Education Act 1944
Territorial extent | England and Wales |
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Dates | |
Royal assent | 3 August 1944 |
Repealed | 1 November 1996 |
Other legislation | |
Repeals/revokes | |
Amended by | Education Reform Act 1988 |
Repealed by | Education Act 1996 |
Status: Repealed | |
Text of statute as originally enacted |
Education Act (Northern Ireland) 1947 | |
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Act of Parliament | |
Long title | An Act to reform the law relating to education in Northern Ireland and for purposes connected with the said matter. |
Citation | 1947 c. 3 (N.I.) |
Dates | |
Royal assent | 27 March 1947 |
Text of the Education Act (Northern Ireland) 1947 as in force today (including any amendments) within the United Kingdom, from legislation.gov.uk. |
The Education Act 1944 (
Background
The basis of the Education Act 1944 was a memorandum entitled Education After the War (commonly referred to as the "Green Book") which was compiled by Board of Education officials and distributed to selected recipients in June 1941.
There was a desire to keep the churches involved in education but they could not afford to modernise without government help. By negotiation with the
The legislation was enacted in 1944, but its changes were designed to take effect after the war, thus allowing for additional pressure groups to have their influence.[7][8] Paul Addison argues that in the end, the act was widely praised by Conservatives because it honoured religion and social hierarchy, by Labour because it opened new opportunities for working class children, and by the general public because it ended the fees they had to pay for secondary education. State primary education had been free since the 1891 Education Act; even after 1944 certain older grammar schools—the direct grant grammar schools—continued to charge fees but also admitted state pupils on scholarships.[9]
New policies
Butler designed the act as an expression of "
The name “elementary school” was abolished as implying that the poorer children who tended to attend such schools would receive an inferior education.[12] The Act ended the traditional all-age (5-14) elementary sector, enforcing the division between primary (5–11 years old) and secondary (11–15 years old) education that many local authorities had already introduced. It abolished fees on parents for state secondary schools. It brought a more equitable funding system to localities and to different school sectors. The act renamed the Board of Education as the Ministry of Education, giving it greater powers and a bigger budget. While defining the school leaving age as 15, it granted the government the power to raise the age to 16 "as soon as the Minister is satisfied that it has become practicable",[13] though the change was not implemented until 1973. It also brought in a new system for setting teacher salaries.[14]
One of the results of the act was to increase the openness of secondary schools to girls and the working class, educating and mobilising them. Another result was that the percentage of children attending higher education tripled from 1% to 3%.[14]
The act provided both for nursery schools and Further Education programmes through community colleges, offering education for both children and adults, a measure that was only followed through by a few LEAs such as the
Anglican schools were continued, but brought under increased state funding and control. Every state-funded school was required to begin the day with a nondenominational religious prayer.[15] This clause was amended by the Education Reform Act 1988, which specified that the act of worship should be of a 'broadly Christian nature' unless such a message was deemed to be inappropriate for a particular school or group of children. The amendment also specified that the act of worship could now take place in classes, rather than the previous system of conducting worship in assemblies.[14]
The act was supported by HORSA (Hutting Operation for the Raising of the School-Leaving Age) a building programme to provide 'hut'-style accommodation to meet the additional educational demand.[16]
School meals and milk
The Education Act 1944 made it a duty of local education authorities to provide school meals and milk. The authority could remit the charge for the meal in cases of hardship.
In 1968
See also
- United Kingdom home front during World War II
- Political career of Rab Butler (1941–1951) for detailed narrative, mainly of Butler's negotiations with Church leaders
References
- .
- ISBN 9781135783112.
- ^ a b "Education After the War ('The Green Book') (1941)". Education in England. Archived from the original on 14 July 2017. Retrieved 27 March 2019.
- ISBN 9781910448359. Retrieved 27 March 2019.
- .
- .
- .
- ^ McCulloch, Gary (2013). Educational reconstruction: the 1944 Education Act and the twenty-first century. Routledge. pp. ?.
- ^ Addison, Paul (1975). The Road to 1945: British politics and the Second World War. Penguin. pp. 237–238.
- ^ Brian Simon, "The 1944 Education Act: A Conservative Measure?," History of Education. (1986) 15#1 pp 31–43
- ^ Butler 1971, p123
- ^ Butler 1971, p123
- ^ Education Act 1944, section 35
- ^ ISBN 978-0-304-32661-7.
- ^ Secularists and rationalists opposed this and other provisions. See for example Brown (n.d.)
- ^ "Charley Junior's School Days". Nationalarchives.gov.uk. Retrieved 8 August 2016.
- ISBN 9780203401965.
- ^ Gordon, I. (1957). "Borough of Ilford Health Report for the year 1956". p. 90. Retrieved 14 April 2021.
- ^ Smith, Rebecca (8 August 2010). "How Margaret Thatcher became known as 'Milk Snatcher'". Telegraph. Retrieved 8 August 2016.
- ^ "Free nursery milk to stay, but costs set to be cut. 18 June 2012". BBC News. 18 June 2012. Retrieved 25 May 2016.
- ^ Williams, Shirley (8 April 2013). "Shirley Williams: How Margaret Thatcher changed Britain". The Independent. Retrieved 16 February 2017.
She was a fall guy for the Treasury's expenditure cuts, for it was Anthony Barber, not Margaret Thatcher, who abolished free milk for school children; yet it was Margaret Thatcher who took the blame for it and was nicknamed Thatcher the Milk-Snatcher.
Further reading
This 'further reading' section may need cleanup. (August 2022) |
- Aldrich, Richard, Dennis Dean, and Peter Gordon. Education and policy in England in the twentieth century. (1991).
- Batteson, C. H. "The 1944 Education Act reconsidered." Educational Review 51.1 (1999): 5-15. DOI:10.1080/00131919997632
- Butler, Rab (1971). The Art of the Possible. London: Hamish Hamilton. ISBN 978-0241020074., his autobiography
- Dunford, John, Paul Sharp, The Education System in England and Wales, London: Longman, 1990, 17–24.
- Gosden, Peter. "Putting the Act together." History of Education 24#3 (1995): 195-207. online
- Goldin, Claudia, "The Human Capital Century and American Leadership: Virtues of the Past," The Journal of Economic History, 2001, Volume 61, Number 2.
- Green, S. J. D. "The 1944 Education Act: A Church‐State Perspective." Parliamentary History 19#1 (2000): 148-164.
- Griggs, Clive. The TUC and Education Reform, 1926-1970 (Routledge, 2013).
- Hillman, Nicholas. "Public schools and the Fleming report of 1944: shunting the first-class carriage on to an immense siding?." History of Education 41#2 (2012): 235-255.
- Howard, Anthony. RAB: The Life of R.A. Butler (2013) ch 10. (originally published 1987)
- Jago, Michael. Rab Butler: The Best Prime Minister We Never Had? (2015) ch 9.
- Jeffereys, Kevin. "R. A. Butler, the Board of Education and the 1944 Education Act," History (1984) 69#227 pp 415–431.
- Ku, Hsiao-Yuh. "Fighting for social democracy: RH Tawney and educational reconstruction in the Second World War." Paedagogica Historica 52#3 (2016): 266-285.
- Ku, Hsiao-Yuh. "Education for liberal democracy: Fred Clarke and the 1944 Education Act." History of Education 42#5 (2013): 578-597.
- McCulloch, Gary. Educational reconstruction: The 1944 education act and the twenty-first century (Routledge, 2013).
- McCulloch, Gary. "British Labour Party education policy and comprehensive education: from Learning to Live to Circular 10/65." History of Education 45#2 (2016): 225-245. online
- Middleton, Nigel. "Lord Butler and the Education Act of 1944," British Journal of Educational Studies (1972) 20#2 pp 178–191
- Simon, Brian. "The 1944 Education Act: A Conservative Measure?," History of Education. (1986) 15#1 pp 31–43
- Wallace, Ron G. "The origins and authorship of the 1944 Education Act." History of Education 10.4 (1981): 283-290. DOI:10.1080/0046760810100405
- Wright, Susannah. "The Faith of the Democrat: The Association for Education in Citizenship, 1934–1944." in Morality and Citizenship in English Schools (Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2017) pp. 177-208.
External links
- Ellen Wilkinson & the 1944 Education Act – UK Parliament Living Heritage
- Change and continuity: reflections on the Butler act Speech to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the 1944 Education Act, given by the chief inspector of schools, David Bell