A History of Vocational, Civil Service and
Secondary Examinations in England since 1850
Testing Times
Testing Times
Richard Willis
This book focuses on the delivery of public examinations offered by the main
examining boards in England since Victorian England. The investigation reveals that
the provision of examinations was as controversial in the nineteenth century as it
is today, particularly since the government is now determined to bring in reform.
The issues of grade inflation, the place of coursework in marking, and the introduction
of technological change all feature in this book. Educational policy is primarily
examined as well as some reference to the global scene. The study analyses archival
material from a wide range of sources, including those records stored at the National
Archives and the London Metropolitan Archives.
The modern GCSE and the plans for I-levels are considered and key observations are
made about the efficacy of those examinations offered by Oxford and Cambridge
universities and O-levels, A-levels and NVQs.
The reader is given every opportunity to benefit enthusiastically in this account
of examinations, and those engaged in education, whether teachers, examiners,
students or administrators, will be able to gain useful insights into the workings of
the examination system.
ISBN 978-94-6209-480-2
Richard Willis
DIVS
A History of Vocational, Civil
Service and Secondary
Examinations in England
since 1850
Richard Willis
An emphasis is placed upon the various institutions that contributed to the process,
including the Royal Society of Arts, the London Chamber of Commerce, the City
of Guilds of London Institute and the University of London. Attention is given to
the findings of the Taunton Commission and the Bryce Commission and shorter
reports such as the Northcote-Trevelyn Report which served to radicalise entry and
recruitment to the Civil Service.
SensePublishers
Testing Times
Spine
9.83 mm
Testing Times
Testing Times
A History of Vocational, Civil Service and Secondary Examinations in
England since 1850
Richard Willis
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ISBN: 978-94-6209-480-2 (paperback)
ISBN: 978-94-6209-481-9 (hardback)
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CONTENTS
List of Tables and Figures
vii
List of Abbreviations
ix
Acknowledgements
xi
Introduction
1
1
Background
Origins and the Middle Classes
The Lower Classes
Smith, Mill and Bentham
9
9
16
21
2
Technical and Vocational Education
The Royal Society of Arts
The London Chamber of Commerce
City and Guilds of London Institute
Private Teachers
27
27
32
35
42
3
The Public Sector Context
The Department of Science and Art
The Civil Service 1858–1870
The Civil Service 1870–1900
57
57
63
71
4
Secondary Education
The College of Preceptors
Oxford and Cambridge Locals
University of London
79
79
89
102
5
The Twentieth Century
Technical Examinations
Civil Service Examinations
Secondary Examinations
109
109
119
123
v
CONTENTS
6
The Twenty-First Century
Vocational Examinations
Civil Service Examinations
Secondary Examinations
137
137
143
149
7
Conclusion
159
Select Bibliography
165
Index
169
vi
LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES
Table 2.1.
Table showing the record of examinations at the City and Guilds of
London Institute between 1879 and 1900
42
Figure 2.1
Numbers of Candidates entering for the College of Preceptors’ Teacher
Diplomas 1860–1890 (Source: Chapman, Professional Roots, 1985; cf.
Hodgson, 1896)
50
Table 3.1.
Summary of competitive examinations from July 1855 to February 1856
(Source: First Report of Her Majesty’s Civil Service Commissioners,
1856)
69
Table 4.1.
Boys’ schools that sent in the Cambridge Junior and Senior Local
Examinations in December 1893 (for centres in England and Wales)
(Source: the Bryce Commission, V, 1895)
101
Table 4.2.
Girls’ schools that sent in the Cambridge Junior and Senior Local
Examinations in December 1893 (for centres in England and Wales)
(Source: the Bryce Commission, Vol V, 1895)
101
Table 5.1.
Number of General National Vocational Awards by level in England,
Wales and Northern Ireland between 1993/4 and 1997/98 (Source: Joint
Council for Vocational Awarding Bodies)
118
Table 6.1.
The number of applications and ‘sift’ stages for graduate management
trainees at GCHQ in 2001–2002 (Source: The Cabinet Office, Fast
Stream Recruitment Report 2001–2002)
145
Table 6.2.
Skill set and associated competencies (Source: The Cabinet Office, Fast
Stream Report, 2005–06)
147
vii
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
ACP
AQA
ASL
AVCE
BTEC
BTec
CGCI
CIEH
CoP
CRB
CSE
ET
FCP
GCE
GCSE
GNVQ
HNC/D
ICS
ICT
LEA
LCC
LCCIEB
LCP
NAHT
NCVQ
NUT
NVQ
OCR
Ofqual
Ofsted
ONC/D
OQ
QCA
QCF
RAC
RSA
SSEC
TES
TNA
Associate of the College of Preceptors
Assessment and Qualifications Alliance
additional and specialist learning
Advanced Vocational Certificate of Education
Business and Technology Education Council
Business and Technology Education Council vocational awards
City and Guilds Council Institute
Chartered Institute of Environmental Health
College of Preceptors
Criminal Records Bureau
Certificate of Secondary Education
The Educational Times
Fellow of the College of Preceptors
General Certificate of Education
General Certificate of Secondary Education
General National Vocational Awards (Qualification)
Higher National Certificate/Diploma
Indian Civil Service
information and communication technology
Local Education Authority
London Chamber of Commerce
London Chamber of Commerce and Industry Examinations Board
Licenciate of the College of Preceptors
National Association of Head Teachers
National Council for Vocational Qualifications
National Union of Teachers
National Vocational Qualification
Oxford, Cambridge and RSA Examinations
Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation
Office for Standards in Education
Ordinary National Certificate/Diploma
Occupational qualifications (under NVQ)
Qualifications and Curriculum Authority
Qualifications and Credit Framework (of NVQ)
Regional Advisory Council
Royal Society of Arts
Secondary Schools Examinations Council
The Times Educational Supplement
The National Archives
ix
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I extend my thanks to the following individuals who have unreservedly helped me
in the course of my research:
– Nazlin Bhimani, Research Support and Special Collections Librarian, Newsam
Library, Institute of Education University of London
– Sian Astill, Oxford University Archives, Bodleian Library
– Gill Elliott, Cambridge Assessment
– Philip Wilson, Chief Psychologist and Chief Assessor at Civil Service Fast
Stream
– Jackie Domingue, Ofqual Helpdesk Coordinator
– Dr Peter Cunningham based at the Institute of Education University of London
and Homerton College University of Cambridge.
xi
INTRODUCTION
The English origins and subsequent proliferation of public examinations based on
the competitive principle can be traced from the mid-nineteenth century onwards.
The universities, the Civil Service, the Royal Society of Arts, to name but a few,
were very much at the centre of these reforms.
My own administrative experience in the use and reform of examinations began
in the 1980s when I was employed by the College of Teachers to research into and
construct a new qualification for in-service teachers at home and overseas. The
outcome was the acceptance by the College’s academic board of proposals to
launch an institutionally based Diploma in the Advanced Study of Education. I
worked in close liaison with the late Professor Brian Holmes (Dean of the College
and Professor of Comparative Education at the Institute of Education University of
London). Brian chaired a series of meetings and we were assisted by Sir Robert
Balchin, the Treasurer, and by Sir Norman Lindop, who was himself then chairing
a committee reviewing degree validation.
I was also fortunate in that I held an advisory position at the Qualifications
Curriculum and Development Agency between 2007 and 2010. Before the
Conservative-led coalition government abolished the QCDA, the quango in effect
wrote the National Curriculum and prepared subject criteria for A-Levels
and GCSE in liaison with the examining boards. Attending meetings with
such innovators as Dr Ken Boston, former CEO of the QCDA, I gave advice on
a number of issues pertaining to examinations, and in particular, the Diploma for
14- to 19-year-olds, an award noted for the qualification’s mix of theoretical and
applied learning.
Another advisory position I have undertaken arose during discussions in the
House of Lords when I had the opportunity of addressing David Cameron’s team
on the General Teaching Council (GTC). Baroness Perry showed considerable
interest in the talks engaged in, and subsequently I was asked to convey some of
my views by writing for the Tory party’s website. My concern was that teachers in
England were dissatisfied with the way in which the GTC (England) operated as it
neither was cost-effective nor served the teaching profession in any meaningful
way.
I have gained a greater understanding of the role of teachers in British society in
the course of writing my book on the GTC,1 and later a history of the College of
Teachers.2 As to examinations, the Journal of Educational Administration and
History, the History of Education Bulletin, History Today, Education Today and
Your Family History have published articles I have written on examinations and
the teaching profession.3 The data for these books and articles was essentially
collected when I was a research associate for the Leverhulme project in the Faculty
1
INTRODUCTION
of Education, University of Cambridge. This collection was something I conducted
alongside a study in oral history on teacher training in the inter-war years.
My spell as visiting research fellow at the Institute of Historical Research
University of London coincided with the release of Sir David Cannadine’s research
findings tracing the teaching of history in state schools, in his book The Right Kind
of History: Teaching the Past in Twentieth-Century England,4 where he explores
the real history of history education.
My book on the history of examinations in England proposes to investigate in
detail the public examinations offered by the main examining boards in England
since the mid-nineteenth century. A dominant theme is to show how an educational
institution, often motivated by entrepreneurial vigour, was often allowed to operate
independently of government control, only to be castigated in acts of government
intervention. The importance of such a study takes on even more significance in
the light of the determination of Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Education in
David Cameron’s government, to analyse and reform academic and vocational
examinations in the educational system. The intention is to go some way to provide
pupils with world-class examinations based on those offered to such students as
those in Singapore. When Gove became Minister he wanted to reduce the extent to
which coursework counts towards final assessment, bring more stringent
intellectual demands to the fore and introduce a new system bringing with it an end
to grade inflation.
Another purpose therefore is to investigate the extent to which educational
policy and practice from 1850 to 2014 has been brought to bear on school,
vocational and civil service examinations. I also look partially at the global scene
as the examinations provided by English examining bodies were taken abroad. The
archives at the Institute of Education at the University of London, the London
Metropolitan Archive and the the National Archives (TNA) offer much untapped
evidence and data, paving the way for a detailed review and investigation of this
topic. But while it is vital to point out that the nature of the educational provision,
or lack of it, for the poor gives an important backdrop to the issues of the day, it is
with the English middle classes that this book is primarily concerned. Further, a
concentration on the delivery of examinations in the second half of the nineteenth
century is supported by the boom in such examinations in Victorian England,
which accompanied the aspirations of the universities and professions to establish
their own schemes, with various motives.
These examinations provide ‘a lens’ through which an observer may analyse
Victorian England and apply the lessons learned to the aims and functioning of
education in contemporary England. The book has considerable historical
significance in relation to recent developments therefore, and in particular to the
Conservative-led coalition’s emphasis on school examinations. Historical treatment
of such examinations assists in the current debate on educational policy. It helps to
draw attention to the problems facing school examinations generally in England
and to assist contemporary analysts to consider current reforms historically – to
2
INTRODUCTION
explore the ways in which today’s educational concerns are similar to or distinct
from those in the nineteenth century.
Attempts are made to consider the nature, role and delivery of these
examinations and how they affect and expose wider issues concerning social
policy, philosophical concepts and national educational values. This debate, a
particularly vibrant one in modern England, is highly charged politically and offers
the basis for a riveting and intriguing investigation.
The methodology employed for this work is a qualitative approach culminating
in a retrospective analysis of events and actions; the outcome is the establishment
of a far greater understanding of the events and policy-making processes in the
delivery of school and teacher examinations. Vital sources in determining the
actual methodology were Gary McCulloch’s Documentary Research in Education,
History and the Social Sciences,5 and McCulloch and William Richardson’s
Historical Research in Educational Settings.6
McCulloch and Richardson point out that there are some basic, well established
rules that apply to appraising and analysing documents, and these concern
authenticity, reliability, meaning and theorisation.7 The first stage in the
documentary analysis process itself is to establish the authenticity of the document.
It has to be genuine and there must be no doubt about its origin. The author, place
and date of writing must be verified and validated.
In the course of examining the records there was, it appeared, very little political
or financial gain from forging any of the documents; the only anomaly was the
inclusion at different intervals of several duplicates of the same memorandum or
report. I can substantiate that by far the vast amount of archival material is genuine
but nonetheless this is something that historians have to be aware of in the research
they do.8
The second feature highlighted by McCulloch and Richardson is to appraise
reliability. They write ‘[t]his includes issues relating to truth and bias, but also the
availability of relevant source material and the representativeness of those
documents that had survived to be researched’.9 Here, the movement between
primary and secondary sources is worth addressing. The central landmarks noted in
John Roach’s Public Examinations in England and R.J. Montgomery’s
Examinations provided a basis on which to establish a pivotal relationship within
the documents between what was relevant and what was not. Attention was paid to
the inclusion of material that, while ostensibly less important, could still add to
developments in the delivery of examinations.
Cross-referencing of archival documents mitigated against authors being too
inexpert or inexperienced for their account to be trusted. The existence of a bias
was at times difficult to counter, so I regularly sought the advice of other historians
and former colleagues in the School of Education, Roehampton University and at
the Institute of Education University of London, such as Professor Pat Mahony,
who assisted me in arriving at conclusions that were more ‘objective’, that is,
3
INTRODUCTION
securing an opinion confirmed by a second or third party. This technique is not
foolproof, but the aim was to avoid presenting a false picture of an event, or
misleading the reader into adopting a discriminatory viewpoint or discrediting an
individual for carrying out certain actions. The extensive use of cross-referencing
was also adopted in my earlier The Struggle for the General Teaching Council.10
I attempted to be aware of the extent, referred to by John Scott, to which the
available research might be said to be typical, so as to attach limits to the
application of conclusions that were drawn from it. To ward off some of these
potential problems of reliability, I recognised that it was essential to examine a
wide range of different kinds of document in an effort to protect the reader against
bias.
Hence, I undertook a systematic investigation, including the cross-referencing
and comparison of the many sources, of examining boards’ minutes and of the
Education Department files at TNA, comprising internal memos and committee
papers, correspondence, letters and clippings from the popular press; educational
journals; and the general meetings, letters and papers associated with the running
of examinations since the 1840s. These and other sources were extracted from the
British Library, including its newspaper division at Colindale; the Institute of
Education Library, University of London; the Bodleian Library at Oxford
University; the London Metropolitan Library, the Library at Roehampton
University; Devon Record Office; the Educational Institute of Scotland;
Nottingham Archive Library; the Brotherton Library at Leeds University;
Plymouth Central Library; and Southwark Local Studies Library.
A further element in establishing the rules that apply in appraising and analysing
documents is their meaning.11 While I did not engage in what Sol Cohen calls ‘the
semiotics of text production’,12 I was keen to ensure that the evidence was clear
and comprehensible to me. This stage in the research process is aptly described by
Arthur Marwick: ‘historians should satisfy themselves that they have understood
the document as its contemporaries would have understood it, rather than as it
would have been understood today’.13 The meanings that people brought to
situations were made sense of by recognising that practitioners do not confront
policy texts as passive readers, they come with histories, with experience, with
values and purposes of their own.14
The final component of the document analysis concerned theorisation. This
aspect, as McCulloch writes,15 involves developing a theoretical framework
through which to interpret the document. The three approaches he quotes are
positivist, interpretative and critical.16 The theorisation I used was essentially
positivist. The interpretative model sees the documents as being socially
constructive and the critical approach lays emphasis on social conflict, power,
control and ideology, such as in Marxist theory.17 Different aspects of document
analysis are not always conceived as wholly separate or distinct and, as McCulloch
says, they overlap each other.18
4
INTRODUCTION
Positivism, historically associated with the nineteenth-century French
philosopher Auguste Comte, turns to observation and reason as a means of
understanding behaviour.19 Positivism strives for objectivity, measurability,
predictability, controllability, patterning and the construction of laws and rules of
behaviour.20 This approach looks at society as the focus of the research, and
through understanding the internal laws and establishing relevant facts, we can in
turn understand how and why individuals behave as they do.21
Positivism claims that science provides us with the clearest possible ideal of
knowledge, but this paradigm is less successful in its application to the study of
human behaviour with all its complexities. This point is nowhere more apparent
than in educational policy-making, where the problems of human interaction
present the positivist with a huge challenge.22
The practice I adhered to involved consideration, comparisons and crossreferencing of the myriad sources I located, and it was this exercise that determined
my approach to this book. These techniques were used by Mark Halstead in his
study of the controversy in England during the 1980s, in which the headmaster Ray
Honeyford became locked in a case concerning multicultural education.23
Certain document types constituted genres with distinctive styles and
conventions. I often knew what sort of document I was dealing with simply
through recognising its distinctive formal use of language. For example, official
documents and reports were couched in language that contrasts with colloquial
English. But I was aware that this should not endorse a glib condemnation of
‘officialese’ or conclusion that bureaucracies exist to mislead deliberately or
confuse through their particular use of the English language. Minutes stored at
examining boards, as far as each set was concerned, were linked as series or
sequences of documents: minutes refer to previous minutes and use common terms
such as ‘matters arising’.
The minutes looked very similar in construction, language and tone. By
examining different genres of documentary research – for example, internal
memoranda and official minutes – I looked for emerging themes and trends;
consulting with some of my colleagues at Roehampton, I sought the help of outside
readers who perhaps were in a position to notice subtle aspects that may have
eluded me.
The value to the educational researcher of the more recent media coverage has
become more limited by its demonising of the education sector:24 in deriding the
lack of discipline in state schools and hyping up the occurrence of grade inflation
in school examinations and the general weaknesses in the school sector, the
popular press has undermined the work of many successful pupils and
sensationalised falling standards.
At the outset it is important to distinguish between elementary and secondary
education. The terms are used in this book for reasons of simplicity to describe the
evolution of examinations in the private sector vis-à-vis their state-run counterparts
5
INTRODUCTION
but some authors, albeit rarely, choose to distinguish between middle-class and
working-class private education. Thus, Dr P. Gardner, the historian, refers to the
latter, pointing out that it produced very little independent documentary evidence
of its own. He goes on to show that, in its curriculum and in its distribution of
educational resources, the working-class private school presents an implicit
rejection of the emerging varieties of regulated schools.25 Elementary education
resides in the delivery of tuition by the state and religious societies and the
encroachment of the elementary on the secondary occurred later in the nineteenth
century, as we shall see, in the creation of higher-elementary schools.
It is hoped that the reader will engage enthusiastically in this account of the
history of examinations and draw insights from it as well as observing the
landmarks that are presented in the chapters ahead. Those still active in the
educational system and, more particularly, students and those who are employed as
administrators, teachers, civil servants, examiners, politicians and academics
should be keen to know about the various developments in the progress of and
setbacks in the evolution of examinations since 1850. The study envelops a wide
span of activity and indicates the richness and diversity of the historical fabric of
educational life in England since the mid-nineteenth century.
NOTES
1
R. Willis, The Struggle for the General Teaching Council, London & New York: Routledge/Falmer,
2005. A number of references have been borrowed from this source.
2
R. Willis, The Development of Primary, Secondary and Teacher Education in England: A History of
the College of Teachers, Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2012.
3
R. Willis, ‘Market Forces and State Intervention in Educational Enterprise: The case of school
examinations from 1850 to 1917’, Journal of Educational Administration and History, 27:2, pp 97–
109, 1995; R. Willis, ‘The Role of the College of Preceptors in providing Teacher Examinations in
Educational Theory and Practice 1846–1907’, History of Education Society Bulletin, No 60, pp 14–
23, 1997; R. Willis, ‘Testing Times’, History Today, Vol 55 No 8, pp 38–39, August 2005; R. Willis,
‘How to Trace Teachers’ Records’, Your Family History, August, 2010, pp 26–28.
4
D. Cannadine, J. Keating and N. Sheldon, The Right Kind of History: Teaching the Past in
Twentieth-Century England, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
5
G. McCulloch, Documentary Research in Education, History and the Social Sciences, London:
RoutledgeFalmer, 2004.
6
G. McCulloch and W. Richardson, Historical Research in Educational Settings, Buckingham: Open
University Press, 2000.
7
Ibid., p. 42.
8
Ibid.
9
Ibid.
10
Willis, 2005.
11
McCulloch, 2004, p. 45.
12
S. Cohen, Challenging Orthodoxies: Toward a New Cultural History of Education, New York: Peter
Lang, 1999, pp 65–66.
6
INTRODUCTION
13
A. Marwick, The Nature of History, 2nd edn, London: Macmillan, 1981, pp 145–146.
14
McCulloch, 2004, p. 45.
15
Ibid., p. 46.
16
Ibid.
17
Ibid.
18
Ibid., p. 47.
19
L. Cohen and L. Manion, Research Methods in Education, London: RoutledgeFalmer, 1994, p. 9.
20
Ibid.
21
N. Walliman, Social Research Methods, London: Sage, 2006, p. 23.
22
Ibid.
23
M. Halstead, Education, Justice and Cultural Diversity: An Examination of the Honeyford Affair,
1984–85, London: Falmer, 2010.
24
McCulloch, 2004, p. 90.
25
P. Gardner, The Lost Elementary Schools of Victorian England, New Hampshire: Croom Helm,
1984.
7
CHAPTER 1
BACKGROUND
ORIGINS AND THE MIDDLE CLASSES
Purportedly, centralised competitive examinations originated with the Han
emperors of China between 206 BC and AD 220. These tests were introduced to
recruit candidates for government posts. The reform, somewhat surprisingly, was
slow to be taken up in other countries, and even though eighteenth-century Japan
made efforts to copy the Chinese system, the Japanese attempt was not longlasting. In the sixteenth century the Jesuit traveller to China, Matteo Ricci, may
have influenced European countries to use the competitive external examinations
but the extent of his influence is open to question.
During the Middle Ages the universities were chosen by individuals, not to gain
a liberal education but rather to qualify for one of the professions: medicine, law or
theology. Neither the monarch nor the state was concerned with the examinations
offered by the universities and they remained essentially outside the jurisdiction of
external authorities. The degrees awarded bore little resemblance to the
qualifications gained by students in more recent times, though the terms ‘Bachelor’
and ‘Master’ of arts are shared both by old and modern awards: the former tended
to rely more on oral examinations that the student must satisfy.
The modern system of examinations in Europe did not arrive till much later:
between the 1750s and the 1850s, mainly in Prussia, France and England. In the
nineteenth century the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge used the results of
examinations to award degrees. Reform of the examinations held by Oxford
University began after the Examination Statute of 1800. Written examinations
were set to test candidates’ ability and public examiners were appointed to
maintain common standards. The changes continued and in 1808 an early variant
of Responsions was introduced. Beginning in 1780, similar reforms took place at
Cambridge University where the procedures for examination became both more
methodical and more efficient.
By the middle of the nineteenth century the entire population of England and
Wales was almost 14 million. It was around this time that the railway network was
established but it is difficult to pinpoint the extent of adult literacy, and analysts
too often rely on measures such as the ability to sign the marriage register as
suitable for calculating how much of the population could read and write. Where
such yardsticks are used in 1840 it can be suggested that about two-thirds of men
and half of women were literate, although again it must be stressed that the
derivation of this estimate should be viewed with scepticism. With the advent of
9
CHAPTER 1
cheaper books and with more advances in printing and the press, evidence
indicates that literacy rates were improving from 1820.1 But universal literacy was
far from being achieved. Some reports of Inspectors of Schools in Norfolk in 1840
revealed that, where they had found a stratum of adults who could read and write,
this was by no means the norm and that there was much illiteracy.
The problem with attempts to improve literacy rates among adults was not
helped by the weaknesses in the provision of elementary education. Difficulties in
this area often spilled over to technical education where the Mechanics’ Institutes
attracted white-collar and commercial candidates even though the lower classes
still availed themselves of this opportunity. The institutes were also valuable in
offering books and periodicals to their students.
Also at this time the middle classes were extending the part played by the
governess. Governesses were made famous by Charlotte Brontë in her celebrated
novel Jane Eyre. A wide range of families in Victorian Britain employed a
governess, and her role has been romanticised in the part played by Julie Andrews,
Connie Fisher and, more recently, Summer Strallen, in The Sound of Music. It may
not always have been full of the sort of romance and idealism associated with
Maria von Trapp. While their widespread employment began to lapse in the
twentieth century, governesses are now very much back on the scene. Vacancies
advertised on the internet and in the press call for Montessori, Princess Christian or
Chiltern-trained governesses and tutors. Pay ranges from £500 to £700 per week
plus frequent travel, separate accommodation and other perks.
By contrast, back in Victorian England the cry for improved pay and conditions
was greater for the governess than for almost any other teacher. There is some
evidence that governesses’ appointments were sometimes filled by French women
but many of these were unqualified. Many were recruited by English agents who
were rarely concerned about the professional competence of newcomers. Menials
were often contracted for the task. The unscrupulous practice of ‘agency
trafficking’ was highlighted and strongly opposed by the educational press, which
complained of a system allowing a chamber maid to be passed off as an
accomplished Parisian teacher.
The prejudice against women’s education in the nineteenth century was so great,
though, that social reformers had to struggle to help improve governesses’ lot.
Marriage was the accepted institution for upper- or middle-class women. For those
contemplating a career as a governess and who had the dedication and the selfdiscipline required, the advantages of securing a bona fide contract were meagre
though not to be overlooked. Benefits came with the contribution of educational
pioneers such as Frances Mary Buss within the College of Preceptors, a society
geared to meeting the needs of private teachers, who worked hard `to gain reform.
At one time, however, its department for women was said to ‘vegetate’. Few came
forward to join and the view was that this branch was both ‘weak’ and in much
need of ‘healthy shoots’.
10
BACKGROUND
At this time women’s rights were far away from the political agenda. The 1832
Reform Act extended the franchise to the boroughs, which allowed the middle
classes greater representation in Parliament. Limited though the social range of the
electorate still was, the new legislation was very much a victory for popular
opinion against entrenched and self-interested elements in the House of Lords. The
outcome was that the balance of power shifted towards the Commons, giving the
middle classes more power over future policy, though this was was slow to be
revealed. Nonetheless, self-improvement and material prosperity among the ‘rising
middle classes’ of the Industrial Revolution allowed greater economic and
commercial progress in business resulting in increasing opportunities for social
mobility and financial reward in the first half of the nineteenth century.
By 1847, there had been very little intervention in education by the government:
grammar schools, private schools and charity schools had been largely unaffected
by the state. Although in some cases it had a role in the appointment of heads to
grammar schools, by far the majority of these were under the complete control of
trustees and committees, each of which acted independently of the others and was
not attached to any central body. The endowed and public schools were
characterised by a confining classical curriculum, poor boarding accommodation
and a depraved morality. This state of affairs aroused the disquiet of parents who
were reluctant to send their children to such inadequate schools. The endowed
schools in particular provided a very unsatisfactory form of education for children.
Many parents viewed their curriculum as unresponsive to the demands of a
growing, industralised state. Lawson and Silver quote the decline of Manchester
Grammar School as a case in point. They agree that, while its decay may have been
triggered by a commercial depression, there was also a reaction to the school’s
inappropriately sticking to a classical education and to the incompetence of the
teachers employed in such schools.2 The unsavoury aspects of education came into
play in other towns between 1770 and 1810 and generated much disappointment in
England’s ability to adapt to the changing social and economic circumstances of
that time.
In many schools the level of scholarly work was at best rudimentary. There
were, however, exceptions to this general rule. Towards the end of the eighteenth
century Hull Grammar School was acclaimed as very efficient, and it was the
concerted efforts of Reverend Joseph Milner that contributed to this success. In
1812 the consensual and legislative approach was to confirm that the grammar
schools’ principal function was to furnish classical teaching.3 Calls for reform of
the endowed and public schools did not fall on deaf ears, however, and along with
Milner, the headmasters Samuel Butler of Shrewsbury and Thomas Arnold of
Rugby did their level best to introduce reforms to counter the unsuitable conditions
and low standards. Matthew Arnold was also sharply conscious of the advantages
of the Prussian system of education, recognising that it was both all-embracing and
of particular value to trade and industry. The Prussians had designed their system
11
CHAPTER 1
to adapt well to commerce and technology and it was known for its supremacy
over other national systems of education.4
In the meantime private schools were often preferred in England, and they were
chosen as a way of securing a ‘better’ education. In this context, the term ‘private
school’ refers to privately-owned schools that charged fees and were run for
private profit by a proprietor or group of proprietors. Horace Mann’s analysis of
private schools in 1851 showed that, of 600,000 children receiving some form of
secondary education, as many as 500,000 were in private schools.5 Mann classified
private schools in three categories according to efficiency: superior, middling and
inferior. The first category was essentially for secondary schools, including
classical, boarding, proprietary and ladies’ schools; middling schools, resembling
the ‘writing schools’ of the eighteenth century, provided a commercial training.
The inferior schools largely consisted of dame schools accommodating a
considerable number of children under 5 years old, for whom a higher category of
education was inappropriate,6 so presumably are barely represented in the figures
quoted above.
The grammar schools might have been endowed by their founders primarily for
underprivileged children but by the 1840s this concession had been superseded in
favour of upper-class children. The low standards of tuition and the limited means
both of the grammar schools and the common day schools encouraged the
development of proprietary schools. These represented an important response to a
large number of new occupations demanding recruits educated beyond the primary
stage. Advances in the printing press, an emerging postal service, the extension of
railways, the general expansion of commercial and government activity created job
vacancies requiring an education of a ‘super-primary’ type. Proprietary schools,
owned by proprietary bodies distinct from the schoolteachers, were set up to meet
the demand and to train pupils for new employment in the Stock Exchange, in
banking and insurance, in the gas and water companies and for other posts
connected with the growth of government business and the professions.
The proprietary schools were financed and controlled on the joint-stock
principle which allowed middle-class parents to buy proprietary shares holding the
right to nominate their children for entry. The advantages of the ‘limited company’
schools were keenly heralded in many quarters. In January 1831 after the
introduction of the first proprietary schools The Quarterly Journal of Education
urged parents to expand the system further, claiming that the benefits afforded by it
render ‘the desire for their establishment very prevalent’.7 Early examples of these
schools were the London University School (1828), King’s College School (1829),
Blackheath Proprietary School (1830) and the West Riding Schools (1834). In later
years came the City of London School (1837), Cheltenham (1841) and
Marlborough (1843). Many other fine schools, in some cases under Anglican
influence and in others catering specifically for women, owed their foundation to
this agency. It also gave parents some control over the curriculum which was noted
12
BACKGROUND
for its special attention to mathematics, history, chemistry, drawing, drilling,
natural philosophy, social science, book-keeping and to modern and classical
languages. In general the proprietary school tended to offer a more ‘modern
education’ for the growing middle classes.
In competition with the proprietary schools were the commercial boarding
schools and private academies. They varied considerably in efficiency and ranged
from dame schools, where childminding in effect was given at a fee of 4d. per
week, to the country boarding schools charging between £15 and £30 per year.
Courses consisted of reading, writing and arithmetic in addition to a number of
optional extras, such as geography, commercial accounts, French, Latin, dancing,
drawing, music, history and occasionally specialised subjects like pharmacy. In the
choice of such schools, parents were not always interested in educational or
intellectual achievement. Instead, they looked for a place to which ungovernable
children could be sent and hence the fitness of schools depended very much on
criteria such as the moderate terms offered, the duration of the vacations, the
domestic comforts afforded, the motherly attention given, or the ornate
penmanship of the half-yearly bill.
A similar grading system was used by the Schools Inquiry Commission in the
1860s. The framework the commissioners applied adopted a three-grade structure.
It was designed according to length of school life, and was based on the likely
future occupations of the pupils. Schools falling within the first grade included
those where the leaving age was about 18, which offered a liberal education that
required a university course to complete. Public schools delivered an education of
this kind. Teaching in the second grade would finish about 16 and would prepare
students for the Army and top professions, e.g. the legal profession and branches of
the Civil Service. The third-grade schools provided an education till about 14 and
were geared to meeting the demands of future small tenant farmers, tradesmen and
certain artisans.8
The schoolteachers, satirically portrayed by Dickens, Thackeray and Charlotte
Brontë, were the subject of considerable criticism. They were depicted as failures
from other occupations who had turned to schooling solely for personal profit in
the same way that the unemployed might have taken to farming or trade. Their
chief object was to make money in a system disparagingly called ‘private
adventure schooling’. The assistants were not only poorly paid but also lacked
proper training. They were looked upon as little better than their pupils, whose
moral and intellectual progress suffered from tuition conducted by unqualified
teachers and even less competent and underpaid ushers.
The practice of ‘school-merchandising’ attracted daily investigation and
complaint. Leading fictional characters epitomised the weaknesses of commercial
schools. The author of Fifty Years of Progress wrote ‘[t]he rascality of Squeers, the
brutality of Creakle, and the pretentiousness of Dr Blimber had their counterparts
in actual life’.9 It is clear that Dr Blimber’s academy and Squeers’s Dotheboys Hall
were reasonably true to type but how far can Dickens’s attacks on the private
13
CHAPTER 1
schools be justified? The poor quality of the cheap, distant schools in Yorkshire
had long been common knowledge and their masters were invariably seen as
irresponsible guardians, inefficient teachers and harsh profiteers; however, not all
Yorkshire schools were ‘Hells’ or ‘Bastilles’.10
To ascribe the flaws of the Dickensian representation to all private academies in
England is an exaggeration. Discipline in the schools Dickens described was by no
means as severe as some are led to believe. The boarding schools were even
singled out for their laxity rather than their severity of discipline, fearing that harsh
treatment might only excite the sympathy of parents. Of more significance, the
commercial school presented the possibility for experiment and innovation in the
curriculum which was lacking in the grammar schools restrained by statute and
traditional methods of teaching. Notwithstanding the benefits that emanated from
some practices, the commercial schools and other private-venture schools were
characterised by glaring inefficiency and low quality.
The backward state of English secondary education, when compared to the
educational systems abroad, led to careful research into the Continental approach.
Few of the pioneers of comparative education were uncritical borrowers, and
national sentiment and awareness of special national virtues even discouraged it.
As one nineteenth-century educator declared,
[t]he educational systems of the Continent have been studied in their minutest
details; centralisation, the fruit of these researches, perseveringly obtruded
and recommended for adoption. But England, Old England, likes not exotics
in education. Her educational soil is peculiar, and hence the failure of the
various attempts alluded to.11
Whatever the professed benefits of foreign systems, the English were disposed to
maintain a strictly private school system rather than to opt for the professional
practice of Germany.
Any attempt to uproot the English system, according to many observers, was as
futile as preaching a crusade against education itself. Nonetheless, the weaknesses
in the private school system and the many deficiencies under which middle-class
education laboured called for radical reforms.The number of teaching methods
tended to follow no set pattern so that mainly each teacher was expected to adopt
his own judgement and approach to learning and tuition.12 Moreover, a change in
schoolteacher led to a change in system too. The situation was aggravated in the
private schools in which, unlike the state schools where teachers were more subject
to supervision, change was even more widespread.
Despite the lack of state supervision, soon after the state made its first grant to
the education sector in 1833, a model school was established at Chelsea in London.
Similar developments took place at Greenwich Hospital, and these schemes were
financed by public revenues. Furthermore, around 1848 the government provided,
as direct inducements to schoolteachers falling within their control, for some form
14
BACKGROUND
of preliminary training. The universal nature of such help was however very
elusive in spite of the belief among some early private teachers that:
[t]he combined action of the State and societies and private individuals is
gradually preparing the way for a condition of things in which no person will
be permitted to engage in the education of the working classes who has not
been regularly trained to his profession…13
It can probably be assumed, as was widespread practice at this time in educational
history (especially in the public elementary schools), that the children the teachers
taught gained their knowledge by rote. Concerns about the sterility of this method
of learning have remained current, particularly in the fields of medical, legal and
accounting education, for many years. In more recent times, an emphasis has been
placed more upon knowledge that is internalised, reflected upon and assimilated as
opposed to being merely regurgitated. The debate has also been conducted in terms
of deep versus surface knowledge.
Controversy still raged over the ability of Britain to compete with its foreign
rivals, but a Select Committee set up in Parliament in 1836 recognised that Britain
was in decline when compared to its industrial counterparts in Europe. By 1851
attention turned towards the Great Exhibition and it was hoped that the
comparative deficiencies evidenced in preceding years would show signs of
ending. Thus, while the Exhibition provided a showcase for exhibitors around the
world, the organisers’ priority was to show Britain’s ‘superior’ industrial base.
There was also a desire to give security and hope for the future after twenty years
of social, economic and political upheaval in Europe.
Britain took up half of the display and showed exhibits from the home country
as well as the colonies. Much competition was evident from France, which
represented the largest foreign exhibitor. Queen Victoria opened the exhibition on
1st May. The entrance fee for visitors was £3 and over 6 million came to see the
wonderful spectacle. The exhibition marked, in some ways, the supremacy of
Britain’s industrial prowess and it was at this time that the country experienced
considerable success in trade and industry. In particular, the railways had
developed new patterns of transport, allowing passage for thousands of citizens and
freight. Agriculture took on a more minor role and industrialisation had been
adopted on a grand scale.
Yet in what is a paradox, the economic picture did contain some inconsistencies.
Some areas of the economy had been slow to transform, and the expansion of GDP
was in some cases slow. In other areas industry was very labour-intensive. The
capital markets were not always expansive in scope, especially where private loans
or parochial loans still took place. It is hard to generalise about the overall success
and failures but it is clear that, in the years after the Great Exhibition, foreign
competition made clear inroads in the ability of Britain to excel economically and
to flourish.
15
CHAPTER 1
THE LOWER CLASSES
The demands therefore of stamping home the importance of providing education
for the poor were put forward by their masters, with the group affected largely
taking no interest. Essentially, what had to be weighed up were the encroaching
dangers inherent in not having an industrious and technically advanced nation,
against the anxieties over having a working class equipped and educated to
challenge its position in life by perhaps seeking to overthrow the higher and
established orders.
Middle-class education did not exhibit the same sort of weaknesses as were
inherent in that provided for the working classes. Following the efforts of Henry
Brougham, a parliamentary committee was set up in 1816 ‘to inquire into the
Education of the lower Classes’. The resulting report was very critical of what it
saw as a vacuum in educational provision, and of the lack of regular attendance
generally. Brougham then proceeded to examine the issue of educational
endowments and his campaigning led to the introduction of the Parish Schools Bill
of 1820 in an attempt to pave the way for manufacturers to fund education.
Collectively, the proposals supported by Brougham represented the foundation of a
national system of education, but largely on account of religious opposition,
especially from the Roman Catholics, the bill was withdrawn.
The mantle for reform was transferred from Brougham to John Arthur Roebuck.
He was aware that France and Prussia already had their own systems of popular
education. Roebuck’s aim was to persuade the government to allow children aged
6 to 12 to have schooling guaranteed by the state. Educational endowments and
taxes would, he hoped, finance such an arrangement. H.C. Barnard, the educational
historian, notes that the ambitious nature and expensive ramifications were bound
to result in Roebuck’s recommendations being rejected.14 It is hardly surprising
that the advocates of non-intervention in running Britain won the argument with
their strong views on and support for laissez faire, the doctrine that so often
dominated in the political debates of that day.
In the early part of the nineteenth century, elementary education for many of the
lower classes was also provided by various voluntary and religious groups. At the
forefront of those giving a working-class education were the non-denominational
Royal Lancastrian Society (1808 – later the British and Foreign Society), and the
National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the
Established Church (1811). The two groups shared a similar system of tuition,
which was the monitorial or mutual system used widely by Joseph Lancaster and
Andrew Bell. This was a system used for children who could not afford fees and it
permitted many poor children to receive a very limited form of education at low
cost. Lessons took place in large classrooms and the teacher was able to scrutinise
the activity of the whole school.
Bell was attached to the Established Church. In the course of his work as a
teacher in Madras, as a result of a lack of staff he was compelled to place some
16
BACKGROUND
classes in charge of some senior pupils. On Bell’s return to the UK, he advertised
details of his experiences in India and his scheme was consequently adopted by
certain charity schools. During these years, at a school in Borough Road, London,
Joseph Lancaster, a Quaker, similarly adopted a system of teaching in which he
drew upon children known as ‘monitors’ to engage the other children. Barnard
comments: ‘by such means the number of children ultimately in the charge of a
single adult could be greatly increased’.15 In this way the appointed teacher in a
classroom could delegate responsibilities to the more able students and thus
generate benefits for the entire class.
The two powerful societies exercised a generic influence over the schools they
supervised: they published books, maps, etc. for the schools’ use and they founded
teacher training schools to impart to trainees something resembling method in the
delivery of their lessons. Children usually respected their teachers as strict school
discipline was imposed. Children in their early teens assisted the teacher to run the
class. They became known as ‘pupil teachers’ and were awarded certificates to
enable them to qualify as teachers once they became more proficient.
Up until 1850 teachers practised their schoolroom skills with the aid of
monitors. School heads instructed the monitors, who in turn taught the other pupils.
There were more women than men in the ‘profession’ and the pay was low. The
system formed the roots of widespread schooling and even though the monitors
were untrained and unqualified it offered a formalised, inexpensive and efficient
framework to cope with the practical problem caused by a shortage of competent
teachers. The elementary school teacher contributed fundamentally, however, to
meeting the needs in a developing industrial society of the emerging professional
groupings such as civil servants, chemists, engineers and accountants.
Social legislation while welcome did not always provide the outcome that many
reformers sought. The Factory Act 1833 was very much a watered-down and
empty prize to those who were campaigning for a Ten-hour Act. It placed
restrictions on child labour and opened some doors to a factory inspectorate.
Schooling was to be made available for two hours a day but all too often the
‘education’ of working children was avoided or given in a very unsatisfactory way.
The Act of 1833 really only established in principle the notion of compulsory, parttime education. Sir James Graham wanted to go a stage further, and took the
initiative in introducing a bill designed to make more social and educational impact
than the Act of 1833. He sought to decrease working hours and to increase the
number of school hours. After much opposition, however, particularly among the
Nonconformists who were sidelined by Graham’s emphasis on enhancing the role
of the Church of England in the legislation he was promoting, the bill was
withdrawn.
The Sunday school went some way towards giving a modicum of education to
the underprivileged in towns and villages throughout England. Such schools were
even regarded as giving the most efficient mode of tuition in Lancashire. The
overall effectiveness of teaching was a long way below the standards expected in
17
CHAPTER 1
modern society and the Sunday school movement was criticised for replacing the
instruction given by day schools on the Sabbath. The teachers in these schools
were charged with providing a knowledge of the Scriptures and produced some
worthy results in bringing some form of education to a disadvantaged minority in
England.
Religious instruction was also apparent in the work of the Home and Colonial
School Society, which adopted a religious base in describing its aims and
objectives as well as subscribing to a viewpoint that society wanted to improve
moral aspects of a child’s education. Inspectors attested to the fine work that these
schools undertook and praised their progress in providing a kind of foundation that
children could take a stage further in their lives. The importance of physical
education was stressed in a curriculum that also promoted music, allowing for a
degree of self-sufficiency and independence within the children.16
Ragged schools and workhouse schools provided two other channels through
which the lower classes were ‘educated’. The Poor Law Amendment Act 1834
attached some weight to the idea of giving daily education to poor children kept in
workhouses. The authorities were not always sympathetic to the needs of such
infants and held back schemes to offer improvements to what was in effect a
perfunctory attempt to educate. The workhouse environment demeaned the activity
of those committed to better the system and the instruction was delivered in a
fashion that made constructive learning an impossibility.
Ragged schools took off in the 1840s. In 1844 Lord Shaftesbury was influential
in forming the Ragged School Union. Charity aid was raised and unpaid teachers
were encouraged to join. The upholding of Christian principles again motivated the
early volunteers and they endeavoured to instruct the most needy children. By
1870, there were 132 of these schools; their work extended to Sunday schooling
and their exertions here continued till the 1890s.
In early-Victorian England only the privileged few were able to gain a
university education. Many children then never attended school and the majority
never mastered the ability to read and write. As already explained, some went to
Sunday schools, which were established by voluntary effort; many of the poorer
children frequented ‘dame’ schools. There was significant agreement that
unacceptable excesses resulted from immoral tendencies within society yet the
state chose not to deal with these directly itself but rather to rely on the unassisted
and undirected efforts of individuals and societies.17
A dame school was normally run by an elderly woman, often spurred by
misfortune to maintain an income by taking care of young children whose mothers
might have been in employment. The dame schools expanded greatly in the
nineteenth century, frequently opened all day and very much assisted mothers who
were otherwise working on the land or in the factory. Increasingly, children’s
parents were indeed forced to work in mines or factories and there was a need for
childcare. The dame, looking after children between 2 and 7 years old, charged a
few pence each week. The education of those in her charge normally only extended
18
BACKGROUND
to knowledge of the alphabet and the spelling of a few simple words. Hardly any
records of these ‘schools’ survive, but it can be said from external reports that
many were inefficient and unhygienic.18
The advantages of studying science were recognised in the seventeenth century
but instruction in its application did not really occur till the nineteenth century. In
1810 chemical science, the arts and manufacture were advanced by the Royal
Institution but the Institution tended to direct its work towards the upper echelons
of society and also not towards applied outcomes. Rural life depended on
agriculture and prior to the Industrial Revolution technical education was tied up
with the apprenticeship system and with craft guilds. The latter had developed
significantly in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
In the field of technical training the main path then consisted of a limited
number of apprenticeships offered by craft guilds. Some progress (though far from
a significant impact) was made with the introduction of the Mechanics’ Institutes
and these served to expand the interest in technical education. The first Mechanics’
Institute was founded in 1824; by 1850 there were 610, engaging 102,000
members. A minority of these institutes acquired significant wealth compared to
other colleges of their day, with the Liverpool Mechanics’ Institute, for example, in
1839 accumulating £6,000 for its building fund, and in the same year earning
£3,569 in income.19 The Liverpool institute, however, was unrepresentative of the
typical institute and the majority were characterised by limited resources, being
unable to provide facilities, such as workshops and equipment, so necessary for
technical education to thrive. Much of the study therefore was largely theoretical as
the opportunities for practice were very limited. The functioning of these institutes
mirrored many of the changes that were taking place in the field of technical
education.
From the early 1840s the Working Men’s Colleges were distinct from the
Mechanics’ Institutes and instead addressed adult education. Religion played a role
in these; a central tenet usually advocated by these colleges was that education was
not related to a man’s craft or profession. Such a principle struck deeply at the
heart of much educational reform at this time and did not sit well with either
former or contemporary thinking. Yet the colleges were to be found in London,
Leicester and Halifax. In Oxford Ruskin College decided to educate men from the
working classes to occupy important positions in commerce and industry.
At this time, as the voluntarist philosophy prevailed, entrepreneurs were very
reluctant to sponsor employees to learn the skills for future development and
investment and so left the government to take charge of any learning opportunities.
Prior to Forster’s Education Act of 1870, there was no evidence of a national
system of education and suspicions of the dangers of expansion in scientific and
technical advances were apparent in society at large. As it was only during the
second half of the nineteenth century that attitudes changed, when England’s GDP
grew considerably the demand for qualified and skilled engineers and technicians
outstripped supply.
19
CHAPTER 1
After, in 1867, the Taunton Commission delivered its Schools Inquiry Report
(see below), evidence that state intervention might provide assistance to the
secondary sector was suggested by the Elementary Education Act 1870. This Act
served ‘to complete the voluntary system and to fill up gaps’ and within ten years
there was almost a doubling of voluntary schools, their pupils and teachers. More
importantly, the local school boards created under the Act led to the formation of
higher-grade, organised science schools and from the 1890s advanced evening
classes. These innovations were largely a result of the demand from working-class
and lower-middle-class parents for a modern, post-elementary form of education
for their children that was cheaper than that provided by the grammar schools.20 A
significant blow to the school boards was the Cockerton judgement of 1899, which
held that the London School Board had over-stepped its powers by spending
money on post-elementary education.21
The first Parliamentary grants to public education were made by the Whig
government in 1833. The legislature agreed to grant £20,000 for school building to
be given through the National and British societies. Hence, the sums involved were
not directed towards the cost of tuition, but merely subsidised the initial costs
involved in the building of schools. Those in the larger cities and the metropolis
were favoured in the distribution of funds. Some church authorities even opposed
the grant and campaigned to prevent the adoption of interventionist policies by the
state, fearing that their influence would be weakened. Many MPs also resisted,
considering that there was no purpose in any such funding as lower-class children
would be unable to apply lessons learnt in the classroom to skills at work. Laissez
faire principles and the strength of the voluntarist philosophy also defined much of
English history and such tenets tended to dominate, arguing that the state had no
place in subsidising the working classes; and linked to this was the continuing fear
that an educated lower class could be a dangerous phenomenon which could breed
discontent and even rebellion.
The government’s contribution was by no means substantial, but a precedent
had been introduced for further state intervention in education. To regulate the
system of grants, the government set up the Committee of the Council for
Education in 1839. The members of the Committee were the Lord President of the
Council, the Secretaries of State, the First Lord of the Treasury, and the Chancellor
of the Exchequer. From 1857 a Vice-President was appointed who took
responsibility for policy. The Committee was also an attempt to pacify some of the
many religious disputes at the forefront of many educational reforms. The
Committee dished out strict conditions to control the appointment of persons to
inspect Church of England schools (less regulation was considered necessary for
other denominations in line for help). In 1843 the Committee allocated funds for
the building of normal schools linked to the National and British societies and so
ended the system under which voluntary effort alone provided training colleges.
It was not till 1846 that the first moves appear to have been made towards
allowing grants for the maintenance of schools. In that year it was decided to
20
BACKGROUND
apprentice pupils, young persons at least 13 years old, to receive separate
instruction for an hour and a half daily from the head teacher. Apprenticeships
were expected to last for five years. Thus, elementary school teachers in midVictorian England were invariably selected from the more ambitious and cleverer
pupils from the working classes.
Yet so many entrepreneurs and industrialists were reluctant to support technical
education, taking the view that it was the responsibility of the state to take the lead
in supporting such a cause. An unwillingness to promote scientific and technical
progress led to problems in developing a national system of commercial and
technical education and an accompanying programme of examinations. The
outcome was that technical training tended to be part-time and haphazard. More
progress was being made by foreign countries and it was recognised that, abroad,
teaching too was held in higher esteem. In France and Prussia, for example, teacher
training was more advanced and these countries had done more for the training of
teachers. In England, as indeed in America, the status of the teacher was low. The
governing classes were aware that they depended on the labour and services of the
many and preferred a system that kept the lower classes ignorant for fear of
rebellion.22 To promote their position, the higher classes stressed the importance of
social deference and ‘knowing one’s place’ to those seeking elementary education.
Religion played a significant part here as Christianity was underlined by a message
of humility and acceptance of one’s lot in life.23
The first state examinations taken on an national basis were those for initial and
in-service teachers soon after 1846. Montgomery asserts that these were not a
victory for the Radicals but rather the result of a compromise between the Radicals
and the entrenched position of the Church.24 Examinations in elementary schools
differed from those in secondary schools in that the former primarily were
provided directly by the government. The nature of the curriculum governing the
elementary tests was also different: it was far more narrow and the academic
standard tended to be lower.25 As already inferred, the Church largely provided
education to the working classes, even though the demand for it was low. By the
early 1800s, there was concern that for a growing population more had not been
achieved to educate the young. By 1846, the expectation that improvement and
expansion of schools was necessary led to the training of more teachers and
‘Queen’s Scholarships’ to promising pupil-teachers were introduced. They would
be chosen from successful pupils in elementary schools and they would help the
teacher as classroom teachers. At the end of a five-year apprenticeship they would
be presented with certificates awarded to the ablest after an examination.26
SMITH, MILL AND BENTHAM
Suspicion of a European approach was also tied up with a distrust of government
intervention. Although in England the schools and universities remained essentially
independent of the state, in Prussia it had comprehensively intervened in education
21
CHAPTER 1
after the defeat of Napoleon at Jena in 1806. In France too there was a centralised
organisation: a law of 1802 created a national system of education and a body of
teachers ‘surveillé par l’État’. Paradoxically, from 1833, starting with the Factory
Act and the grants to public education in that year, Britain experienced not only
legislation regarded by social historians as marking the beginnings of a centralised
administrative state but also a strong commitment to non-interventionist values
such as support for laissez faire, the creed of individualism and self-help. Dislike
of government action in social policy was often endorsed by influential Benthamite
philosophy and by political economists such as John Stuart Mill who warned of the
dangers of overgovernment by a repressive dictatorial state. One outcome was that
barriers prevented the adoption of foreign procedures so that, whilst countries like
Prussia and France sustained national educational systems, England retained
private enterprise and laissez faire.
Mill proposed a system of compulsory education and at the heart of it would be
a structure of examinations. Mill also supported a proposal to introduce training
colleges for secondary-school teachers but others were suspicious of government
intervention and of the government funding such operations as this might give it
too much control over education. Concessions to the lower classes caused less
controversy and indeed the government did back training colleges for elementary
teachers.
A scheme for introducing public examinations was explained by Adam Smith in
his famous work The Wealth of Nations (1776). In an acknowledgement of the
value of laissez faire, he was doubtful of any system that might result in
government interference on a large scale but he nevertheless welcomed the
importance to the economy of an educated work force. For their benefit he
favoured some kind of competition giving prizes to the successful participants.
Smith’s idea for competitive examinations was taken up by Jeremy Bentham who
became the principal architect of the public examination system. Bentham devoted
much time to studying the economic, social and educational organisation of the
community. His investigation, however, was as relevant to senior public
appointments as it was to the provision of examinations in schools. Bentham was
also very critical of overemphasis on the teaching of classics in schools and
considered that more attention should be given to law, science or politics. In the
early 1800s there existed a strong campaign hostile to the concentration on Latin
and Greek at the expense of pupils spending time on more practical subjects in the
curriculum.
Looking for more efficient ways of solving economic and administrative
problems, Bentham held to the principle of self-help and that competition in trade
and commerce should be applied to education and the public service. In 1827 he
outlined a proposal for a scheme of examinations. In 1854 it was applied to the
East India Company’s Civil Service and later in the century to the domestic civil
service.27 Central to Bentham’s theme was the view that competition was the
ingredient that is key to recruitment. A major impetus to the growth of
22
BACKGROUND
examinations in the nineteenth century was the competitive principle espoused by
Darwinists and the belief that competition was both desirable and vital in
promoting the spirit of the age. Those in support of examinations stressed that
competition was an essential element in the educational process. Moreover,
Bentham’s scheme was designed to work against the current practice, which
depended on the trustworthiness of individuals presenting their case for selection,
so was vulnerable to fraud, cheating and lies. Even though Victorian administrative
reform was never entirely the product of any one political philosophy, there is little
doubt that the 1846 decision by the Committee of the Council to adopt teachers’
examinations owed much to the influence of Bentham and his followers. Indeed,
most if not all the examination schemes adopted in the mid-nineteenth century
owed their origins to Bentham, while Smith can be seen as the progenitor of the
principle.
Individual competition therefore took on an advanced form in the development
of examinations. Collective responsibility was another important social trend at
this important juncture in England’s educational history, with occupational groups
forming themselves into professional bodies and societies. In professional terms,
by 1845 lawyers, physicians and clergymen were fairly well organised: the Law
Society had been incorporated in 1827 as a voluntary association; the College of
Physicians was legally empowered to prosecute persons practising without a
licence; the College of Surgeons had authority to examine those wanting surgical
qualifications; under the Apothecaries Act 1815 the London Society of
Apothecaries was able to prosecute unlicensed apothecaries. In contrast, the only
apparent check on teachers’ appointment was an ancient law stipulating that
teachers engaged by grammar schools should possess a licence conferred by the
bishop of the diocese. However, any person was legally entitled to open a school. It
is true that clergymen and university graduates formed the majority of teachers in
the great public and endowed schools but, unlike senior doctors and solicitors, the
managers of private schools were not obliged to pass any official examination.
This gap in the governance structure meant that examinations had far more ground
to make up in the teaching profession and hence the competitive principle became
even more essential to the improvement of national professional education.
Bentham was not reticent in detailing a pattern for future examinations. He
pronounced that a relatively full syllabus should be provided to candidates at the
outset of their preparation. As later proved the norm, teachers vigorously doubted
the possibility that syllabuses might be able to ensure that there could be no
question that was not covered by the topics codified beforehand. Syllabus-based
examinations became widespread and,28 despite the controversy they often caused,
were still prized as an excellent feature of the provision of public examinations.
As well as their role in local recruitment, Bentham was determined not to
undermine the use of public examinations in the recruitment of those appointed to
the highest offices. He claimed that the prime minister should choose cabinet
ministers from a list composed by a special jury that would in turn test the aptitude
23
CHAPTER 1
of each applicant. Hence, the examination of candidates should be a judicial
exercise, based on the results of tests. Intellectual prowess would dominate in the
choice of candidates, but moral aptitude was no less a prerequisite and this would
be gauged partly by the submission of what became known as the ‘Candidate’s
Character Book’, to be duly sent to the prime minister to help him in his choice.
Bentham considered that the appropriate model on which to base the tests would be
the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos, and that this should be followed by a
thorough interview. Candidates would also be encouraged to discuss topics among
themselves. Again, oral, ‘question-and-answer’ interviews would be the norm, as
was the practice in most universities.29
Without examination, personality traits would not readily come to light. M.E.
Guidi, a present-day economist, holds that Bentham’s confidence in examinations
as a means of screening may appear to be naïve, but even here the philosopher
identifies the limitations of believing such a method to be foolproof: he points out
that surplus information and the dangers of bad practice in the recruitment process
can only be reduced by it.30
The writings of the classical economists therefore gave a fresh impetus to the
development of examinations in the UK yet their use was in evidence well before
the Committee of the Council decision of 1846. As Roach wrote, the training
college examinations sanctioned in that year were the first extension on a national
scale and at a lower level of the examinations that had proved so successful in the
Oxford Schools and the Cambridge Tripos, as described in ‘Origins and the Middle
Classes’, above.
Following the precepts of Smith and Bentham and once the use of public
examinations was under way, it was John Stuart Mill who steered the philosophical
debate on their application. Writing On Liberty in 1859,31 he put forward his ideas
for examinations. Moving away from a laissez faire stance, he believed it might be
desirable for the government to engineer a good education for every child, but
(Mill continued) it could be saved from such a task if the parents were allowed the
responsibility of paying the fees for schools, with the state helping out poorer
children whose parents found it financially difficult to contribute.
Both Bentham and Mill subscribed to the doctrine of Utilitarianism and
recognised its actual and potential impact on government and its approach to
governing. Central to the philosophy was utility as the measure of all virtue: it is
the obligation of individuals and government to address the aim of general
happiness. Bentham and Mill did not always agree with one another and, while the
former is often regarded as the father of the school, it was Mill who went about
refining its innermost concepts and producing a more subtle variation which he
largely saw as a consolidation and revision of Benthamite principles.
Mill wanted examinations to be extended to all children and to start in infancy.
A system of fines was also heralded, to be imposed on parents if they were
neglectful of their children. In what seemed another contradiction, he favoured
voluntary examinations in the more advanced stages of tuition. The examinations
24
BACKGROUND
would test facts rather than require structured papers dealing with opinions and
arguments. This also extended to religion where Mill preferred to have ‘instructed
churchmen or instructed dissenters’. He was concerned that, by breaching such a
principle, the government’s influence might grow to unacceptable levels, and
might lead to it having too much power over access to the professions, particularly
the teaching profession, despite his belief that teachers do not necessarily have to
be tested and qualify for their vocation. Here Mill, in not requiring training, merely
reflected the contemporary lack of interest in having all teachers properly trained
before they were unleashed on schools and academies.
Yet it must be remembered that the Benthamite philosophy predominated for, as
already pointed out, Mill wrote after public examinations had been launched. Brian
Simon charts how Bentham’s work arose from the necessity of bringing into being
new forms of education for the expanding middle class. Bentham decided to ignore
existing educational practice and as a true pioneer engaged on the study of human
knowledge,32 endeavouring to relate it to the real world of science and technology.
Bentham’s credo was to open up entry to the new professions by having in place a
system of general competition. He supported a system for the worthy to rise to the
top. Such an outlook was later endorsed by the Schools Inquiry Commission,
reporting in 1867:
If the son of a labourer can beat the sons of gentlemen that goes a long way
to prove that he is capable of using to advantage the education usually given
to the gentlemen.33
While Bentham’s prescription was never used comprehensively, it was much
applied for the purposes of the East India Company’s Civil Service in 1853 and of
those examinations leading to recruitment for the home Civil Service. These
reforms were advanced by Lord Macaulay, Stafford Northcote and Charles
Trevelyan, who were (as Frank Foden notes) all ‘Benthamite mandarins’.34 Foden
also speculates that Bentham’s contribution was a major influence on Macaulay
and recognises that Bentham’s ideas were a product of Adam Smith’s ‘rivalship
and emulation’.35 Bentham distrusted human nature and considered that, without
examination, it was incapable of doing justice in the selection of civil servants.
Moreover, the panoply of private school educators were no doubt similarly
convinced that public examinations pointed the way to achieving higher standards
and to acting as a vital benchmark in the development of a child’s education from
school to employment.
NOTES
1
J. Lawson and H. Silver, A Social History in England, London: Methuen and Co Ltd, 1973, p. 259.
2
Ibid., pp 250–251.
3
Ibid., p. 252.
4
S. Curtis, History of Education in Great Britain, London: University Tutorial Press Ltd, 1968, p. 164.
25
CHAPTER 1
5
Census of Great Britain, 1851, p.xliv.
6
Ibid.,p.xxxiii.
7
‘Proprietary Schools’, The Quarterly Journal of Education, Vol. I, January 1831, p. 199.
8
J. W. Adamson, English Education 1789–1902, Cambridge University Press, 1964, pp 259–260.
9
The College of Preceptors (CoP), Fifty Years of Progress in Education: A Review of the Work of the
College of Preceptors, London: C. F. Hodgson, 1896, p. 5.
10
P. Collins, Dickens and Education, London and New York: Macmillan, 1964, p. 103.
11
The CoP, ‘Some Details of the Principles, and Proceedings of the College of Preceptors….’ etc., The
Calendar of the College of Preceptors, London, 1847, p. 97.
12
‘On Education and Educators’, The Educational Times (The ET), January 1848, p. 59.
13
Ibid.
14
H.C. Barnard, A History of English Education from 1760, University of London Press, 1960, p. 69.
15
Ibid., p. 53.
16
Ibid., pp 280–282.
17
‘On Education and Educators’, The ET, January 1848, p. 59.
18
R. Willis, ‘Tracing your roots’, Child Care, February 2009, p. 19.
19
Gordon W. Roderick and Michael D. Stephens (1973), ‘Approaches to technical education in
nineteenth-century England: Part IV. The Liverpool Mechanics’ Institution’, The Vocational Aspect
of Education, 25:61, pp 99–104.
20
D. Stainwright, ‘The Brighton School Board and Technical Instruction Committee: a study in
conflict’, The Vocational Aspects of Education, 46:1, 1994, p. 18.
21
Ibid., p. 19.
22
D. Fraser, The Evolution of the British Welfare State, London: Macmillan Press, 1984, p. 78.
23
Ibid., p. 79.
24
R.J. Montgomery, Examinations: An account of their evolution as administrative devices in England,
London: Longmans, Green and Co Ltd, 1965, p. 32.
25
J.C. Matthews, Examinations: A Commentary, London: George Allen and Unwin, 1985, p. 11.
26
Ibid.,pp 34–35.
27
F.E. Foden, ‘The Rev. James Booth: Pioneer of examinations’, The Vocational Aspect of Education,
20:46, 1968, pp 127–136.
28
F. Foden, The Examiner James Booth and the origin of common examinations, Leeds Studies in
Adult and Continuing Education, Leeds: University of Leeds, 1989, pp 90–93.
29
Ibid., pp 91–92
30
M.E. Guidi, ‘Bentham’s Economics of Emulation’, Paper presented to ISUS Conference
‘Utilitarianism’, New Orleans, March 22–23, 1997.
31
J.S. Mill, ed. M. Warnock, ‘On Liberty’ in ‘Utilitarianism’, Glasgow: Fontana Press, 1986, pp 240–
241.
32
B. Simon, Studies in the History of Education, 1780–1870, London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1969, p.
79.
33
Report of the Schools Inquiry Commission (Schools Inquiry Commission), London, 1867, Volume 1,
p. 596.
34
Foden, 1989, pp 90–91.
35
Ibid., p. 91.
26