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This paper uses the 1908 Oxford Report, a founding document for the Workers' Educational Association, as a window onto the internal contradictions of the university adult education movement, an issue that has been neglected by historians of education. Examining the early history of the WEA shows that while the movement was inspired by Oxford Idealism and set itself the aim of democratising higher education, it also drew support from people who intended to professionalise the university by introducing the principles of trained expertise and selection by merit. The confluence of Idealism and professionalism resulted in a ground-breaking but inconsistent educational programme outlined in the Oxford Report. This paper suggests that the attempt to simultaneously democratise and professionalise higher education was untenable and foreshadowed later tensions within the WEA movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the connections between the school building programme in England and the raising of the school leaving age (ROSLA) from 14 to 15 in 1947 and then to 16 in 1972. These two major developments were intended to help to ensure the realisation of ‘secondary education for all’ in the postwar period. The combination led in practice to severe strains in the education system as a whole, with lasting consequences for educational planning and central control. ROSLA was a key issue for the school building programme in terms of both finance and design. School building was also a significant constraint for ROSLA, which was marred by temporary expedients in building accommodation both in the 1940s with ‘HORSA huts’ and in the 1970s with ‘ROSLA blocks’, as well as by the cheap construction of new schools that soon became unfit for purpose. Together, school building needs and ROSLA helped to stimulate pressures towards centralisation of planning that were ultimately to undermine postwar partnerships in education, from the establishment of the Ministry of Education’s Architects and Building (A&B) Branch in 1948, through the Crowther Report of 1959 and the Newsom Report of 1963, to the assertion of central state control by the 1970s. The pressures arising from such investment and growth in education again became a key issue in the early twenty-first century with the Labour Government’s support for raising the participation age to 18 combined with an ambitious ‘Building Schools for the Future’ programme. The historical and contemporary significance of these developments has tended to be neglected but is pivotal to an understanding of medium-term educational change in its broader policy and political contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper, based on the author’s presidential address to the History of Education Society in November 2006, explores aspects of continuity and change over the past 40 years with particular reference to educational reform and the development of the History of Education Society itself. It assesses the significance of the work of the playwright Alan Bennett in relation to the ‘Great Debate’ in Britain, especially its appeal to nostalgia and tradition during a phase of rapid change. In so doing it emphasizes the potential role of literary sources and the importance of an understanding of broader cultural dynamics in the history of education. It then reviews the strategic issues facing the History of Education as a consequence of the wider changes that have taken place since its foundation in 1967. It also considers several aspects of the intellectual project of the history of education in a changed society and in the broader context of global change, noting in particular the scope for new work on the national past, the interdependence of Britain’s internal and external relationships, Britain’s relationship to a changing Europe, and global history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the setting up of kindergarten systems in colonial New Zealand over the late nineteenth century, kindergarten founders such as Miss Mary Richmond in Wellington developed global links with kindergarten movements in a number of countries including England. This article examines the nature and significance of two key global interconnected networks underpinning Mary Richmond's work in kindergarten. The two networks addressed here—the Froebel movement in London and the Unitarian based network of family and friends—were characterized by a shared belief in the power of education to bring about change. This paper argues that such networks need to be understood not only through the lens of female collective action but also more specifically through a particular reforming outlook that sought to use education as a means to bring about broader social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout the first half of the twentieth century control over their schools was central to the sense of a Catholic identity for English Catholics, and its defence was a priority of their bishops. The 1944 education act threatened the financial viability of these schools. Between 1942 and 1944 the divided and uncertain response of the Catholic Hierarchy of England and Wales to the state’s proposals for educational reform opened the way for the intervention of lay catholics into the education debate. The Sword of the Spirit movement is commonly remembered as the central organization for lay initiative in Church affairs. However, for Catholics and for participants in the education debate the organization known as the Catholic Parents’ and Electors’ Association (CPEA) was far more significant. From local initiatives in Ilford, south-east London, and Bradford, in the north, between 1940 and 1942, the CPEA expanded, until by 1944 it could claim a nationwide membership running into tens of thousands, as well as the enthusiastic support of the Catholic press. It engaged in vigorous political activity, in most cases without the sanction of clerical authority. To some extent the movement troubled Catholic authority as much as the education issue itself. With the re-establishment of authority, following the appointment of a new cardinal-archbishop of Westminster the movement foundered but was by no means extinguished. It embodied the extending power within the Catholic community of an urban middle class, related to, but increasingly distinct from, the growing Catholic professional elite exemplified by the growth of the Newman Association. The CPEA could be harnessed by the clerical leaders of the Catholic community, but its history indicates the social, psychological and political stresses attendant on educational change in a minority community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how infant school reform took hold in London’s schools from the 1890s to the 1930s through examination of the work of two Froebelian head teachers, Elizabeth Mary Shaw and Frances Emily Roe. In contrast to teacher-led rote-learning methods and rigid discipline they implemented play-based activities drawing on children’s interests and introduced visits for nature study and projects. The research draws on logbooks, published accounts, reports of HMIs, local authority inspectors and school managers, and witness evidence submitted by Shaw and Roe for government reports. The data suggest that their work reflects developments in the educational experimentation which marked the period and demonstrates women’s agency in challenging conventional conceptions of infant teaching and expanding conceptions of educational spaces. The article illuminates how reform was disseminated and shows that as a result of their success both women achieved high professional status. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Piaget's fundamental psychology of mental growth not merely supports [activity] methods, but decisively demands them. A radical activity approach over virtually the whole front of education is in fact now shown to be the only one that makes psychological sense at least for all the primary period, and even well into the secondary. (Nathan Isaacs [1965] Piaget: Some Answers to Teachers' Questions). The importance of Piaget's description of thought as internalized action lies in driving home to us our responsibility in providing enough action to internalize if we wish our children to become good thinkers. (M. Brearley [1963] 'The practical implications for the teacher', in First Years in School) ... the study of science fits in with each stage of a child's intellectual growth, as Piaget sees it, from the time of his entry into infant school to adolescence. (Nuffield Foundation [1967] Nuffield Junior Science: Teacher's Guide 1). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]