Politics of Educational Reform, 1920-40

The third of four studies in the "History of Education in England," this volume covers the crucial years 1920-1940, in which the ground was prepared for the 1944 Education Act and likewise for most of the conflicts which have beset educational policies in Britain since the end of the Second World War. In this period Labour's programmes for educational reform came into conflict with a determined Conservative resistance, and proposed reforms were repeatedly cut back by the call for economies, starting with the "Geddes axe" in 1921-22. At the same time, real power passed more and more into the hands of the permanent officials, the top civil service administrators of the Board of Education. The long established divided system of education was consolidated by the development by psychologists of the theory and practice of "psychometry" and "intelligence tests," while the privileged position of the public schools, already under challenge, was maintained intact.