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Room 261 University of London Senate House London, Wcie 7Hu n :e a c a d e .1C registrar ROOM 261 UNIVERSITY OF LONDON SENATE HOUSE LONDON, WCIE 7HU foi THE EDUCATIONAL POLICIES OF THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY, 1918-1944 Kevin Jefferys (Bedford College) Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Ll: JLXN/! ProQuest Number: 10098489 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest. ProQuest 10098489 Published by ProQuest LLC(2016). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 ABSTRACT This thesis sets out to examine the role played by the Conservative Party in the evolution of the state education system between 1918 and 1944. The early chapters provide a chronological account of ministerial policy and party attitudes towards secondary and elementary education between the wars. This is followed by assessments of the party's approach to the dual system of council and church schools, and to the problems of ' education for employment '. The manner in which Conservative education policy operated locally is then examined with particular reference to the area of London; and the arguments put forward are brought together finally by an analysis of the party's responsibility for, and reaction to, the 1944 Education Act. The two main themes of the thesis are the working of the modern Conservative Party and the history of education as a political issue, which has arguably been over-simplified in existing accounts. It is demonstrated here that Conservative ministerial policy contributed more to the development of state schools than has been realised, especially in the case of Lord Eustace Percy; and that party opinion - though traditionally hostile or indifferent to education - became more receptive to the need for reform during the 1930s. In this light, it appears that ministers such as Percy saw education as a means of transforming the Conservative approach to social reform, and that the politics of education were characterised by continuity and growing party agreement. These forces came together most conspicuously in the Second World War. R.A. Butler's reform of 1944 looked forward to a more positive party role in social policy, but was based on ideas popularised between the wars; it was accepted by Labour as the realisation of minimum demands made over the past twenty years, and by Conservatives as the logical extension of policies they had recently endorsed. CONTENTS Page Chapter 1. Introduction 4 2. The Unionist Party and the 1918 Education Act 21 3. Educational economy and the formation of 45 Unionist policy, 1918-1924 4. Lord Eustace Percy, the Conservative Party 73 and the 'education of the adolescent', 1924-1929 5. The Conservative Party and educational reform, 106 1929-1939 6. The 'dual system' of church and council 144 schools: Conservatism and religious education between the wars 7. The Conservative Party and the problems 186 of education for employment, 1918-1939 8. Education and local Conservatism between 228 the wars: the Municipal Reform Party and the educational policies of the London County Council 9. Conclusion: R.A. Butler, the Conservative 275 Party and the 1944 Education Act Appendices I. Ministers and leading officials at the 314 Board of Education, 1918-1944 II. Conservative education policy: biographical 315 details of ministers, M.P.s and party supporters Bibliography 320 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION This thesis sets out to examine the role played by the Conservative Party in the evolution of the modern education system, which underwent an important transformation in the first half of the twentieth century. Before the First World War, the two main types of school provided by the state - secondary and elementary - were largely separate and distinct. It was only after the passage of the 1902 Education Act that a small number of children had for the first time attended state- aided secondary schools. The Act offered the old independent foundation schools the option of receiving financial aid from the Exchequer, and also empowered the newly created local education authorities to set up additional municipal schools. As a result a fee-paying minority, usually entering from private preparatory schools, were offered the benefits of an academic curriculum in preparation for higher, university education or for a career in the professions. In the meantime, the great majority of the nation's children remained in the public elementary schools, which operated under an inferior code of administrative regulations at the discretion of either local authorities or voluntary, church, organisations. The elementary school pupil received only basic instruction and left to seek employment at the age of twelve or thirteen, rather than proceeding to any form of further education. The Edwardian period witnessed the first, tentative attempts to relate two forms of schooling hitherto divided rigidly along lines of social class. The free place regulations of 1907 reflected the contemporary concern to create an educational 'ladder', available to all to climb irrespective of background: thereafter at least a quarter of all secondary school places were to be provided free of charge to elementary pupils. In addition, some local authorities sought to improve facilities for the older and more able children attending the elementary schools, either by introducing 'senior classes' within the all-age school or by setting up separate institutions, pioneered in London and Manchester under the name of central schools. The growth of this 'advanced elementary instruction' was handicapped, however, both by regulation and tradition; and at the outbreak of war in 1914 the horizontal stratification of the education system had been neither eroded nor seriously challenged. In the period between 1918 and 1944, which was bounded by two major educational reforms, the notion of separate and parallel types of state school was gradually blurred and ultimately broken down. Fisher's Education Act of 1918 pointed the way by encouraging the expansion of both secondary and advanced or post-elementary education. As concern about 'the education of the adolescent' came to dominate debate, increasing criticism was directed at the absence of an intrinsic connection between the secondary and elementary schools. In particular, the term 'secondary education for all' was used to embody the demand that every child should receive a connected course of training. All children, it was suggested, should receive elementary, or primary, education to the age of eleven, followed by four or five years of secondary instruction in one of several types of school - one of which would be the traditional secondary school - conducted under a single code of statutory regulations. The concept of two successive stages of a unified educational process was not, however, adopted as national policy between the wars. Under the impact of a series of economic recessions, the need to control educational expenditure became a major priority for inter-war governments and ruled out the possibility of significant advances. As far as the adolescent was concerned, successive administrations concentrated on modest improvements within the existing framework. The policy of elementary ’reorganisation', for example, improved standards for the older children by dividing schools into junior and senior departments, but this process - though well advanced by 1939 - still took place within the context of the inferior regulations governing elementary education. The idea of abolishing the regulations which underpinned the existing system was in fact only taken up during the Second World War, which provided a fresh impetus to reform proposals. Amongst its many provisions, the 1944 Education Act laid down that in future all children would attend first primary and then secondary schools, thereby marking official acceptance of the view that the two stages of education were not separate entities but sequential phases of the same process. The following account is concerned with the contribution which the Conservative Party made to the development of the state system between 1918 and 1944. The early chapters provide a chronological account of ministerial policy and party attitudes towards secondary and elementary education between the wars. The issue known to contemporaries as the education of the adolescent provides the main connecting theme for these chapters, which concentrate on two questions in particular - the extent of access to the traditional secondary school, and the form and scope of post-elementary education provided for the remainder of adolescents. The issue of education for the adolescent was itself intimately linked with two further problems examined in the following chapters: the difficulties posed by the 'dual system' of church and council elementary schools, and the ill-defined question of relating education to employment, which involves consideration of other types of provision such as technical education and 'continuation* schooling. The manner in which Conservatives locally tackled the various issues affecting those between the ages of five and eighteen is then raised, with particular reference to the area of London. Finally, the main arguments put forward are brought together by an analysis of the party's responsibility for, and reaction to, the 1944 Act. The evolution of the modern education system was of course the product of a wide range of factors, and the approach adopted here does not allow full treatment to be given to the complex administrative, professional and popular pressures which helped to shape the school structure after the First World War. These forces are dealt with primarily where they impinge upon the main concerns of this study, which are twofold.
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