1924-36 The leaving age battle
1924 Labour: reversing the engines
When the first Labour government took office on 21 January 1924 the new Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald, appointed as President of the Board of Education Charles Trevelyan (1870-1958) (pictured in 1899), a former Liberal who had been a member of the London School Board and had served as Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education from 1908 to 1914.
In March 1924, Trevelyan declared that he had 'reversed the engines' (quoted in Simon 1974:80): Circular 1190 (which had halted virtually all educational development) was withdrawn, and the Board began considering proposals for new nursery, elementary, secondary and technical schools. University scholarships were reinstated, class sizes reduced, and more money was found for the school medical service.
Three months later he announced that the proportion of free places in secondary schools would be raised to 40 per cent, and that there would be more generous provision for 'advanced instruction' in new elementary schools. Steps were also taken towards raising the school leaving age to fifteen.
Treveyan's long-term aim was free secondary education for all, though he acknowledged in the Commons that this 'would be perfectly impossible at the present time' (quoted in Simon 1974:83).
Sadly, the minority Labour government was defeated on a motion of no confidence and the General Election, held on 29 October 1924, resulted in a Conservative landslide.
1924-1929 Baldwin's Tories
Baldwin was back as Prime Minister, Winston Churchill was now Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Lord Eustace Percy (1887-1958) (pictured) became President of the Board of Education.
In January 1925 the Board issued Circular 1350 which dropped most of Trevelyan's proposals but required that, in planning new buildings, local authorities should make provision for advanced instruction for children over eleven. This age, it said, was 'the most suitable dividing line between what may be called "junior" and "senior" education' because it gave 'opportunities for suitable classification and organisation' of children over eleven (quoted in Simon 1974:233). Methods of selection were becoming an important issue.
The report of the Departmental Committee on The Training of Teachers for Public Elementary Schools was published in 1925. Chaired by Viscount Burnham, the Committee made 69 recommendations. Compared with the early Hadow reports, it was 'much more in tune with the Board's general view' (Simon 1974:293):
Departmental committees could be controlled, while the Consultative Committee got increasingly out of hand, and this one advocated the consolidation of two levels of teacher training - for elementary school through two-year colleges, for secondary school through university departments training graduates - at a time when this division was beginning to be outgrown (Simon 1974:293).
More cuts
Within a year of taking office, Baldwin had announced a new round of economies. Percy was asked to make cuts in the education budget and, when these did not go far enough, to come up with more. He responded that his first proposals involved rationing local authority expenditure 'drastically' and, in asking for more, the Cabinet committee 'are indeed asking for a higher reduction than I considered, or now consider, possible' (quoted in Simon 1974:90).
But he drafted a new circular (1371, issued on 25 November 1925) which proposed a complete standstill. There would be no educational development for at least three years (until 1929) and the percentage grant would be abandoned in favour of a block grant. For the year 1926-7, authorities would be given grants which were one per cent less than they had received in 1924-5. Finally, grants for under-fives in elementary schools would be cut by 30s (£1.50) per child (Simon 1974:95).
When the circular was published, 'the outburst of wrath was immediate and overwhelming' (Simon 1974:98). The Manchester Guardian (3 December 1925) saw it as 'a turning point in educational policy' which would have a 'quite disastrous outcome' (quoted in Simon 1974:98).
Circular 1371 was eventually withdrawn, but in March 1926 the Commons began debating an Economy Bill, which included a clause effectively implementing its provisions. On 4 May 1926 the General Strike began. The objectionable clause of the Economy Bill was quietly forgotten, and the issue of block grants was then tackled in a general local government bill. 'But the inclusion of education in this also aroused powerful opposition' (Simon 1974:112).
In his autobiography, Some Memories published in 1958, Percy noted that as President of the Board he had come to realise that elementary schooling for children over eleven formed no part of an educational ladder and was not intended to be a preparation for anything: elementary schools were just 'finishing' schools for young workers. It was little wonder, he wrote, that 'a "class" education of this kind was coming to be increasingly suspected and resented' (Percy 1958:95).
Reaction to the 1926 Hadow Report
The Education of the Adolescent was published on 16 December 1926. Before he had even had time to read it, Lord Eustace Percy wrote immediately to Hadow, rejecting the proposal to raise the leaving age to 15 in 1932.
A month later, in January 1927, representatives of the Association of Education Committees met Percy and urged that preparations should be made for raising the leaving age - though in 1933 rather than 1932 as Hadow had suggested. They were met with 'a self-righteous, and ... aggressive, response' (Simon 1974:133). Percy told them:
To force children generally to stay longer in the elementary school will be, from the parents' point of view, a somewhat arbitrary exercise of authority and from the point of view of education it would be the merest eyewash (quoted in Simon 1974:134).
He also argued that local authorities already had the power to raise the age (with exemptions) under the 1921 Act if they wished to do so.
Despite Percy's intransigence, many felt that the publication of The Education of the Adolescent marked a turning point: something positive was at last being advocated after a long period of 'danger, disorientation and cutbacks in expenditure' (Simon 1974:137). The Times Educational Supplement (1 January 1927) declared that 'a change has come over the whole spirit of English education' (quoted in Simon 1974:136-7); the education authorities warmly welcomed the report; the County Councils Association urged its members to begin planning for what soon became known as 'Hadow reorganisation'; and a conference to consider the report, organised by the National Union of Teachers (NUT) and the Workers' Educational Association (WEA) in October 1927, drew more than a thousand delegates.
In the Commons on 16 February 1927, Labour MPs called on the government to 'take all the legislative and administrative action necessary to secure a universal system of post-primary education on the lines recommended by the committee', and Charles Trevelyan insisted on the need to raise the leaving age. It was, he said, 'one of the biggest things which we can contemplate in the near future' (quoted in Simon 1974:135).
At its annual conference in the autumn of 1927, the Labour Party urged the development of
a new type of secondary school which offers a variety of courses suitable to children of different aptitudes and capacities, but is otherwise on a level with the present day secondary school (quoted in Simon 1974:136).
This differed markedly from the Hadow report which, 'in accepting selection and different grades of post-primary school, necessarily envisaged a bottom grade non-selective school for the majority' (Simon 1974:136).
The New Prospect in Education
The Board of Education gave its official response to the Hadow proposals in 1928, when it published Circular 1397 and Pamphlet No. 60 The New Prospect in Education. The underlying message was clear: the Board wanted as little change as possible.
First, The New Prospect in Education defined 'Hadow reorganisation' as 'a readjustment of the existing Elementary School system' (Board of Education 1928:7).
Second, it used the term 'intermediate education' (which did not appear in Hadow) to 'misdefine the main thesis of that report' (Simon 1974:137). What the committee had recommended, the pamphlet claimed, was 'the provision for every child over the age of 11 of a system of intermediate education in schools set apart and organised for that purpose' (Board of Education 1928:1).
Third, the pamphlet was clear that selection must be retained: 'We want not only Senior Schools for all, but special types for selected pupils' (Board of Education 1928:2).
Fourth, because new forms of post-primary school were being developed, it was important 'to maintain in their proper sphere the special standards of [the] traditional type of secondary education' (Board of Education 1928:7). Indeed, there could even be a reduction in the number of secondary places in the future - a proposal directly contrary to Hadow's expectation that 'many more' would be provided.
And finally, the pamphlet identified selective central schools as 'the chief pioneers in the new ventures which are opening out for us' (Board of Education 1928:3), but declared that pupils in such schools would on no account be admitted to external examinations. Again, this was contrary to Hadow's recommendations.
A leader in The Times (9 June 1928) noted that 'the Board is preparing the way for raising the school leaving age in 1933' (quoted in Simon 1974:139). However, it was clear that
no incentive to improving education was to be provided, let alone an advance to providing education of a secondary character for all. Since the ceiling of 25 per cent selective places, in both secondary and central schools, remained, 75 per cent of children were inevitably destined for senior elementary schools or departments whose course would lead to no qualification whatsoever after ten years of education. What was now laid down as official policy by the Board was ... the simple division of the elementary system into two stages, primary and post-primary (Simon 1974:139-40).
The NUT's response
It was left to the teachers to make clear what Hadow had actually proposed. In the autumn of 1928, the NUT published The Hadow Report and After, which aimed to 'disinter all those aspects of the Hadow Committee's thinking which the Board was most concerned to bury' (Simon 1974:140). The General Secretary of the union at the time was Frank Goldstone (1870-1955), who had been a Labour MP and a member of the party's education advisory committee. He had also served on the Departmental Committee of 1920.
Hadow's recommendations, said the NUT, required the introduction of free secondary education for all children over eleven, with a common code of regulations and provision of adequate maintenance allowances. What the Board was doing was seeking to maintain 'the old irrational distinctions, legal and administrative' (quoted in Simon 1974:140).
Teachers' organisations had already begun advocating comprehensive education, though the term 'comprehensive' was not used at the time: instead, there was talk of 'multi-bias', 'multiple-bias', or 'multilateral' schools. In January 1925 the Association of Assistant Masters, a secondary association, had unanimously called for children to be 'transferred to secondary schools containing departments of different types' (quoted in Simon 1974:142) where they would stay until they were 16; while the NUT had called for the creation of large multiple-bias schools which, it noted, had been adopted throughout the United States.
Now, in November 1928, Percy turned down an NUT request to discuss the multilateral school. But he did meet an NUT deputation on 8 March 1929, when he rejected the idea of a common secondary school and urged the NUT not to fight for free secondary education (Simon 1974:143).
At their 1929 annual conference, NUT members welcomed 'the facilities that have been provided for post-primary education under reorganisation schemes' but regretted that these 'fail to give effect to several of the recommendations of the Hadow Report' (quoted in Simon 1974:144). It demanded that all types of state-aided education for children over eleven should be equal in status, free, and under one set of regulations.
Opposition
Not everyone was in favour of the expansion and reorganisation of secondary schooling. The education committee of the Federation of British Industries declared that industry could not bear the burden of releasing juvenile workers over the age of fourteen for eight hours a week, as had been provided for by the 1918 Education Act and that, in any case, only a small minority of children were 'mentally capable of benefiting by secondary education' (quoted in Lawson and Silver 1973:394).
And in 1928 a former school medical officer claimed that most elementary-school children would not benefit from secondary education because of 'the shallowness of their mental impress ... and of the generally exaggerated appraisement of school education for the masses as a whole'. Most pupils would go on to be manual workers and therefore 'even that extra year in the Public Elementary Schools ... would prove superfluous to the majority of them' (quoted in Lawson and Silver 1973:394). He rejected Hadow's proposals because of
(1) The too low educability of many of the children. (2) The compulsory nature of the afterlives of the scholars ... No theoretical schemes for equal education of all the children can get away from these basic and fixed conditions (quoted in Lawson and Silver 1973:394).
Free places
Despite such objections, the number of pupils with free places in grammar schools doubled between 1920 and 1932, by which time there were 209,000 free-place children, almost half of the total (Lawson and Silver 1973:394).
Although free-place pupils broadened the social mix of the grammar schools, 'The benefits of the ladder were unevenly distributed geographically and among the different social strata eligible to benefit from it' (Lawson and Silver 1973:395).
This point was taken up by Kenneth Lindsay in his 1926 book Social Progress and Educational Waste, in which he revealed the limitations of the free-place system:
it has been conclusively proved that success in winning scholarships varies with almost monotonous regularity according to the quality of the social and economic environment. London, Bradford, Liverpool,
and the countryside bear this out in the minutest detail (Lindsay 1926:8).
The poorer the district, the lower was the success rate. Lindsay argued that 'selection by differentiation must replace selection by elimination' (Lindsay 1926:15) because, under the existing system, almost half the children of 'proved ability' were 'being denied expression' (Lindsay 1926:23).
Hadow reorganisation
The raising of the school leaving age to fourteen, as required by the 1918 Education Act, had been postponed because of economic problems. The measure was repeated in the 1921 Act and finally came into force in October 1922.
23 November 1928: Leslie Clayton's school leaving certificate
kindly supplied by his son Michael
[click on the image for a larger version]
The 1918 Act had also required local education authorities to provide courses of advanced instruction for the older and abler children. As a result, some of the more enlightened authorities reviewed their arrangements for children below the age of twelve, and several began to create junior schools and departments.
By the 1920s, London - and a few other towns - had numerous 'three-decker' schools. The children started in the infant department on the ground floor, from which at the age of seven they moved to one of the upper storeys - which usually housed separate boys' and girls' departments - where they stayed until they left school at the age of fourteen.
Hadow's proposal for a break between primary and secondary education at age eleven (made in the 1926 report) could easily be accommodated by rearranging the storeys of the three-decker schools: they now housed infant, junior and senior departments instead of infant, girls' and boys' departments (Plowden 1967 I:97-99).
'Hadow reorganisation' began in earnest. In just three years, from 1927 to 1930, the number of pupils in separate junior departments rose from 150,000 to 400,000 - from seven to sixteen per cent of the total child population aged between eight and twelve (Plowden 1967 I:99).
Bradford, for example,
entirely reorganized its elementary schools along Hadow lines, with a new system of 'modern' schools for children from the age of eleven, and involving an extensive redistribution of staff and children (Lawson and Silver 1973:393).
The number of pupils in grant-aided secondary schools as a whole rose by almost 100,000 during the 1930s, and the schools increased in size to an average of around 350. The proportion of pupils who came from public elementary schools rose steadily, reaching 77 per cent in 1937, 'as a result of the increased numbers of special places, and greater pressures from the parents of elementary-school children' (Lawson and Silver 1973:388-9).
The churches and reorganisation
Meanwhile, the problem of the involvement of the churches in many elementary schools - 'and in most of the worst of them' (Simon 1974:149) - remained, and there were now concerns that the churches would want their own secondary schools.
In 1929, Percy Jackson, Chair of the West Riding Education Committee, argued that the churches had stood in the way of educational advance for over a century. Now that new arrangements were being made, he hoped the churches would confine themselves to giving religious education in the schools, and, 'having got that, let the State do its own work' (quoted in Simon 1974:150).
However, both the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church made it clear that, unless there was a settlement which met their demands, 'they would arrest all advance - in terms of reorganisation - by any means to hand' (Simon 1974:150).
Previous attempts to resolve the problem (in 1919 and 1926) had come to nothing. The Conservatives - who were not subject to the same Roman Catholic influence as Labour - could have ended the dual system: hardly any new Church of England schools had been built since 1918, and by the early 1930s old ones were being handed over to local authorities at the rate of seventy-six a year (Simon 1974:214). Instead, in 1929, a Cabinet committee discussed the matter with the churches - rather than with the local authorities, who actually understood how far the dual system was hindering reorganisation and how poor many church (or 'non-provided') schools were.
The importance of this question can be gauged by the fact that as many as four-fifths of all public elementary schools in Lancashire were voluntary schools, so that the need for agreement was acute (Simon 1974:150).
In the 1929 election campaign, the Conservatives promised 'actively to seek an agreed settlement which will enable provided and non-provided schools to work together' (quoted in Simon 1974:150), to complete reorganisation and to improve all 'blacklisted' school buildings. This would be a major task because many church schools were in a state of chronic disrepair: of around 3,000 'blacklisted' schools condemned by the Board of Education in 1925 as 'unfit for further use', most were church schools (Simon 1991:52).
1929-31 Labour's second administration
On the eve of the 1929 election the Conservatives published a pamphlet in which Baldwin declared that the party was leading the way in achieving a classless society. 'The classification of our schools', he wrote, 'has been on the lines of social rather than educational distinctions; a youth's school badge has been his social label.' But, he claimed, a
great new fabric is already taking shape ... the outward 'elementary' structure is at last being superseded; higher [ie secondary] education is being provided for every child, and manual aptitudes are being given for the first time the same facilities of exercise as the academic (quoted in Simon 1974:152-3).
Brian Simon comments: 'It is difficult to conceive of any contemporary statement further removed from the truth' (Simon 1974:153).
Labour's education policy was outlined in Labour and the Nation (1928) and followed up by an 'Appeal to the Nation' on May Day 1929. It promised that Labour would 'raise the age of school attendance to fifteen with a view to it being raised to sixteen as soon as possible' and that facilities 'for free secondary education' would be developed 'at once' (quoted in Simon 1974:153).
Labour won the election and Ramsay MacDonald formed his second administration but, with only a small majority over the Tories, he was forced, once again, to rely on Liberal support.
Trevelyan returned as President of the Board of Education. He was determined to raise the school leaving age, and in this he had
full backing from the Education Advisory Committee of the party and others in the educational field, coldly negative discouragement from the Labour Chancellor for plans to realise election pledges, no solid support from prime minister and Cabinet to counteract this, and little understanding or help from the parliamentary Labour Party (Simon 1974:154).
The Labour Education Advisory Committee sent Trevelyan a draft memorandum which called for a single code of secondary regulations, abolition of secondary fees, and the development of multi-bias (ie comprehensive) secondary schools, which were now supported by most of the teachers' organisations.
Despite the reaction of Board officials - which was 'wholly negative' (Simon 1974:155) - Trevelyan told the Commons that a bill would be introduced to raise the school leaving age to 15 by 1 April 1931, a year earlier than Hadow had suggested. His announcement was followed by Circular 1404 (24 September 1929) which set out the financial assistance which local authorities would receive. Trevelyan also wanted to increase maintenance allowances and abolish fees, but had to acknowledge that it could not all be done at once.
After lengthy discussions with the Chancellor, Trevelyan was able to announce (in Circular 1406, 9 April 1930) that the number of university scholarships would rise, though only by 100 rather than the 200 he had proposed; and (in Circular 1407, 17 April 1930) that the proportion of free places in secondary schools would rise from 40 to 50 per cent (Simon 1974:159).
Trevelyan's first bill to raise the school leaving age was lost because of the government's heavy legislative programme. In May 1930 he introduced a second bill, this time incorporating proposals for financing the reorganisation of voluntary schools. This did not appeal to the churches, who had 'taken up entrenched positions' (Simon 1974:162). The bill also ran into trouble over its insistence on means tests in relation to maintenance allowances. Labour MPs staged a revolt and the Cabinet forced Trevelyan to shelve the bill.
But Trevelyan was determined. He now presented two new bills: one - the Education (School Attendance) Bill - dealt with the raising of the school leaving age; the other - the Non-provided Elementary Schools Bill - provided for a financial settlement once negotiations with the churches had been successfully concluded.
By this time, however, the Free Churches were objecting to any settlement which subsidised Anglican and Catholic interests, while the Catholic hierarchy ordered Labour's Catholics to obey the directives of the bishops. As a result, the 'Scurr' amendment proposed delaying the raising of the school leaving age for a year. In the end, none of this mattered: Trevelyan's bills were defeated in the Lords.
When Trevelyan was then asked to make further cuts in the education budget, he resigned. His letter of resignation, dated 19 February 1931, concluded:
Now that in my department I am prohibited by the action of the House of Lords from carrying through any drastic educational progress, I do not wish to be any longer in part responsible for a general policy which I regard as ineffective (quoted in Simon 1974:166).
Following Trevelyan's resignation, on 2 March 1931 Labour MP Hastings Lees-Smith (1878-1941) was appointed President of the Board of Education: he held the post for less than six months.
Trevelyan's financial measures had made a significant difference in many areas. In the north west, for example, they had
greatly accelerated the programme of many authorities for the reorganisation of their schools, the reduction of the size of classes, the replacement and repair of defective premises, and the provision of accommodation for the additional age-group (Jewkes and Winterbottom 1933:84).
Trevelyan had shown that 'so relatively little could achieve so much' (Simon 1974:215). There was no reason why reorganisation could not have been completed in the following years.
But by February 1931 the government was facing another financial crisis and the Chancellor, Philip Snowden, appointed Sir George May, secretary of the Prudential Assurance Company, to chair an independent committee to recommend possible economies.
Trevelyan had also taken steps to provide more teachers but, as a result of budget cuts, by the end of 1932 there were 1,100 newly-qualified teachers without jobs, and
to the eternal shame of the government, many remained without employment while classes so large as to prevent any effective education remained prevalent (Simon 1974:215).
In October 1931, MacDonald was forced to call an election as a result of which he formed a 'National Government' with a small majority of Conservative ministers. The National Government was to have three Prime Ministers: MacDonald until 1935, Baldwin 1935-1937 and then Neville Chamberlain.
1931-39 National Government
Circular 1421: more budget cuts
May's committee, whose members knew little about the state education system, recommended a cut of almost £12m in the education budget for England and Wales. The exchequer grant should be abolished, they said, teachers' salaries cut by a fifth and secondary school fees raised by a quarter. Despite Lees-Smith's objections, the Labour Cabinet agreed to adopt most of May's recommendations (Simon 1974:176).
In October 1931, with the Liberal Donald Maclean (1864-1932) now President of the Board of Education, a National Economy (Education) Order was issued which abolished the guaranteed fifty per cent minimum exchequer grant and legalised the reduction of teachers' salaries (by 15 per cent - though this was later reduced to 10 per cent), regardless of contracts. These steps had been called for by Circular 1413, published a few weeks earlier. The only concession was that secondary-school fees would not be increased (Simon 1974:177).
When Maclean died suddenly on 15 June 1932, Edward Wood - who was now Lord Irwin - returned to his former post as President of the Board 'somewhat reluctantly' (Simon 1974:151). Since he could only speak in the Lords, the Parliamentary Secretary, Herwald Ramsbotham (1887-1971), assumed the role of Board spokesman in the Commons.
Irwin and Ramsbotham were faced on the one hand with making further cuts (as proposed by the May committee and supported by Irwin), involving the raising of secondary-school fees and the replacement of free places with means-tested 'special places'; and on the other by the Joint Four Secondary Teachers' Associations, who protested 'very strongly indeed' (Simon 1974:180) about the lack of consultation on the new secondary regulations. There was very little time to resolve the issues before the start of the new school year, and matters were made even more difficult by the fact that:
civil servants were under considerable difficulties given the opening of the shooting season. Indeed president and parliamentary secretary could hardly keep in touch, migrating as they were from one house party to another (Simon 1974:181).
Nonetheless, Circular 1421 was sent out on 15 September 1932: means-tested fees were now to be charged in all grant-aided secondary schools, abolishing at a stroke the free secondary schools which towns such as Bradford and Manchester had been operating for some years.
On 17 September the Times Educational Supplement carried a letter signed by forty leading educationists and Liberal and Labour politicians, expressing fears of a new round of cuts. The signatories included Sir Percy Nunn (1870-1944), Professor of Education at the London Institute of Education from 1913 to 1936, Archbishop of York William Temple, TUC secretary Walter Citrine and the novelist and historian HG Wells (1866-1946) (Simon 1974:182).
A couple of days later, Tawney, writing in the Manchester Guardian, called for 'a massive campaign' to force withdrawal of both the circular and the regulations, which were not due to come into effect until the spring of 1933:
So the methods of the Poor Law may be applied, it seems, to what the government apparently regards as an analogous service. There is to be strict enquiry, an exact appraisal of the resources of the family whose younger members have the bad taste to ask their fellow-countrymen for the opportunity to be educated (quoted in Simon 1974:183).
Within a few weeks the Board had received 1,800 submissions from all over the country and from a wide range of individuals and organisations. Only three supported the government's policy (Simon 1974:184).
At the Labour Party conference in October, Charles Trevelyan declared that the government was effectively saying to Durham and Bradford:
you have had your children educated in secondary schools for a generation, but that is now at an end. You shall go down to the level of those backward authorities who know how to keep the working people in their places. Now I say that means class war (quoted in Simon 1974:185).
The fact that men like Baldwin and Irwin had supported this 'dirty, mean, selfish class persecution' was astonishing, said Trevelyan. Labour must resolve that as soon as it had power it would ensure 'free secondary education for all' (quoted in Simon 1974:185).
The circular was debated in the House of Commons on 16 November 1932. In response to a Labour motion supporting the principle of free secondary education, Ramsbotham spelled out clearly the Tory attitude. Secondary education, he said, should be reserved for 'selected children, the gifted and the intellectual' from whom 'we expect leaders of industry and commerce in the coming generation'. Free secondary education, he went on,
might very well turn the whole country into a vast educational soup kitchen from which few would get proper rations, and still fewer would be able to digest what they got' (quoted in Simon 1974:186).
This was an appallingly insensitive comment, given that at the time many working-class families were being kept alive by soup kitchens.
In the end, another Circular (1424) announced that, while all the representations had been 'carefully considered', the Board saw no need to modify the terms of Circular 1421.
Thus where there had been free secondary schools there would now be schools with 100 per cent special places - the only difference was that a means test would now apply (Simon 1974:186).
But even this was not enough for the National Government, which began to demand still further cuts. A new committee was formed, consisting of local authority representatives and chaired by Conservative MP William Ray. Faced with a Chancellor of the Exchequer now demanding savings of £6m, the committee's report, published towards the end of November 1932, called for the pupil-teacher ratio to be raised, small schools closed, departments amalgamated, teachers' increments to be biennial rather than annual, fees to be charged in selective central schools, maintenance allowances revised, student teachers to receive loans instead of grants, fees raised for day and evening classes, and cuts in expenditure on 'special services' - 'a euphemism for special care for the physically and mentally afflicted child' (Simon 1974:187). Finally, percentage grants should replace block grants - a proposal which, coming as it did from a local authority committee, was regarded as a great betrayal.
On 12 January 1933 the Labour Daily Herald reported that
Education authorities all over the country are defying the Cabinet for the sake of the children whose future they hold in trust. They refuse to carry out the 'economies' in secondary education scheduled in the Board of Education Circular 1421. Despite urgent instructions from the Board these authorities will refuse to cut the number of free places or raise fees (quoted in Simon 1974:189).
An internal Board memorandum acknowledged that the story was true and, when local authorities refused to cooperate, the Board backed down. From now on, it could only 'contemplate the ruin of even its own limited brand of Hadow reorganisation', its annual reports seeking to cover up 'the smallness of advances' (Simon 1974:191).
Even so, as late as 1938 it must record that 78 per cent of rural schools remained all-age, or unreorganised. These were schools in the areas of Conservative county authorities which had been too slow off the mark to get the benefit of Trevelyan's grants; and, in particular, schools belonging to the Churches which had betrayed the children's interests in pursuit of their own by digging the grave of Trevelyan' s education Bills (Simon 1974:191).
The Labour Party, meanwhile, faced with an overwhelming majority of Tory MPs in the National Government, was in the doldrums. Its annual conference in the autumn of 1933 called for the raising of the leaving age 'without delay' - but only to 15. Ernest Bevin, of the Transport and General Workers' Union protested about 'a wishy-washy thing of this character' (quoted in Simon 1974:192), and the resolution was amended to call for a leaving age of 16.
It was as well, for this was to become a key question as the term of the National Government drew to a close and demands arose for a constructive alternative policy to end the standstill imposed on the education service (Simon 1974:192).
London County Council: calls for comprehensivisation
In 1934, Labour won control of London County Council for the first time. After calling on the government to raise the school leaving age to 15 by April 1935, the new Council set up a special joint sub-committee to consider post-primary education. With members representing both elementary and secondary sectors, it was chaired by Barbara Drake (1876-1963) who, in 1929, had urged Trevelyan to develop multi-bias schools.
The sub-committee, however, was faced with a director of education, EM Rich, who favoured the status quo. She argued that:
The great majority of London's children are destined to pursue occupations which will make little demand upon specialised gifts ... To give a more expensive form of education, therefore, to more than a proportion of London children would be misuse of the educational system ... It is ... advisable ... to concentrate expensive forms of educational training in relatively few schools, in which efficiency is ensured by the homogeneity of the pupils and of their purpose. Anything which would lower the standard of such schools would be most regrettable. It is questionable whether, even at present, we do not admit to them, too freely, children of mediocre gifts. It is characteristic of the British character that the spirit of healthy competition should provide the necessary stimulus to effort. This finds expression in our scholarship system ... in such a way that children even at an early age shall strive for facilities denied to the idle or indifferent (quoted in Simon 1974:193-4).
Her arguments did not deter the sub-committee, whose report argued for 'a system of post-primary education which will function as an integral whole rather than in separate departments or types of school like the present system' (quoted in Simon 1974:194). It went on to advocate multilateral schools providing a variety of courses:
We have considered a suggestion that this unity of post-primary education might be achieved by the establishment of a new type of school which would be large enough to provide within its four walls most, or all, of the activities now carried on in existing types of post-primary school. ... The new type of schools would be organised in such a way that a good general education could be given for the first few years of the course, during which the pupils would find their proper level and bent through the adoption of the 'sets' system; thereafter, special facilities would be available for differentiations in the curriculum according to the abilities and aptitudes of the pupils. In such a 'multi-type' or 'multi-bias' school, it should be comparatively easy to transfer a pupil from one side to another according to the development of his interests and abilities, without incurring any psychological disturbances such as may arise from a further change in the locale of his school (quoted in Simon 1974:194).
This was the strongest challenge yet to the limited form of Hadow reorganisation being promoted by the Board of Education.
Meanwhile, similar arguments were being made by the TUC and sections of the teaching profession in evidence to the Consultative Committee (now chaired by Will Spens) which, from early in 1934, was working on a new reference relating to the organisation and content of secondary education.
The School Age Council
Another challenge to the government came from the School Age Council, formed in the summer of 1934, with JJ Mallon, the warden of Toynbee Hall, as secretary. This was a hugely influential body, with representatives of industry and the trade unions, the Church of England and the Free Churches, and the local authorities - including 79 education committee chairmen and 81 directors of education (Simon 1974:199).
They faced a government determined not to give way on education expenditure. In July 1934 the President of the Board of Education, Lord Halifax (Edward Wood, who had previously been Lord Irwin but had recently succeeded his father), told the Lords that it would cost £8m to raise the leaving age, that the nation could not afford it, that it was complicated, and that there were other pressing measures. All these issues, he said, 'prevent His Majesty's Government at the present time from considering the raising of the school leaving age as practical politics' (quoted in Simon 1974:199).
A deputation from the School Age Council met Ramsay MacDonald on 20 February 1935. Percy Jackson, Chair of the West Riding Education Committee, pointed out that they were a very conservative body - far from 'rabid enthusiasts for education' (quoted in Simon 1974:201). The Warden of All Souls College, Dr WGS Adams, summed up the Council's position. MacDonald said he agreed that the leaving age should be raised, and that the Board of Education had already been instructed to conduct a study of the matter.
This was disingenuous of the Prime Minister, to say the least, since Halifax had had great difficulty in persuading Cabinet colleagues of the urgency of the issue, and by the autumn of 1934 the government had already decided that, with the election less than a year away, no legislation would be introduced in the present parliament.
Meanwhile, thousands of children were still growing up ill-fed and ill-housed, while their education had been 'pared to the bone' (Simon 1974:196). More than eighty per cent still left school at 14 to take up dead-end jobs which ended in unemployment queues:
It is a striking, and a deplorable, fact that very large numbers of children continue to enter the cotton industry in areas in which that industry is already seriously overcrowded (Jewkes and Winterbottom 1933:31).
Indeed, the cotton factories employed more than forty per cent of the boys in Nelson and Colne, thirty per cent in Oldham; and over sixty per cent of the girls in Bolton, Leigh, Farnworth and Pendlebury districts (Simon 1974:217).
Yet the government was allowing schools to deteriorate, preventing both new building and repairs, despite the fact that local authorities which had taken advantage of Trevelyan's measures already had accommodation waiting for the extra year group, and that other authorities were ready to proceed once the funding was made available. Jewkes and Winterbottom noted that, in Lancashire, for example:
with very few exceptions, the authorities are even now ready to proceed with new building operations as soon as the Board are prepared to sanction further capital expenditure (Jewkes and Winterbottom 1933:86-7).
Two things were changing, however. On the one hand, economic recovery was beginning to gather pace; and on the other, there was growing social awareness of the problems. It was no longer credible for the National Government to argue that 'the nation cannot afford it', while at the same time claiming the credit for the improving state of the economy.
In 1935, the new President of the Board, Oliver Stanley (1896-1950), 'whose qualifications for the office were as slender as those of his predecessor' (Simon 1974:208) announced the withdrawal of the universally unpopular Circular 1413, which had been issued to implement the May Committee's cuts.
1935 General Election
By October 1935 the National Government felt able to include in its election manifesto a promise to raise the leaving age. 'It remained to fight for redemption of that promise in 1936 when the limitations of Conservative conversion to the cause of educational reform duly became apparent' (Simon 1974:198).
The manifesto, says Brian Simon, was 'a curious document'. It was, of course, 'difficult ... to convey genuine concern for popular education' when it was 'the firm intention not to permit development beyond strictly defined limits' (Simon 1974:208). It described the proposition of raising the leaving age as doctrinaire and announced that 'The National Government have therefore decided to legislate to raise the school leaving age to 15, with a right to exemptions between 14 and 15 for beneficial employment' (quoted in Simon 1974:209).
This was
A carefully prepared position ... which might do something to give the government a progressive image among the uninitiated, and which certainly helped to fill out an election manifesto which would otherwise have been unduly bare (Simon 1974:210).
Labour's manifesto stressed the need to press ahead with reorganisation, to provide nursery schools and better facilities for school meals, and to raise the school leaving age 'at once'. The notion of free secondary education for all was mentioned but given no priority. No doubt this was because expectations were low, given the endless cuts that had bedevilled education since 1931.
The election was held on 14 November 1935. Labour, now led by Clement Attlee (1883-1967), regained much of the ground it had lost in 1931, but the new National Government was overwhelmingly Conservative and Baldwin became Prime Minister again.
Circular 1444
In January 1936 the Board of Education issued Circular 1444, a ten-page pamphlet entitled 'Administrative Programme of Educational Development', which offered some prospect of increased funding for the school medical service and special schools. An Exchequer grant of 50 per cent (up from 20 per cent), for the building of new senior elementary schools was temporarily granted. The cap on the proportion of special places in secondary schools - which many authorities had ignored anyway - was lifted, and the number of university scholarships was increased from 300 to 360, though these publicly-financed scholarships were now also offered to pupils of independent schools, who were 'in an advantageous position to secure them' (Simon 1974:218).
Secondary education in the 1930s
Lowndes notes that in 1934 there were 448,421 pupils in secondary schools, of whom 216,255 had free places, 15,152 had partial remission of fees, and 217,000 whose parents paid full fees. But only 119 in a thousand elementary pupils in England had the opportunity of a secondary-school place at eleven; in Wales, by contrast, the figure was 223. Despite these figures, says Lowndes,
a feeling has spread in Whitehall and parliamentary circles and among the local authorities themselves that the country probably has for the present enough accommodation in secondary schools (which should look to the university) to satisfy the specific needs for which such schools should cater in a modern community (Lowndes 1937:120).
Thus there was a huge gulf between the views of the government on the one side and the teachers - who understood the realities of the school system - on the other.
The number of School Certificate candidates taking craft, technical, domestic and commercial subjects, art and music increased in the 1930s. Botany declined, but biology, which had only recently been introduced, became popular. In 1937, English, French and mathematics were taken by more than 90 per cent of entrants, geography by 69 per cent. Of the sciences, chemistry was taken by 35 per cent, physics by 27 per cent, and physics-with-chemistry by 10.3 per cent (Lawson and Silver 1973:389).
Fears of a new recession in 1937 faded as a result of rearmament: government expenditure increased and unemployment fell. New industries using advanced techniques made new demands on education, but this did not translate into new policies: 'the traditional pattern of ideas continued to prevail in high places and at the administrative level' (Simon 1974:251).
Thus the public schools were expected to provide recruits for leading positions both at home and abroad; elementary schools prepared manual workers to work in industries 'which made comparatively few demands in terms of skill over and above what could be acquired on the job' (Simon 1974:252); and secondary schools provided clerical workers for commerce and banking, and recruits for teaching and other 'lesser professions'.
There was, argues Brian Simon,
no thought for the future in terms of economic trends and the need for a new standard of mass education - let alone concern for the present welfare of the majority of children (Simon 1974:254).
The Board of Education's Consultative Committee had been suspended during the First World War. It was reconstituted by Order in Council dated 22 July 1920 and, in the ten years between 1923 and 1933, produced six reports under the chairmanship of Sir Henry Hadow (1859-1937) (pictured), an educationist (Vice Chancellor of the University of Sheffield from 1919 to 1930), a well-known music critic and a prodigious writer. These reports - totalling 1,500 pages, around 650,000 words - covered issues at all stages of schooling from the nursery to the school leaving age.
Cyril Burt (1883-1971) (pictured) had been appointed educational psychologist to the London County Council (LCC) in 1913. Along with other proponents of eugenics, he had developed the theory of fixed or 'innate' intelligence, which was to have profound implications for the organisation of schools, both internally and externally.
