The New Dawn and Changes in Education

The Beveridge Report, 1942

Just as the First World War saw the need for social change, so too in the Second World War there was set in motion a plan for peace and change. In 1942, Lord Beveridge, chairman of a special committee, presented his plans for a new social order to the coalition Government for their consideration. Beveridge, who must go down in history as the foremost reformer in this country of the twentieth century, laid emphasis on the “Five Great Evils” in society as identified by his committee: these were Ignorance, Want, Unemployment, Disease and Squalor. After some discussion by the cabinet a decision was taken to publish the Beveridge Report, which became available in December 1942. The first named of these “evils” – Ignorance – was to be combated by the Butler Education Act of 1944.

Need for educational reform

From the early months of the war, education, especially in London and some of the great cities, had received severe blows. Evacuation, the commandeering of school buildings, bombing with its widespread destruction, the call-up of teachers to the forces, lack of investment – all these gravely interrupted the work of schools and left a legacy of difficulty for the post-war years. Yet the call for reconstruction in education was not just recognition that there would be damage to repair and leeway to make up once the war was over. Like the enthusiasm for the Beveridge Plan, it was a part of a national demand for change, for a new start.

Before 1944, the state provided free, compulsory education up to the age of 14 only. This was called ‘elementary education’. Secondary education was provided by the grammar schools for those children whose parents could pay, or who could win ‘free places’ in a scholarship examination. This meant that many gifted and clever children had to leave school at 14 because their families were poor and needed the wages that they could earn.

The Butler Act was intended to change all this. It made it the duty of the state to provide free education at every level from nursery school to university, so that each child should receive the education that best suited its ‘age, ability and aptitudes’.

In fact, the Butler Act of 1944 – called after the minister who piloted it through the Commons, the Conservative, Mr R.A. Butler – was largely based on the proposals put forward in the Hadow Report of 1926. Its main features included the establishment of secondary education for all children from the age of 11; the raising of the leaving-age to 15 and then 16 as soon as was practicable after the end of the war; the abolition of fees in all State-maintained and aided secondary schools, and the replacement of the Board of Education by a ministry with stronger powers. The Butler Act was accepted with enthusiasm by men of all political parties. It was passed because of the growing realisation that education was vitally important, not only as the basis of all social welfare, but because the future wealth and power of the nation depended as a whole on it.  The Act would serve as a framework for much of the educational developments of the next twenty years.

Board of Education and White Paper

Even before Beveridge put forward his proposals the Board of Education had intimated there would be changes taking place. In July 1943 the Government published its White Paper, Educational Reconstruction. The reforms planned were aimed to secure for children a happier childhood and better start in life, to ensure a fuller measure of education, and opportunity for young people and to provide means for all of developing the various talents with which they are endowed and so enriching the inheritance of the country whose citizens they are. On 3rd August 1944, the new Education Act came into force; it would have consequences for thousands of schools throughout the country, including St Gregory’s.

The Eleven Plus and the Tripartite System, from 1944

The Eleven Plus examination was created by the 1944 Butler Education Act. This established a tripartite system of education, with an academic, a technical and a functional strand. Prevailing educational thought at the time was that testing was an effective way to discover to which strand a child was most suited. The results of the new examination would be used to match a child’s secondary school to their abilities and future career needs.

The Eleven Plus was a result of the major changes that took place in the English and Welsh education in the years up to 1944. In particular, the Hadow Report of 1926 called for the division of primary and secondary education to take place on the cusp of adolescence at 11 or 12. The implementation of the Butler Act seemed to offer an ideal opportunity to implement streaming, since all children would be changing school anyway.

In England the Eleven Plus was an examination administered to pupils in their last year of primary education, governing admission to various types of secondary school. The examination tested a pupil’s ability to solve problems using verbal reasoning and mathematics. The structure of the Eleven Plus examination varied over time, but it usually consisted of three papers – Arithmetic (a mental arithmetic test), Writing (an essay question on a general subject), and General Problem Solving (a test of general knowledge, assessing the ability to apply logic to simple problems).

Most children took the Eleven Plus transfer test examination in their final year of primary school: usually at age 10 or 11. The name derives from the age group for secondary entry: 11-12 years.

Introduced in 1944, the examination was used to determine which type of school the pupil would attend after primary education: a grammar school, a technical school, or a secondary school. This became known as the tripartite system and its base was the idea that for this purpose skills were more important than financial means: different skills required different schooling.

In its early years, critics of the Eleven Plus claimed that there was a strong bias in the examination, sometimes favouring children who came from middle-class families. In later years, the 1960s, the examination was redesigned to be more like an IQ test. However, even after this modification, overwhelmingly, middle-class children attended grammar schools while working-class children attended secondary modern schools.

This is not, however, the place to discuss the merits or disadvantages of the Eleven Plus examination or the tripartite system. Suffice to say that that on 3rd August 1944 the new Act came into force and drastically altered the educational system in England and Wales.

As far as St Gregory’s was concerned, the Eleven Plus examination determined the admission of its pupils until 1976.The school also served as an examination centre for the pupils of the local primary schools.

The Butler Act also divided public education into three progressive stages: primary, secondary and further education.

Five-year course of study

The Butler Act also resulted in pupils at St Gregory’s being able to stay on. Instead of leaving at the end of the fourth year, they were able to extend their studies for a fifth year. The 1945 intake, therefore, could remain until 1950.

St Gregory’s: a voluntary-aided school

The 1944 Act gave voluntary schools the choice of becoming aided or controlled. Aided schools would retain the right to give denominational religious worship. In return, they had to bear 50% of the cost of alterations to existing schools.

St Gregory’s was a voluntary-aided school and as such came within the restrictions of the 1944 Act. In the wake of this legislation Catholic action groups made tremendous efforts to achieve parity with local authority-controlled schools and those voluntary schools that chose to be controlled, thereby having no financial commitments whatsoever, the entire cost being met by the local education authority. The Catholic Parents’ and Electors’ Association was in the forefront in seeking reciprocity in respect of Catholic schools. The hierarchy too was very concerned with the situation that affected the Catholic community. As a result of all the pressure brought to bear on the post-war Government, and the support received from Members of Parliament, further legislation was effected in the Education Act of 1959, which allowed for 75% grants to Catholic schools in respect of new schools and alterations to existing schools. This is not the place to reopen the issues concerning this particular period; it is suffice to say the financial aspect concerning Catholic schools was a ramification of the 1944 Act, which had to be contested at the time.

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