1st Edition

Secondary Education in England 1870-1902 Public Activity and Private Enterprise

By Prof John Roach, John Roach Copyright 1991
    296 Pages
    by Routledge

    294 Pages
    by Routledge

    In this comprehensive and extensively researched history, John Roach argues for a reassessment of the relative importance of State regulation and private provision. Although the public schools enjoyed their greatest prestige during this period, in terms of educational reform and progress their importance has been exaggerated. The role of the public school, he suggests, was social rather than academic, and as such their power and influence is to be interpreted principally in relation to the growth of new social elites, the concept of public service and the needs of the empire for a bureaucratic ruling class. Only in the modern progressive movement, launched by Cecil Reddie, and the private provision for young women, was lasting progress made. Even before the 1902 Education Act however the State had spent much time and effort regulating and reforming the old educational endowments, and it is in these initiatives that the foundations for the public provision of secondary educational reform are to be found.

    Part I The endowed schools 1 The work of the Endowed Schools Commission 1869–74 2 Poverty, merit, and social differentiation 3 Political, administrative, and religious issues 4 Academic policies and the curriculum 5 Conflict in the provinces—Bristol, Birmingham 6 The Charity Commissioners after 1875 7 The endowed schools about 1890 Part II Public activity in secondary education 8 ‘Our new Secondary Education…’ 9 Higher-grade schools: Bradford, Sheffield, Manchester 10 The 1890s: the technical instruction committees Part III The public schools 11 The public school image 12 The public schools and society 13 The public school community Part IV Private and private foundation schools 14 Private schools: strengths and weaknesses 15 Private schools: policies and practices 16 Some individual schools 17 Semi-public and private foundation schools Part V The education of girls 18 Endowed schools—1 19 Endowed schools—2 20 Proprietary and other schools—1 21 Proprietary and other schools—2 22 The girls’ schools and their objectives 23 The internal life of girls’ schools

    Biography

    Prof John Roach, John Roach

    'The salient strength of Professor Roach's study is the inclusion of not only general surveys based on national records but also of a series of case studies of particular areas and individual schools from local archives. The process allows him to offer revisionist emphases on the effect of educational developments in the period which enrich our understanding of the ethos of the evolution of English secondary education in a formative age immediately prior to the state's commitment to provide it.'G.R.Batho, University of Durham, UK