2.
secure the effective execution by the local
authorities under his control and direction of the
Impact of
national policy for providing a varied and
comprehensive education service in every area’.
the 1944
(1944 Act)
Education Act LEAs were to build and maintain the county (state)
schools and the one third of schools provided by
The foundations of this Act existed in the coalition voluntary, usually religious, bodies. The LEAs would
government during the Second World War, and it usually appoint and always pay the teachers. They
was part of a wider view of how Britain might be were to allocate resources to the schools, including
reconstructed after the war. It promised a free, staff, buildings, equipment and materials.
common and universal system of education for
students up to 18 based on the notion that ‘the The Act established a nationwide system of free,
nature of a child’s education should be based on compulsory schooling from age 5
_
15. (The school
his capacity and promise, not by the circumstances leaving age was raised to 15 in 1947 and the Act
of his parents’. (White Paper 1943) said that it should be raised to 16 as soon as
practicable.)
The Act divided responsibility for education
between central government, which was to set Section 8 of the 1944 Act required the provision of
national policies and allocate resources; the local opportunities for all pupils ‘in view of their different
education authorities (LEAs), which were to set ages, abilities and aptitudes, and of the different
local policies and allocate resources to schools; and periods for which they may be expected to remain
the schools themselves, whose head teachers and at school’. This was interpreted as meaning the
governing bodies would set school policies and ‘tripartite system’ of secondary education which
manage the resources. The Act set no controls over had been promoted by the Spens and Norwood
the curriculum being taught within the schools reports, with grammar schools for the most able,
themselves. Central government’s role was ‘to secondary modern schools for the majority, and
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