The 1944 Butler Education Act ~ part one

 

The Right Honourable Richard (Rab) Butler MP - President of the Board of Education

The draft white paper on educational reform dated 9th July 1943 (1) can be read in full on the National Archives website. In this, Butler outlines proposals for post-war educational reform, in response to instructions from the War Cabinet in November 1942. The introductory page notes: ‘confidential discussions on various aspects of the scheme have been proceeding for some time.’

It is interesting that Butler does not call it reform but ‘educational reconstruction’ – national restructuring of secondary education in England and Wales. The education act had lofty aims – reconstruction in the closing stages of WWII and part of a four-year plan due to start as soon as possible. British people had already shown their character throughout the war years: ‘an enduring possession that will survive all the material losses inevitable in the present struggle’ (1) [para 1]. The nation’s children were important assets.

Education in Wales gets an entire section (1) [paragraphs 119-125], acknowledging its well-developed system of secondary education  from the 1889 Welsh Intermediate Education Act, 1889, with growing demand for free secondary education which might be applied nationally in three stages: primary, secondary and further education (1) [Paragraph 119]. 

The Welsh Language has prominent status in Butler’s draft paper, not an extra subject to be covered in the curriculum but ‘related to the background of local and national history and geography and thus … a live part of the social as well as the intellectual life of each pupil’ (1) [Para 124]. A transcript of the debate in the House of Commons for the second reading of the Bill on the 19th of January 1944 (2) also mentions linking the national policy of reform with the ‘school life and work and with the cultural and linguistic history of the Welsh people.’ We will explore how Welsh medium secondary schools benefited in the second part of this blog, for example Aberystwyth’s Ysgol Gymraeg.

What exactly did Butler propose? Essentially, The Education Act of 1944 brought in free education for secondary children in England and Wales, but also introduced more reforms (see 4 and 5 for further reading). It clearly distinguished:

…between primary and secondary education with the elimination of the former all-age (5-14) elementary sector; ending fees charged for pupils attending publicly provided or grant aided secondary schools … the introduction of more equitable funding to localities and to different school sectors. Under the Act, the Board of Education was reconstituted as a new Ministry with extended power and plans were announced to extend the school leaving age from 14 to 15.’ (3)

 Local Education Authorities (LEAs) had to draw up plans to reorganise secondary education in their area and submit these to the newly created Department of Education. They mostly aimed to establish three streams: grammar, technical and secondary modern and provide equal opportunities for all backgrounds. Children would be separated into one of these streams based on their performance in the dreaded ‘11 plus’ exam. Grammar schools taught an academic curriculum to the most intellectually able twenty-five percent of schoolchildren. (6) 

In the early years of the tripartite system, children who failed could not go to university, only those from grammar schools were prepared for entrance exams but the 11-plus’ gatekeeper role declined with the emergence of unnselective comprehensives in some areas of the country. Some pupils transferred to grammars from secondary moderns at thirteen if academic performances improved, but the exams at the end of primary education were criticised as inefficient, putting many students in the wrong school. In some cases, this meant they never achieved their full potential. 

My late father passed the 11-plus in 1958 and went up to Nottingham University from grammar school, but he always said the test caused more stress than all his undergraduate exams! If he'd failed, he would have followed his own father down Mountain Ash or Penrhiwceiber Colliery. His experience came in the closing years of the tripartite system, but would have been similar to thousands from the South Wales coalfield in the first decades after WWII. My mother maintains she failed the 11-plus ‘on purpose’ so she could stay with her friends.

Rab Butler outlived his creation. Before his death in March 1982, he had seen the three-tier structure largely abolished in England and Wales. The process began from 1965, with Circular 10/65, ending with the 1976 Education Act. As we will see in the second part of this blog which focuses on Aberystwyth, most maintained grammar schools (and secondary moderns) amalgamated with other local schools, to form neighbourhood comprehensive schools. A few closed their doors forever.

Blog by R. S. Pyne

References:

 

(1)    Cabinet Memorandum. Educational Reconstruction. Note by the President of the Board of Education. Includes the draft White Paper. 9 July 1943 - National Archives website:  http://filestore.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pdfs/small/cab-66-38-wp-43-299-49.pdf (accessed 23rd June 2022) [public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0]

(2)    http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1944/jan/19/education-bill

(3)    Batteson, C. H. (1999) The 1944 Education Act Reconsidered. Educational review (Birmingham), 51 (1), 5–15.

(4)    Hempel, S. (1982) Lord Butler of the 1944 Act: architect of the modern education service. The Times Educational Supplement. (number 3428), 3–.

(5)    Middleton, N. (1972) Lord Butler and the education act of 1944. British Journal of Educational Studies, 20 (2), 178–191.

(6)    Bolton, P. (2015), Grammar school statistics (PDF), House of Commons Library (retrieved 13 June 2022)