Post-War School Building with Special Reference to the Problems Faced by the Hampshire Local Education Authority
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Durham E-Theses Post-war school building with special reference to the problems faced by the Hampshire local education authority Edwards, P. E. How to cite: Edwards, P. E. (1962) Post-war school building with special reference to the problems faced by the Hampshire local education authority, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/9563/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk 2 Post-War School Building with Special Reference to the Problems faced by the Hampshire Local Education Authority. Thesis for the Degree of Master of Eduoation by PoEo Edwards, M„A. September 1962. TABLE OP CONTENTS Chapter 1 Introduction Chapter 2 Facing the problem Chapter 3 The Background to the Building Programmes of the 1950's Chapter 4 The Building Programmes 1950-1962 Chapter 5 The Evolution of Design in Post War Primary Schools Chapter 6 The Evolution of Post War Secondary School Design and Planning Chapter 7 Voluntary Schools Chapter 8 Further Education Building 1945-1962 Chapter 9 Current and Future Problems Post-War School Building with special reference to the problems faced by the Hampshire Local Education Authority i Ch.I. Introduction The statutory duty of Local Authorities to provide suitable and sufficient schools for their areas is laid down in unequivocal fashion in Sections 8 and 9 of the Education Act, 1944* I*1 particu• lar, the Act states''' the schools available for an area shall not be deemed to be sufficient unless they are sufficient in number, character and equipment to afford for all pupils opportunities for education offering such variety of instruction and training as may be desirable in view of their different ages, abilities and aptitudes, and of the different periods for which they may be expected to remain at school, including practical instruction and training appropriate to their respective needs." The various kinds of schools which are desirable to afford opportunity for the different ages, abilities and aptitudes of • " 2 pupils are laid down elsewhere in the Act and the Minister was required to- issue regulations governing the physical standards 3 appropriate to each kind of school. The applause which the Act received from press, political parties and public alike had the effect of concealing the immense burden placed upon the Local Authorities, and it was widely assumed by laymen that the words of the Act would call the ideal educational system into being almost overnight. To-day, eighteen years after the Butler Act reached the Statute Book, it would not be disputed that many of its provisions concerning both the physical conditions in schools and the type and standard of education available to the pupils have not been fully implemented. 1 Section 8 (1) Education Act 1944 2 Section 7 nun 3 Section 10 ' ». " " 1. Lowndes blames this situation on the consequences of the war:- "... although in the realm of ideas the effect of the war had been to advance by fifteen years the popular demand for a public system of education genuinely capable of serving a classless democracy, in the realm of hard facts it had retarded by at least twenty years the possibility of the substantial realisation of any such ideal.The factors which have retarded the physical improvement of the educational system will be investigated in later chapters. At this stage it is more important to assess the size of school building problem faced by the government and the local authorities in the post-war years. The Act itself placed the following additional burden squarely on the Authorities' shoulders:- 1) the need to accommodate the growth in the school popula• tion owing to the raising of the school leaving age from 2 14 to 15 in 1947. This in effect increased the school population by roughly one eleventh and the problem of simply accommodating these additional pupils in the schools was the first priority in the early post-war years. 2) the need to provide separate schools for primary and 3 secondary pupils. Although the more progressive Authorities had started programmes of reorganisation • i after the publishing of the Hadow Report, these had not, been carried very far and indeed the process of reorganisation is still not complete. 3) the educational theories and ideals on which the 1944. Act was based and the Minister's Building.Regulations and Bulletins which put them into practice meant that the. vast majority of schools in the country were at once sub-standard. Thus an enormous programme of 1 G.A.N. Lowndes: The English Educational System, 1960. P 157 2 Section 35 Education Act 1944- 3 Section 8 (2a) Education Act 1944. 2. modernisation of pre-war schools was made necessary, a programme, let it be admitted, which has as yet barely started. 4.) the need to develop an efficient School Meals Service."'' The School Milk and Meals Service had largely developed during the war and its perpetuation set the Authorities the task of planning and building kitchens and dining spaces at every new school and every established school where one was not already provided. Although this burden was not a financial one, since the Minister reimburses fully all authorised expenditure on the School Meals Service, the problem of planning and building kitchens and more particularly dining spaces is one that continues to test L.E.A. officers to this day.; 5) the need to provide Further Education facilities as a logical extension of full-time primary and secondary 2 education. Technical Colleges, Evening Institutes and the like were well known before 1944-* but the Act envisaged a system much more comprehensive than existed before the second world war. The Further Education Building programme has placed a strain on Authorities which is likely to become greater as time goes on - particularly if the provisions of the Act 3 regarding County Colleges are ever implemented. These then were the main additional burdens placed on Local Education Authorities over and above those already stipulated by Acts of Parliament prior to 1944.. But even more important than these factors were the problems which Authorities would have had to face had the 1944- Act never come into force. These factors are . 1 Section 49 Education Act 1944. 2 Section 41 3 Section 4.3 3- briefly as follows:- 1) the need to repair or rebuild schools destroyed or damaged by enemy action. Over 5»000 or about one in every five or six schools were damaged during the war."'" The schools had to be repaired or replaced just at a time when Local Education Authorities were concentrating every effort on providing new school places for the increased school population. 2) the need to accommodate the increased school population owing to the 'bulge' in the birthrate between 1942 - 194$. There were in fact fewer school children just ' 2 after the war than immediately before it, but the effect of the increased school population was felt in the Infant schools between 1948 and 1954» by the Junior schools between 1951 and 1957 and by the Secondary schools between 1955 and 1961. The provision of new school places to accommodate these children in itself set a school building problem of considerable size and duration. 3) the need to build new schools to serve new housing estates or even new towns. The movement of population released a few places in a large number of schools, but the new concentrations of population made new schools necessary in each new estate and a large proportion of educational investment has been made in post-war housing estates. The nett result of these overlapping factors was a schools building problem of immense size. The only comparable school building problem was that of housing "the huge conscripted army of 3 quite young children"^ after the passing of the 1870 Act and the School Boards and Voluntary bodies took as long as their modern counterparts to solve their building problem. Suffice it to say that 1 The Story of Post-war School Building Ministry of Education Pamphlet No.33 Ch.l P.7. 2 - ditto - 3 G.A.N. Lowndes: The Silent Social Revolution 1939. Ch.l P.4. L. 2,810,135 new school places had been provided in permanent con• struction in the country between 1945 and 1960. When it is realised that these places were provided by Local Education Authorities, which in 1945 had neither the staff nor the technical knowledge to cope with the problem, and that from 1945 to 1953 many of the vital materials and labour were in short supply and 2 subject to control, the nature of the achievement can be appreciated. The Problem in Hampshire in 1945 It would perhaps be appropriate at this stage to survey briefly the size of the school building problem in the Hampshire Administrative County after the war and to compare it with the problem encountered nationally,. The raising of the school leaving age in 1947 meant in Hampshire that a new school age group of some 6,000 children had to be accommodated and under the 1944 Act this age group should have been educated in separate secondary schools.