Section One:
The historical
context
The Hadow Committee went on (in their reports of The solution to this challenge was the subject of
1931 and 1933) to focus on the style of education the 1938 Spens Report, Secondary Education with
to be offered in these schools. This was important special reference to grammar schools and technical
because, despite the efforts of the high schools, which recommended that there
developmentalists such as Froebel, Isaacs and should be three types of secondary school:
Montessori, the earliest primary schools continued grammar schools for the academically able,
to be like elementary schools ‘in terms of technical schools for those with a practical bent,
cheapness, economy, large classes, obsolete, and new ‘modern’ secondary schools for the rest.
ancient and inadequate buildings, and so on.’ They So rather than educational selection based on
also continued to provide a curriculum based on class, the process was now to be defined by
the drill methods of the elementary schools. intelligence and ability. Spens also recommended
that the school leaving age should be raised to 16
The new primary schools quickly became the but it was 1973 before this was finally
battleground for a number of competing forces. implemented.
Those who believed in the new ideas about child
development clashed with those who saw the job The 1943 Norwood Report, Curriculum and
of the primary schools as being to get children examinations in secondary schools, backed the
through the ‘scholarship’ examination. The latter idea of three types of school by arguing that
group tended to win. The psychologist Cyril Burt children naturally had three ‘types of mind’. One
and educationist Percy Nunn continued to assert type liked learning; another liked applied science
‘the absolute determination of "intelligence" by or art; while the majority did not like ‘ideas’ and
hereditary or genetic factors.’ They therefore was ‘generally...slow’. It was in this climate of
strongly recommended that children should be opinion and views of the value of education that
‘streamed’ into classes of a similar ability. the 1944 Education Act was written.
It was also becoming clear that class-divided
secondary schools were failing the nation’s children.
Twice as many students were going on to higher
education in Germany, more than twice as many in
France, over three times as many in Switzerland,
and almost ten times as many in the US.
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