almost inaccessible
heretofore. How these opportunities are used is shown by
the fact that a quarter of the students admitted to universities
in 1930-1 were boys and girls who had spent some of their
earlier years in the elementary school. Well may a recent
writer who wishes t defend the great work of L.E.A.'s
entitle his book The Rising Tide. In truth the growth of
public secondary schools has effectively removed the old re-
proach that children of the working classes were virtually
restricted by the system once in vogue to the elements of
education.

A further grievance, if not a reproach, has disappeared as
the result of the two great Acts so frequently mentioned. This
was more strictly political and sectarian. A powerful group
of thinkers had for long held that where public money was
spent on education there should be direct public representa-
tion on the bodies which administered the funds and con-
trolled education. They carried the day when the Education
Act of 1870 created boards which were elected ad hoc and

238 CONCLUSION

they opposed Mr Balfour's Act as deserting the principle of
popular representation. It will be found, however, that the
schools and institutions under the public system of education
all have public representation of some kind; if this is indirect
or partial, as it is in aided schools, it is now accepted as
adequate for the purpose. Similarly the sectarian grievance
that Nonconformist children were obliged to attend schools
under the Church of England, and Nonconformist teachers
had not their fair share of the training colleges has been mostly
met by the rapid increase of council schools, elementary and
secondary, and by the L.E.A. training colleges. With these
sources of complaint and dissatisfaction removed education,
no longer an occasion for party strife, has had some thirty
years of comparative peace.

iv

It would of course be idle to pretend that the educational
system is perfect, or that it escapes criticism among those who
are actively engaged in working it. But there is no Platonic
ideal of a perfect education laid up in heaven to which our
imperfect efforts are directed. What may be claimed is that,
no doubt with many failings, English national education
during the last thirty years has corresponded more and more
closely to the aspirations of various classes in the nation, and
that it is elastic enough to admit of growth and readjustment
when and where these become necessary.

In the course of the preceding chapters the problems that
still remain unsolved have been touched upon as they arose.
They may profitably be mentioned in conclusion. It seems
likely that the dualism so often emphasised in these pages
between the public system controlled and aided by the state
and the many independent agencies will continue, unaffected
by any totalitarian conception; this dualism seems to be a
part of the English character. But without any real surrender

CONCLUSION 239

of the rights of Individual freedom so much prized, and
without any relaxation or undue amplification of the duties
of the state in education, the relations between public and
private education might be much closer. The Universities are
free enough from state interference, yet they accept state aid
and render services to the state. Much of what is summed
up in Further Education is part of public provision, but it is
not inconsistent with private provision with which it works
in amicable rivalry. These analogies are capable of extension
to other spheres. It may be hoped that those Public schools
which stand entirely aloof from the central and local authorities
may come to recognise more openly the unity of the purposes
which they all pursue, even though they accept no formal
connection. More urgent is the desirability of bringing into
a vital relation with the national system the 'private' schools
of various kinds. There is a rising feeling that the state, in
the interests of the children for whose education it assumes
responsibility, should no longer disregard those in private
schools but bring them under some kind of supervision. On
their own part the private schools should be demanding some
share, if only through eligibility for scholarships, in the
assistance so liberally placed within reach of schools in the
public system.

At the end of the War the principal problem in elementary
education was the provision of * advanced instruction for the
older and more intelligent children'. A solution was found
by the Hadow Reports of the Consultative Committee. But
it is not yet fully worked out. The reorganisation of schools
for children above eleven plus makes great progress but it is
still too early to judge of its final effects ; for example, what
will be the ultimate relations between the selective central
schools and the ordinary secondary schools, what success
the non-selective schools will have in dealing with the children
who are not 'more intelligent', not to mention the dull and

*40 CONCLUSION

Dackward, and how far under the new conditions education
in the post-primary school will prove to be a coherent and an
intelligible whole? The old elementary school tended to
finish indefinitely and with many ragged ends ; the new school
will have a precise beginning at eleven plus and will have
time enough for fresh types of curriculum to be carried
through up to fourteen plus at least. To judge by present-day
indications, sooner or later the age of leaving may be raised
to fifteen. The repercussions not only on secondary schools
but also on the evening schools and institutes, introductory
to technical education, and on industry cannot yet be
estimated.

The provision of secondary schools in their present form
appears to have almost reached its limit. There are few areas
still unsupplied with secondary education. Indeed there has
been manifest in recent years a feeling that children are
admitted to a prolonged academic course from which they are
not able to derive profit. Whatever be the truth of this, and
it is partly due to dissatisfaction with the entrance examination
at eleven plus, and partly to the recent economic crisis and
the calls for retrenchment, it seems to assume that secondary-
education differs essentially from other education, being
mainly academic and perhaps predominantly literary, and as
such advantageous only to a select few. The cry of * Secondary
Education for All* is the Labour Party's challenge to this
view, but they seem to mean education prolonged to fifteen
or sixteen rather than secondary education as formerly
understood. The question that agitates the schools and their
critics at the time of writing turns on the First School
Examination. Many would dissociate matriculation from it
entirely, alleging that university requirements dominate the
work of the schools ; others wish to see the practical subjects,
arts and crafts, placed on an equal footing with the conventional
subjects. These points have been discussed in an, earlier

CONCLUSION 241

chapter and need not be farther examined here. In any case
the reference upon which the Consultative Committee is now
engaged promises a complete survey of education up to
sixteen in schools which are not working under the Ele-
mentary Code.

With Further Education current problems tend to become
merged in the widest social questions of the time. The old
divergence between ideals of a liberal education and the
practical desirability of a vocational education now takes on
a new complexion. Technical education was severely vo-
cational and, if under that name studies were permitted or
encouraged that had no immediate utilitarian aim, it was
rather a concession ex gratia. But the more technical Further
Education becomes on one side, the less it seems to respond
to the real needs of the large mass of the population engaged
in industry and commerce. In this age of machinery the gap
between the trained and skilled on the one hand and the
unskilled on the other appears to grow wider. Though there
are still many intermediate grades, and the path of ambition
is not closed, it becomes more probable that technical pre-
paration, other than the most elementary kind, will be no
longer positively required for the majority of workers, but
will be reserved for the comparatively elect few. As children
remain at school till fourteen plus, and perhaps soon till
fifteen the elementary preparation may often be accom-
plished at school and the elaborate courses of introductory
training, so necessary thirty years ago, may be no longer
called for. When it is remembered that along with machinery
and organised mass production has gone a reduction in the
hours of labour, it is evident that the purpose of Further
Education must more and more be education for leisure.
Nor need this be a mere phrase. The previous chapters on
Further, including Adult, Education will have indicated how
varied are the ways by which the organised schemes of

242 CONCLUSION

education under the L.EA.'s and those of many other agencies
provide for education which is not narrowly vocational ; not
only by bookish study but by the practical arts of music, the
drama, craftsmanship, painting and the cultivation of bodily
health through exercises, dancing and travel. In certain
chapters of his Year Book of Education (1934) Lord Eustace
Percy urges that the new society which is rapidly being
developed needs a new education. And the key to one
important side of it is Education for Leisure.

NOTES

A. Acts of Parliament.

The following is a list of the principal Acts of Parliament
affecting education from 1870 onwards. They are arranged
chronologically.

1870 Mr Forster's Act. The Elementary Education Act, 1870. The
Act laid^down that there should * be provided in every school
district *a sufficient amount of accommodation in public
elementary schools available for all the children resident in
such district, for whose elementary education efficient and
suitable accommodation is not otherwise made'. This was
the compulsory provision of elementary education. Where
adequate accommodation was not * otherwise' forthcoming,
a School Board was to be set up to provide it.

1876 The Elementary Education Act, 1876. By it the parent was
obliged to see that his child received elementary education
between the ages of five and fourteen. Complete abstinence
from employment was enforced under the age of ten.

1880 Mr Mundella's Act. The Elementary Education Act, 1880.
This enforced complete attendance at school up to ten.

1889 The Technical Instruction Act, 1889.

1890 The Local Taxation (Customs and Excise) Act, 1890. These
are described in the Notes below on chap. vra.

1899 The Board of Education Act, 1899. This created the Board of
Education. See chap. in.

1902 Mr Balfour's Act. The Education Act, 1902. This is suffi-
ciently described in chap. II and elsewhere.

1903 The Education (London) Act, 1903, Applied the principles of
the 1902 Act to London.

1907 The Education (Administrative Provisions) Act, 1907.
Authorised among other duties and powers those of medical
inspection.

244 NOTES

1918 Mr Fisher's Act. The Education Act, 1918. This is discussed
frequently in the foregoing pages, especially in chaps, vi
and vin. Among other things it made attendance compulsory
up to fourteen and abolished half-time and other forms
of exemption.

1921 The Education Act, 1921. Codifies the previous Acts. This
Act is now quoted in official documents as the Standard
Education Act.

B. General Bibliography.

The Schools of England (Sidgwick and Jackson, 1928), edited by
Professor J . D over Wilson . This book contains seventeen chapters ,
mostly lectures on various aspects of English Education by
acknowledged authorities delivered at King's College, London, in
the autumn of 1927. A short bibliography is added to each chapter.
Special chapters bearing upon the various sections of the present
book will be mentioned below.

The present writer published some outline Notes for the Study
of English Education from 1860 to 1902 (Geo. Bell and Sons, 1929)
and some further Notes for the period 1902-30 (Geo. Bell and
Sons, 1931).

Two standard works by Professor J. W. Adamson should be
consulted at need. The first, A Short History of Education, as its
title suggests, deals succinctly with education in general, in ancient
and modern times. The second, English Education, 1789-1902,
traces the development of English education up to the Balfour Act.

A valuable work of reference for those who wish to examine the
complicated system which preceded the Balfour Act of 1902 is
Sir Graham Balfour's Educational Systems of Great Britain and
Ireland (Oxford University Press, 1903). The book includes an
analysis of the Act of 1902.

C. Notes on the Chapters.

Chap. I. Professor Dover Wilson, who contributed the larger
portion of this chapter, has also written a survey of the general
development of education in England and Wales as an introduction
to his book, The Schools of England.

NOTES 245

Chap. II. The two books mentioned here (pp. 23-30) are The
Board of Education, by Sir L. A. Selby-Bigge, Permanent Secretary
of the Board of Education, 1911-25 (Putnam's), and Local
Government in England, Redlich and Hirst, 2 vols. (Macmillan,
1903).

p. 37. In 1933 there were 317 L.E.A.'s. Of these 146 had full
powers under Part II of the Acts of 1902 and 1903, i.e. 62 county
councils, the London County Council and 83 county boroughs.
The remainder, i.e. 132 municipal boroughs and 39 urban districts,
have Part III powers only, and control only elementary education.
On different dates the numbers of municipal boroughs and urban
districts will be found to differ slightly as from time to time a
district changes its status with the growth of population. Since the
Act a few municipal boroughs have become county boroughs.

In 1900, i.e. before the Act of 1902, there were 2545 school
boards, large and small; there were also 788 'school attendance
committees', often coterminous with Poor Law Unions. They
were appointed in 1876 to supplement the school boards. The
new LJE.A.'s of course absorbed the functions of both school
boards and school attendance committees.

Chap . III. Attention may be drawn at this point to the Annual
Reports of the Board of Education. Besides a review of the
year's work in various directions, the Board frequently include a
special introduction, a special chapter or more rarely a special
supplement, with a historical review of some special field of the
Board's activity. During and after the Great War, for example,
the effect of the War on education and the measures taken to
restore to ex-soldiers the educational opportunities of which service
in the Forces had deprived them were fully described.

References will be made in these notes to some of these special
chapters. As bearing upon chap. Hi an account of the Origin and
Growth of the Board's Inspectorate in the Report for 1922-3
may be mentioned.

Chap. IV. The full title of Mr Sidney Webb's book is Grants-
in- Aid (Longmans, 1911).

p. 59. Fee Grant and Aid Grant. The first was authorised by
Lord Salisbury's Government in 1891. It provided for the pay-

246 NOTES

ment of los. per annum for each child in average attendance at an
elementary school between the ages of three and fifteen. The
effect was to make elementary education virtually free, for the
relatively few schools which had charged more than %d. per
week (i.e. 10$, per annum for a year of forty weeks) had to reduce
the fees proportionately. Certain other provisions were introduced
to secure that no district should be entirely without free schools.
All fees were abolished by the Act of 1918.

The second in 1897 provided a payment to voluntary schools
of a sum equivalent to 5$. per pupil. This sum, unlike the Fee
Grant, which went to managers of schools or to school boards,
was distributed through associations of schools ; the committees of
the associations could allot lump sums from their share to schools
in proportion to their needs. The Aid Grant was a very sensible
relief to the schools. A similar relief was granted to necessitous
school boards.

Chap. V. p. 74. The distribution of elementary schools in 1932
is shown by the following table :

Average

Nos. attendance

Council Schools 9821 3^3>7

Church of England Schools 9501 1,242,374

Wesleyan Schools in 17,929

Roman Catholic Schools 1280 345,132

Jewish Schools 13 4,766

Other Schools 252 3 I J?6s

p. 8 1 . The grants were payable on the average attendance in the
school concerned, except as to 'specific subjects*. The * class
subjects* so called were taken by all the classes but, even in
examination days, were not tested by individual performance, as
the three R's were, but on the efficiency of 'the classes as a whole.
The chief class subjects were English, geography, history, needle-
work, of which only two could be taken, one being English.
Specific subjects were taught only to the upper classes. There
was an imposing variety, including as they did, algebra, French,
Latin, domestic economy and some sciences. Only a few of the
ordinary schools attempted them. The Board's Annual Report for

elementary schools.

The grants for infants' schools was at the rate of 6^., 4$. or zs.
according to efficiency.

For further information on the curriculum and the grants
corresponding the student should consult the History of English
Elementary Education, 1760-1902, by Professor Frank Smith
(University of London Press), or the History of Elementary Educa-
tion in England and Wales, by C. Birchenough (University Tutorial
Press), 2nd edition.

p. 82. In the Board's Annual Report for 1913-14 there is an
appendix containing a General Report on the North- Western
Division. The Report, which covers elementary education in
Lancashire and Cheshire, also attempts to estimate the effect of
the remarkable Code of 1900.

Chap. VL Each of the Hadow Reports of the Consultative
Committee (The Education of the Adolescent, 1926; the Primary
School, 1931; Infant and Nursery Schools, 1933) contains a
valuable historical chapter by way of introduction. The growth
of the idea of post-primary education is fully described in the 1926
Report.

For an appreciation of the work of the public elementary school,
the chapter on this subject in The Schools of England is worth
consulting.

Chap. VII. A book in this series, issued by the Cambridge
University Press and called Secondary Education in the Nine-
teenth Century, is indispensable to those who wish to pursue
the subject of secondary education further. The writer, Professor
R. L. Archer, traces the growth of secondary education through
the century and shows how the confusion into which it had fallen
towards the close led up to the Acts of 1889 and 1902. The book
is quoted on p. 129,

Lectures were given in 1927 and are published in The Schools of
England on The Preparatory School, The Boys' Day School, The
Boys' Boarding School and The Girls' School.

The Board's Annual Reports contain special sections upon
secondary education as follows: 1908-9, a sketch of the history of

240 NOTES

secondary education up to 1903 and a review of the progress made
to the previous few years; 1911-12, a special chapter on The
passage of scholars from public elementary schools to secondary
schools since 1902; 1913-14, the inspection of secondary schools
by the State ; 1923-4, a report on recent developments of secondary-
schools.

The Rising Tide, by Mr J. G. Legge (B. Blackwell, 1929), is an
account of the new L.E.A. schools. Mr Legge was for many years
Director of Education for Liverpool and writes enthusiastically on
what he justifiably calls an 'epic of education'.

Statistics. From what is said early in chap, vn and elsewhere, it
will be difficult to give exact statistics of children in England and
Wales receiving ' secondary' education. The figures given below
are of schools with some connection with the Board of Education.
Others will be found under chap. xi.

(a) In 1932 there were 432,061 pupils in secondary schools
recognised as eligible for grant by the Board. The schools were as
follows :

L.E.A. Schools 742, with 242,250 pupils.
Welsh Intermediate Schools 102, with 28,759 pupils.
Aided Schools, Roman Catholic 87, with 23,739 pupils.
Aided Schools, Foundation and other 448, with 137,713 pupils.

(b) It is interesting to notice that of 194 schools represented at
the Headmasters' Conference, 70 are on the grant list, 66 are
'recognised as efficient' but claim no 'grant, 41 are not in England
and Wales, and 17 have .not applied for inspection or have with-
drawn.

(c) Of the numbers in state-aided schools, quoted in (a) above,
some 200,000, i.e. 48 per cent., were free pupils on March 31, 1932.

(d) The proportion of pupils in state-aided secondary schools is
10*8 per 1000 of the population; in counties it is 11-5, in county
boroughs 10-4, in London 8'2.

Chaps. VIII, IX. p. 133 [also j>. 67]. The three Acts affecting
Further Education and preceding the Board of Education Act,
1899 and the Education Act, 1902 were these:

(a) The Local Government Act, 1888, which created County
Councils in England and Wales.

NOTES 249

(b) The Technical Instruction Act, 1889, which allowed the
council of any county or borough c to supply or aid in supplying
technical or manual instruction' and to appoint committees for
that purpose.

(c) The Local Taxation (Customs and Excise) Act, 1890, which
allotted a large sum annually out of the Customs and Excise
Duties.

The first two, as stated in the text, established a kind of prece-
dent for the Act of 1902, giving authority for aiding education to
councils elected for the general purposes of local government and
enabling rate-aid (up to id. in the ) to be given to education other
than elementary. The Science and Art Department was named as
the central authority for the purpose of the Parliamentary Grant
available. Technical instruction was defined as * instruction in the
principles of science and art applicable to industries and in the
application of special branches of science and art to specific
industries or employments'. The Department interpreted the
definition, which also added the exclusion of direct trade teach-
ing, very generously and all subjects were admitted except the
Classics.

The third was the origin of the * whisky money ' . It was ' handed
over to local authorities in place of being paid as compensation to
publicans, the purpose for which it had originally been designed*.

A very clear and concise account of technical education and its
relation to the State up to 1902 is in Graham Balfour's book on
Educational Systems, pp. 163 et seq.

A chapter on Technical Education, Evening Schools and Day
Continuation Schools is in The Schools of England: also a chapter on
Adult Education.

There is no very complete and full history of Technical Educa-
tion, in England and Wales. A partial history with a review of
present-day problems is Education for Industry and Commerce, by
A. Abbott, until recently chief inspector of the Technical Branch
of the Board of Education.

The Annual Reports of the Board contain the following partial
reviews which may be usefully consulted: 1911-12, a summary of
technical work; 1914-15, 1915-16, munition workers in technical
schools ; 1924-5 , a long first chapter giving a survey of the provision,
made for Technical and Further Education; 1925-6, a chapter ex-

25 NOTES

plaining the variety of technical work as classified in the Regulations
described in the present chaps, vm and ix.

Humanism in education, a memorandum on the possibilities of
Day Continuation Schools, written by Professor Dover Wilson,
1921, then one of the inspectors of the technological branch of
the Board.

Statistics. A few statistics will throw a little light on the scope
and variety of schools and institutions described in the two
chapters on Further Education.

(a) In 1933 there were 191 Junior Technical Schools and
Junior Housewifery Schools with 21,445 pupils.

(b) Junior Departments in Art Schools were 35 (1927 pupils).
These are full-time schools for boys or girls usually under

eighteen.

(c) Day Continuation Schools were 53, of which 46 were
conducted by L.E.A/S and 7 by voluntary bodies : pupils numbered
15,976, of whom 10,295 were under sixteen and 5,681 over sixteen.

(d) The technical day classes took 27,311 students, of whom
17,121 were eighteen years of age or over, and all but some 3000
were under sixteen.

(e) Senior full-time courses in Technical Colleges took
8,772 students, of whom 1866 were under seventeen.

(/) Art Schools had 55,847 students, of whom over 40,000 were
seventeen and over.

(g) The number of evening students in Technical Colleges was
estimated at just over 200,000 and the number in Evening Insti-
tutes of various kinds as over 650,000.

(h) The number of students in grant-aided classes for Adult
Education was 25,321 men and 25,711 women.

Chap. X. The handiest book in which to find a conspectus of the
origin and the work of universities is The British Universities, by
Sir C. Grant Robertson, Principal of Birmingham University,
published in Benn's Sixpenny Series. This includes a short
bibliography of books to be consulted for further details.

Statistics. The total number of students in the universities and
the university colleges of England and Wales (omitting Hull and
Leicester) is 37,428. This figure represents those who are proceed-
ing to their primary degree and are in full-time attendance. In

NOTES 251

addition there are men and women engaged on work beyond the
first degree, or are in part-time attendance in various capacities.
Of the total quoted 9261 are women, London University has
1 1 ,194 students (3345 of whom are women), Cambridge 5582 (478
women), Oxford 4771 (815 women), Manchester 3159 (618
women). The rest of the full universities have under 2000, Bristol
and Sheffield under 1000 and the youngest university, Reading,
608, with a slight preponderance of women. The university col-
leges, except Cardiff which has 1 127 (328 women), are below 1000.

p. 163. In 1914 Cambridge had accepted a grant from the
Treasury in support of the Medical Schools.

p.i66. The situation at Cambridge is peculiar. Women are not
reckoned as full members of the university either as graduates or
undergraduates. But senior members and tutors of the two
colleges may serve as members of the boards of faculties and are
eligible for professorships and lectureships.

p. 167. At Oxford and Cambridge a student must have been
accepted by a college or by the non-collegiate body before being
admitted to the university. At Cambridge the great majority of
non-collegiate students are members of Fitzwilliam House, which
has now acquired many of the features of college life. The ' un-
attached ' men at Oxford are grouped as members of St Catherine's
Society and the women under the Society of Home Students.

Chap. XI. There is no book which deals with the subject of this
chapter as a whole. Indeed one can hardly be expected, as the
various schools and courses independent of the State are very
different in origin and scope and are negatively connected by the
fact of their independence. Chapters in Professor Dover Wilson's
The Schools of England deal with boys' conference schools, boarding,
like Harrow, and day, like Dame Owen's School : with girls' public
schools, with boys' preparatory schools. There is a considerable
literature concerning the Public School, especially the biographies
of famous schoolmasters, like Thomas Arnold, Edward Thring
and more recently Sanderson of Oundle. A good recent book on
Public Schools is by Bernard Darwin in the Home University
Library.

For similar reasons statistics were not available except in certain
cases. In 1932 there were 83 schools quoted in official returns as

252 NOTES

Public Schools, with 29,848 pupils; these are all boys' schools
except one, which is co-educational. There are 517 members of
the Preparatory Schools Association (with 29,808 boys): 240 of
these are on the list of schools recognised by the Board of Educa-
tion (17,308 boys). There is no parallel association of girls' schools
for, as pointed out in the chapter, girls' preparatory schools do not
form a distinct class as do preparatory schools for boys.

The Independent Schools Association counts some 800 schools :
boys' and girls' schools in the association are ordinarily separate
establishments, though very small boys may be found in some
girls' schools. Private schools other than those belonging to the
Associations named, to which may be added the Association of
Convent Schools with 13,000 pupils, have no returns available.

272 girls' schools (34,452 pupils) are recognised as efficient and
are not aided.

There are said to be some 10,000 private schools, with perhaps
400,000 pupils of all ages.

Chap. XI L .198. The steady reduction in the size of classes is
shown by the decreasing number of classes reported as having more
than 50 on the roll in recentyears. In 1929 there were 10,883 classes,
in 1933 8296, in 1934 there were 6184. The proportion of various
types of teachers in elementary schools is as follows (1932). Out of
169,986 75-3 per cent, are certificated and 73-6 per cent, are women.
There are 29,766 uncertificated, among whom are 1871 men, a fast
diminishing number. In addition 7016 supplementary teachers.
There are 3946 graduates (men) and 3626 women.

The Board's Annual Report for 1909-10 contains a special
section on the staffing of public elementary schools.

p. 200. The recent changes in training colleges are these:

Wood Green Home and Colonial closed entirely.

St John's, Battersea, closed and men absorbed into St Mark's,
Chelsea.

Warrington transferred to a new site and rebuilt at Liverpool.

Whitelands rebuilt at Putney.

St Mary's, Hammersmith R.C., transferred to Strawberry Hill
and much enlarged.

Southlands Wesleyan transferred toWimbledon Park and partially
rebuilt.

NOTES 253

Edgehill undenominational acquired by the Lancashire Education
Committee and a new college built at Ormskirk.

Two chapters on the Training of Teachers appear in The Schools
of England. The fullest information on the same question is in a
book by Dr Lance G. E. Jones, published by the Gilchrist
Trustees in 1924. Unfortunately the investigation which led to it
was too early to enable the author to record the more recent
changes.

The Board's Report for 1912-13 has a special chapter on the
history of the training of teachers, which is valuable for the
account of the earlier years.

Chap. XIII. The Annual Reports of the Chief Medical Officer
of the Board of Education, Sir George Newman, bear on this
chapter. These Reports are very full and the examination of any
one will give a conspectus of the medical services. The Report is
issued under the title 'The Health of the School Child'.

In 1929 the ordinary Annual Report of the Board contains a
summary review of the school medical service since 1908 when it
effectively began.

Chap. XIV. The Schools of England has special chapters on
The Education of the Naval Cadet, on Educational Training in the
Army and on The Educational Scheme of the Air Force*

INDEX

Acts of Parliament: list of principal Acts,
Notes, p. 243, and also Notes, pp. 245,
248, 249; tor the Act of 1902, see
chap. II; for the Fisher Act 1918, see
especially chap. VI and chap, vil; for
Acts concerning teachers, see chap, xil;
for Acts concerning Medical Service,
see chap. XIII.

Adult Education, 131, 134, 157 et seq.

Advanced Courses, 124

Agricultural Colleges, 155

Aid Grant, 59, and Notes, p. 246

Arnold, Matthew, 20, 79, 84, 94, 133, 196

Art, Schools of, 156

Balfour, Sir Graham, 33

Black List, 88

Blind and deaf, the, 219

Board of Education, chap. Ill : origin, 38 ;
general description, 40; President, 40,
41; staff, 41; Welsh Department, 43;
special branches, 43 ; work of the Board,
43 ; policy of the Board, 45 ; regulations,
46; circulars, 48; committees, 49; the
Consultative Committees, 51; inspec-
tors, 52 ; full inspections, 54

Bryce Commission, the, 39, 108 and
elsewhere

Burnharn Committee and scales, 50, 211

Bursaries, 195

Cambridge University, chap, x

Central Schools, 96

Certificate, the Board's, 194, 205;
National, 154

Charity Commission, 39

Circulars, 48

City and Guilds of London Institute, 153

Classrooms, op

" Clear Cut" in education, 99

Cockerton, 83

Code, 69, 8 1

Co-education, 71

College of Preceptors, 127, 212

Colleges for Further Education, 145

Committees, of the Board, 49; Adult
Education, 160; Burnham, 50; Consul-
tative, 51

Committees, of the L.E.A., see chap. II

Common Entrance Examination, 120

Compulsory education, 75

Continuation Schools, Day and Evening,
see chap. VIII

Cost of education, 65

County Boroughs, 24

County Councils, 19, 27 et seq,

Cross Commission, 79, 194

Day Continuation Schools, 138
Defective and Epileptic Children, 219
Deficiency Grant, 61

Departmental Committee, on Private
Schools, 191; on training of teachers,
200

Direct Grant, 62

Dual system in elementary schools, 72

Duration of school life, 118

Education in England and abroad,
chap. I: education in England is both
old and new, 3; why states now impose
education on all, 5 ; origin and character
of the educational system in France, 9 ;
in Prussia, 10; education in U.S.A., 13 ;
English education compared with that
of France, Prussia and IJ.S.A., 15 : the
state and private enterprise, 16; educa-
tion connected with political and social
history, 19; education of women and
girls, 22

Education outside the State system,
chap. XI : dualism in English education,
state institutions and independent
institutions, 180; the Public School,
182; Preparatory Schools, 183; girls*
boarding and other schools, 184;
L.E.A.'s and Endowed Schools, 185;
Private Schools, 186; Kindergartens,
189; inspection of Private Schools, 189;
Departmental Committee on Private
Schools, 190

Elementary School, the, chap. V: elemen-
tary education as an official term, 69;
characteristics of the public elementary
school, 70 ; the double system of council
and voluntary schools, 72; isolation of
the elementary school up to 1902, 75;
payment by results, 78; the Code or
1900 and its effects, 83 ; work of the
Board and L.E.A.'s, 85; premises and
the Black List, 88

Evening Continuation Schools, 135

Evening Institutes, 138

Evening Play-Centres, 229

Examinations, 125

Extra-mural education, 159

Fee Grant, 59 and Notes, p. 245.

Finance, chap. IV : origin of grants-in-aid,
56; first grants, 58; grants in the school
period, 59; deficiency grant, 61; direct
grant, 62; cost of education, 65

First Schools Examination, 125 et seq.

Fisher Act, the, passim, especially chap.
VI, 98, and chap. VIII, 139.

Free education in elementary schools, 71

Free Places in Secondary Schools, 120

Further Education, chap. VIII: explana-
tion of the term, 131; sketch of earlier
history, 132; Evening: Institutes, 135;
group courses, 136; Day Continuation
Schools, 138; Junior Technical Schools

INDEX

255

and Trade Schools, 141 ; Junior Com-
mercial Schools, 142; Further Education
continued, chap. IX: Senior Evening
Institutes, 145; Colleges for Further
Education technical schools, 147; the
National Certificate, 140; Science and
Art Examinations and others, 152;
Agricultural Colleges, 155; Schools of
Art, 156

Girls' schools, 183

Government Departments and education,

232

Grammar Schools, 68, 70
Grants-in-Aid, Mr Sidney Webb on, 57
Group courses, 126

Hadow Reports, the, 98 et seq.

Health and welfare, chap, xin: the
health movement, 216; the Blind and
Deaf, 217; the Defective and Epileptic,
219; special schools for M.D.'s, 219;
the M.D. Committee, 220; the school
medical service, 222; nursery schools,
225; physical training, 227; open-air
work, 228; evening play-centres, 2295
Provision of Meals Act, 230; medical
inspection in other schools, 230

Higher Elementary Schools, 95

Higher Grade Schools, 93

Independent Schools Association, 187
Infant Schools, 81, 83, and Notes, p. 247
Inspections, full, 189
Inspectors, 52
Internal degrees, 173

Junior Commercial Schools, 142
Junior Housewifery Schools, 141
Junior Vocational Schools, 141

Kay- Shuttle worth, Dr, 59, 79

Kent, an example of a large L.E.A., 34, 35

Kindergartens, 189

Labour Party, the, 22, 102, in, 129
Local Education Authorities, the, chap. II :
the county boroughs, 24; the Part III
authorities, 25; county authorities, 27;
London, 27; committees of L.E.A.'s,
28 ; the chairman, 31 ; education officers,
32 ; membership of committees, 33 ;
work of committees, 35; summary
remarks, 36

London County Council, the, 17
London University, chap. X, especially
p. 171

McMillan, Miss Margaret, 226

Medical inspection, 221; in secondary

schools, 231
Mental Deficiency, 219
Ministry of Health, 21, and chap. XIII
Morant, Sir Robert, 42

National Certificate, the, 154
National Society and National Schools,
58, 72, 76

Newman, Sir G., 224
Non-provided schools, 72 et seq.
Non-selective Central Schools, 99
Nursery Schools, 226

Official Reports, the, 49, and Notes, p. 245

Open-air work, 228

Oxford University, see chap. X

Payment by results, 78, 81

Pensions, 212

Physical training, 227

Polytechnics, 63, 133, 151

Post-primary education, chap. VI: the
felt need, 93 ; higher-grade schools, 93 ;
higher elementary schools, 95; effect of
the War, 96; Fisher Act, 97; the
Hadow Report, 99 ; proposals for raising
the school age, 102; forthcoming Report
of the Consultative Committee, 105

Preparatory Schools, 182

Private schools, chap, xi, especially p. 185

Provided schools, 72, etc.

Provincial Universities, 167, chap, x,
especially p. 167

Provision of Meals Act, 230

Public Schools, dates of foundation, 3, 182

Pupil Teacher System, 195

Regional Boards, 204

Regulations, the Board's, 46, 47, 112

Reports, Annual, of the Board, Notes, p.

245; Governmental Committees', 129;

Hadow, 98

Royal Society of Arts, 153
Royal Society of Teachers, 213

School Boards, 37 and chap, v

School Medical Service, 222

Science and Art Department, the, 64, 133,
152

Secondary School, the, chap. VII: Bryce
Commission, 108 ; defining of secondary
education, no; the Act of 1902 and
secondary schools, in; First Regula-
tions, 112; Welsh Intermediate Schools,
115; difficulties of finance, 116; the age
of entry, 118; the duration of school
life, 119: the Free Place System, 120;
Special Places, 122; Advanced Courses,
124; First and Second School Examina-
tions, 125 ; changes in teaching, 129

Selby-Bigge, 23

Selective Central Schools, 99

Senior Schools, 99

" Special Places", 122

Special Schools, 219, 221

Staffing of schools, 198

"Suggestions", Handbook of, 82

Teachers' Registration Council, 213
Teaching Body, the, chap, xu : how far is
the title justified, 192; elementary
teachers up to 1890, 193; university
training departments, 194; changes in
the pupil-teacher system, 195; estimate
of the value of pupil teachers, 196;
staffing of elementary schools, 198;

256

INDEX

training colleges, 1 99 ; Departmental
Committee on Training, 200; changes in
type of training and association with
universities, 203 ; the Certificate, 205 ;
training of secondary teachers, 207;
the Burnham Scales, 211; superannua-
tion, 212; the registration of teachers,
212

Technical Institutes and Colleges, 145,
etc.

Technical Instruction Committees, 133,
and Notes, p. 249

Technical (Junior) Schools, 141

Technology, 131

Training Colleges, 199

Trevelyan, Sir Chas., 102, 202

Universities, the, chap. X: list of univer-
sities, 161 ; relations with the State, 161 ;
and with L.E.A.'s, 164; the educational
ladder, 165; women and universities,

1 66; various characteristics, 167; pro-
vincial universities, 169; Oxford and
Cambridge, 171; London, 171; uni-
versity colleges, 174; London degrees,
175 ; the output of universities, 176
University Colleges, 174
University Grants Committee, 162
University Training Departments, 163,

194, 200, 203
U.S.A., education in, 12, 13

Voluntary Schools, 72 et sag.

Wales, University of, 174
Welfare, chap, xni
Welsh Department, 43
Welsh Intermediate Schools, 115
W.E.A., 158
Women's Colleges, 166
Women's education, 22
Wood Report, 220

CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY WALTER LEWIS, M.A., AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS

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