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Patterns of English Educational Change: The Fisher and the Butler Acts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

D. H. Akenson
D. H. Akenson*
Affiliation:
Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario
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Extract

Both the 1918 Education Act (the Fisher Act) and the 1944 Education Act (the Butler Act) are of interest to the English social or education historian as major signposts along the road to the English welfare state. The acts are even more striking when juxtaposed, because their developments follow similar patterns. This paper will suggest that the evolution of both acts involved the following pattern: First, the ideational components of each act were produced by the Board of Education and by the consultative committee of the Board of Education in the years before the world wars. In both cases the ideas out of which the acts were constructed were merely the conventional wisdom of the prewar educational establishment. Second, the crystallization of these ideas was the result of wartime events. Third, because in each case the energizing force for the articulation of the conventional wisdom into legislative enactment was the war, it was inevitable that the disappearance of the source of energy (the war) would produce an eventual diminution of educational momentum. In both cases a postwar educational “slump” was the result.

Type
Research Article
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , Summer 1971 , pp. 143 - 156
Copyright
Copyright © 1971 History of Education Quarterly 

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References

Notes

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