Post-War Educational Reform and the New Concepts of Equal Opportunity in England: 1944-1951

東京外国語大学論集第78号（2009） 123

Post-war Educational Reform and the New Concepts of Equal Opportunity in England: 1944-1951

OKADA Akito

Introduction 1. An Anatomy of educational policies and equality of opportunity in the process of formulating the 1944 education act 2. Continuity: The new ministry of education under a labour government 3. The heralds of the socialist concept of equal opportunity

Introduction The year 1944 rather than 1945 has to be chosen as the starting point for examining the transformation of the concept of ‘equality of opportunity’ in post-war English education, because that was the date of the passing of the ‘Butler Act’, which laid the foundations of the contemporary education system. The significance of the 1944 Education Act was that it crystallised the quarter-century old ideal of ‘secondary education for all’. The main aims of the Act may be quickly summarised: (1) state education should be organised in three successive stages: primary, secondary and further education; (2) secondary education should be free and compulsory, and Local Education Authorities (LEA) should have the responsibility for its provision; (3) the school leaving age was to be raised from 14 to 15 (implemented in 1947) and then 16 as soon as possible (implemented in 1972); (4) a scheme for establishing county colleges for part or full-time further education up to 18 was recommended (in the end, this was not implemented); and (5) LEAs were made responsible for the free medical and dental care of schoolchildren, and also nursery and ‘special’ education, all of which had been on the education agenda since the beginning of the twentieth century. 1) Possibly the most outstanding contribution of the 1944 Act was the acceptance of the concept of a higher degree of ‘equality of opportunity’, which England had developed in its political, economic, social and educational democracy during the twentieth century.2) This article traces the initial application of equality of opportunity to post-war educational reform in England, and examines what notion of equality of opportunity the central government 124 Post-war Educational Reform and the New Concepts of Equal Opportunity in England: 1944-1951：OKADA Akito subscribed to. It also analyses the formulation process of the 1944 Education Act and explores the impacts of the Act on the post-war educational reconstruction under the Labour government in England.

1. An Anatomy of Educational Policies and Equality of Opportunity in the Process of Formulating the 1944 Education Act Since the very beginning of the 20th century, the discussion of ‘equality of opportunity’ had been one of the most prolonged educational debates in England.3) The Consultative Committee of the Board of Education had attempted to realise the concept on the grounds that children should not be debarred from receiving any form of education from which they were capable of profiting through inability to pay the fees. Despite the fact that elementary education was already universal, however, the Committee had left some issues about secondary education unresolved: who was capable of, or eligible for, secondary education? And what secondary education system was most desirable? After World War I and until the formulation of the 1944 Education Act, the Committee gradually made its position clear: there was to be secondary education for all ‘by means of schools of varying types, but which have, nevertheless, a broad common foundation’.4) There is fairly general agreement that the Committee's educational policy in the period was marked by two main strands: (i) the desirability of selection at the age of 11; and (ii) the establishment of a tripartite organisation of secondary education. Both these strands deserve close examination in relation to the concept of equality of educational opportunity. Along with the development of ideals concerning secondary education, there had been increasing acceptance of the principle of ‘equality of opportunity’, which had not been a single or unchanging concept, but had been seen in several different ways. By the outbreak of World War II, there were at least five different forms of the concept, mirroring the English social structure, and all of them had an effect on the formulation of the Act. It is in the competition between them that their importance, in relation to post-war educational policy in England would seem to lie.

1.1.‘Tripartism’ The first idea of equality of educational opportunity was a view based on ‘tripartism’, which advocated the idea of developing three different kinds of secondary school: grammar, technical and modern, according to children’s age, ability and aptitude. The supporters of this doctrine acknowledged that equality should not necessarily be compatible with identity or sameness, but 東京外国語大学論集第78号（2009） 125 depended upon the fuller recognition of individual differences. Before World War II, the Consultative Committee had played an important role in tackling the issue of what kinds of equality in secondary education should be planned for and implemented and tended to use this type of rhetoric in its education policy. Tripartism, which derived from a combination of the Board's crucial documents, the Hadow (1926), Spens (1938) and Norwood (1943) Reports, was underpinned by the psychological claim that ‘equality of opportunity’ did not mean that all children should be given the same type of education: ‘It is accordingly evident that different children from the age of 11, if justice is to be done to their varying capacities, require types of education varying in certain important respects’.5) And so, at the secondary education level there had to be a variety of educational opportunities and curricula in order to meet the ‘very varying requirements and capacities of the children’6) if the system was to involve large numbers of children. Accordingly the Green Book, a discussion document of 1941, shaping opinion for the 1944 Act, defined equality of opportunity thus:

‘Equality of opportunity’ does not mean that all children should receive the same form of education. At the primary stage i.e., to the age of 11, education should be the same for all, but thereafter at the secondary stage there must be ample variety of educational opportunity to meet the varying requirements and capacities of the children. Indeed, in the educational sphere, much more than in the dietetic, one child’s meat may be another child’s poison. The provision for all children at the secondary stage of the same type of education would not connote equality of opportunity but rather the reverse. . . Equality of opportunity means, therefore, acceptance of the principle that the accidents of parental circumstances or place of residence shall not preclude any child from receiving the education from which he is best capable of profiting. It is clear from what has been said that by ‘secondary education for all’ is meant, not the provision of the same type of education for all at the secondary state [sic], but that all types of full-time education at this stage should be regarded as on a parity and should receive equal treatment in such matters as accommodation, staffing, size of classes, etc.7) [present writer's emphasis].

While identifying a general concern with the issue of social justice in education, the Green Book confirmed the concept of equality of opportunity as a guidepost for sketching the Board's outlines of post-war educational programmes based on three fundamental premises: first, the equality of opportunity of all children in primary school to take the same 11 plus examination; 126 Post-war Educational Reform and the New Concepts of Equal Opportunity in England: 1944-1951：OKADA Akito second, a genuine belief that equality is achieved through children’s mental abilities and the schools to which they are allocated; and, finally, the idea that the three different types of school, grammar, technical and secondary modern, could be really equal, enjoying ‘parity of esteem’ through ‘parity of material conditions’.

The views of the Green Book were to be firmly maintained by the majority of the Board’s Committee throughout the war, and in the crucial period of reconstruction immediately following it. In response to the definition set out in the Green Book concerning the concept of equality of opportunity, the most popular view was similar to the logic of the ‘different types of school for all regardless of economic and social condition’ principle, and this logic was reflected in the educational policies of the National Union of Teachers (NUT), the Council of Education Advancement, the Co-operative Union Education Committee and the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA).8) For instance, the NUT declared that ‘the accident of parental circumstances or the place of residence shall not preclude any child from receiving the education from which he is best capable of profiting’.9) Furthermore, another doctrine of the Green Book, the concept of ‘parity of esteem based on parity of material conditions’ was also broadly accepted.10) These widely shared views led to the publication of the White Paper ‘Educational Reconstruction’ in 1943, which aimed:

To ensure a fuller measure of education and opportunity for young people and to provide means for all to develop the various talents with which they are endowed and so enrich the inheritance of the country whose citizens they are. The new educational opportunities must not, therefore, be of a single pattern. It is just as important to achieve diversity as it is to ensure equality of opportunity.11)

Thus, the White Paper assumed that the tripartite system, without impairment of social unity, would put into practice its concept of equality of opportunity. Soon after the appearance of the White Paper, the Norwood Report on the curriculum and examinations in secondary schools provided more details on the substance of tripartite division. First, the Norwood Report officially described a formal presumption that there were three ‘rough groupings of pupils’ - ‘the pupil who is interested in learning for its own sake’, ‘those whose interests and abilities lie markedly in the field of applied science and applied art’, and ‘the pupil who deals more easily with concrete things 東京外国語大学論集第78号（2009） 127 than with ideas’.12) In the view of the Report:

The existing Secondary Schools [Grammar Schools] would continue to perform their proper task without distraction; the secondary Technical Schools would provide an access of pupils well able to profit by the courses which they provide; the Modern Schools still in the process of formulating their aim and methods would gain the scope necessary them to fulfil the promise which they already show, and we do not regard it as impossible that eventually pupils of over 16+ may be found in them.13)

In short, the tripartite division which was widely supported in the 1940s should be seen in relation to a longer-term historical tendency in English education towards secondary education for all both to serve national efficiency and to meet the individual's needs. ‘Tripartism’ was widely advocated and was deeply rooted in the politics and society of the 1930s and 1940s. The main principle of tripartism was supported not only by the majority of the Board’s Committee, but also the other interested groups (the Conservative Party and a majority of Labour supporters), on the grounds that such a reorganisation of secondary education would meet both the needs of the nation as the best means of producing trained manpower and economic efficiency and competing with other ideologies such as Nazism, and also the needs of individuals as the means for self-development and realisation. Agreeing with the psychologists' claim that individuals could be differentiated early in terms of intellectual characteristics,14) the character of tripartism was based on three basic premises: (1) the desirability of selection at the age of 11; (2) the justification of preserving the high academic tradition of the grammar school, and (3) the acknowledged necessity for ‘parity of esteem’ of the three different types of schools, to be achieved through ‘parity of material conditions’. These main strands were echoed in the post-war educational reform. Thus by the end of the war ‘tripartite’ division became the most dominant image which influenced the formulation of the Education Act of 1944.

1.2.‘Common Schools’ The second idea of equality of educational opportunity required a more egalitarian educational policy, which advocated the reduction of the existing social inequalities by social mixing of children irrespective of their parental background. The supporters of this idea strongly proposed the development of ‘common schools’, meaning ‘the bringing together of all 128 Post-war Educational Reform and the New Concepts of Equal Opportunity in England: 1944-1951：OKADA Akito types of children within the unity of a single school’.15) This principle was not a new one.16) It had been developed particularly by the minority members of the Board of Education, some radicals of the Labour Party and the Trades Union Congress (TUC). A minority of the Board’s Committee had expressed their dissatisfaction with ‘tripartism’ for these reasons: (i) the tripartite system of schools seemed to crystallise, at an early stage, social distinctions and differences; (ii) the decisions had to be made when children were very immature; (iii) the possibility of rectifying errors in classification after the decisions had been reached at 11+ or 13+ was rather remote, and difficult to achieve.17) Both within the Labour Movement and outside, opposition had been increasingly directed towards the educational as well as the social disadvantages of tripartism. Between the Wars, it gradually became clear that certain of its supporters were urging a more radical approach which sought to achieve social equality in terms of structural change in the education system.

During the Second World War, the idea of the multilateral school was taken up vigorously by W.C. Cleary, a member of the Principal Assistant Secretaries’ Committee, and R.H. Charles, the chief inspector for elementary schools.18) Having regard to the social and political tendencies which post-war English society should seek to achieve, they pointed out that the tripartite reorganisation did not ‘go far enough in the direction of social merging and full equality of opportunity in education’.19) They suggested that the national establishment of multilateral schools would remove the social prestige of the grammar school and avoid the controversy regarding unfair selection at 11-plus. Justifying his view in the name of war-time political and social trends, Cleary insisted that the meaning of equality of opportunity required social mixing in education:

The really urgent and vital problem however, after the war, is likely to be a truly open field of educational opportunity for every child. This, so far as the State system is concerned, connotes the establishment of equality of esteem for all types of post primary education so that for example no child should go to a “secondary” school because of its superior social status compared with that of senior school. While “secondary” schools remain apart from senior schools will they not continue to act as a factor in maintaining the greater social prestige of the clerical and professional careers for which they mainly train their pupils over that of the manual occupations recruited mainly from the pupils of the senior schools? The obvious and perhaps the only satisfactory answer is the multilateral post primary school attended by all children over 11 alike, most of 東京外国語大学論集第78号（2009） 129 whom will stay to 15, many to 16, and a few later.20)

The first thing that one notices is that their assertion of equality of opportunity was envisaged as the social equality which was in part an expression of this wartime strategy to unite social life. They hoped that the creation of the multilateral school would help to promote equality within the social as well as the education system. This idea of the concept of equality of opportunity has much in common with Labour policy since the party regarded multilateral schools as an essential step ultimately in the larger process of social equality.

Up to the late 1930s, the traditional attitudes of the Labour Party on educational policy had been clear: it envisaged educational expansion as a necessary means for social reform and demanded ‘secondary education for all’. With regard to the structure of post-primary education, there had been a notable development among the Labour Party in their acceptance of the multilateral schools as part of the principle of equality of opportunity. The National Association of Labour Teachers (NALT) in particular upheld general multilateral education for all until 13, with differential courses in the same school thereafter.21) This was evident at both the Labour Party and the Communist Party conferences in 1942, the former urging the government ‘to develop a new type of multilateral school which would provide a variety of courses suited to children of all normal types’.22) In the same year, the TUC also supported the principle in a memorandum on post-war education plans, arguing that ‘so long as the three types of school are separately housed, the old prejudice will die hard, and equality in fact will not be achieved’.23) Some bodies like the London County Council (LCC),24) the largest in England, and the Council for Education Advance25) were soon (1942-3) to choose a system of comprehensive high schools rather than a multilateral system. Thus it seems important to recognise that there were some substantial bodies of support for the multilateral school, grounded in the social and political aspirations of educational reform over the previous twenty years.

While the issue of multilateral schools had been placed on the agenda, however, it is important to notice that a majority of the Labour supporters did not reject the necessity for differentiation of children on the basis of their ability. For them, the possibility suggested by the Green Book of transfer between schools at 13-plus, which would rectify errors at 11 plus, already provided the main prospective advantage of the multilateral school. In fact, even such influential 130 Post-war Educational Reform and the New Concepts of Equal Opportunity in England: 1944-1951：OKADA Akito

Labour supporters as R.H. Tawney and Shena Simon set their primary emphasis upon tripartism rather than on ‘multilateralism’.26) Not only Conservative supporters, but also a majority of Labour supporters interpreted equality of educational opportunity as having two strands: first equality of opportunity was thought of as all children’s free, compulsory access to secondary schooling, and secondly, it was closely related to parity of esteem through equality of material conditions between three different types of schools. In the wartime political climate, in Kang's analysis, ‘the progressive Conservatives' bold deviation from old-style Toryism27 ) and the Labour Party's general acceptance of the restricted nature of measures for educational reconstruction, temporarily cooled the political tension over educational policy and provided a middle ground to enable the White Paper to be published.28) Similarly, concerning the future of the grammar school and public school systems, the party was not critical of the existence of these schools. The Fleming Report, which was set up to ‘consider the means whereby the association between the public schools and the general education system of the country could be extended and developed’,29) was the ideal way of shifting the issue of the public schools off the agenda, out of the 1944 Education Bill. As Butler described succinctly in his autobiography, ‘the first class carriage had been shunted into an immense siding’.30)

To sum up, the idea of the multilateral school system had been developed as a countermeasure against the tripartite system. In its historical transformation process, ‘multilateralism’ had gathered widespread popular support among Labour supporters as the ideal system to achieve equality of educational opportunity. The fundamental principle of the common school system was based on the two pillars of (1) social mixing of children regardless of their parental backgrounds; and (2) abolition of the greater social prestige of the grammar schools. These pillars had been conceived of as the best measures to reduce social as well as educational inequality. However, the Labour Party gradually compromised on its traditional policy and began to match its belief in equality of opportunity with the necessity to provide various types of secondary education, while assuming a scheme of differentiation of children on grounds of difference in ability. The Labour Party, as G.D.H. Cole explained, pursued educational development, ‘within the potentialities of the existing structure, without formulating any revolutionary notions about the desirable content of the education they were endeavouring to open to the whole people’.31) Like the Conservatives, a majority of Labour MPs believed that real equality of opportunity would be established by parity of esteem within the existing structure and 東京外国語大学論集第78号（2009） 131 considered multilateral schools as only an experimental measure in secondary education.

1.3. Other Significant Social Factors The last three manifestations of the concept of equality of opportunity attempted in different ways to avoid the value judgements about the alternative forms of provision that each of the first two types involved. A third form of concept, more agnostic in character, sought to allow individual schools and other educational institutions to find their own level. This principle was proposed by the Norwood Report, which transformed tripartism from proposal into doctrine.32) The idea here was that the emphasis should not be on the pupils themselves, but on individual schools transcending or overcoming their limitations and official typologies in order to gain public acceptance. Whereas the White Paper admitted the possibility of achieving parity of esteem through parity of material conditions and thereby meeting the need for equality of educational opportunity, the Norwood Report did not agree with such logic. The three types of secondary schools, it argued, ‘should have such parity as amenities and conditions can bestow’, but public acceptance ‘can only be won by the school itself’.33) This would allow the three types of schools to give ‘equivalence of opportunity to all children in the only sense in which it has valid meaning, namely, the opportunity to receive the education for which each pupil is best suited for such time and to such a point as is fully profitable to him’.34) Thus the Norwood Report concluded that parity of esteem cannot be offered by parity of material conditions among secondary schools, and therefore should be outside the government's responsibility.

Other important social factors at that time had also conditioned the concept of equality of opportunity, and these too need to be taken into account. Firstly, the Board's officials used the term ‘equality of opportunity’ for the settlement of the dual system.35) During the War, the Board's Committee paid attention to inequality between provided and non-provided schools (i.e. state schools as distinct from those run by religious denominations). The reason for the demand for such emphasis by the Board was the fact that lack of funds and lack of control over the organisation of voluntary schools meant that 541 non-provided (voluntary) schools out of 735 remained on the Board's black list of schools with defective and out-of date premises. Some 62% of the children of 11 years of age or over in Council (provided) schools were in Senior Schools while the corresponding figure for voluntary schools was only 16%.36) The LEAs had no power to spend money on repairs, alterations and improvements to non-provided schools. Furthermore, 132 Post-war Educational Reform and the New Concepts of Equal Opportunity in England: 1944-1951：OKADA Akito the divided responsibility of the dual system had given rise to endless administrative complications leading to problems of economy and efficiency.37) Butler, from the very beginning of his term of office, took it as axiomatic that equality of educational opportunity was dependent on equality of school provision and organisation between state schools and voluntary schools.38) This issue was predominant in his concern with equal opportunity.

Finally, gender in particular had been a key source of social differentiation and inequality, which had in some ways heightened differences in provision of secondary education because of its effect on social and educational expectations. Different treatment of girls and boys, based mainly on the difference in their expected social functions, was the underlying philosophy justifying different education for different sexes. In England, since the establishment of the modern education system, there had been increasing differentiation in the curriculum offered to boys and girls. In the case of secondary education for most working-class girls, the curriculum became increasingly ‘domesticated’, and domestic economy became one of the specific subjects. For working-class girls, the domesticated curriculum was their only option. Grammar school girls, who were predominantly middle class, were excused the full excesses of the domesticated curriculum. In order to cope with this issue, the Consultative Committee's report on Differentiation of the Curriculum for Boys and Girls, specifically Boys and Girls in Secondary School, made recommendations, which asserted greater freedom should be introduced into the curriculum for girls, who should normally be encouraged to take the domesticated curriculum.39) However, by the mid-twentieth century little had changed. The Norwood Report again enshrined a view of girls as homemakers and provided the rationale for post-war girls' education by saying that: ‘For many girls it is felt that domestic subjects provide a centre of interest natural and congenial to them’.40) The 1944 Education Act did not question traditional differences in the nature of boys' and girls' education. Thus, for most working-class children, secondary education for girls had to await a more generous view of their social position, greater job mobility, and the construction of a wide system of schools to which girls could have access.

Overall, the major contribution of the 1944 Education Act was to attempt to put into effect the principle of ‘equality of opportunity’ through the quarter-century - old plank of secondary education for all, an aim which had been pursued by its precursors, the Hadow, Spens and Norwood Reports. The concept of equality of opportunity in education took various forms. The 東京外国語大学論集第78号（2009） 133 five forms of the concept, which sometimes overlap one another, have already been identified. They had developed in the historical multiplicity of threads interwoven with changes in ideals of political, economic and social factors, which were also moving towards a greater equality of opportunity. In the process of formulating the 1944 Act, it was obvious that expansion of educational opportunity was envisaged as a necessary means of desirable social reform. Nevertheless, both Conservatives and most Labour supporters saw educational reform within the existing institutional framework rather than outside it. It can be said with fair certainty that the Act could be seen as the outcome of a political compromise and that it thus left some significant issues to one side. There were some weaknesses in the Act: (1) the Act itself, in the following year, made no attempt to lay down the method by which the secondary system should be organised,41) and (2) the Act did not extend to higher education. Even so, the tripartite system became the dominant image for reform in the post-war Labour Administration. As high hopes for the results of the 1944 Act abated, there was more questioning of the ‘equality of opportunity’ concept which the Act enshrined. ‘The equality of opportunity offered by the Act’, as Mary Warnock has pointed out, ‘was the opportunity now open to children to compete for the best education for which they could be selected,’42) thus, with these weaknesses of the Act, children were ‘seen to have equality of opportunity to compete for a place in an elitist system which left people unequal’.43)

2. Continuity: The New Ministry of Education Under a Labour Government The election of July 1945 gave the Labour Party power with a large majority. The new socialist Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, came to office with 393 Labour MPs against 213 for the Conservatives, which meant that the Labour Party could push through its legislation without much regard for opposition.44) The electorate's memory of the nightmares of the 1920s and 1930s and their demand for social benefits to come gave the party authority. The impact of the war and particularly a sense of shared suffering of the British people forced the government into a direct control of national affairs, which would have been unthinkable only a few years earlier. The collectivism of wartime was redirected by Attlee's administration towards social reconstruction by a series of nationalisations45) and the establishment of the welfare state, including the establishment of the National Health Service and the carrying through of the National Insurance Act, the two key sections of the Beveridge Report.46) However, the depressing economic recession caused by wartime borrowings, drastic cuts and the consequent 134 Post-war Educational Reform and the New Concepts of Equal Opportunity in England: 1944-1951：OKADA Akito unemployment and poverty, fully took up the time and the resources at the government's disposal. As a result, various post-war reconstruction plans had to contend with one another for a share of the available national resources.

2.1. Initiative in Reconstructing the Education System In the sphere of educational policy, the newly established Ministry of Education, headed by Ellen Wilkinson, was empowered to take the initiative in reconstructing the education system and was required to carry out the national policy by putting LEAs under its control and direction. The Ministry demanded that every LEA estimate the immediate and prospective needs of its area as regards primary and secondary education, including proposals for pupils under five years of age, and for those who required special educational treatment. The 1944 Education Act required each LEA to produce proposals for development in each specified branch of education, together with any other proposals the authority might think necessary.47) However, the principal task for the Minister of Education in the years immediately following the 1944 Act was to develop a system of secondary education for all and to raise the school-leaving age to 15 (implemented in 1947), which would fulfil the aspirations of the Act. Thus it fell to the Labour Minister to supervise the implementation of the Act, although it had been passed by the wartime coalition government.

The Ministry of Education had worked on reconstruction plans for implementation before Labour came into office. Essentially, the plans were based on the Hadow, Spens and Norwood Reports, which envisaged three different types of schools (grammar, technical and modern) according to children's age, ability and aptitude. The Minister's view of how tripartism would cater for different types of children was set out in the pamphlets and circulars which followed the 1944 Act. In fact, Pamphlet No.1, The Nation's Schools issued in 1945 affirmed that ‘the most urgent reform to which the development plan must be addressed is the completion of “Hadow” reorganisation’,48) meaning that three distinct and different types of secondary education would be needed ‘to meet the differing needs of different pupils’.49) In tone and intention it certainly argued heavily against the multilateral school. Calling for a reduction in the number of grammar school places in order to preserve their glorious prestige, The Nation's Schools addressed the question of multilateral schools thus: (1) such schools must be very large and this would not be undesirable; (2) selection at the age of 11 would have to continue within them; (3) schools fulfil their functions when they have one specific aim or purpose; (4) the reorganisation programme must be based on 東京外国語大学論集第78号（2009） 135 existing plans and ‘it would be a mistake to plunge too hastily on a large scale into a revolutionary change. . . Innovation is not necessarily reform’.50 ) No encouragement was given to the organisation of the multilateral school, which the Labour Party had espoused at its 1942 conference. Nor did the election victory and the appointment of a Labour Minister of Education greatly alter the policy of the Ministry. The principle of the three types of school was soon followed by general guidelines on the proportion of accommodation to be provided for each of the three types according to the normal distribution formula of ability and intelligence. Thus it was suggested that under normal conditions 70 to 75 per cent should be of the modern type, the remaining 25 to 30 per cent being allocated to grammar and technical school in suitable proportions according to the circumstances of the local area.51)

2.2. Disputes within Labour Party The government's decision to promote a tripartite rather than a multilateral school system attracted strong criticism from within the party. The challenge came in the first place from radical groups within the NUT and the NALT in terms of the social effects of tripartism and the social advantage of the common school. The predictable clash came at the 1946 annual conference. The Nation's Schools was powerfully attacked by a member of the NALT, W.G. Cove, who urged the Minister to repudiate the document and reshape the education system in accordance with Socialist principles,52) which meant multilateral reorganisation. Insisting that ‘a Socialist Minister should look not merely at the field of education through the narrow eyes of education, but should relate the means and purpose and the organisation of our schools to the social objects in view’,53) Cove called for the withdrawal of The Nation's Schools.

We have said that every child should have an equal opportunity, but what does “The Nation's Schools” do? This statement [that there are three groups and three strata of capacity] is that [sic] there is a small section of the community which is fitted, by capacity and aptitude, for grammar school education . . . In the broad field, there are masses of children who cannot have the same equality of opportunity.54)

Cove, who strongly supported the multilateral school, related educational problems to social problems. He viewed the problems of education not only in terms of particular social and political benefits, but also of the disadvantages of the modern school and the unsatisfied demand 136 Post-war Educational Reform and the New Concepts of Equal Opportunity in England: 1944-1951：OKADA Akito for grammar-school education. However, at that time his views got little support from the Commons. In practice The Nation's Schools was retained, though Ellen Wilkinson stated that certain parts of it no longer represented government policy.

Despite this attack, Wilkinson remained firm in her attachment to tripartism, suggesting that ‘I want to emphasise that we want to educate children according to their ability and aptitude’.55) The Minister drew this conclusion directly from her own educational experience: she was born into a working-class home and she had to fight her own way through to university. What seemed important to her was to ensure that no child of ability was prevented by financial difficulties from taking the course best suited to develop his or her talent. She believed that equality of educational opportunity would be achieved by parity of esteem between the different schools through parity of material conditions, and that the three different types of schools were to be divided on the basis of objective, rational educational criteria and not, as had previously been the case, on indefensible and irrelevant social criteria, and were thus justifiable. Against the recommendation for a common school, both the Minister and Mr. D.R.Hardman, the Parliamentary Secretary, thus continued to stress tripartism; this, as Barker pointed out, ‘did no more than reflect a very real division within a party which was at one and the same time attracted to the equality of opportunity which was associated with unhindered access to the grammar school, and to the equality of provision which demanded a multilateral arrangement’.56) The same view was echoed a year later in the Commons by George Tomlinson, the successor of Wilkinson who had died early in the year. He concurred with Wilkinson's proposals and published the pamphlet, The New Secondary Education, which assumed that ‘the secondary school system must consequently offer variety in the curriculum and variety in the approach, suited to the differing aptitudes and abilities and stages of development of the children concerned’.57) Tomlinson defended the Ministry's firm belief in the tripartite system by insisting on the necessity to preserve the high standard of the grammar schools.58)

The protagonists in the carrying-through of this policy, Wilkinson, Tomlinson and Hardman, were convinced that the best hope for disadvantaged sections of the population lay in the tripartite system, and this was the reason why the Labour government strongly defended and continued to defend policies adapted by the wartime coalition and supported by the Ministry of Education. The Ministry's refusal to recommend the development of the multilateral or comprehensive schools 東京外国語大学論集第78号（2009） 137 stemmed from a lack of enthusiasm within the leadership of the Labour Party as well as the distrust within official circles at the Ministry. The development of this kind of school would pose a serious threat to the existence of the grammar schools, to which the party had fought to provide access for the children of the working classes. In fact, Labour Forum, the quarterly review of Labour policy, placed importance on a liberal concept of equality of opportunity59), that all children should have equal access to the different types of school according to their ability, rather than an egalitarian one meaning that all children should have the common curriculum for the integration of the individual within society, generally accepting the idea that there were three different types of children.60) This was shared by contemporary opinion: the Times Educational Supplement (TES) described the grammar school as ‘one of the greatest successes of English education’,61) and said that ‘the nation cannot do without them. It is their social function that is prized. The schools turn out an indispensable kind of citizen’.62) In 1948, a large majority at the annual conference of the NUT refused to condemn the tripartite principle. Further, Creech Jones was the most prominent of several Labour M.P.s who defended the grammar schools on the grounds that any weakening of their position within the state sector maintained by LEAs could only strengthen the links between the public schools and the professions.63) Thus the Labour government retained this policy without any significant change until 1951 when it left office.

It was hardly surprising in this general context that relatively few local authorities moved towards multilateral or comprehensive schools. In special circumstances and in order to meet local needs the Minister would be prepared to consider proposals for bilateral and multilateral schools. Despite the fact that the vast majority of LEAs chose some form of tripartite or bipartite organisation and even those under Labour control strongly supported the prestige of the grammar school, some areas, for example, London and Middlesex, did, however, plan from the outset to base their secondary education provision upon multilateral schools. In March 1947, the LCC had already accepted a scheme for comprehensive secondary education; it involved the establishment of 103 comprehensive schools, some of which were to incorporate grammar schools. This would provide for all children, the LCC argued, ‘equal opportunity for physical, intellectual, social and spiritual development which while taking advantage of the practical interests of the pupils should make the full development of personality the first objective’.64) In Middlesex, it was soon remarked that ‘the potentialities of the group who did not proceed to grammar schools were infinitely greater than had been supposed, and modern schools should be 138 Post-war Educational Reform and the New Concepts of Equal Opportunity in England: 1944-1951：OKADA Akito encouraged to be both flexible and dynamic so that their achievement ceiling might continuously rise’.65) In 1949, Middlesex was permitted to proceed with plans for two experimental schools. As has been mentioned before, multilateral organisation had gained widespread and increasing support among teachers and educational reformers generally before the war. Furthermore, some other LEAs such as Reading, Oldham, Coventry, Southend, Bolton and West Riding took a great deal longer to prepare their plans than was envisaged in the 1944 Education Act. The Fabian Society analysed 54 Development Plans of LEAs in 1947 and indicated that 14 of them were in fact proposing to provide one or more multilateral schools while another 20 proposed bilateral schools (either technical-modern or grammar-modern) - well over half of the authorities analysed, then, wanted a more flexible structure than under the strict tripartite mode.66) The Ministry was growing increasingly concerned at evident moves on the part of several LEAs to prepare fully comprehensive schools.

2.3. Conservatives’ Policy on Secondary Education When compared with Labour's educational policy at the time, the Conservatives' policy on secondary education was not so different. After its severe defeat in the 1945 general election, the Conservative Party began to recognise the necessity for more State intervention in social and economic policies as well as education. This was a significant step in impelling them to move towards realising in practice the ideal of equality of opportunity. The Conservative Party had expressed a willingness to accept the principle of equality of opportunity for its educational policy at the 1946 annual conference.67) Yet, just as Labour did, Conservatives saw equality of opportunity within the existing ideological and institutional framework. In other words, the idea of tripartite secondary education for all children, which never abandoned the high academic standard of the grammar school as a selective institution training the future leaders of the nation, was widely assumed to be the most desirable scheme for educational reform. A definition of the conservative notion of equality of opportunity by R.A Butler, “The View of a Conservative”, published in the 1952 Year Book of Education, illustrated this best: ‘I yield to no one in my desire for equal educational opportunity. . . but equal opportunity is not identical educational opportunity. Nor can it lead, unless by stunting and retarding the growth of the “uncommon child” to equality of individuality, talent and success’.68)

Not only Butler, but also other Conservatives shared the idea of the different types of 東京外国語大学論集第78号（2009） 139 secondary education for all, although they initially did not object to the idea of the establishment of experiments with multilateral schools.69) It seems reasonable to suppose that the concept of equality of opportunity envisaged by the Conservatives in the immediate post-war period was in harmony with those of the Ministry of Education and the majority of Labour supporters. However, when the banner of the multilateral secondary school began to be waved by some radical Labour MPs, the Conservatives gradually took up their position as guardians of the traditional value of grammar schools and of the continuing existence of the public schools.

To sum up, as it neared the middle of its term of office, the Labour government did not come into conflict with the Conservatives in relation to post-war reconstruction in secondary education. The principle of equality of opportunity based on the logic of the tripartite doctrine was frequently referred to by both the major political parties. The educational policies implemented in this period revealed, on the one hand, a strong defence of the liberal concept of equality of opportunity and on the other hand a lack of enthusiasm within the Labour Party for an egalitarian concept of equal opportunity. Convinced of the role of the grammar school as the main avenue of occupational and social mobility for working-class children, the majority of Labour supporters realised that ‘to give up these schools appeared to be surrendering the fruits of their victory with the taste still fresh in their mouth’.70) Analysis of motions at Labour Party annual conferences makes it clear that the principle of equality of opportunity, which advocated three different types of schools on the basis of psychological findings, drew a lot of support at first from a widespread admiration of grammar school education. At the same time, however, the rebels within the party were becoming more persistent. For example, an annual resolution of the Bristol Labour Party emphasised that ‘development of a new type of multilateral or common secondary school’ was inevitable ‘in order to give real equality of opportunity to all the nation's children’,71) and the NALT's resolution proposed that ‘This conference regrets that the policy of the establishment of the Comprehensive School has not yet received greater encouragement from the Minister’.72) Adoption of some form of resolution urging the Ministry to recommend LEAs to adopt a scheme of multilateral (up to 1948) or comprehensive (from 1949 onwards) schools became an annual inevitability. This is a reflection of the ambivalence with regard to concepts of equality of opportunity towards secondary education within the Labour Party.

3. The Heralds of the Socialist Concept of Equal Opportunity 140 Post-war Educational Reform and the New Concepts of Equal Opportunity in England: 1944-1951：OKADA Akito

From the perspective of tracing shifts in the leading concept of equality of educational opportunity, the second half of the Labour administration (1948-51) was a significant period containing some important elements, which led to the collapse of the tripartite system and a redefining of the concept of equal opportunity in terms of a more egalitarian view. The underlying ideas of a common school reorganisation and this newly emerging egalitarian definition of equality were indeed further developed and woven together by W.C. Cove and Alice Bacon, who feared that different types of schools with different curricula and leaving ages would become different grades of schools with superior and inferior statuses. The Labour Party had long been committed to apply the principle of equality of opportunity to make ‘secondary education for all’ a legal obligation. There is no doubt that the Labour Party had played a crucial role in politicising demands for this reform. However, once secondary education became free and universal after the 1944 Education Act, it gradually shifted to applying the principle to several new educational aspects. For the period beyond 1945 three new tasks, all of which always appeared at each annual conference of the Labour Party up to 1948, were set: the first was the necessity for expansion of opportunity for higher education, especially university education, which more and more people sought in the decades following the War. At each annual conference, the resolutions of the party advocated that (i) university fees should be abolished; (ii) maintenance grants should be provided; and (iii) admission to universities should be by competitive examination only.73) The most significant development for the universities after the War was the extent to which they faced an unprecedented demand for their services, their consequent expansion and the way in which their affairs became the concern of politicians and administrators in a manner hitherto not experienced.74) Second, at the 46th conference Keighley Labour Party's resolution redefined ‘real equality of opportunity’ for all the nation's pupils by suggesting that ‘the Public Schools are not maintained in their existing position’.75) There had been discussion within the party of the relationship between the state system of education and public schools, though it occupied only a small place in the political debate about educational reconstruction. The 1944 Education Act made no changes in this relationship. As a result, in 1946 about 3 percent of the nation's children, the future elite of the country, still attended those schools and benefited from the concomitant social and intellectual prestige. In order to achieve full equality of educational opportunity some Labour members who wanted massive nationalisation envisaged the repudiation of the public schools or the integration of these schools into the state education system.76) Finally, once consolidated as national ideal, ‘secondary 東京外国語大学論集第78号（2009） 141 education for all’, equality of opportunity began to be applied more widely and variously, and some Labour MPs' expectations increased for a more equal society, including a more egalitarian policy for the reconstruction of secondary education. From 1948 onwards they began to criticise the validity of the tripartite allocation of children, whereas a majority of the party members defended their positions, favouring different types of schools for children of differing abilities. Above all, the third issue, that of selection, generated more and more criticism and marked a significant turning-point, which led eventually to the collapse of the tripartite system and the emergence of a new definition of equality of opportunity.

3.1. Comprehensive Style of Schools for All As noted before, the first signs of some Labour members developing the new idea of equal opportunity were apparent soon after the publication of the 1944 Act. LEAs' disregard of central policy in the matter of selection, classification and categorisation of the nation's children brought about a gap between the vision of those who planned the 1944 Act and reality. One of the most clear-sighted discussions of the social or the educational aims of the comprehensive school was provided by W. G. Cove, who called for the withdrawal of The Nation's Schools. Cove insisted that equality of opportunity meant that there should be access to a common curriculum and opportunity to take the same examinations as the grammar schools.77) Since employment and earning power were determined by the leaving qualification, he considered that children in modern schools, mostly from working-class homes, would be branded for life as inferior because they had a leaving qualification which excluded them from the more prestigious and better-paid careers.78) Cove assumed that parity of esteem between schools would not be achieved through parity of physical amenities and instead emphasised the necessity of a grammar school curriculum for all, asking: ‘Are we going to deny the children in modern schools the opportunity of taking the same examinations as the grammar school?’79) The Ministry's policy to set sixteen as the minimum age for sitting the School Certificate was furiously criticised by him because ‘until the age is raised to 16 for modern secondary schools those schools are automatically excluded from the purpose of the school certificate’.80) For him therefore, ‘secondary education for all’ meant ‘grammar school education for all’. Cove pressed the social advantage of the comprehensive school:

That integration can never be achieved so long as we have a tripartite system of education. . . 142 Post-war Educational Reform and the New Concepts of Equal Opportunity in England: 1944-1951：OKADA Akito

What is needed is one comprehensive type of school, where all boys and girls, whatever their aptitude and capacity, may obtain life more abundantly. . . What is needed is the development of the modern secondary school [sic] giving equality of opportunity and parity of esteem.81)

It was clear from such statements that there could not be equality of opportunity unless grammar school courses for the School Certificate, which brought socio-economic benefit, were made available to all children with the ability to take them. The comprehensive schools, Cove believed, would provide for the children of those parents of all classes who wanted an education for their children of a character and duration which could not be provided in modern schools.

3.2. From Multilateral to Comprehensive In tracing the shift in the major concepts of equality of educational opportunity, it is important to note that the concept of equality as suggested by Cove included some significant implications. New aspects of the concept became apparent. It was extended beyond the traditional liberal idea of “free and universal secondary educational for all”, which was now attacked as too limited in scope. There was a shift in emphasis from equal access to secondary schooling to the results achieved, particularly the possibility of obtaining a school certificate and increased chances of well-paid employment. These issues brought up by the new concept of equality would seem to be the first hints of what in the following two decades came to be called a policy of national development based on a human capital approach and a policy of positive discrimination for the benefit of the pool of national abilities. One may note that the meaning of equality of educational opportunity became increasingly linked to socio-economic opportunities. Thus tripartism was gradually ousted as supporters of comprehensive schools demanded abandonment of tripartism's initial aim of the segregation of children and put more pressure for grammar-school-type education, examinations and a recognised certificate of some sort.

After 1948, the attitude of the Labour Party towards common schools became much more explicit. A clear conception emerged of what was involved in the idea of these schools. The common school was generally conceived by the Ministry of Education as a large multilateral school with a six- or seven-stream entry. 82 ) However, the phrase ‘multilateral school’ or ‘comprehensive school’ was used to differentiate the more thoroughgoing policy which did not propose to stream the children into grammar, technical or modern sections. The Labour Party 東京外国語大学論集第78号（2009） 143 gradually dropped the use of the term, ‘multilateral’‚ and pushed instead the claims of the true comprehensive school, which provides a single integrated educational unit. It was pointed out that a ‘multilateral school is one which maintains the tri-partite system with the three streams housed in one building or in separate buildings on one site. Clear sub-division of streams remains.’83) A Policy for Secondary Education, issued by the party in 1951, stated that:

The comprehensive school caters for all children through a system based on a central core of subjects common to all, from which branch classes in specialised subjects [sic] [are] taken according to the desires, aptitudes and capacities of the children.84)

The comprehensive school, the pamphlet argued, would avoid the controversy regarding selection at both 11 and 13, and would remove the educational inequalities inherent in the tripartite system. The majority of children were excluded from a grammar-school education, so that access to the universities would only be through schools which were to be the preserve of a fortunate minority. It is important to differentiate between the multilateral and the comprehensive school. Whereas the multilateral school would have preserved the streaming based on the distinct characters of three types of school inside the system, the comprehensive school rejected streaming, which would lead to the abortion of ‘the class method of entry into avenues of life and avenues of careers’.85)

In the complex web of educational politics another feature surfaced at about this time which had a close bearing on the structure, ethos and nature of the now evolving system. This concerned the conflict between the primacy of the tripartite system and the development of the comprehensive school. In parliamentary debates on education (from 1948), according to Kang, two prominent American scholars — James B. Conant (professor at Harvard University) and Issac L. Kandel (professor at Columbia University) — were frequently quoted by Labour MPs in arguing about the future structure of the secondary education system.86) Conant's line of thinking, which emphasised the necessity for the integration of children into society, was referred to and developed by the supporters of the comprehensive school represented by W. C. Cove.87) The principle of the comprehensive school, as Conant argued, was to offer a democratic, undifferentiated education and seek ‘a common core of general education or a course of “common learning” which would unite in one cultural pattern the future carpenter, factory-worker, bishop, 144 Post-war Educational Reform and the New Concepts of Equal Opportunity in England: 1944-1951：OKADA Akito lawyer, sales manager, professor and garage mechanic’.88) On the other hand, D.R. Hardman, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Education, and a majority of others, followed Kandel's thinking that the common school had not, in fact, ‘had the effect of producing parity of esteem’, 89 ) so that they could defend the ministry's preference for the tripartite system. Referring to the American experience of the comprehensive school, Kandel claimed that:

Everything that it known about individual differences in ability; everything that is known about the varying needs of boys and girls; everything that is known about the needs of modern life seems to point in the direction of schools functionally organised so that each can carry out its specific aims and purposes; all of them by different methods and adaptation of content contributing to the same common end - the preparation of every boy and girl for their task as citizens, workers and human beings.90)

Kandel's view had much in common with those of the Ministry and the majority of the Labour MPs who thought that the common schools would be both a denial of equality of opportunity for the most gifted children and ‘a national disaster’.91)

3.3. Towards the end of Labour’s Administration Towards the end of its administration the Labour Party as a whole found itself increasingly uncertain about its plans for secondary education. While its policy relating to the structure of secondary education was sharply divided into two poles, the new concept of equality of opportunity, initially developed by Cove, was refined by Alice Bacon as the National Executive Council of the Labour Party (NEC) spokesman of the multilateral school, and James Johnson MP. Calling on the Minister ‘to review the education system in order to give real equality of opportunity to all the nation's children’,92) Alice Bacon attacked the uncertainty of selection at the age of 11 and insisted that ‘there is no educational reason for separation at 11 . . . Children do not fall naturally into these three types of schools, and they cannot be divided fairly’.93) What this passage makes clear at once is that the process of education is a natural unity that cannot effectively be broken up into arbitrary parts, depending upon a mechanical selection process to supply its different parts. Thus her criticism of the tripartite system argued that the system with 11-plus selection was deficient in educational terms because it created an artificial administrative barrier within what was essentially a single educational process. Further, Johnson even 東京外国語大学論集第78号（2009） 145 repudiated the concept of the multilateral school as ‘simply the old tripartite system in disguise’. Assuming that educational needs could not be broken into three separate categories, he advocated the importance of the comprehensive school as the ‘great equaliser’ in shaping a society free of social and economic inequalities. As with Cove, the concept of equality of opportunity was explained by its proponents as the same access to the same curriculum, irrespective of children's different abilities and aptitudes for the sake of social and economic advantages. Consequently, they condemned the inequalities inherent in the tripartite system, accused the Ministry of lack of drive, and called for the establishment of comprehensive schools.94)

However, there were few who accepted this approach until 1951, when the comprehensive school was finally adopted as official policy by the Labour Party. The Minister of Education reaffirmed the tripartite policy based on tripartite principle; ‘secondary education for all according to children's age, ability, and aptitude’, which had been repeated in successive pamphlets and circulars since 1945. Having not accepted the criticism that the tripartite system itself was necessarily pernicious, Tomlinson firmly rejected the new egalitarian concept of equal opportunity, because ‘comprehensive schools are still the subject of violent controversy in educational circles’ and therefore ‘would alienate a large, vocal and influential section of opinion’.95) It was apparent from this point on that the official Ministerial concept of equal opportunity was quite the opposite of that of Cove, Bacon and also the NALT, whose view was that ‘the tripartite system of education does not provide equality of educational opportunity and is therefore out of tune with the needs of the day and with the aspirations of socialism’.96) At the party conference of 1951, Tomlinson remained unrepentant, rejecting the criticisms of the Ministry's policy and warning that ‘the Party are kidding themselves if they think that the comprehensive idea has any popular appeal’.97)

Thus the six years which spanned the Labour government's period in office after the War (1945-51) produced no national policy to alter the tripartite system based on the philosophy of the liberal concept of equality of opportunity. However, soon after the Conservative Party gained power there was a shift in opinion within the Labour Party toward a more egalitarian concept of equality of opportunity. In 1951, although its policy had changed in an unobtrusive manner, Labour advanced fully and publicly for the first time to the ideal of the comprehensive school. Now comprehensive education was identified completely with the party's philosophy. 146 Post-war Educational Reform and the New Concepts of Equal Opportunity in England: 1944-1951：OKADA Akito

Notes

1) Board of Education: Education Act, 1944: Other key reforms of the Act include: Church schools became voluntary, aided or controlled; schools were required to hold a daily act of worship; religious instruction was made compulsory; the Board of Education was changed into a new Ministry of Education and it was empowered to determine teachers’ pay after receiving an independent committee’s advice; a Central Advisory Council was established; parents were obliged to ensure their 2) On this subject, see Kang, Hee-Chun: Education Policy and the Concept of Equality of Opportunity in England, Seoul (Sekyungsa) 1986. Kang provides significant conceptual framework to explain historical transformation of the concept of equality of educational opportunity in England in the 20th century. The main argument of the current article is indebted to the work of Kang. 3) See, in particular, Harold Silver: Equal Opportunity in Education, London (Methuen) 1973. 4) Board of Education: Report of the Consultative Committee on the Education of the Adolescent (Hadow Report), London (HMSO) 1926, p.74. The Committee of the Hadow Report considered that at least 75% of children were eligible for post-primary education. As regards secondary schools, the Committee suggested a bipartite system: Secondary Grammar and Secondary Modern schools. 5) Board of Education: Report of the Consultative Committee on Secondary Education with Special Reference to Grammar Schools and Technical High Schools (Spens Report), London (HMSO) 1938, p.358. The Hadow Report had envisaged different kinds of educational institution being accorded equal esteem, and the Spens Report on secondary education attempted to demonstrate in detail how this could be achieved. 6) Board of Education: Education After the War (the Green Book), 1941, p.7. The full content of the Green Book is available in N. Middleton and S. Weitzman, A Place for Everyone, London (Victor Gollancz Ltd) 1976, pp.387-462. 7) Ibid., Chapter I, para 2. 8) See, in particular, David Rubinstein and Brian Simon: The Evolution of the Comprehensive School 1926-1972, London (Routledge and Kegan Paul) 1969, p.25. 9) PRO., Ed. 136/429: Green Book Discussions by the NUT. A similar view also came from the WEA and the Joint Committee of the Four Secondary Associations. See PRO., Ed. 136/260: Green Book Discussions by the WEA and PRO., Ed. 136/261: Green Book Discussions by the Joint Committee of the Four Secondary Associations ( Associations of Headmasters, Headmistresses, Asst. Masters and Asst. Mistresses), 28 May, 1942. 10) See, in particular R.H. Tawney to F. Clark, 30 September 1940. R.H Tawney correspondence, memos, Institute of Education, London: and British Library of Political and Economic Science. 11) Board of Education: Educational Reconstruction (White Paper), London (HMSO) 1943, p.3. 12) Board of Education: Curriculum and Examinations in Secondary Schools (Norwood Report), London (HMSO) 1943, pp.2-3. 13) Ibid., p.15. Although the Norwood Report called for the tripartite system, it did not claim that equality of opportunity could be achieved by parity of esteem through parity of material conditions. See later part of this chapter. 14) This theory strongly influenced by Cyril Burt, professor of psychology at University College, London, justified its notion of tripartism in terms of child psychology and intelligence. 15) Banks, Olive: Parity and Prestige in English Education, London (Routledge and Kegan Paul) 1955, p.133. 16) There is a growing literature analysing ‘multilateral’ or ‘comprehensive’ schools. Especially good introductions can be found in D. Rubinstein and B Simon, op.cit., Parkinson, Michael: The Labour Party and the Organisation of Secondary Education 1918-65, London (Routledge and Kegan Paul) 1970, Robin Pedley: The Comprehensive School, London (Penguin Books) 1962 and for detailed discussion of historical transformation of the concept of equality of educational opportunity between the Wars, see in Kang, Hee-Chun: “Education and Equal Opportunity between the Wars” in Oxford Review of Education, Vol. 9, No. 2, 1983. 東京外国語大学論集第78号（2009） 147

17) PRO., Ed. 136/300: Multilateral Schools, no date, p.1. 18) PRO., Ed. 136/300: Multilateral Schools, Note on Multilateral Schools by R.H. Charles and W.C. Cleary, no date. 19) PRO., Ed. 136/212: Cleary’s Memorandum of 1 February, 1941, on Reconstruction Policy in Education, No.2. 20) Ibid., General Memorandum of 13 January, 1941, on Post-War Social Development and its Effects on Schools, para 5 and 7. 21) See National Association of Labour Teachers: A Policy, 1930. National Association of Labour Teachers advocated school of 800 to 900 students providing a variety of courses around a common base. Such a plan, they claimed, would eliminate the necessity for deciding the pupils future career at the age of 11. 22) Labour Party Annual Conference Report, 1942, p.141. According to a Ministry of Information survey in 1942, 72 % of respondents supported multilateral school system. See Michael Barber: The Making of the 1944 Education Act, London (Cassell) 1994, p.9. 23) Trade Union Congress: Memo. on Education after the War, 1942. 24) PRO., Ed. 136/249: LCC’s Observation of the Educational Sub-Committee on the Memorandum from the Board of Education, October, 1941. For more on the LCC’s attitude to the multilateral school see, London County Council: London School Plan, London (LCC) 1947. 25) This Council, composed of the representatives of the NUT, WEA, TUC and the Co-Operative Union Education Committee, declared to represent the working-class. cf. H.C. Dent: Education in Transition, London (Kegan Paul, Trench, Truber & Co) 1944, p.220ff. 26) Barker, Rodney: Education and Politics, 1900-51: A Study of the Labour Party, Oxford (OUP) 1972, pp.76-7. 27) According to Kang, the traditional attitude of the Conservatives to education was (1) parental freedom to choose the school and pay fees for their children’s education, (2) preservation of the high academic tradition of secondary schools, and (3) minimum interference of the State in educational matters. Kang, 1986, p.157. 28) Ibid., p.159. 29) Board of Education: The Public Schools and the General Educational System: (Fleming Report), London (HMSO) 1944, p. 1. 30) R.A. Butler: The Art of the Possible, London (Hamish Hamilton) 1971, p.120. 31) G.D.H. Cole: “Education and Politics: A Socialist View” in Yearbook of Education, 1952, p.53. 32) H.C. Dent: Secondary Education for All, London (University of London Press) 1947, p137. 33) Norwood Report, p.14. 34) Ibid., p.24. 35) For more on the centrality of history in the dual system, see Moberly E. Bell: A History of the Church Schools Company 1883-1958, London (SPCK), 1958 and Majorie Cruickshank: Church and State in English Education: 1870-the Present Time, London (Macmillan) 1963. 36) PRO., Ed. 136/228: Discussion and Correspondence on the Archbishop's Five Points and the Dual System. There were 10,533 voluntary schools with a total attendance of 1,374,000 pupils; the 10,363 state schools catered for 3,151,000. And so, while the LEAs had control over secular instruction, they had no power to alter the organisation or to institute a system based on efficiency and equality of opportunity applying to all the children in a given area. See Green Book, p.55. 37) For example, voluntary schools with 30 pupils could not be closed; a teacher from a State school could not be transferred to a voluntary school; a voluntary school might be set up even if there were enough places for the area's children in the state school. 38) For more detail about political debate on this issue see Gosden, P.H.J.H.,: Education in the Second World War - A Study in Policy and Administration, London (Methuen) 1976, R. A. Butler: The Art of Memory, London (Hodder and Stoughton) 1982, and M. Barber, op.cit. 39) Board of Education: Report of the Consultative Committee on Differentiation of the Curriculum for Boys and Girls respectively in Secondary Schools, London (HMSO) 1922, p. xiii. However, this report did not completely oppose the differentiation of the curriculum between boys and girls. 148 Post-war Educational Reform and the New Concepts of Equal Opportunity in England: 1944-1951：OKADA Akito

40) Norwood Report, p.128. For further details of gender issues in equality of educational opportunity in England,, see Liz Dawtrey (et al.): Equality and Inequality in Education Policy, Clevedon (Open University) 1995, Lynda Measor and Patricia J. Sikes: Gender and Schools, London (Cassell) 1992, and also see Miriam E. David: Parents, Gender & Education Reform, Cambridge (Polity Press) 1993. 41) There is no mention in the 1944 Education Act of grammar, technical or modern schools, and no limit was laid on the education authorities save that of offering to their pupils ‘such variety of instruction and training as may be desirable in view of their ages, abilities and aptitudes, and of the different periods for which they may be expected to remain at school.’ Education Act, 1944, Part I, section (8). 42) Mary Warnock: School of Thought, London (Fabar) 1977, p.41. 43) Michael Sanderson, Educational Opportunity and Social Changes in England, London (Faber) 1987, p.81. 44) For more on the post-war political history in England, see A. Shed and C. Cook: Post-War Britain: A Political History, Sussex (The Harvester Press) 1979, A.F. Havighurst: Modern England, 1901-70, Cambridge (Cambridge University Press) 1976, and C.J. Bartlett: A History of Post-War Britain, 1945-74 , London (Longman)1977. For further details of the history of the Labour Party, see Cole, G.D.H., A History of the Labour Party from 1914, London (Routledge and Kegan Paul) 1948, and Pelling H., A Short History of the Labour Party, London (Macmillan) 1961. 45) This includes massive nationalisation of the coal industry, of gas, electricity, transport, of the Bunk of England, of iron and steel. A. Shed and C. Cook, op.cit., pp.25-37, 46) Ibid., pp.38-49. 47) Ministry of Education: Draft Building Regulations, Circular 10, 1944. For more detail on this point, see also, Brian Simon: Education and the Social Order 1940-1990, London (Lawrence & Wishart) 1991, pp.88ff. 48) Ministry of Education: Pamphlet No. 1: The Nation's Schools: Their Plan and Purpose, London, 1945, p.12. In the same year the Ministry issued a circular titled The Organisation of Secondary Education. It replaced the Nation's Schools and differed little from its predecessor. 49) Ibid., p.13. 50) Ibid., pp.13, 21-24. 51) Ministry of Education: The Organisation of Secondary Education, Circular 73, 1945. 52) Labour Party: Labour Party Conference Report, 1946, pp.189-95. 53) Hansard, 5th series, Vol. 420, cols. 2235-6, (22 March, 1946). 54) Ibid., Vol. 424, cols. 1831 and 1833, (1 July, 1946). 55) Ibid., cols. 1810. 56) Rodney Barker, op. cit., p.84. 57) Ministry of Education: Pamphlet No. 9: The New Secondary Education, 1947, p. 22. 58) Hansard, 5th series, Vol. 441, cols. 655-6 (31 July, 1947). 59) Kang used this conceptual framework to explain the historical shift of the concept of equality of educational opportunity in England in the 20th century. See Kang, 1986, pp.IX-XIV. 60) Labour Party: Labour Forum - A Quarterly Review, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Jan-Mar. 1947), p.6. 61) TES, 2 April 1949. 62) Ibid., 5 January 1951. 63) Hansard, 5th series, Vol. 411, cols. 1320-1 (11 June, 1946). 64) London County Council: Replanning London Schools, London (LCC) 1947, p.45. The eight experimental schools which were set up in London between 1946 and 1949 were judged to be an acceptable experiment: they were based on old central or senior schools and allowed the 25 county grammar schools already at work in the area to continue. 65) Middlesex Education Committee: Primary and Secondary Education in Middlesex, 1900-65, London, 1965, p.62. 66) Joan Thompson: Secondary Education for ALL, London (Fabian Publication) 1947. 67) Quintin Hogg: The Case for Conservatism, West Drayton (Penguin Books) 1947, p.244. 東京外国語大学論集第78号（2009） 149

68) Butler, R.A.,: “Education: The View of Conservative”, in Yearbook of Education, 1952, pp.31ff. Butler argued that from American experience the comprehensive school failed to provide adequately for more gifted children. 69) Hansard, 5th series, Vol. 441, col. 669 (31 July, 1947) and Vol. 466, col. 2028 (5 July, 1949). 70) Parkinson, Michael, op. cit., p. 49. 71) Labour Party: Resolutions for the 46th Annual Conference, 1947, pp. 40-41. 72) Ibid., Resolution for the 48th Annual Conference, 1949, p. .23. The idea of multilateral schools also was supported in Resolutions for the 47th conference, pp.25-6, Walthamstow resolution and Resolutions for the 49th conference, p.30, the West Bromwich T.C. 73) Labour Party, Resolutions for the 45th Annual Conference, p.31; Resolutions for the 46th Conference, p.31, and Resolutions for the 47th Conference, p.25. 74) For the issue of university education see Peter Gosden: The Education System since 1944, Oxford (Martin Robertson & Company Ltd) 1983, pp.136-55, and also see Roy Lowe: Education in the Post-war Years: A Social History, London (Routledge) 1988, pp.152-83. 75) Resolutions for the 46th Annual Conference, p.54; for the 47th conference; and p.25, for the 48th conference, p.23. 76) This explanation is more fully developed in Parkinson, Michael, op. cit., pp.94-131 and Banks, Olive, op. cit., pp.220-238. 77) Hansard, 5th series, Vol. 441. col. 743 (31 July, 1947). 78) At the time the vague definition of the modern school was as ‘free from the pressures of external examination’ and aimed at fostering the ‘enjoyment of life’. The Nation's Schools, 1945, p.21. 79) Hansard, 5th series, Vol. 441, col 743. 80) Ibid., Vol. 466, col. 2006 (July 5, 1949). The school leaving age of modern school children was 15. See Ministry of Education, Circular 168, 1948. 81) Ibid., col. 2007. 82) Hansard, 5th series, Vol. 478, col. 650 (26 July ,1950). 83) Labour Party: A Policy for Secondary Education, London (Victoria House Printing Company) 1951, pp.8-9. 84) Ibid., p.9. According to the pamphlet, the following factors must be borne in mind in planning the comprehensive school: Size: Provision must be made for sixth form education equivalent to that of the present grammar school; Organisation: The arrangements of numbers of classes catering for the specialised bents of the children should not be such as to make unreal demands on staffing and accommodation; Individual Guidance: There should be close individual guidance of each child throughout the school career. 85) Labour Party Annual Conference Report, 1950, p.94. 86) Kang, 1986, p. 184. 87) Hansard, 5th series, Vol. 466, col. 2006. Cove used Conant's book General Education in a Free Society to support his advocacy of the comprehensive school. 88) James, B, Conant: Education in A Divided World, London (OUP) , 1948, p.87. 89) Hansard, 5th series, Vol. 478, col. 652 (26 July, 1950). 90) See Education, 9 January 1948. 91) TES, 1 February, 1947. 92) Labour Party Annual Conference Report, 1947, pp.198-204. 93) Hansard, 5th series, Vol, 477, cols. 1889-9 (17 July, 1950). 94) Ibid., Vol. 478, cols. 646-54. 95) Note on the comprehensive school by George Tomlinson for the Education Advisory Committee and the Party Committee, Transport House Papers (T.H.P), R.5, (July 5, 1950), p.3. Tomlinson, however, was prepared to encourage experimentation with comprehensive schools. 96) Final Report of the committee on comprehensive schools, T.H.P.R. 28. (February 28, 1951), p.1. 97) Letter of Tomlinson on the report of the committee on comprehensive schools, T.H.P.R.37, (February 28, 1951). 150 Post-war Educational Reform and the New Concepts of Equal Opportunity in England: 1944-1951：OKADA Akito

戦後イギリスの教育政策における「機会均等概念」の変遷 －1944 年教育法成立過程から労働党政権までを中心にして－

岡田 昭人

本稿は第 2 次大戦前後のイギリスでは、国家的レベルでの教育政策において「機会均等」概 念がどのような議論を経て形成され、そして定義されてきたのかを、特に 1944 年教育法（バ トラー法）の成立過程から、戦後労働党政権期間（1951 年頃迄）を中心に分析するものである。 主に中等学校制度を巡って国会レベルで展開された保守党と労働党と間にみられた議論を手が かりとして、国会議事録や政府刊行物等を中心として解明を試みるものである。 イギリスでは教育における「機会均等」の原理は、19 世紀末になるまで差ほど公的な場で議 論の対象となることは少なかった。初等教育の義務化・無償化はある程度進んでいたのではあ

るが、この原理が中等教育に向けて検討されることは極めて限られていた。しかしながら、20 世紀に入りヨーロッパ大陸諸国との経済・科学技術競争に必要な人材育成の観点から、また自 由主義や社会主義者等による社会的平等を求める諸運動の高まりととともに、機会均等原理は 社会制度のあらゆる面で次第にその重要性が認識されていったのである。 第 2 次世界大戦後のイギリスの中等教育制度形成を方向付けた 1944 年教育法（通称バトラ ー法）の成立過程においては、保守・労働党共に国の子供たちをその能力や適正に応じて、11 歳時に実施される試験（11－plus）によって、グラマースクール（進学校）、テクニカルスクー ル（技術学校）、モダンスクール（進学を目的としない普通学校）という異なる 3 つタイプの 中等学校（三分岐制度）へと選別・進学されることが「機会均等」であると解釈されることが 主流であった。しかし労働党の少数派や教員組会の代表からは、そうした中等学校制度が、労

働者階級の子供たちの将来に不利な制度になっていることを鋭く批判し、3 つのタイプに分け ない統一された中等教育制度（マルティラテラルやコンプリヘンシブ・スクール）の設置を要 望する意見が出されていた。 本稿では、教育における「機会均等」概念が「三分岐制度」や「コンプリヘンシブ・スクー ル」のどちらか支持するのかによって、根源的な矛盾を抱え、また時として激しく対立するこ とを確認し、どのような形で展開・定義されてきたのかを考察することを主たる目的としてい る。