tag:theconversation.com,2011:/fr/topics/history-of-education-11749/articlesHistory of education – The Conversation2022-06-20T03:59:53Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1771352022-06-20T03:59:53Z2022-06-20T03:59:53ZReligious women set up some of Australia’s first schools, but their history remains veiled<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468897/original/file-20220615-12-xabqcs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C3%2C1238%2C885&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">St John’s Pro-Cathedral, the Convent of Mercy and the girls’ school in Perth circa 1862. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://purl.slwa.wa.gov.au/slwa_b4167690_1">State Library of Western Australia </a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In a wealthy country like Australia, a time with no government schools seems unimaginable. But back in the 1840s, when the Sisters of Mercy opened the <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/frayne-ursula-3572">first seconadary school</a> in Western Australia, there were only a few tiny private schools. Many children, particularly girls, received no formal education. </p>
<p>Women religious, or nuns, made education more accessible. Their way of life also offered one of few leadership opportunities for women. </p>
<p>These women demonstrated entrepreneurial and diplomatic skill while developing education in Australia. Their work required them to navigate hostile male hierarchies, religious discrimination, class struggles and complex relationships with Aboriginal peoples. </p>
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<p>Historians have documented part of this story, but there is a way to go. In a country enamoured with egalitarianism, the lives of women religious speak of the broader historical reality of inequality.</p>
<h2>Where did these women come from?</h2>
<p>Religious orders consist of people living apart from society but as a community in accordance with the spiritual rule of their founder. <a href="https://www.cuapress.org/9780813218731/the-path-of-mercy/">Catherine McAuley</a> (1778-1841) founded the Sisters of Mercy in Dublin when she opened the first House of Mercy dedicated to serving the poor, sick and uneducated.</p>
<p>Catherine’s approach to assisting Ireland’s burgeoning poor was <a href="https://www.academia.edu/3081655/C_Kovesi_Killerby_Ursula_Frayne_A_Biography_Fremantle_University_of_Notre_Dame_an_imprint_of_Fremantle_Arts_Centre_Press_1996_">radical</a>. The community consisted of <a href="https://www.cuapress.org/9780813218731/the-path-of-mercy/">two classes</a> of sisters. Choir sisters were educated, middle-class women and generally served as teachers. Lay sisters were poor and working class and operated the kitchen or laundry.</p>
<p>Ursula Frayne (1816-1885), who opened the <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/frayne-ursula-3572">first secondary school</a> in Western Australia as well as schools in Victoria in the mid-19th century, had trained with McAuley. In 1845 Bishop John Brady visited the sisters’ Dublin convent and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Valiant-women-foundation-Australia-1845-1849/dp/085884320X">requested</a> the mother superior send six sisters to Western Australia with Frayne as the leader.</p>
<p>While sailing to Western Australia aboard The Elizabeth, a member of the missionary group travelling with Bishop Brady was a young French monk, Leandre Fonteinne, who ominously <a href="https://shop.newnorcia.wa.edu.au/collections/a-salvado-selection-commemorating-200-years/products/clf-1">noted</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“His Lordship is only concerned […] for the six women religious that he is bringing along with us. They are and for quite a number of years to come will be a burden to the mission.”</p>
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<h2>What did they do in Australia?</h2>
<p>After arriving in Perth, in 1846 the sisters became the first female religious teaching order to establish a school in Australia. Having navigated sectarism in Ireland, they decided to offer a general education to all Christians. The sisters prioritised Aboriginal people, immigrant Irish orphan girls, the poor and the uneducated. The sisters <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/frayne-ursula-3572">established</a> a fee-paying school, benevolent institution and Western Australia’s first high school.</p>
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<p>Coming from a prosperous Dublin family, Frayne was class-conscious but the distinction between choir and lay nuns was unsustainable in colonial Perth. Relying on the bishop was not an option that would allow them to progress their enterprise. </p>
<p>For these women to be self-sufficient, everyone had to do domestic duties. Frayne herself <a href="https://www.academia.edu/3081655/C_Kovesi_Killerby_Ursula_Frayne_A_Biography_Fremantle_University_of_Notre_Dame_an_imprint_of_Fremantle_Arts_Centre_Press_1996_">became a baker</a>. </p>
<p>Although Bishop Brady promised financial support, in 1850 Frayne travelled to Colombo, Malta, Rome, Florence, Paris, England and Ireland to raise funds. In March 1851, she returned to Perth with £450. She gave £157 to the bishop, who was broke. </p>
<p>By 1853 the nuns could afford a new £800 school building. As the sisters’ workload increased, they <a href="https://www.academia.edu/3081655/C_Kovesi_Killerby_Ursula_Frayne_A_Biography_Fremantle_University_of_Notre_Dame_an_imprint_of_Fremantle_Arts_Centre_Press_1996_">applied to Dublin</a> for “strong” lay sisters. </p>
<p>Two of the longest-serving lay sisters sent from Dublin were Catherine O’Reilly and Catherine Strahan. O’Reilly filled multiple roles, including carpenter. She was eventually promoted to choir sister and helped to establish schools at locations such as Geraldton.</p>
<p>Strahan’s trajectory was different. Strahan was a lay sister at 30 and provided essential services to the convent kitchen and laundry until she <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/32717149?searchTerm=Catherine%20Strahan%20Sister%20of%20Mercy">died at 67</a>.</p>
<p>In 1857, Frayne moved to Melbourne to establish a new school as Brady’s replacement as bishop, <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/serra-joseph-benedict-4560">Joseph Serra</a>, frequently <a href="https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/_/_0I3EAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA55&dq=%22Joseph+Serra%22+%22Frayne%22+%22melbourne%22">interfered in the order’s leadership</a>. Frayne <a href="https://www.academia.edu/3081655/C_Kovesi_Killerby_Ursula_Frayne_A_Biography_Fremantle_University_of_Notre_Dame_an_imprint_of_Fremantle_Arts_Centre_Press_1996_">felt much of his interference unneccessary</a>. Such interference peaked in Queensland, where the Sisters of Mercy had established the state’s <a href="https://200years.catholic.edu.au/2021/09/01/memories-from-the-past-mercy-sisters/?et_blog">first secondary school for girls</a>. The local bishop withheld part of their government salary and exposed them to undernourishment and an early death.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468885/original/file-20220615-16-mq8zyf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Drawing of senior nun" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468885/original/file-20220615-16-mq8zyf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468885/original/file-20220615-16-mq8zyf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468885/original/file-20220615-16-mq8zyf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468885/original/file-20220615-16-mq8zyf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468885/original/file-20220615-16-mq8zyf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468885/original/file-20220615-16-mq8zyf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468885/original/file-20220615-16-mq8zyf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Ursula Frayne was a pioneer of education in both Perth and Melbourne.</span>
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<h2>Undeniably important yet curiously anonymous</h2>
<p>Women religious operated significant educational enterprises. Historian Stephanie Burley <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03323315.2011.596666">considers</a> female Irish teaching orders as an empire within the British Empire. Their classes bridged the political, religious and cultural norms of the Irish Catholic Church and the British Empire, acting as a pacifying force between the two spheres.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, as historian Colin Barr <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/irelands-empire/FD04BB48D7FB5599DE42E14072B4804B">notes</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Unfortunately, historians have too often seen these women as an undifferentiated mass, undeniably important yet curiously anonymous. Yet [they] were not merely the passive transmitters of male ideas or initiatives.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As a leader, Frayne has been the subject of biographies. However, Catherine O’Reilly and Catherine Strahan remained cloistered. </p>
<p>The women who laboured in domestic roles in religious communities deserve greater attention. Although historians are increasingly showing interest in the broader role of women religious in Australian society, aspects of their influence remain opaque.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/177135/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Odhran O'Brien is affiliated with the Catholic Archdiocese of Perth as the archivist.</span></em></p>These women showed diverse skills while developing education in Australia. In a country enamoured with egalitarianism, the neglect of their stories speaks of a broader historical reality.Odhran O'Brien, PhD Candidate in History, The University of Western AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/447402015-07-20T12:31:41Z2015-07-20T12:31:41ZWe’re stuck with the same debates about childcare as half a century ago<p>Children from the most disadvantaged backgrounds should be taught in schools from the age of two, according to Ofsted’s <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/ofsteds-early-years-report-2015">chief inspector of schools</a>, Michael Wilshaw. His intervention is the latest in a long history of debate in Britain about how best to care for the nation’s under-fives. </p>
<p>While there have been private nurseries in Britain since the 19th century, provided by factory owners and philanthropists, until the middle decades of the 20th century the state played a minimal role. The second half of the century saw changing attitudes towards pre-school childcare, but the same questions that were being asked in the 1950s and 1960s are still being asked today. At what age should children should start childcare – at two, three or younger? Where and by whom should they be looked after – in a day nursery, nursery school, or by a childminder? </p>
<p>Further questions were also being asked then about whether care or education should be the main goal of early years services. And what should be done for children who cannot be looked after by their mothers or those whose home conditions mean they would benefit from time spent outside it? Should extra effort be made for certain groups of children, such as an only child who lacks company at home?</p>
<p>Despite fevered debates on the subject, such as <a href="https://www.pre-school.org.uk/media/press-releases/283/belle-tutaev-founder-of-pre-school-learning-alliance-awarded-obe">Belle Tutaev’s campaign</a> for more nursery education which led to the founding of the playgroup movement in 1961, and the social and political dynamism of these decades, there was little change in the level of state-provided pre-school childcare. There were striking similarities in attitudes to childcare of successive governments during the second half of the 20th century, despite the different parties in power. </p>
<h2>Leave families to it</h2>
<p>British policy took a <em>laissez faire</em> approach and left families to make private arrangements for the care of children under five. Decisions were influenced by issues of limited resources combined with ideological concerns about the respective roles of the state and the family and competing theories of child development. A lack of funding for many child welfare schemes meant they could not always meet the aspirations society held. </p>
<p>All this contributed to the low level of pre-school childcare available in comparison to other European countries. In <a href="http://www.oecd.org/els/emp/4343133.pdf">the late 1980s</a>, 22% of Britain’s three million under-fives received nursery education with only 1% attending council day nurseries. In contrast, in France the government provided full-time care for 33% of two-year-olds and in Denmark the figure was 29%.</p>
<p>Three main ideas about childcare dominated government childcare policy until the end of the century. First, care for the under-fives was the responsibility of individual families, not the state. Second, young children were best off at home with their mothers. Third, any care that was offered to the under-fives should be cost-effective. </p>
<p>At the end of the 20th century, the government’s role and position changed substantially. During the Thatcher and Major Conservative governments, childcare became increasingly regulated. The 1988 Children Bill, part of the <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/9/contents/enacted">Local Government Act</a> required local authorities to review day-care provision in their area, and the <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1989/41/contents">1989 Children Act</a> obliged local authorities to register and inspect childcare services. </p>
<h2>Labour stepped in</h2>
<p>However, the real change came with the 1997-2010 Labour government, which rejected that all childcare should be in private hands and accepted the need for a state-led childcare policy. As part of the <a href="http://www.ukchildcare.ca/policy/strategy.shtml">National Childcare Strategy</a>, the Labour government also instituted the Sure Start initiative, which aimed to improve childcare, early education, health and family support with an emphasis on outreach and community development. </p>
<p>Initially aimed at challenging disadvantage it was later decided to provide a children’s centre in every area not just the most disadvantaged. In his Comprehensive Spending Review speech in July 2004, the then chancellor, Gordon Brown, declared the 21st century as the era of universal childcare and early-years services.</p>
<p>A more mixed picture developed under the 2010 coalition government: free nursery places were introduced for disadvantaged two-year-olds, but this was financed <a href="http://217.35.77.12/archive/england/papers/welfare/pdfs/A_New_Era_for_Universal_Childcare.pdf">at the expense</a> of Sure Start, as local authority budget cuts led the closure of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-12940355">some centres</a>. </p>
<h2>What adults really remember</h2>
<p>However, <a href="http://www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9780719090653">my research</a> has found that adults’ memories of their childcare experiences are largely determined by the quality of family life they experienced, rather than how they were looked-after at school or nursery when they were young. </p>
<p>Based on interviews with adults who had attended childcare between the 1940s and 1990s in Coventry, London and Oxfordshire, I found that those who grew up in what they described as a “happy home” were likely to remember childcare positively regardless of what those arrangements were. They were also more likely to say they tried to replicate the same type of care for their own children. </p>
<p>While good-quality childcare can neutralise the negative effects on children of deprivation and disadvantage, early intervention working with parents, as well as children, will have the best long-term outcomes. So, the government’s plans to <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-brings-forward-plans-to-double-free-childcare-for-working-families">increase the number</a> of free childcare hours for three and four-year-olds to 30 hours a week needs to take place in tandem with continued support for families in the form of schemes such as Sure Start or the <a href="https://theconversation.com/fact-check-has-the-troubled-families-programme-saved-1-2-billion-38999">Troubled Families</a> programme.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/44740/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Angela Davis receives funding from the Wellcome Trust. </span></em></p>Despite big changes in childcare policy at the end of the 20th century, we’re asking many of the same questions as in the 1960s.Angela Davis, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of WarwickLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/414132015-05-13T05:17:25Z2015-05-13T05:17:25ZSchools haven’t always been the safe havens of today’s ‘mini welfare states’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81445/original/image-20150512-25056-1bui1h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">As welfare cuts bite, a growing number of schools are feeding and clothing and pupils. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">School cafeteria via Monkey Business Images/www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>“Please, sir, I want some more,” pleaded Oliver Twist in the fictional workhouse depicted in the 1837 novel by Charles Dickens. The infamous response of Mr Bumble to Oliver’s modest request for another plate of gruel has passed into folklore. This is the heritage of the Victorian approach to welfare – a dangerous place for children to grow up in. </p>
<p>The contrast with a recent survey by the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-32540801">National Association of Headteachers</a> (NAHT) could hardly be greater. It shows that schools are providing around £2,000 to £3,000 a year to support children as a result of social, welfare and health budget cuts. Russell Hobby, general secretary of the NAHT, concludes that schools are now acting as “mini welfare states”. </p>
<p>So are the schools of the 21st century safe havens or dangerous places for our children? The answer is that they can be either, depending on how we use them. Some of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/greville-janner-is-just-the-latest-twist-in-a-slow-burning-scandal-39527">recent child abuse scandals</a> coming to light are a horrific example of this. But the NAHT survey shows that a series of reforms begun in the early 20th century to support the welfare of children are having a continuing effect – to such an extent that schools are increasingly designed as safe havens to protect children from the dangers of the outside world. </p>
<p>British schools are fundamentally protective in their aims – not yet the <a href="https://theconversation.com/school-metal-detectors-reduce-weapon-carrying-but-not-fear-26547">mini security states</a> that we see in some countries such as the US, where pupils may be frisked for guns before they can enter.</p>
<p>The welfare reforms began in earnest in the early 20th century under a Liberal government – the introduction of <a href="http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/school-dinners/">free school meals</a> for the poorest children (1906), <a href="http://adc.bmj.com/content/81/2/181.full">medical inspection for school pupils</a> (1907), and a <a href="http://www.intriguing-history.com/childrens-act/">Children’s Act</a> (1908). They helped to stimulate a new approach to social welfare <a>that was later expressed</a> in the Beveridge report of 1942 that underpinned the modern welfare state. Hobby’s reference to “mini welfare states” is close to the mark, as they once helped to inspire the maxi version.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81273/original/image-20150511-19524-1nheauz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81273/original/image-20150511-19524-1nheauz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=457&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81273/original/image-20150511-19524-1nheauz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=457&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81273/original/image-20150511-19524-1nheauz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=457&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81273/original/image-20150511-19524-1nheauz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=574&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81273/original/image-20150511-19524-1nheauz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=574&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81273/original/image-20150511-19524-1nheauz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=574&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The welfare state has moved on a bit since Dickens’ day.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/fdctsevilla/3983519280/sizes/l">El Bibliomata/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>The Dickensian tradition would have schools as very unsafe, alien territory for children, institutions that could only too readily control, punish, exploit and abuse the children in their care.
This was not only the case for working class schools. The elite public boarding schools of Victorian times found many ways of forcing their pupils to watch their step, the better to build their character. </p>
<p>Regimented conformity was the start of it, <a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Tom_Brown_s_universe.html?id=s-w2AAAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y">moving on to</a> bullying and flogging. “<a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Such_such_were_the_joys.html?id=HSZbAAAAMAAJ">Such, such were the joys</a>”, as George Orwell recalled in an essay about his days at the prep school St Cyprians. Orwell also remembered the squalor and neglect of upper class schools. Personal hygiene was poor, epidemics frequent, hunger widespread, with fear of epidemic diseases such as scarlet fever a constant torment. The school universe of <a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Tom_Brown_s_School_Days.html?id=gN0NAAAAQAAJ">Thomas Hughes’s Tom Brown</a> was hardly less dangerous than the world of Oliver Twist.</p>
<p>Lower down the social scale, Victorian day grammar schools <a href="http://eprints.ioe.ac.uk/11002/">were often decaying structures</a> with outdated endowments in which pupils and teachers froze in their classrooms in winter and fried in summer. There was no room here to wash the clothes of pupils who walked for miles in the same attire that they wore during the school day, or to clean the boots of mud picked up along the way.</p>
<h2>Unsafe surroundings after World War II</h2>
<p>In 20th century schools, in buildings dating from the 19th century, such conditions were often still to be endured on a daily basis. After World War II, the <a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Failing_the_ordinary_child.html?id=VD4mAQAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y">Workers’ Educational Association </a>(WEA) reported that over 700 schools had been “blacklisted” two decades before but were still in use. </p>
<p>Many of these schools did not have proper lighting, had inadequate heating, primitive sanitation, no inside water, a single washbasin and towel for scores of children, defective ventilation, with old fashioned furniture unsuited for children, cramped classrooms, small playgrounds, no playing fields and few books. The WEA found the <a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Failing_the_ordinary_child.html?id=VD4mAQAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y">situation was</a>: “So serious that teachers are to be found in desperation supplying the lack as best they can out of their own pockets”.</p>
<p>Today, that tradition of the welfare state, long at the centre of the state school system, is still alive and kicking. There will be some who fret about the prospect of the mini-nanny state and the NAHT’s new evidence of growing poverty. Yet maybe we can take some comfort in the fact that there remains a space for care, compassion, and a social conscience, and that it exists, despite it all, in our schools.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/41413/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gary McCulloch does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Victorian schools were alien territory for children, and after World War II many schools were crumbling and unsafe.Gary McCulloch, Brian Simon Professor of History of Education, UCLLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/294412014-08-01T05:09:57Z2014-08-01T05:09:57Z70 years after the Education Act, debate still rages on the school leaving age<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55425/original/jzm3chmb-1406805283.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=15%2C73%2C784%2C579&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Here 'til we're 16? Really, sir? </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/Technical_School-_Training_at_Tottenham_Polytechnic%2C_Middlesex%2C_England%2C_UK%2C_1944_D21390.jpg">Ministry of Information Photo Division Photographer, via Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Seventy years on from its passage into law, the <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Geo6/7-8/31/contents/enacted">Education Act of 1944</a> is often remembered as a monument to political consensus – the art of the possible, in the words of its chief architect, R A “Rab” Butler. It achieved cross-party support under a coalition government which had a military victory over Adolf Hitler in World War II as its principal objective. The Education Act probably seemed a limited, compromise measure, but also just a sideshow to the momentous events that were taking place on the world stage.</p>
<p>Yet the Education Act, which was given Royal Assent on August 3 1944, was also the product of a genuine debate about the future of education in a postwar society. Many of the measures that it included had long attracted controversy and often bitter opposition, even if they have now found general acceptance.</p>
<p>For instance, the act ushered in <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/schoolreport/25751787">secondary education for all</a> children for the first time. This was a proposal that had been supported by the <a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_politics_of_educational_reform_1920.html?id=j-wMAQAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y">Labour Party since the 1920s</a> but denounced by many politicians and business leaders, on the grounds that it was not only too expensive but also educationally unsound and socially problematic. </p>
<p>Even in 1943, as part of the preparations for the act, <a href="http://www.educationengland.org.uk/documents/norwood/">a committee set up by the Board of Education</a> argued forcefully that there were three different groups in society that therefore required three different types of secondary school – an approach that underpinned the postwar development of grammar schools, technical schools and secondary modern schools.</p>
<h2>Raising the school leaving age</h2>
<p>A closely related provision of the 1944 act, <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Geo6/7-8/31/section/35/enacted">in section 35</a>, was its support for an increase in the school leaving age, which had stood at 14 since the end of World War I. It proposed the leaving age should be raised immediately to 15, and that it should be increased again, to 16, as soon as this became practicable. </p>
<p>Such an idea had been anathema to business interests. In the aftermath of a war and with a lack of teachers and schools it also raised serious practical difficulties. Nevertheless, the first instalment of this reform was delivered under Clement Attlee’s postwar Labour government from 1947, disfigured though it was by the <a href="http://eprints.ioe.ac.uk/11845/">prefabricated huts</a> that were brought in to house the extra secondary school children.</p>
<p>It was still unclear in the postwar period whether raising the leaving age had won over public opinion as a popular cause. The second stage in this reform, an increase to 16, was actually delayed for a further 25 years, until 1972, when Margaret Thatcher finally presided over this additional step as education secretary. </p>
<p>Even then, however, it remained a controversial measure, partly because of the resources needed to put it into practice, but also because a number of teachers were unwilling to retain unruly and alienated pupils, some of whom they felt would learn little more in an additional year at school than they had managed in the previous ten.</p>
<h2>Lessons for today</h2>
<p>What are the lessons of this delayed provision of the 1944 Act after 70 years? <a href="http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/?k=9780230340398">Recent research</a> on the history of raising the school leaving age in this country by Tom Woodin, Steven Cowan and myself at the Institute of Education in London, argues that despite all the obstacles and opposition, increasing the leaving age was a crucial achievement that has led in turn to the further expansion of post-16 education and also higher education over the past decade.</p>
<p>This is a particularly important issue for the present day because the 2008 Education and Skills Act provided for further increases in what is now called the education participation age, making participation in education or training <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/policies/increasing-opportunities-for-young-people-and-helping-them-to-achieve-their-potential/supporting-pages/raising-the-participation-age">compulsory for all</a> up to 17 from 2013 and 18 from 2015. </p>
<p>Many economists, industrialists and educationists continue to raise objections to this policy on a number of grounds. Arguing in The Guardian, former editor Peter Preston called the extension “<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2007/jan/15/comment.politics2">Two more futile years</a>”, while Chris Woodhead, former chief inspector of schools, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-15146240">argued instead</a> that the school leaving age should be cut to 14 instead, and former trade minister Digby Jones that the age rule <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-14338977">should be relaxed</a> to connect getting a skill with earning money. </p>
<p>The protracted debate over implementing the 1944 act provisions in this area is again highly instructive. The extended period that was needed for the 1944 Act to come into full effect highlights the slippage that can so often take place between the policy and the practice. It was a matter of high policy, with agonised discussions taking place at cabinet level within governments throughout the 1960s as the treasury warned of dire economic consequences if it were ever allowed to come into force. </p>
<p>The Conservative government of the 1950s <a href="http://eprints.ioe.ac.uk/11712/">toyed with the idea</a> of returning the leaving age to 14. From the 1960s, the Guardian newspaper, once so strongly in favour with the <a href="http://www.history.ac.uk/makinghistory/historians/tawney_richard.html">educational reformer R H Tawney</a> writing its leading articles, became conspicuously ambivalent.</p>
<p>Raising the school leaving age, a crucial move towards equality of opportunity, remains a significant example of the struggle and controversies involved in educational change over the longer term. It reveals the close connections between politics and economics on the one hand, and curriculum and educational structures on the other. The 1944 act was no mere sideshow, but a vital reform in the making of a modern society.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/29441/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gary McCulloch receives funding from ESRC. </span></em></p>Seventy years on from its passage into law, the Education Act of 1944 is often remembered as a monument to political consensus – the art of the possible, in the words of its chief architect, R A “Rab…Gary McCulloch, Brian Simon Professor of History of Education, UCLLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.