Exhibit JC42 - The Leveson Inquiry

For Distribution to CPsHacks and Dons - Teaching at the London University Journalism School 1919-1939: Its origin,development and influence.education as skills training, or rehearsal in skills and techniques, where theeducational input was minimal. Thus the separation from higher educationwas institutionalised, and it was not until 1990 that British universitiesattempted to develop journalism education within the university context.The Growth of Provincial Universities in EnglandIt is difficult to realize that even in 1902 England could boast only fouruniversities for its 35 million population. $1 The following year Sidney Webbwas stating ’we are actually engaged.., in the business of makinguniversities ’$2 and that must have seemed a flavour of the times. LondonUniversity had been re-organised on a teaching basis between 1898 and1900 and the conglomerate Victoria University (founded in 1880) split intoindividual Universities: Liverpool and Manchester in 1903, Leeds in 1904and Sheffield in 1905: Bristol gained its Charter as a University in 1906(with the IoJ among its founding fathers.) The transformation of MasonsCollege into Birmingham University (Chartered in 1900) was accompaniedby a spate of foreign travel by some of its professors. They visited Americaand returned saying ’it was only then the committee arrived at someconception of what was required of them ’~3 and the first Chancellor of thenew University, politician Joseph Chamberlain, was reported as saying thatthis committee’s report opened his eyes as to the role the university shouldadopt in a modern society.Further impetus to transatlantic travel followed the Education Act of1902, which imposed some semblance of order on the chaotic state ofEnglish Education and, in theory, made it possible for a ladder of educationto stretch from the elementary school to university by way of thescholarship system. Representations from the newly-formed educationauthorities in the major cities (some of them listed above), from universitiesand from industry toured the United States publishing reports in 190474The industrial report commented that: ’the reason the American worker isbetter than his British contemporary.was that he has received a senior andbetter education. ’~sBy 1908 Birmingham University had published the first journalismsyllabus at an English University (Appendix VII), although the death of itsproposer cut short any experiment at that time. The following year LondonUniversity underwent another Royal Commission under Lord Haldanewhich lasted until 1913 and, because of the First World War, it was not until1926 that the Report was acted upon. This underlined the transformationfrom the examining to the teaching, and research, model of universityeducation with the University encouraged to jettison its supervisory role ofthe teaching at London Polytechnics where the teaching ’was much thesame kind of instruction as at school.’The idea was not to imitate Oxford or Cambridge with their ’leisurelycurriculum’ but to organize courses: ’in such a way as to turn out thegraduate fully equipped; not only as a cultivated citizen, but also, so far asmay be possible, as a trained professional... (with) London Universitytaking on the character of a technical school for all brain-workingprofessionals (including) journalism...,~629MOD100051200