Education in Britain

1900 - Present Day

Question 1 = 20 marks

Read the following extract from the 1944 Education Act and answer the Question which follows.

"Local Education Authorities are required to provide secondary schools which are sufficient to give all pupils opportunities for education taking into account their ages, abilities, and aptitudes."

Using your classwork notes, textbooks, video notes, and your own knowledge, explain why the government thought it was necessary to pass the 1944 Education Act.

The government thought it was necessary to pass the 1944 Education Act, for several reasons. The main reason for the new act was that the government was actually breaking the law, by allowing clever children to stay on at schools to ages over 11 years of age. The other reasons were that the government wanted all children to develop their full educational potential. They felt this could be achieved in several ways. Firstly, they decided that children should be educated from the age of five up to the age of fifteen. They also decided that children's abilities should be tested at the age of eleven, and that they should then go on to the most appropriate type of secondary school. These schools would be either Grammar, Secondary, or Technical and would teach a different range of subjects.

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Since 1900, there have been a number of attempts to improve children's education the main acts were:

1902        Balfour's Act,

1906        Provisions of Meals Act,

1907        Health Inspections Act,

1918        Fisher's Act, raising school leaving age,

1926        The Hadow Report,

1938        The Spens Report.

All of these attempted to solve different social and educational problems that were critical at the time, however, by the end of the 1930's, the schools generally were seen as not being good enough.

Balfour's Act abolished the school boards, which had been created by Forster's Act of 1870. In its place, there were created a total of 315 Local Education Authorities ...

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