"Changing definitions of equality lie at the heart of educational policy during the twentieth century". Do you agree?

The first change in law to break with this de-facto class-segregation in education was the so-called Free Place Regulation in 1907. It obliged all secondary schools receiving grants from the Board of Education to provide 25 percent of their places to elementary school pupils who passed a qualifying examination. The Free Place Regulation introduced some mobility between the dead end road of common elementary school and the track that led up to secondary and university education. However, such mobility remained the exception. When the First World War broke out in 1914, only 56 out of 1000 elementary school pupils aged 10 to 11 went on to secondary education. Lower class children going to university were still an abnormality capable of causing quite a stir:

When Lionel Elvin, for example, eventually won a scholarship to Cambridge, his old village elementary school at Buckhurst Hill had a half-day’s holiday

The Great War spurred on educational reform in two ways. On the one hand it reinforced fears of falling behind other nations, notably Germany whose fighting power and industrial capacity once more astonished Europe. Even more important, however, was the social solidarity created by the war. Herbert Fisher, the President of the Board of Education at the time, referred to this common sentiment when introducing the Education Act of 1918 with the words:

when you get a state of affairs under which the poor are asked to pour out their blood and to be mulcted in the high cost of living for large international policies, then every just mind begins to realize that the boundaries of citizenship are not determined by wealth, and that the same logic which leads us to desire an extension of the franchise points also to an extension of education.

The 1918 Education Act introduced major reforms. It strengthened the local authorities, reformed the grant system so that not less than 50 percent of the cost of education was paid for with central government funds, it abolished all fees in elementary schools, raised the school leaving age to 14 and eliminated all exemptions from this rule. However, the two-tier system remained essential in place and despite the beginning change in attitudes, the Act contained strong remnants of the old thinking. Fisher, himself an Oxford graduate, was sure that

 [The poor] do not want [education] in order that they may rise out of their own class, always a vulgar ambition, they want it, they want it because they know that in the treasures of the mind they can find … a refuge from the necessary hardships of a life spent in the midst of clanging machinery in our hideous cities of toil

What is more, the economic difficulties of the interwar years led to a period of educational retrenchment which showed itself in the half-hearted implementation of the Fisher Act. Social class continued to determine most children’s education. University intake rose, but remained the privilege of a small, largely socially selected minority.

And yet, the changes the Great War had prompted ran deep and began to surface in the interwar period. The Labour party, which emerged as the main opposition to the Conservatives, began to demand secondary education for all children. It directly attacked the two-tier system and clamoured for secondary education to be defined not in terms of a particular curriculum, ethos or social class, but simply in relation to the age range of pupils. In this, Labour was strongly influenced by the historian R.H. Tawney. In his work Secondary Education For All (1922), he declared secondary education to be a right of all ‘being the education of the adolescent and primary education being education preparatory thereto’. One should not underestimate the passions educational reform could arouse in its advocates during these years. Improving elementary education for the masses and introducing universal secondary education promised to bring equality of opportunity. A society where class did not hinder individual advancement seemed within grasp, indeed, some even thought a classless society possible.

Even though such promises would eventually be revealed as overly optimistic, they found fertile ground in interwar society and achieved their political breakthrough when in 1924 the Labour party came to power for the first time in its history. Ramsay MacDonald’s government commissioned a report on “The Education of the Adolescent” which was published in 1926 and became widely known as the ‘Hadow Report’. This report recommended the institution of secondary education for all children, following six years of primary education. Furthermore it advocated the raising of the minimum school leaving age to 15 and the establishment of ‘modern secondary schools’ which ought to have a more ‘practical’ and ‘realistic’ curriculum than the traditional Grammar schools which had hitherto dominated the secondary sector.

The Hadow Report proved most influential and determined policy in the following decades. Even though financial constraints prevented a large scale reorganization of the educational system in the 1930s, the transformation of schooling according to Hadow’s principles began in these years.  The Hadow Report was complemented by other papers, such as the Spens Report (1938) and Norwood Report (1943) which expanded on Hadow’s ideas and envisaged the tripartite division of secondary education into grammar, technical and modern schools. Finally, the government published a White Paper on Educational Reconstruction (1943) in which it acknowledged that the new layout of the education system was to be ‘based on a recognition of the principle that education is a continuous process conducted in successive stages’.

When the Education Act of 1944 turned these suggestions into law, it meant the end of the formal two-tier structure of state education. Free secondary education for all children between 11 and 15 was introduced. The system was to be tripartite, divided into the classic Grammar schools, secondary modern and technical schools. Pupils were to be selected for the different types based on their school records, parental wishes and the results of what became known as the 11+ examination. Despite these deep reaching changes in social attitudes and law, the private schools managed to retain their elitist character. Similarly, access to universities did not expand substantially until the 1960s and despite improvements the student body continued to have a strong social bias against children with working class background.

Universal secondary education certainly was a great advance over previous policies that had excluded the majority of children from any systematic instruction between 11 and 15. However, social problems persisted and the dream of a society where class did not hinder individual development remained elusive. The secondary technical schools failed to fulfil earlier hopes placed in them and were soon abandoned by government planners. Furthermore, it emerged that the educational quality offered in Grammar schools was greatly superior to that in most secondary modern schools, the latter often being little more than a ‘depository of the unsuccessful – the rag bag into which children who have not made the grade are put’. In this context the 11+ examinations which seemed to favour children from middle- and upper-class background became increasingly controversial. What made matters worse and more complicated was that even those working-class children who qualified for Grammar schools were on average less successful and dropped out of the education system earlier than their middle class peers.

The Labour party, in many respects responsible for the system then in place, became increasingly hostile to it and proposed a new concept: the comprehensive school. These large, all-ability schools were to combine grammar and secondary schools into one, offering a broad range of courses and, allegedly, equal opportunities for all. When Labour returned to power in 1964 it promptly began establishing comprehensive schools as the main form of secondary education in England and Wales. By the 1990s over 90 per cent of secondary school pupils were being educated in comprehensive schools.

In a sense the driving force behind the comprehensive school experiment was different from that which had motivated earlier reforms. No longer was the definition of equality changing, thereby pushing educational reform ahead. The aim – equality of opportunity for all – was the same in 1964 as it had been in 1944. Thus, the motivation behind the introduction of comprehensive schools was the attempt to find a new structural solution to the persisting problem of social disadvantage in education. But again it failed. Not only were comprehensive schools clearly outperformed by the private ‘public school’ sector, but in addition a hierarchy emerged within the comprehensive school system. Because pupils were mainly recruited from the neighbourhood of the school, wealthy areas soon boasted more successful schools than underprivileged regions such as the inner cities. Studies in the early 1980s found a resilient pattern of low achievement on the part of working-class pupils. Thatcher’s government did not address these problems in any fundamental way. Educational reform in the 1980s did not make any substantial structural changes but instead focused on educational content and the reduction of costs.

Today the comprehensive school system is widely regarded as a failure. However, it is not clear how the problem should be tackled. In 1997 the Tory party proposed a return to grammar schools, an idea that was rejected by the new Labour government, mainly because it would have meant a return to a two-tier system. Instead, Labour launched a new school reform that encouraged specialist schools such as faith schools, city academies and schools sponsored by business. Existing comprehensive schools were encouraged to acquire a ‘distinctive ethos and [to] tailor teaching to the needs of individual pupils. Yet, so far no decisive successes have been achieved and social disadvantages remain a commonly recognized feature of secondary education.

In higher education the broad trends were similar to the developments in the secondary sector. The first half of the century saw steady but restricted growth. The Robbins Report (1963) marked the beginning of a new phase. It followed earlier reports in its recognition that social rather than genetic reasons determined the admission of students into university. This was a decisive change in the attitude (towards equality) which had wide-ranging implications for higher education policy. The Robbins report proposed to raise the percentage of the age group in full-time higher education from 8 to 17 per cent and urged the government to provide financial support for a large scale expansion of the higher education sector in preparation for the enormous baby-boom birth cohort. The government largely followed the Robbins Report’s advice, the predictions of which proved on the whole correct. The total student population in full-time higher education in the UK doubled between 1963 and 1970/1 to 457000 and more than doubled again to reach 1,131,000 in 1997/8. By the late 20th century, almost one in three young persons went from school to higher education, whereas only one in 18 had done so in 1900. However, the general tendency of inequality of educational attainment depending on social class persisted. Despite a considerable increase in absolute numbers, the proportions of those entering higher education from manual working families have hardly increased by comparison with those from the professional and managerial classes. In higher education, just as in the secondary sector, the target of equality of opportunity has been firmly established, in the process determining the direction of policy. However, it has so far proven an elusive goal.

In this essay I have argued that twentieth century British educational policy was crucially determined by perceptions of equality and the way in which these evolved. Education, initially seen as a means to enforce a corporatist social structure was fundamentally transformed by a change in attitudes that culminated in the emergence of the ‘equality of opportunity’ ideal by the mid-twentieth century. Educational policy in the remaining decades consisted mainly of various attempts to realize this aim in the secondary and higher education sector. It thus seems fair to conclude that, indeed, changing definitions of equality lay at the heart of educational policy during the twentieth century.

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quotes to open up or to use in essay:

We are born weak, we need strength; helpless, we need aid; foolish, we need reason. All that we lack at birth, all that we need when we come to man’s estate, is the gift of education. – Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Nous naissons faibles, nous avons besoin de force; nous naissons dépourvus de tout, nous avons besoin d'assistance; nous naissons stupides, nous avons besoin de jugement. Tout ce que nous n'avons pas à notre naissance et dont nous avons besoin étant grands, nous est donné par l'éducation. – Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The want of education and moral training is the only real barrier that exists between the different classes of men. Nature, reason, and Christianity recognize no other. Pride may say Nay; but Pride was always a liar, and a great hater of the truth. - Susanna Moodie (1803-1885) – Canadian Writer

Author: Oscar Wilde, The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and probably lead to acts of violence in Grosvenor Square.

Author: H. Seton Merriman Topic: Gentlemen; He was the product of an English public school and university. He was, moreover, a modern product of those seats of athletic exercise. He had little education and highly devloped muscles-that is to say, he was no scholar, but essentially a gentleman.

• the pen-name, of Hugh Stowell Scott, English novelist. He was a member of the firm of Henry Scott & Sons, and was for some years an underwriter at Lloyds. His literary career began in 1889 with The Phantom Future, and he made his first decided hit with his Russian story, The Sowers (1896), which was followed by many other well-constructed novels remarkable for excellence of plot and literary handling.

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