inner–london schools 1918–44 a thematic study - English Heritage

young, engaged in learning by cooperative experiment’. 13 Hadow suggested breaking upthe all-age elementary model by separating infant and junior schools wherever possible,with a break at seven years of age. Prior to 1926, when the Hadow committee firstrecommended this policy, several authorities had created separate junior departmentsand schools. But between 1927 and 1930, the number of pupils in reorganised juniordepartments rose from 150,000 to 400,000. 14Secondary education and permissive legislationProgress towards the Butler Education Act of 1944 and the universal provision ofsecondary education can be seen as a gradual process occupying much of the first halfof the 20 th century, in which milestones were the raising of the leaving age from 13 to14 through the 1918 Fisher Act, the reorganisation of schooling on the basis of a breakat 11, and the increasing provision of alternatives to ‘staying on’ at an elementary schooluntil the leaving age. As early as 1902, J. J. Findlay (1860-1940), the Professor of Educationat the University of Manchester, suggested that every child should receive post-primaryeducation from 11 to 14 plus. The political movement for universal secondary educationwas represented by the Labour Party’s Secondary Education for All, written for the 1922general election by the social historian R.H. Tawney (1880 - 1962), who later sat on theHadow committee. Tawney’s report prefigured the Hadow reports, the Butler Act of1944 and the emergence of the welfare state generally.The Education Acts of 1918 (Fisher Act) and 1921 had placed a requirement on localeducational authorities to provide selective, advanced and specialised instruction forolder and more intelligent children who could not afford, or gain admittance into thegrammar schools. 15 Extra capacity was provided in the form of central schools, seniordepartments or day continuation schools. The LCC provided around 50 additionalFig. 6 Secondary school provision in London at the end of the First World War:number of children (per 1,000 population) attending secondary school by borough(reproduced from LCC 1920).© ENGLISH H ER I TAG E 43 - 20 0913