INTRODUCTION

Since the Second World War, many economic historians have come to see human capital as a weakness of the British economy since the late nineteenth century, particularly when compared with the United States and Germany. Although there is an element of truth in this, it is important not to exaggerate the British shortcomings in this area, particularly in the period before 1945. Britain can be seen as falling between an emphasis in the United States on formal education and a German emphasis on vocational training, but the extent of human capital gaps varied with the country of comparison, the time period and the sector of the economy.

There is strong evidence of a British shortfall in formal education compared with other rich countries including Germany as well as the United States in the mid-nineteenth century. However, Britain closed the gap in primary schooling during the late nineteenth century, and although the United States moved to a system of mass secondary education and rapidly expanded higher education in the first half of the twentieth century, Britain’s increase in secondary schooling during this period was not unimpressive and remained on a par with Germany’s. Although the modern German system of vocational training was already well established in industry and to a lesser extent in services by the early twentieth century, Britain still provided a supply of skilled workers for industry, through the system of apprenticeships, and for services, through professional qualifications, that far exceeded the supply of vocational training in the United States.