The Edwardians

by Roy Hattersley

  The need for a major overhaul of the education system was, much to the surprise of the whole Cabinet, heartily endorsed by the Duke of Devonshire who, as a Whig aristocrat, was not in the habit of either mastering the details of public administration or supporting government intrusion into the lives of the people. The day-to-day responsibility for the Bill was, however, left in the hands of Sir John Gorst – to whom the acceptance of new responsibility did not bring caution or wisdom. Gorst, who had once been a member of ‘The Fourth Party’ and co-operated with Balfour and Lord Randolph Churchill in harrying his own front bench, never quite adjusted to the demands of government. He openly described the Duke of Devonshire as a ‘living wet blanket’ and rejoiced when his public criticism of Conservative policy ‘made Balfour squirm’. In July 190112 his indiscretions returned to haunt him. A radical MP reminded him of a long-forgotten speech in which he had explained why Tory governments neglected education.

  The members of the government were selected from a class which was not entirely convinced of the necessity or the desirability of higher education for the people. They held the opinion which is sometimes expressed by great professors of the universities in their speeches that there were certain functions which had to be performed in the modern life of civilised communities which were best performed by people ignorant and brutish.

  A combination of what Balfour called ‘a degree of opposition which seems to be wholly irrational’ and Gorst’s unconventional way of defending government policy made it impossible to proceed with the general reform for which Balfour hoped. But a short bill which legitimised expenditure outside the 1896 Act was passed into law. During the Second Reading debate, Balfour made clear that he intended to return to the subject for reasons which went far beyond the need to protect the interests of the Church of England. ‘You tell us that we are falling behind the Germans in industrial matters because we do not educate our people.’ It was therefore ‘incumbent on the House, as soon as may be, to establish that secondary authority which shall deal with secondary education for all classes of the country’.13

  Balfour argued successfully for the preparation of another bill. The Cabinet agreed, but ‘insisted on his conducting it through the Commons. They would not have Gorst at any price.’ Balfour’s style encouraged one of his friends to complain, ‘the worst of it was that he did not believe in education’.14 It was a pose. He accepted the burden of his new responsibility and wrote to the Duke of Devonshire, not to complain (which would have been against his nature) but to explain (as was essential to his style) that he was not seeking to extend his empire. ‘I have as you know been dragged (much against my will) into questions connected with education.’15 What would now be called a ‘mixed committee’ – both ministers and civil servants – was appointed to work out the details. It was dominated by Robert Morant.

  Balfour set about the task of both preserving and improving secondary education throughout the country ‘in the lowest possible spirits about the whole question’, for it seemed that his hopes of securing a general improvement in education might well be frustrated by an alliance in the House of Commons between Anglicans, who thought that the Church of England was receiving too little help, and Nonconformists, who thought that it was receiving too much. Morant’s paper on the contents of the new bill supported Balfour’s determination to make revolutionary, as well as comprehensive, changes in the whole organisation of education, but it also revealed how many conflicting objections had to be overcome before that was achieved.

  If we are tempted to include Elementary Education in the Bill in order to save the Denominational Schools [which will otherwise] be swept away by the next radical government and to raise enthusiasm for the Bill, we must necessarily face the question of removing the existing denominational restrictions upon all aid, of losing the cumulative vote, of raising denominational struggles … in the election of local bodies, and above all of deciding on a proper relation between the County and its component areas and on the proper organisation of Local Authorities, each with clearly defined functions for various types of school.16

  Balfour, determined that the governance of elementary schools should be included in his bill, was willing to face all those hazards. So he examined a number of alternative solutions to the problems which Morant set out. It might be possible to allow the new authorities he intended to create a choice between assuming a responsibility for elementary as well as secondary education or simply supervising the new secondary schools which the government intended to encourage. His first instinct was to determine the nature of religious education in state elementary schools by what was called ‘the Clause 27 Rule’ – the provision in the 1896 Act which allowed denominational instruction if that was the clear preference of a majority of parents. Nonconformists had fought bitterly against that change to the principle, laid down by the 1870 Act, that religious teaching in board schools should have no denominational bias. Nonconformity was far stronger in the Parliament of 1901 than it had been in the Parliament of 1896. Balfour’s contempt for religious bigots was undisguised: ‘I do not approach the topic in the least as a Member of one particular denomination. Indeed the division among Protestants has in my judgement done such incalculable harm to Christianity that I should be reluctant indeed to embitter them.’17

  But the most intractable problem facing Balfour was the apparently irreconcilable conflict between preserving the independence of the church (voluntary) schools and, at the same time, providing them with the funds necessary to guarantee a quality of education which was comparable with that available in the secular alternative.

  As I understand the present situation, those interested in the maintenance of these [church] schools desire to have all their current expenses, connected with secular education, paid out of the rates, they (in exchange) to hand over their existing buildings, to keep them up and where necessary add to them … But I take it that, in a very large number of cases, the buildings are inferior to the Board Schools and that, if Voluntary School Managers were required to bring them up to that standard, their financial position would hardly be improved by the change.18

  Despite Balfour’s initial pessimism, a combination of his political strength and Morant’s intellectual agility made sure that the conflicting needs – improved standards and continued church participation – were as nearly reconciled as possible. The basis of the new bill was the complete abolition of the School Boards and the assumption of the responsibility for education by committees of county and county borough councils. Each of the councils – including the larger non-county boroughs which were brought within the scope of the bill during its committee stage – was to create a committee which included co-opted members with special interest in education. Most often, they turned out to be leaders of the local religious communities. The Local Education Authorities (as the committees became) were empowered to provide both elementary and secondary education. Their task was to encourage the general provision of a curriculum that was already available in the most progressive local authorities which used to the full their powers under the 1889 Technical Education Act. In Bradford, Rowland Evans, about to become an engineering apprentice, described in his diary life in the ‘top section of the 2nd year’ in the senior department of a board school. His working day under the supervision of ‘Mr Pendlebury … a very strict teacher’ was certainly not ‘elementary’ education. ‘The first lesson was scripture and he was talking about parables and their meaning. Then we had French and mathematics. In the afternoon we had Latin and were reading Shakespeare.’19 The object of the 1902 Bill was the provision, throughout the country, of what was already available in places like Bradford.

  The Church of England’s needs were met by the government accepting (in slightly more generous terms) the bargain – premises in exchange for the promise of running costs – which Balfour had earlier rejected. The churches were to appoint their own teachers, but their schools were to be subject to government inspection. The Catholic Church, after
years of doubt about an educational partnership with the state, changed its mind and rejoiced that ‘the general effect of the new law is to make Christian and Catholic Education a part of the law and constitution of England’. Cardinal Vaughan believed the 1902 Act to be ‘a large and important advance’.20 His views were a triumph for realism. ‘Our hope for the future lies in our schools and our schools can never be self-supporting. The idea that we in England could ever hope to throw off state aid and maintain effective schools (such as the government would recognise as efficient) out of our own private means is a pure chimera.’21 The Nonconformist churches had few schools of their own, but the defence of those which existed was fierce and unremitting. They feared that the Act would ‘ensure permanent subsidisation of the Established and Roman Catholic Church’.22 The Baptists were particularly critical of proposals which the Reverend Doctor Clifford called ‘Rome on the Rates’.

  The Nonconformist objections grew stronger with the discovery that Cardinal Vaughan had asked Irish Members of Parliament to stay in London throughout the summer and guarantee the successful passage of the Bill. Nonconformists on the Opposition benches had hoped that the Church of England schools would wither and die. The Bill would reprieve them. Very often they were the only schools in travelling distance of whole communities. In consequence there was the permanent prospect of Nonconformist children being educated in Church of England schools – rather than attending the board schools (called ‘provided schools’ after the Bill was passed) and receiving their religious education at home and on Sundays. The Nonconformists had a second concern. They knew that Balfour was in favour of allowing the ‘provided schools’ to offer whichever sort of religious instruction the parents wanted. That, they feared, would always be Church of England. The notion of parental preference was abandoned, but the Nonconformists were not reconciled. They decided that the non-denominational education which was an obligatory part of the board schools curriculum would be indistinguishable from the teaching of the Established Church.

  The Nonconformists had an ally in the Cabinet. Joseph Chamberlain was a Unitarian by birth and a troublemaker by nature. Fortunately for the future of the Bill, the Duke of Devonshire ‘surprised all his colleagues by displaying a complete mastery of the issues involved. He unfolded his views with great cogency, not allowing himself to be disturbed by the interventions of Mr Chamberlain.’23 However, the Cabinet did agree – worn down by constant argument and Chamberlain’s implicit threat of resignation – to include a clause which gave each county or borough council the ‘local option’ of not implementing the Bill.

  Chamberlain was mollified but not content. Victor Cavendish noticed that the Duke of Devonshire ‘seemed very worried about the Education Bill. Afraid there may be trouble. May break up the party.’24 It took fifty-seven sessions in all for the Bill to pass into law. One of them should have given the government particular satisfaction. Had the local ‘opt-out’ clause been allowed to stand in its original form the Bill’s basic purpose would have been frustrated. But an amendment to delete it – insofar as it applied to elementary schools – was moved while Joe Chamberlain was away from the House recovering from a hansom cab accident. Emboldened by his absence, the government asked its supporters to vote in favour of the amendment and it was carried.

  Outside the House of Commons the battle over denominational instruction raged. Radicals combined with Nonconformists to campaign for the removal of religious instruction from the school syllabus. More than three years after the Bill became an Act, the Reverend Evans (young Rowland’s father) went from Bradford ‘up to London … to meeting in connection with Secular education. The meeting was called to form a national league. Father on committee. The name of the league is the Secular Education League.’25 By then, Nonconformist hatred of the Education Bill had contributed to Unionist defeat in the general election of 1906. But the bill had changed the quality of English and Welsh education.

  The changes came about slowly, for although Balfour knew that the fundamental reorganisation of the education system was essential to the well-being of the country, his political philosophy prevented him from imposing the reforms on unwilling county and borough councils. The key to progress was the creation of Local Education Authorities with the power to set up and supervise schools of every sort. Balfour told the House of Commons that the government ‘had been most careful not to bind this authority instantly to produce a great scheme of secondary education in their areas’.26 The final clause of the bill prompted but did not compel: ‘The local authority shall consider the needs and take such steps as seem to them desirable, after consultation with the Board of Education, to supply or aid the supply of education, other than elementary, including the training of teachers and the general co-ordination of all forms of education.’

  By the time that the Local Education Authorities were set up and had begun to plan improvement and expansion, the Board of Education (with whom they were required to liaise) was under the command of a new permanent secretary. Kekewich had been pushed aside and Morant had taken his place, determined to create new secondary schools in the image of his own education. Winchester and New College, Oxford, had left their mark. Despite all the talk about the need for technical education, the new schools would teach a syllabus which was a reflection of the public-school curriculum. The bias, although damaging to Britain’s industrial future, had honourable origins. ‘Extending opportunity to the working class meant [offering them] a right to share a liberal education in its highest form.’27

  The elementary schools were expected to develop a syllabus which combined the improvement of practical skills with the acquisition of knowledge. In 1904, a Code for Public Elementary Education – the only outline of education’s purpose to be drawn up in almost a hundred years – was published by the new ministry. It stands up very well to the test of time – with the exception of its use of the word ‘children’. Over the years they became first ‘pupils’ and then ‘students’.

  The purpose of the Public Elementary School is to form and strengthen the character and to develop the intelligence of the children entrusted to it … With this purpose in view it will be the aim of the School to train the children carefully in the habits of observation and clear reasoning so that they may gain an intelligent acquaintance with some of the facts and laws of nature …

  Children must be taught in a way which was likely

  … to arouse in them a living interest in the ideals and achievements of mankind, to bring them to some familiarity with the literature and history of their own country and to give them some power over language as an instrument of thought and expression.

  The formal education of school days should only be a beginning. So

  while making them conscious of the limitations of their knowledge, to develop in them such a taste for good reading and thoughtful study as will enable them to increase that knowledge in after years by their own efforts …

  The School must at the same time encourage to the utmost the children’s natural activities of hand and eye by suitable forms of practical work and manual instruction and afford them every opportunity for the healthy development of their bodies, not only by training them in appropriate physical exercises and encouraging them in organised games, but also by instructing them in the working of some of the simpler laws of health.

  The Code included an admirable expression of the need to balance the interests of the individual against the needs of the whole community.

  It will be an important though subsidiary object of the School to discover individual children who show promise of exceptional capacity, and to develop their special gifts (as far as this can be done without sacrificing the interests of the majority of the children) so that they may be qualified to pass at the proper age into Secondary Schools.

  The secondary schools were clearly not intended to complete the education of all the children. But all parents were to be involved

  in a united effort to enable children not merely to re
ach their full development as individuals but also to become upright and useful members of the community.28

  Few children of the working classes passed at the appropriate age into secondary schools. Indeed the working class barely benefited at all from the implementation of the Bryce Commission’s proposals. ‘The chances of the children of labouring parents obtaining secondary schooling were not immediately enhanced.’29 For the new schools charged fees. Some free places were available immediately after it became lawful to provide them in 1905, but even after 1906 – when the Liberal government required a quarter of the entrants to be elementary school pupils who had won scholarships – the middle class still dominated the rolls. By 1911, 60 per cent of all secondary school pupils (82,000 or more) had begun their education in maintained elementary schools, but most of them were the sons and daughters of clerks, artisans and shopkeepers. However, thanks to the perseverance of Balfour and Morant, by 1914 60 per cent of children in England and Wales stayed at school until they were at least fourteen.30

  In Scotland the reorganisation of schools took a slightly different course – as was to be expected in a country where the commitment to education was traditionally far greater than it was in England. In 1496 the law had required barons and wealthy ‘free holders’ to send their children (of both sexes) to school for three years, and John Knox’s First Book of Discipline, published in 1560, had prescribed universal education as essential to the creation of a God-fearing nation. ‘Most of the progress in Scottish Education since Knox’s day had consisted of advancing towards his ideals.’31 A Scottish (or ‘Scotch’ as it was surprisingly called) Education Department – distinct from other ministries – had been created to co-ordinate school policy in 1885, fifteen years before the same rationalisation was thought necessary in England and Wales. State funds were made available for secondary and technical education during the 1890s and many elementary schools created ‘higher grade classes’ from among their pupils. The examination for the Scottish Leaving Certificate (inaugurated in 1888) was opened to all board school pupils in 1892. So by 1902, when the Scottish Education Act was passed, there were four hundred schools in Scotland that were already providing some sort of secondary education. And, crucial to the development of an educated nation, the profession of teaching was treated with a respect which it did not enjoy south of the border.