It is unfortunate that the myth persists that the 1944 Education Act prescribed a tripartite system of schools – grammar, technical and secondary modern (Letters, 14 July).
James Chuter Ede, the Labour party minister at Rab Butler’s board of education in the war coalition, told a union conference at the time that, having piloted the act through the Commons, he had gone through it with a small-toothed comb, and could find only one type of school for senior pupils – a “secondary school”. Selection, the 11-plus and the three types of school are not mentioned in the act at all.
Ede, with experience as a state school teacher and education administrator (which Butler and most other politicians lacked), insisted that each local education authority should determine the nature of its own secondary provision. Had he become Attlee’s education minister as expected, he might have managed the country towards a much less selective system. As it was, Attlee wanted him as home secretary, and the Ministry of Education (under both parties) encouraged selection into grammar and secondary modern schools.
This perpetuated one of the major problems of education here – the most able pupils have for centuries been given an excellent academic training, while the rest have been provided with little more than they need to move into low-skilled employment. As such employment became less available during the last century, the failure to produce young people with technical skills became more and more apparent. But the Education Act 1944 was not to blame; it was the way it was implemented.
Stephen Hart
Biographer of James Chuter Ede
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