EDUCATION ACT

Education Act of 1944



Education Act of 1944

1) How did wartime and pre-wartime social & economic conditions influence the intent of the 1944 Act?

Among victors and vanquished alike, the experiences of the Second World War would generate a reconsideration of basic social and political arrangements among actors and create new possibilities for institutional change. In the case of education policy, the war would dramatically accelerate the demands for greater access to schooling that the interwar period had witnessed. More than anything, the experience would make clear to Britons the manifold lapses in the basic education of the country's young people and usher in what Barber refers to as a “social sea change” that would bring together actors to reform the system of general education.

To be sure, the most vocal advocates for change were on the Left. Led by a coalition comprised of the National Union of Teachers, the Trades Union Congress (TUC), and the Workers' Educational Association, all of which would come together in 1942 to form the Campaign for Educational Advance, an advocacy group chaired by Tawney, progressive supporters of educational expansion would travel throughout the country in the war years demanding reforms of the type that Tawney himself had called for twenty years earlier in Secondary Education for All and the Hadow and Spens reports had reaffirmed (Barber, 1994: 4).

By the start of the war, however, more traditionally conservative groups and media outlets, included the military, the Church of England, the BBC and The Times, would also begin making clear their support for fundamental changes to the structure of the general education system. Although Labour would serve in government in a wartime coalition with the Conservatives beginning in 1940, it would be Tory R.A. Butler who would oversee the Education Act from his appointment as President of the Board of Education to the Board by Prime Minister Winston Churchill in July 1941 through its passage in summer of 1944.

2) What reports on educational issues influenced the content and aims of the 1944 Act?

The English Education Act of 1944 might well be considered the most voluminous educational reform act in English history. In fact, it was so comprehensive that the populace of war-torn Britain, without full knowledge of its contents, misnamed it revolutionary. However, the contents of the comprehensive act were not at all novels or revolutionary, but rather a rewriting of an entire century of educational documents.

The educational system of 1940 was sadly lacking, but only as a result of minimal implementation of already existing educational legislation. Between the years of 1859 and 1938, eight major education acts had been issued. Each piece of legislation had brought with it innovations capable of advancing the system of its time. Therefore, to imply that the Education Act of 1944 was revolutionary would doom these prior acts to being worth no more than the paper they were written on, robbing them of their individual importance. By analyzing all sections of these acts, whether implemented or not, we ...