Educational Policy to 1979 The Origins of Education

1. Educational Policy to 1979The Origins of Education Education and equal opportunity, as policies of the British government, date back only as far as the Second World War.

2. History of Government Policy • 1870 Forster’s Education Act • 1944 Education Act & Tripartite system • 1965 Comprehensives • 1970’s Progressive Education • 1988 Education Act: Thatcher & New Right • 1980’s The New Vocationalism • 1997 New Labour & Blair

3. 1870 The Origins of the State School System • Forster’s Education Act of 1870 created the first national system of Primary Schools. • In 1880 attendance up to the age of 10 was made compulsory. • Fisher’s Act after the First World War introduced compulsory secondary education to the age of 14. • Bright children from the working class could go on to grammar school, if their parents could afford it, or if they could win a scholarship.

4. Why was State Education Introduced? - 1The Philosophy Behind Government Policy • From the first the State cooperated with private sector [Public schools] and subsidised charity schools [denominational/church]. • Government Board Schools filled in the gaps. • The 2nd Reform Act of 1867 gave the vote to skilled working men [artisans]. The 3rd Act of 1884 extended the vote to rural craftsmen. All men @ 21+ & all women @ 30+ were given the vote in 1918, as a reward for their patriotism and sacrifice in the 1st World War. The Bourgeoisie believed that for democracy to work: ‘We must educate our Masters’.

5. Why was State Education Introduced? - 2The Philosophy Behind Government Policy • The Second Industrial Revolution of the late 1800’s introduced a partnership between entrepreneurs, scientists, technicians, skilled workers and machine-minders. • When the Great War bogged down in the trenches, science and technology were called upon to break the deadlock, backed by mass production on ‘Fordist’ assembly lines. • Modernity & Functionalism dictated that the countries with the most skilled and educated work force would be the ones to dominate the market and to survive in the age of Total War.

6. Why was State Education Introduced? - 3The Philosophy Behind Government Policy • Functionalists argued that specialisation & the Division of Labour made equality of opportunity vital. To compete and survive, every state needed to maximise the skill potential of its children, regardless of their class or gender,. • Social Democrats saw equal opportunity as a matter of social justice and a way to engineer a more equal society. Unlike Functionalists, they didn’t think it could work without government intervention to offset the advantages that MC children enjoyed over their WC peers. • Liberals saw education as a way to liberate the creativity of the individual & empower progress.

7. Why was State Education Introduced? - 4The Philosophy Behind Government Policy • Neo-Marxists and the Left argued that from the first the system was not designed to produce a meritocracy. Rather, it reinforced class continuity, by instilling bourgeois values into children: docility, thrift, hard work, physical strength, deference to authority & the patriarchal oppression of women. • They supported this view by claiming that Fordism [mechanised production] actually ‘de-skilled’ WC craftsmen and reduced them to being docile, pauperised machine minders.

8. Why was State Education Introduced? - 5The Philosophy Behind Government Policy • The Second World War [1939-45] was the ‘People’s War’; one that the nation survived only by the skin of its teeth. Classes had been mixed together more than at any time in History; everyone was ‘in it together’, ‘doing their bit’. Everyone suffered together and everyone looked out for each other. • The National Government, even during the war drew up plans for dramatic social reforms. The most important were the NHS, the Social Security Act and the Butler Education Act. • Attlee’s Labour Government of 1945, which surprised the world by beating Winston Churchill, was committed to social democracy.

9. 1944 The Key Features of the Butler Education Act • Free and compulsory secondary education for all until the age of at least 15. [1972, 16] • Selection at an 11+ test to find the Intelligence Quotient for each child, on the basis of literacy, numeracy & non-verbal reasoning. • A Tripartite System that was supposed to deliver ‘parity of esteem’ [but didn’t]. • Grammar schools provided an academic education for brighter [mainly MC] children. • Technical Schools concentrated on technology, science and creative subjects. • Secondary Modern Schools offered vocational and life training courses to the masses.

10. Why was there growing criticism of the Butler Act by 1965? 1 • Vernon showed that IQ Tests are not ‘culture free’. You cannot test natural intelligence, without going through nurtured experience. Any IQ test will tell you more about social variables than innate [born with] intelligence. • Factors like diet, gender, parental involvement, learning opportunities, ethnicity, relative stimulation of the child’s environment and the negative influence of peers all influence performance. In short: IQ tests mainly tested social class.

11. Why was there growing criticism of the Butler Act by 1965? 2 • Guildford showed that people actually had many intelligences, [not just one central processor with a fixed speed]. Educational testing was blinkered: it was missing the real skills, abilities and potentialities that children actually possessed. [= Learning Preferences] • Secondary Modern students were proving that selection didn’t work by passing the new CSE exams and even the O-Levels, used by Grammars. Many of these ‘late developers’ went on to college. Critics said they were not ‘late’, so much as discriminated against.

12. Why was there growing criticism of the Butler Act by 1965? 3 • Britain’s economy boomed in the 1950’s and business needed more educated workers. • The division between Grammar and Secondary Modern was evidently class based and the degree of social mobility limited. • The availability of grammar places was uneven by region. It was easier to get in in some places than others and there were never enough grammar schools for girls. • Technical schools were expensive to equip and so only a few showpieces were built.

13. Comprehensive Schools 1Labour Education Act: 1965 • A new Labour government required all LEA’s to introduce Comprehensives schools. • MC pupils dominated the grammar schools, but Secondary Moderns could not provide access to the full range of educational opportunities. • By amalgamating and expanding schools, large, well provisioned comprehensives were formed that could offer academic, technical and modern curricula. • New mixed schools would teach children of all abilities and classes, under one roof.

14. Comprehensive Schools: 2 The Philosophy • Wilson’s Labour government saw the new schools as Social Democracy in action. • The schools would break down the barriers between classes & increase social mobility. • By offering all children the opportunity to take their education as far as they could, they would make a reality of the ideals of ‘equal opportunity and meritocracy. • Removing arbitrary selection at 11 would maximise the nation’s human resources. • Bigger schools could offer a broader curriculum with cultural & sporting excellence.

15. Comprehensive Schools: 3Education for All • Comprehensives absorbed many children with special educational needs, previously segregated in ‘Special Schools’. • The leaving age was raised to 16 in 1972. • The Polytechnics, vocational universities offering HND/HNC qualifications, and the Open University increased access to learning for adults. • Education Action Zones 1967, targeted resources at schools in deprived areas. This was social democratic ‘compensatory education’: it redistributed wealth to the poor.

16. The 1970’s : Progressive Teaching Methods 1 • Dewey in Education & Human Potential 1953 popularised Liberal methods in education. Experimental schools,like Neill’s Summerhill or the Steiner schools were based on similar concepts. • Child-centred learning privileged independent study and student choice. The aim was to encourage the student to develop their own questions and answers. Children were not to be passive recipients of bourgeois indoctrination. Education shouldn’t stuff kids with MC values and stale facts.

17. The 1970’s : Progressive Teaching Methods 2 • Progressive methods seemed especially appropriate to Primary Education, where formalism and learning by rote gave way to learning through play and group activities. • Schools, especially in Labour-held LEA’s, were given more freedom over the curriculum. Teachers could select subjects they felt were most in tune with their pupils’ needs. • Exam Boards introduced coursework to end ‘exam discrimination’ against the WC pupil. • Teachers could actually write CSE Mode 3 exams for their pupils & mark them.

18. The 1970’s: Progressive Teaching Methods 3 • Most controversially, Schools experimented with Mixed Ability Teaching to avoid the labelling and social divisions caused by streaming or setting. • This could only function if the children were working at different levels on the same topic or on different topics. Therefore the method implied a less teacher-centred, less disciplined, less didactic approach. A more informal classroom atmosphere resulted. • The abolition of caning typified the less authoritarian style of progressive learning.

19. Halsey, Heath & Ridge: Origins and Destinations 1980.Evaluating Comprehensives 1 • Even to supporters of comprehensivisation, its results had been disappointing. • There was little evidence that social mobility had increased significantly. • Conservative councils retained grammar schools. Where there was still selection the ‘comprehensives’ effectively remained secondary modern schools: the grammars ‘skimmed the cream’ off each cohort. The ‘comps’ could not compete & were then unfairly slated, in the press, as bad schools.

20. Halsey, Heath & Ridge: Origins and Destinations 1980. Evaluating Comprehensives 2 • Socialists objected that comprehensives segregated children internally by streaming for groups of subjects or setting for particular subjects. MC children were more likely to be found in the top sets than WC snots. • MC parents used their cultural capital to subvert the system and create a postcode lottery. WC kids went to the bog-standard comp in the inner cities. MC kids went to the ‘Leafy-Suburb’ school with better results, a more active PFA, better facilities & a more highly qualified staff with a lower turnover.

21. New Right Critique of Comprehensives & Progressive Education 1 • James Callaghan, Labour PM, initiated the Great Debate on Education in 1976, in response to growing concerns about results. • The CBI complained that standards were falling. School-leavers lacked essential skills in the Three R’s: Reading, ‘Riting & ‘Rithmatic. • The crime figures, hooliganism, drug abuse, sexual liberation and the rise in abortions & teen pregnancies suggested that ‘Religion’, the 4th R, wasn’t doing so well either. • It was argued that discipline in schools had suffered from liberal teaching methods.

22. New Right Critique of Comprehensives & Progressive Education 2 • Mixed ability teaching seemed to be holding back the brightest to the pace of the slowest. Few teachers could make it work in practice, because it seemed to require personal planning, worksheets & coaching for 30 kids. • British kids appeared to be falling behind European kids in key skills and abilities. • People questioned the value or rigour of CSE’s and worried that governments were watering down the exams, in order to claim more progress than was actually being made.

23. New Right Critique of Comprehensives & Progressive Education 3 • ‘Looney Left’ councils, especially the ILEA in London, were accused of brainwashing kids with socialist propaganda, pyscho-babble & trendy fads: hyper-feminist textbooks, peace studies, trade union History, anti-racism in every lesson, save the whales etc. • There was a concern that schools were neglecting the basics of literacy & numeracy • The curriculum was not geared to the needs of industry. This was crucial at a time of high unemployment & lack of competitiveness.