The English elementary school : some elementary facts about it

Preface

IN writing this book I have had a very humble aim. Much information as to elementary education is floating about, but it is often rather out of reach ; it is to be found in official documents, various periodicals, and people's memories ; my endeavour has been to embody some of it in a convenient and semi-permanent form.

The Blue-books contain a great deal of interesting matter, but they seldom find their way into non-official hands. They can, of course, be ordered through any bookseller, but booksellers do not keep them on sale, and the public are unfamiliar with them. The blue covers soon wear out, and all Blue-books, except the very smallest, are apt to come unsewn, and break in two. The compilers generally write for experts, so far as they can be said to write for anybody except themselves. They do not begin at the beginning of anything, so to speak, but take for granted much that the ordinary reader does not know, and consequently they puzzle him. They are dull, because they have to write in the official language, and with official caution and reticence. They cannot pass judgment on persons with whom their Department has relations, or utter opinions on any point the Department regards as controversial. Lastly, the Blue-book is apt to be indigestible, because it contains, along with matter of public interest, a great deal which is printed merely for administrative purposes. The annual volumes of the old Education Department used to exhibit glaring examples of this fault.

Writers in educational periodicals, also, provide for

iii

persons engaged in educational work, and take a great deal of knowledge for granted. They are not restricted, as the Blue-book writers are, by official conventions ; but, on the other hand, they are sometimes too much of partisans to be safe guides. What is worse, their productions are necessarily scrappy, and even more transitory than the Blue-book ; for the newspaper file, whether bound or loose, repels the most ardent seeker after knowledge.

My object is to describe, in as few and simple words as possible, the English elementary schools of to-day and yesterday, the regulations under which they work, and some of the considerations which influence those who conduct them. My treatment may be dull, but the subject is interesting, and I shall not have written in vain if this book will provoke some more competent person to write a better one.

In preparing what is something between a history and a guide-book on such a subject as elementary education, the main difficulty lies in securing accuracy, whilst avoiding useless statistics and useless references to Acts of Parliament and official regulations. Statistics and quotations from the Acts and regulations could be multiplied to any extent, but they would make the text unreadable, and I have omitted them almost entirely. At the same time, for the benefit of any person who may wish to verify my statements or embark on educational administration, I have supplied an Appendix, containing a list of the more important Education Acts, and certain other pieces of information.

I do not hesitate to use the first person singular in describing what I have actually seen and heard. Any honest person may be a useful witness, if circumstances permit, and I, through no merit of my own, have witnessed a great deal. On the recognised principle that a witness

PREFA CE V

must give his name and address, I supply the following information about my own experience, which goes back as far as 1880. After being assistant inspector in two or three different places, I have worked successively in Durham, London, Cambridgeshire, and Kent, and have, as what is called a divisional inspector, seen a good deal of the eastern and south-eastern counties generally. Also, I have acted for some years as an inspector of training colleges, and at two different periods as an assistant secretary of the Board of Education.

This book is concerned with England only. So far as education is concerned, Ireland and Scotland are absolutely separate countries. The Isle of Man and the Channel Isles are also separate countries, though they have relations with the English Board of Education. The Welsh system, it may be explained, is administered from the same headquarters as the English, but Welsh conditions are different from our own. I have no first-hand knowledge of them, and I only refer to them incidentally.

A. W. N.

IVIicrosoft Corporation

Contents

CMAPTER PAGE

I. The Educational Machinery of England and Wales - i

II. Payment by Results — Mundella Code — Modifications

CHAPTER I The Educational Machinery of England and Wales

At starting it must be explained what the term " elementary " signifies, and what ground this book covers. Some difficulty attends a strict les^al definition, but for all practical purposes an elementary school is a school which does not provide for scholars much over fourteen, and which is not a mere feeder for more advanced schools. Full-time schools that retain scholars up to the age of sixteen, seventeen, or eighteen are termed " secondary," unless, as may occasionally happen, they have a very strong industrial bias, in which case they are " technical." The elementary school gives an education which is intended to be complete in itself, or else a foundation for work in part-time classes, either " continuation " or " technical." Individual children in plenty leave elementary schools and enter secondary schools at the age of eleven or twelve, or more, but they are in a minority, and to prepare them for the secondary schools is never the elementary school's main business. A school that exists solely or mainly to prepare scholars for secondary schools is known as a preparatory school, and forms part of the system of

C ( t

2 THE'^KNGLTSH'' ELEMENTARY SCHOOL f « t f secortdkr;^^ 'edticalio'ir ^"^vitn* which this book has Httle to do.

The terms elementary and secondary do not, of course, run well together. It would be better to speak of elementary and advanced schools, or primary and secondary schools, but the words in use are well established, and it is unlikely that either of them will be dislodged.

An elementary school that can give proof of its

efficiency may be a private school, that is, it may be

conducted without control or subsidy from the State, but

private elementary schools are few and unimportant, and

a study of English elementary education is practically a

study of the State-aided and State-controlled system

which arose in the first half of the nineteenth century.

This system has had a short but crowded history, which it

would be wearisome to trace in detail. I propose merely

to describe very shortly the position that was reached at

the time of the great Education Act of i 870, and rather

more fully the position that we occupy at the present

day. This is not a hard task, for the system of 1870

was simple, and that of 191 8 is not complicated in its

main outlines. These outlines have been determined

mainly by the Act of i 870, which made the provision of

elementary school accommodation compulsory on every

district, and established school boards in certain places ;

certain subsidiary Acts which supplemented the Act

of 1870, and made school attendance compulsory on

all children; the Act of 1899, which established the

Board of Education and was a necessary preliminary to

the Act of 1902; the Act of 1 891, which abolished

school fees in most schools and reduced them in most

of the remainder; the Act of 1902, which abolished

school boards, instituted education committees, and

placed all grant-aided elementar}' schools, except a very

POSITION IN i8;o 3

few, under the control of the latter ; and the Act of 19 1 8, which simplified and strengthened the law of school attendance, finally abolished school fees, and introduced various improvements in administration.

At the time just before the Act of i 870 was passed, the State, through the Education Department, assisted bodies of private persons to build and maintain elementary schools. Under certain conditions, the Department paid building grants to the school founders or managers, and also annual grants for school maintenance. Interest no longer attaches to the conditions for the building grants, but it is otherwise with respect to the maintenance grants. These last, naturally, varied according to the size of the school, but they depended, also, on the results of the annual examinations conducted by the Department's inspectors. In 1870 the principle of payment by results, as it was called, was not of long standing, as it had only been introduced b}^ Robert Lowe in 1862. In the main the examinations determined the work of the schools. The Department did not forbid teaching outside its own s}llabuses, but nothing outside these counted for grant. The inspector, in his examination, was forbidden to go beyond them in practice. Speaking generally, they were formed, or supposed to be formed, in the interests of the average child, who was expected to go forward a standard a year. For a child who was at all above the average the work was easy, for a dull child it was often hard.

Before the Act of 1870 the Department had no power to force a school on any locality. Speaking generall}^ children were under no compulsion to attend school, but the Factory Acts,^ of which there was a long

^ For a concise and clear account of the early Factory Acts see "A Short History of Education," by G. Benson Clough. Ralph Holland & Co , 1904.

series, ensured the partial school attendance of children employed in workshops and factories. Indirectly, these Acts brought about the provision of schools in particular areas, for where there were no schools there could be no school attendance, and where there was no school attendance, employers could obtain no child labour for their workshops or factories. The child employed in agriculture, or not employed at all, was left theoretically to the mercy of his parents ; he could be sent to school, where a school existed, if they cared to pay his school fees, or he could be sent to work, or he might simply run wild. In practice, some landowners and emplo}'ers encouraged or enforced school attendance, but they did so by illegal, or rather extra-legal methods.

At the same time, the State, through the Science and Art Department of South Kensington, subsidised classes in various arts and sciences, but the Department had no compulsory powers behind it. No locality could be required to provide instruction in science or art, and no person could be required to attend science or art classes where they were provided.

The State had begun to concern itself about secondary schools, and Parliament had just passed the Endowed Schools Act of 1869, which gave the endowed school commissioners certain powers to control the management of endowed schools, but did not create any efficient machinery for the purpose.-^

Pupil teachers in elementary schools were subsidised by the Department, though to a very small extent. Training colleges for elementary school teachers received large grants ; indeed, in 1870, as at present, the grants constituted much the largest part of the incomes of the

^ See " Inspection of Secondary Schools by the State," prefixed to the Report of the Board of Education for 1913-14.

POSITION IN 1870 5

colleges. The Department examined the pupil teachers during each year of their apprenticeship ; it examined candidates for entry into the colleges ; and it examined the students of the colleges and otlier persons who wished to become fully qualified teachers, or, as the phrase goes, to *' get their certificates."

All these State activities taken together were small according to our modern ideas, and according to the ideas that prevailed in some foreign countries in 1870, but the State was doing much more than at any earlier date. Forty years previous to 1870 it was doing nothing. In 1830 the earlier Factory Acts were in existence, but they dealt merely with the hours of v/ork and so forth ; there were no grants for educational purposes ; and there was no department in the State that had to do with educational matters. Everything that got done at all was done by private effort, by societies, or by the governors of various educational foundations,-^ who were really irresponsible people.

In 1870 the Education Department was, in theory, a committee of the Privy Council ; its nominal head was the Lord President of the Council ; its working parliamentary head was usually the Vice-President of the Council on Education, but the nominal head might, and at times he did, control more or less the work of the Department. As in the case of other Government departments, a permanent secretary ranked next to the parliamentary heads; below him came assistant secretaries, and officers called examiners, because they were originally appointed to examine the reports of inspectors. The inspectorate

^ There were foundations that provided elementary instruction ; I know of two in the small county of Cambridgeshire, both dating from at least as far back as the middle of the eighteenth century. The "Old Schools" in the borough of Cambridge are, I believe, older still as institutions, though their fabrics are more modern.

was divided into three groups on denominational lines : the Church of England schools, which far outnumbered all the other schools put together, were inspected by clergymen ; the Roman Catholic schools had inspectors of their own who were laymen ; the British, Wesleyan, and undenominational schools had a third set of inspectors, who also were laymen. It followed that enormous journeys over the same ground had to be taken by three different sets of men.

The Science and Art Department had an organisation of its own ; it worked independently of the Education Department.

It would not be literally true to say that there was no State organisation beyond that supplied by the Education Department and the Science and Art Department, for there were schools and school masters in various institutions controlled or subsidised by the State, but these schools were not available for the nation at large. The Endowed Schools Commission also, was just coming into being. Speaking broadly, however, the State did nothing for elementary education, except through the Education Department, and nothing for technical or higher schools, except through the Science and Art Department.

In 1870 the teacher's position was simple, but unsatisfactory. He was the servant of the school managers, and the conditions of his employment were a matter of bargain between him and them. Sometimes he was paid a fixed salary. Sometimes the school was farmed, i.e., he was allowed to receive the Government grant and children's school pence, to staff the school as cheaply as he could, and to live on what he could make out of the arrangement. Very often an intermediate plan was adopted, e.g., he received a fixed salary, together with a fraction of the Government grant. The word

POSITION AT PRESENT 7

" managers " was nearly always used in the plural, and, as far as I know, the Education Department always required three signatures to the returns and statistics sent in to it by each school, but it was not infrequent for all the managers but one to be men of straw. When this was the case, the teacher's employment depended upon the goodwill of a single person, who might or might not be competent to supervise a school. Occasionally, especially when the school was farmed, all the managers were men of straw, and the teacher, under a very thin disguise, was his own manager as well as his own treasurer.

In 1870 there was no compulsory superannuation for teachers; managers were absolutely free to employ a teacher of any age. Nor was there any kind of superannuation scheme. The teacher who failed through old age or illness had no claim either on the school managers who had employed him or on the State. It followed that a teacher was often tempted to struggle on, after he had become unfit for work.

In the fifty years or so since the first Education Act was passed, the whole situation has changed. The Board of Education^ has come into existence and taken over all the work of the Education Department and the Science and Art Department, together with certain duties formerly assigned to the Charity Commissioners, who in 1874 took over the duties of the Endowed Schools' Commissioners. The Board has also been entrusted with certain other duties which were not discharged by anyone in the past. Before describing

' I use the singular number, but in official language, "Board" is a plural noun. " Department" was singular, but the Education Department's letters and publications always purported to be issued under the direction of " My Lords," z>., the members of the Commitee of Council on Education.

what the Board does, it may, however, be convenient to explain exactly what it is, and what are the educational authorities with which it transacts business. The present position is, in its main outlines, somewhat as follows. The Board of Education, as constituted by the Act of 1899, is an independent department of the State. It is concerned only with England and Wales ; Scotland and Ireland, the Isle of Man, and Channel Islands have educational organisations of their own, as to which this book provides no information. The head of the Board is the President, who, until the small war Cabinet was constituted, was always a Cabinet Minister. It is also represented in Parliament by a Parliamentary Secretary, who is a member of the ministry but not of the Cabinet. Theoretically, the Board is composed of various high Cabinet Ministers, but, as members of the Board, they do not meet, and it is only the President and the Parliamentary Secretary that count. The permanent staff of the Board is divided into various sections, which correspond to the various kinds of schools and institutions with which the Board is concerned. There is a section for elementary schools, a section for secondary schools, one for technical schools and classes, one for continuation schools, one for grants to universities and training colleges. There is also a legal section, a medical section, and a Welsh section. The inspectors who constitute the outdoor staff are divided into corresponding sections.

Every part of England and Wales has its local education authority. In the case of a county or county borough the authority is its council, but the administration is left to a committee, always termed the education committee, which is composed mainly of members of the council, but partly also of co-opted members ; the committee has charge of elementary, secondary, and technical education within its area.

EDUCATION COMMITTEES 9

Boroughs with a population of less than ten thousand, and urban districts with a population of less than twenty thousand, have no education committee; for educational purposes they are treated as parts of the counties in which they are situated.

Boroughs with a population of over ten thousand, which are not county boroughs, and urban districts with a population of over twenty thousand, stand in a different position. All these places have their education committees, but the committee has charge only of elementary education within its area ; other kinds of education are under the care of the county in which the borough or urban district is situated. As in the case of county or county boroughs, the education committee is a committee of the borough or urban district council.

On the whole, then, the position is that there are about eighty-two committees for county boroughs, with complete charge of all kinds of education within their areas, about sixty-three commitees for counties, each of which has charge of all kinds of education within its own area, and also of all education, other than elementary, of the various small boroughs and urban districts forming islands and peninsulas in its area. Lastly, there are about 174 committees for small boroughs and urban districts, which are almost entirely concerned with elementary education only.

Each education committee is bound by law to provide and maintain efficient elementary schools for the children living in its area and to enforce attendance; it is entrusted with control over the secular instruction given in all its elementary schools which it has itself provided, or which were provided by the school boards between 1870 and 1902. In the case of these schools, also, it has control over religious instruction, and complete control over all appointments to the teaching staff;

it may, and often does, delegate these controls to bodies of local managers, but it can resume them at any time. In the case of the elementary schools established by bodies of private persons, either before or after 1902, and recognised by the Board of Education, the position is different. In these schools, which are technically termed non-provided, the control of religious instruction rests with the managers of the school, and its nature is usually determined by the trust-deed, which each non-provided school is obliged to possess ; supposing it is not determined by the trust-deed, it is settled by the managers at their discretion. Appointments to the teaching staff, also, rest with the managers, but they have to be confirmed by the education committee. Two-thirds of the managers of each non-provided school are appointed in accordance with the trust-deed, and are termed foundation managers ; one-third are representatives of local authorities. The authority of the managers of the non-provided school may be considerable or very small, according as the committee does or does not delegate to them its authority over the staff and the secular instruction ; the only power that necessarily rests with them is the regulation of religious instruction in accordance with the trust-deed.

Until the Education Act of 1 9 1 8 was passed, no education committee was under any legal obligation to provide or subsidise any kind of education other than elementary. Up to a certain point, however, the committee of a county or county borough could do so without any expense to its locality, inasmuch as the amounts of certain taxes raised under the Customs and Excise Act of 1890^ is paid to the committee for the purposes of education other than elementary, and this amount cannot be expended in any other way. But

1 This amount is commonly known as the " whisky money."

EDUCATION COMMITTEES ii

though it was under no actual obh'gati'on, the county or county borough committee has since 1902 had very extensive powers. It can maintain secondary schools and technical classes, schools, and institutions; subsidise these schools and institutions ; subsidise young persons intending to become teachers ; and maintain training colleges for teachers. It cannot, however, until the Act of 1 9 1 8 fully operates, enforce school attendance on any boy or girl over fourteen who is not blind, deaf, or defective. Furthermore, the education committee, or strictly the council, of a non-county borough or an urban district has limited powers of subsidising or providing secondary or technical education.

Conversely, just as the education committee is under no obligation to any secondary school, so the governors of an endowed secondary school, unless constrained by a trust-deed, are under no obligation to meet the educational needs of any particular district. They may regard their school as a national and not a local institution, and ignore the committee for the area. Neither need they qualify the school to receive State grant or put it under the inspection of the Board. The position and work of secondary schools are outside the scope of this book, but, it may be remarked, some of the best known endowed secondary schools receive neither guidance nor subsidy from the Board. It may be noted also that the number of pupils in the secondary schools, recognised as efficient by the Board, only exceeds by about 50 per cent, the number of teachers in the elementary schools, and that the number of these secondary school pupils over sixteen years of age is only about i i per cent, of the number of elementary school teachers.

Education committees have also duties in connection with the feeding of school children, the medical inspection of school children, the provision of information about the employment of young persons/ and the maintenance of schools for the deaf, blind, and mentally or physically defective.

The powers of an education committee are limited by those of the Board of Education. Every elementary school which a committee may maintain has to be conducted according to the Board's regulations, />., the premises and the teachers have to satisfy certain conditions, and the course of instruction has to satisfy other conditions, which, however, allow a great deal of latitude. The committee is legally bound to conduct the school in this way, and, apart from the legal liability, an open defiance of the regulations or their serious breach would endanger State aid in respect of the school. A committee is not actually obliged to conduct its secondary or technical institutions in accordance with the Board's regulations, but, unless the regulations are observed, these institutions, like the elementary schools, can earn no grant from the State, and the committee w^ill very rarely maintain, and seldom subsidise, an institution which is not grant earning. There is no apparent legal reason why an education committee should not subsidise even a private school, but cases in point, if they have ever occurred, must be rare, and on the whole, we may say that few schools, classes, and colleges with which the education committees have to do fail to conform to the rules which the State, i.e., the Board of Education, has laid down.

The expenditure of an education committee is met in several ways. First of all there are the school fees. The elementary schools have been generally free for many years, and they are all made free by the Act of 191 8, but the scholars' payments for secondary educa-

^ Under the Choice of Employn cnts Act.

STATE GRANTS 13

tion are of considerable amount. In the second place there is the whisky money, which has already been mentioned as available for super-elementary education. Then there are a number of grants, at one time about fifty, which the Board pays to the committees for a variety of purposes, and under very elaborate conditions. Grants in connection with elementary schools included annual grants, grants in lieu of fees, aid grants to poor areas, all of which, with great advantage, are now amalgamated in one general grant. There are also grants in aid of medical inspection and medical treatment, and grants in connection with the Choice of Employment Act. Grants are also paid for secondary schools and technical schools and classes, but these grants are not necessarily paid to the education committee. It has always to be remembered that, whilst all State-aided elementary schools ^ are conducted by an education committee, State-aided secondary schools, State-aided technical schools, and State-aided training colleges may be conducted by various bodies of persons, provided that various conditions are satisfied, provided in particular that the institutions are not conducted for private profit. An endowed grammar school, for instance, may be aided by the State or by the education committee, or by neither or by both. The grants which have been mentioned do not exhaust the list ; under recent regulations the Board pays grants in aid of nursery schools, play centres, and the organisation of physical instruction. There are also certain miscellaneous receipts from endowments and the like, which may fall to a committee. The balance of an education committee's expenditure falls upon the ratepayers of its area. Speaking broadly, the ratepayers provide about half of the total income of

^ Excepting certain schools connected with residential institutions, which are treated as being of a non-local character.

the education committees, i.e.^ ;^3 1,000,000,^ more or less, in the year before the war, and several millions more at the present time, whilst the taxpayers, or, in other words, the State, provide about fourteen-flfteenths of the other half. But, if we consider the maintenance of schools alone, the taxpa}'er provides more than the ratepa)^er, for every area has to meet its own charges for the provision of schools.

The Board's legal powers over the education committees lie mainly in the fact that it administers the State grants, and that the grants can be withheld if the necessary conditions are not satisfied There is no machinery for coercing a committee which ignores secondary and technical education, and it would be by no means easy to deal with a committee which refused to maintain or provide elementary schools.

An education committee's information about the institutions within its area is obtained in various ways. When an area is small, members of a committee can have a first-hand knowledge of their schools ; a person of reasonable industry and a certain amount of leisure could readily make himself acquainted with all the schools and all the senior teachers in a town of ten to thirty thousand inhabitants, and many committees have no larger population under their care. No doubt there are committee men who, from their own observation, know all about the schools which they maintain. But for this to happen is the exception rather than the rule. Committees are, for the most part, composed of people who are busy about their own affairs, and the mass of

1 This figure represents the total expenditure of the education committees, and not the total expenditure in connection with State-aided schools ; another million in round numbers may be added for the expenditure of all schools and colleges, other than universities, subsidised by the State, but not maintained by education committees.

INSPECTION 15

our population does not live in small and compact towns ; it is either concentrated in great cities, or spread out over wide tracts of country. In many cases there are far more elementary schools than can be profitably visited by any committee man \\\\o is not prepared to convert himself into an unpaid inspector. In some cases, notably in London, the West Riding, Lancashire, Durham, Norfolk, and Kent, it would be physicall}^ impossible for any one man to visit all the schools within any reasonable period. It follows that the education committees usually have to obtain their information about particular schools either from their own paid staff or from the Board of Education's staff of inspectors.