Butler Education Act

The Conservative politician R.A. Butler was President of the Board of Education in Churchill's wartime coalition government. In 1944 he saw a bill into law that determined the shape of education in postwar Britain.

The Education Act 1944, also known as the Butler Education Act, contained a number of important provisions.

Most significantly, it made secondary education free and compulsory up to the age of 15. Previous legislation had made school attendance up to the age of 14 compulsory, but this was widely flouted (George Formby was far from unique in leaving school at the age of seven), and the poorer pupils who stayed in school beyond the age of 11 were often in "senior elementary education" rather than secondary education. Girls, in particular, were beneficiaries of the new law.

The act instituted the "Tripartite System". At the age of 11 pupils leaving primary school would sit an exam to determine their "abilities and aptitudes". This exam was initially known as the "scholarship exam", later as the "11 plus", and would determine whether their secondary education would take place in a grammar school, where the emphasis was on Latin and maths (for the most academically able 20 to 25%), a technical school (but very few technical schools were built as they required considerably more investment), or a "secondary modern" school (for the vast majority). This meant that children from poor backgrounds who already showed academic ability at the age of 11 were much more likely to get a good academic education than had ever been the case before, but most children from poor backgrounds were sent into a system designed to prepare them to carry out manual or household work.

One of the provisions of the act with no parallel in most European countries - and certainly not in the United States, where the separation of Church and State has been a highly emotive issue in education - was that "each school day begin with an act of worship" at which the whole school was present (although teachers could opt out on an individual basis, and parents could opt out their children). This "school assembly" was often, in effect, little more than a morale-boosting or inspirational song or speech, but it gave the school day a different shape from that of many other countries.

Central government laid out the new requirements, but left it to Local Education Authorities to see that they were met. There were major programmes of school-building and of teacher-training to make the functioning of the system possible.

A private sector of fee-paying "independent schools" continued to exist, providing socialisation into the relatively closed circle of the nation's elite, and for children with wealthy parents a way to get a decent education without needing to be terribly bright. Some of these schools were the famous "public schools" ("public" in the sense that anyone could attend who could afford the fees - there was no parish, civic, professional or other qualification), such as Eton (George Orwell's old school) or Harrow (Churchill's old school) - a far cry from the sort of Secondary Modern pictured above. Such schools did also provide a small number of places to "scholarship boys".

The New Jerusalem

The Labour government of 1945-1951 built the British welfare state on the foundations of measures taken by the Liberal government of 1906-1914 and by the wartime coalition government headed by Churchill in 1940-1945. The aim was not only to repair the damage of war, but particularly to prevent a recurrence of forms of social deprivation that had been common before the war. Five areas were of particular concern: poverty, education, health, housing and employment; identified by William Beveridge as "five giants" on the road of social progress: Want, Ignorance, Disease, Squalor, Idleness. The three men of particular importance for laying the groundwork of the post-war welfare state are the Liberal William Beveridge (for social insurance), the Conservative R. A. Butler(for compulsory secondary education), and the Socialist Aneurin Bevan (for the National Health Service). The Prime Minister whose government implemented their reforms was Clement Attlee.

"Want" was to be tackled on the basis of the recommendations in the "Beveridge Report" (see here), through a series of acts of parliament, most importantly the Family Allowances Act 1945, National Insurance Act 1946, National Insurance (Industrial Injuries) Act 1946, Pensions (Increase) Act 1947, and National Assistance Act 1948.

"Ignorance" was to be beaten back by the implementation of the Education Act 1944 (see here). Not only was education to be free (and compulsory) to the age of 15, schools were also to provide their pupils with free meals, free milk, and free medical services.

"Disease" would be overcome by the creation of a National Health Service, providing universal medical care free at the point of need. The service began operation in 1948, on the basis of the National Health Service Act 1946.

"Squalor" would be abolished by programmes of slum clearance, the building of council flats and houses in existing towns (see here), the creation of planned communities (see here), and the regulation of existing accommodation through such measures as the Landlord and Tenant Act 1949.

"Idleness" was to become a thing of the past thanks to economic planning for full employment. In the words of the aristocratic left-winger Anthony Wedgwood Benn, elected to parliament as a Labour MP in 1950, "There was a feeling that if we can plan for war we can plan for peace."

Whatever government had been formed in 1945 would have had to do something about social issues, and some of the first steps in planning and legislation (commissioning the Beveridge Report, the Butler Education Act) had already been taken by the coalition government. The main reason for the Labour Party's landslide victory in the 1945 election was that the electorate knew that a commitment to tackling such problems was central to Labour's political identity, in a way it was not for the Conservative or Liberal parties.

Important measures were also taken to give ordinary people better access to healthy or cultural free-time activities (see here).

Less popular than the social legislation, but not very controversial at the time, were the measures to nationalise key parts of the economy, particularly energy, transport, and heavy industry (see here). What did make the Labour government unpopular, losing them seats in parliament at the 1950 general election and returning the Conservatives to power in the 1951 general election, were the "austerity measures" (see here) that included micromanaging domestic consumption.

Clement Attlee, Prime Minister 1945-1951, expressed the commitment to building a new society by quoting the poetry of William Blake:

Let us go forward into this fight in the spirit of William Blake:
I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall the sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.

A useful six-minute overview of the aims and achievements of Attlee's government, from a present-day American perspective, can be found here.