The Elementary Education: The 1944 Butler Education Act 1870

Prior to the 1944 Butler Education Act, to which this essay discusses, there are many other crucial Acts to briefly mention so as to show the development of education over time. One being The Elementary Education Act 1870, which is deemed the most important stage in the development of the national system of elementary education as it mapped out the country into schooling districts. Then The Mundella Act 1880 made Elementary education compulsory, but not free, for all children between the ages of 5-10. The Bryce Report of 1895 looked into the 'system' and found it was 'ill-arranged' and 'ill-connected' as there was no distinction between primary and secondary education for most children and it recommended a central authority to supervise schools
and to maintain local involvement. This was put into action in the 1902 Education Act which created the Board of Education and Local Education Authorities, public schools, however, were exempt from this new authority.
Then there was the First World War from 1914 to 1918 and despite the devastation, there was a general agreement among politicians that conditions for the working class people needed to improve, and so the 1918 Fisher Education Act was created. The 1918 Act made secondary education compulsory up to the age of 14 and gave responsibility for secondary schools to the state. Prime Minister Lloyd George's coalition government was however persuaded by textile manufacturers to delay implementation of the Act till 1921 as they used children as cheap labour back then. That then concludes to 1937 where President of the Board of Education identified three big changes in education since 1870, the first being that there was a shift of emphasis from the subject to the child, second being the teachers role changing from 'trainer' to 'helper' to foster development and growth and lastly, attitudes changing from thinking the educational environment was unimportant to using it as an aid for mental and physical
growth.
The 1944 Butler Education Act was created after World War 2 when a period of planning for a better post-war Britain was taking place. Before the Second World War Britain's economic situation was poor. In the 1920's there were deflation and falling wages which lead to the great general strike of 1926. The 1930's weren't any better with issues such as mass unemployment, especially in the north, no welfare state or universal health care. The unemployment insurance itself was inadequate, measly and means tested. It is because of these difficult times that people demanded better after the war and so in terms of Education the 1944 Education Act was created as there was a growing awareness that state education was necessary for economic and social wellbeing. In Britain the war had severely disrupted children's education and many schools in the big cities had either closed or were seriously damaged due to the war itself, this itself lead to demands of post-war education to be better than pre-war education. The vision was to build a prosperous, thriving society (Barlett, Burton and Peim, 2006).
The 1944 Education Act aimed to remove the inequalities which remained in the education system by providing free education for all and making it compulsory up to the age of 15, it made a clear division between primary and secondary education, which was an issue noted in The Bryce Report of 1895, and changed secondary education from being 'a privilege for a few to a right for all' (Lawton, 2012).
The Act created three types of secondary school called the Tripartite System, Grammar schools for the 'academic' where emphasis was on traditional subjects i.e. Latin, Greek. Technical/Trade schools for the 'practical' and those who could learn a trade through an apprenticeship after school. Secondary Moderns for those who didn’t fit into either category, meaning most people, their education was to prepare them for future lives as citizens and as unskilled workers. Children would be allocated based on their results from the new '11 plus' examination that the children would take at the age of 11. The intention was to provide equal opportunities for children of all backgrounds and both Labour and Conservatives presented themselves as totally committed to the new Act. The 1944 Act did, to some extent, try to improve educational inequalities as it gave children the opportunity to go to school for free. However, in reality, the Act appeared to simply perpetuate class differences as although Labour had wanted the new system to enable children to succeed based on merit and not their
parent's ability to pay, this didn’t happen. Middle-class children were often taught in Grammar Schools and working-class children were taught in Secondary Moderns. In 1954, the Gurney-Dixon Report (1959) questioned the extent the 1944 Act had accomplished its aim of establishing a meritocratic system; it found pupils' performance and the likelihood of them staying on at school was strongly linked to their parental social class. The Crowther Report in 1959 similarly found that only 10% of the children from the poorest proportion of the population actually went to grammar school and so the 1944 Act was unsuccessful in addressing the educational inequalities it set out to eradicate.
Another key educational policy that tried to minimise inequalities in the education system is the 1988 Education Reform Act. Arguably the most important piece of legislation in education in England and Wales since 1944 (Chitty, 1992; Ranson, 1994) the Education Reform Act came at a time when the Conservatives were in power with Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister. Throughout the 1970's the optimism and energy of the 1950's and 1960's was replaced with anxiety, suspicion and pessimism, there was a generally depressed mood felt over the nation. Unemployment had risen very sharply especially amongst young people, inflation increased dramatically which meant living standards fell and strikes were becoming more common, including by miners, and the country was only able to work on a three-day week due to the energy shortages. The 1988 Educational Reform Act

The aims of this legislation were to give parents choice over where their children would go to school, establish government control over curriculum and assessment which would take away power from local authorities and teachers and lastly the Act aimed to encourage selection into schools to be more diverse. The Act gave the Secretary of State 451 new powers meaning they then had more than any other member of the cabinet, this completely changed the balance of power and influence in education. Previously the government had had no direct hand in controlling or defining curriculum in schools. The main criticism was that it was nonsensical to take such power away from teachers and other education professionals, people who had years of experience in the education sector and give it to government-appointed bodies. Furthermore, in terms of selection, selection would take place, but the main decider would not be academic achievement like with the 1944 '11 plus' test but a more subtle process of giving great advantages to those who could play the social system effectively- the more knowledgeable and richer middle class, 'to those that have, more shall be given' (Lawton, 2012).

The 1944 act and the 1988 act are both very important pieces of legislation but are very different from each other. The main value expressed in the 1988 act was the consumerist parental choice, making education a product almost, which certainly produced differences in quality and covert selection. Whereas the 1944 act had to some extent moved away from social selection to academic selection (social class dominance to meritocratic values) the 1988 Act partly reversed that process. Also the two Acts differ in regards to their changes, the 1944 Education Act specified only religious education as a compulsory subject and even in that case parents had the option to opt out on behalf of their children however the 1988 Education Reform Act made a compulsory curriculum including English, Maths and Science for all maintained schools, this new curriculum was to occupy most, if not all, of student's time.
The effects of social class on educational experience and attainment have been a key topic of discussion in Education and have played a key role in shaping many educational policies. According to many critics, social class is the single biggest predictor of a person's educational experiences and their chances of educational achievement.
Newspaper figure…but evaluate and say in recent year's education has become very political so newspapers often over exaggerate to scare parents