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The Board of Education was created as an act of government re-organisation under the Board of Education Act 1899, it was one part of a series of reforms undertaken following the publication of the Bryce Report 1895 on establishing an organised system of Secondary Education in England. The new Board of Education consolidated and replaced two existing government departments: - (i) the Department for Education & (ii) the Department for Art and Science. It additionally absorbed the powers and responsibilities over education from the Board of Agriculture and the Charities Commission. Ministerial governance was provided through the new roles of President of the Board of Education and Secretary of the Board of Education, these replaced the role of Vice-President of the Committee of Council on Education. The Board also gained the obligation to establish a consultative committee to advise the board and help set-up a register of teachers. The majority of the committee was to be made of learned members qualified to represent universities and other educational institutes.

The objective of the reform was to create a single unified government body to oversea the nation's Education and replace the previous disparate situation of multiple government bodies with both over-lapping responsibilities but more often than not with gaps where no government body had responsibility over particular aspects of Education. The Board of Education lasted forty-five years until it was replaced by the Ministry of Education in 1944.

Board of Education (England & Wales)
The Board of Education was created as an act of government re-organisation under the Board of Education Act 1899, it was one part of a series of reforms undertaken following the publication of the Bryce Report 1895 on establishing an organised system of Secondary Education in England. The new Board of Education consolidated and replaced two existing government departments: - (i) the Department for Education & (ii) the Department for Art and Science. It additionally absorbed the powers and responsibilities over education from the Board of Agriculture and the Charities Commission. Ministerial governance was provided through the new roles of President of the Board of Education and Secretary of the Board of Education, these replaced the role of Vice-President of the Committee of Council on Education. The Board also gained the obligation to establish a consultative committee to advise the board and help set-up a register of teachers. The majority of the committee was to be made of learned members qualified to represent universities and other educational institutes.

The objective of the reform was to create a single unified government body to oversea the nation's Education and replace the previous disparate situation of multiple government bodies with both over-lapping responsibilities and gaps where no government body had responsibility over particular aspects of Education. The Board of Education lasted forty-five years until it was replaced by the Ministry of Education in 1944.

Background; - Central Government
Central government generally had disjointed supervision over education, since education had developed naturally in a haphazard fashion with limited central government influence. Prior to the formation of Board of Education, there was four separate government bodies which oversaw education : -


 * 1) The Board of Agriculture under the President of the Board of Agriculture
 * 2) The Department of Education under the Vice-President of the Committee of the Privy Council on Education (VP of Education)
 * 3) The Department of Science and Arts under the Vice-President of the Committee of the Privy Council on Education (VP of Education)
 * 4) The Charities Commission constituted under Acts of parliament acting as a judicial body with no ministerial control

Board of Agriculture
The Board of Agriculture had powers to inspect and report on any school, apart from public elementary schools, in which technical, practical or scientific education was given in any subject connected to agriculture. The wide range of subjects bearing on agriculture included, as examples: chemistry, physics, biology, geology, book-keeping etc. The Board also provided financial aid to educational institutions from a parliamentary grant which had been distributed since 1888 but by the end of the century, these grants had become focused towards higher education (agricultural colleges).

Department for Art & Science
Following the Great Exhibition of 1851, public awareness arose of the fact Britain was losing its technical and industrial lead over other countries in part due to deficiencies in technical education, this lead to the development of the Department of Art and Science in 1953 within the Board of Trade which began setting examinations in the various branches of science used by industry. Through the second half of the 19th century, the government continued to be concerned of the fact other countries were catching up with advantage Britain had enjoyed from the industrial revolution, the educational aspects of these concerns were explored by the Devonshire Commission (1872-5) on Scientific Instruction and the Advancement of Science and the Samuelson Royal Commission (1882 and 1884) on Technical Instruction. The resulting legislation allowed further expansions in the scope and financial resources of the Department of Art and Science for educational matters.

By the end of the 19th century, this department was responsible for promoting certain science (e.g. mathematics) & practical art (e.g. technical drawing) by providing financial aid to the establishment and maintenance of science & art schools or the maintenance of science & art classes which were then subject to inspection by the Department. The grants were restricted to schools which mainly catered to children of parents who did not earn enough to be taxed, these people were known as the 'industrial class'. The level of grants provided depended on examination results, inspections and levels of attendance. The department additionally awarded medals and prizes for examinations and gave scholarships, exhibitions, and free studentships. It also financially assisted teachers in training at the Royal College of Science and the National Art Training School in South Kensington, and at other approved centres.

Department of Education
By the end of the 19th century, elementary education (aged 5 - 13) had become free and mostly compulsory, it was either provided by the churches on a voluntary basis or by elected school boards representing local districts. The voluntary church schools received grants from the government for some of their costs whilst the school boards levied rates on their locality under the Elementary Schools Acts 1870. Prior to the formation of the Board of Education (1899), the voluntary church schools provide 1.2 million elementary school places whilst the 2,000 school boards provided 1.9 million places through 4,500 schools.

The Education Department had provided a supervisory government function over the school board system, so where there was a shortage of elementary schools, the Education Department had the powers to to form school boards and to requisition them to provide the extra schools. The department also had financial oversight over the the school boards through audits, accounting and returns to the department which were used to influence levels of borrowing, management of funds, mergers of school districts and public inquiries where necessary. The department had qualitative oversight of elementary schools through inspections by Her Majesty's Inspectorate to ensure standards were adequate, examinations against standards I - IV were also used to measure the quality of elementary school education.

The department of education also ensured an adequate supply of teachers & inspectors was in place through teacher training, twelve day training colleges for elementary teaching (in addition to the existing residential colleges) had been established by the Education Department under the Education Code (1890) Act (53 & 54 Victoria c. 22). The teacher training colleges were attached to universities or colleges of university rank, these training colleges received government grants in return they were subject to the regulations contained in the Education Code (1890).

Charities Commission
Historically most Grammar schools had been set-up through ancient charitable endowments from benefactors such as the royalty or monasteries, these schools had been the mainstay of secondary education over centuries. Endowments were often land or property and provided the income to wholly or partially fund the schools with school fees sometimes providing a top-up income for the schools. As many of the endowments had been given a long time ago, the endowed assets had become inefficiently exploited and the income from those assets was often irregular and insecure, with some cases of trustees taking excessive emoluments for administering the endowments. As a result some grammar schools had become run down. In addition, endowed schools had sprung up in haphazard places depending on their benefactors whilst industrialisation & urbanisation had meant the population had concentrated in geographical areas which became under represented by these endowed Grammar schools. Finally, these Grammar schools had tended to be boys schools and by the 19th century, Society had changed and there was a desire to provide girls with a similar level of schooling. It should be noted that Grammar schools only provided enough places for a small number of secondary school age children but because they provided schooling to the professional and middle classes their consideration in the government thinking was important.

As such under the Endowed Schools Act 1869, a commission was appointed with powers to reorganise and repurpose charitable educational endowments so as to be  'most conducive to the advancement of the education of boys and girls'. The aim of the commissioners was to improve the provision & financial security of Grammar schools wholly or partially maintained by ancient charitable endowments and to more fairly distribute the schools by geography and across gender lines. In 1874, the powers of this commission was transferred to the Charities Commission (pre-established by statute in 1853), and so the charities commission became a major central government authority in the organisation of Grammar schools. The schemes proposed by the charity commissioners often involved changing trustees, vesting assets, closing some schools and building new schools, in addition they had gained rights to sequestrate whole endowments which had originally only partially been earmarked for education as the government tried to expand the provision of Grammar schools. All of these actions were often controversial and contested so a consensus had developed that they were no longer able to operate as a judicial government body but needed to operate under a minister and be under political control.

Committee of the Privy Council for Education
By order in council of April 10th, 1839, a committee of the privy council was set-up consisting of: - (i) Lord President of the Privy Council, (ii) Lord Privy Seal, (iii) Home Secretary, (iv) Chancellor of the Exchequer. The committee was to superintend funds granted by parliament for public education.

Background; - Educational Institutes
The four central government bodies had developed in a hap hazard fashion over time, for a rich and diverse variety of educational institutes which in turn had also naturally evolved without any central planning. The resulting government organisation sometimes had over-lapping responsibilities over some aspects of the education system but often there was no government body to provide any supervision, guidance and oversight over other educational matters. One example was secondary education where there existed seven different types of school: -

Some subjects (such as the sciences) taught in the above schools were subject to separate but overlapping oversight by both the Board of Agriculture & the Department of Science and Art but most subjects such as the classics and languages were subject to no such oversight.
 * Endowed grammar schools; - self-governing but sometimes reorganised by the Charities Commission before reverting to self-governance
 * Private schools; - tended to be small schools governed by the private owners, often the head teacher
 * Church denominated proprietary schools; - mainly governed by the Church of England, Roman Catholic Church and the Protestant Wesleyan Church
 * Corporation proprietary schools; - governed by corporations e.g. The Girls' Public Day Schools Company (1872), which had 36 schools, with 7,111 pupils
 * Science schools; - set-up, funded and overseen by the Department of Science & Art
 * Expanded elementary schools; - school boards under the Department of Education often exceeded their elementary education remit and extended schools to provide secondary education where in need
 * Public boarding schools; - were self-governing under the Public School Act 1868 and subsequent amendments

Aims
The new Board of Education were formed as a direct result of the recommendations in the the Report of the Royal Commission on Secondary Education, headed by James Bryce, part IV of the report spelt out the aims of the Board: -


 * 1) Constitution; - To replace the multiplicity of government educational bodies with a single unitary authority with responsibility over the whole of Education, from elementary schooling through to secondary education. A minister responsible to parliament would preside over the new authority with a senior civil servant in the form of a permanent secretary to oversee the various branches of the new ministry.
 * 2) Ethos; - To foster the existing rich & diverse variety of educational institutes, indeed to shun the imposition of uniformity over education but rather allow education to develop through spontaneous experiment and enterprise of all kinds.
 * 3) Local Education Authorities; - To assist in the set-up of the new local education authorities, including the appointment of members of local authorities, then to: -
 * 4) * Oversee local education authorities to ensure they adequately provision both elementary and secondary education where deficient
 * 5) * Arbitrate between local education authorities, for instance to ensure children living along a border of one authority can attend schools overseen by another authority
 * 6) Endowment Schemes; - To review and approve L.E.A. schemes for the reorganisation of educational endowments previously carried out by the charities commission
 * 7) School Governors; - To provide school governing bodies with the ability to appeal local authority decisions to the central government authority
 * 8) Boarding Schools; - To allow boarding schools drawing most of their scholars from outside their local authority to be under the jurisdiction of the ministry rather than that of local education authority.
 * 9) Educational Council; - To be advised by a new independent council of "persons experienced in educational matters" with eminent representatives of the Crown, the universities, and experienced teachers, hence allowing the Board to act act with informed judgement rather than received wisdom
 * 10) Examinations; - To correlate the examining bodies so certifications and the grades attained by the students leaving school could be compared for purposes such as employment & further education. Prescribe schools to have their students sit examinations and award comparable certificates.
 * 11) Inspections; - To establish a regulatory framework for the inspection of schools, including minimum sanitary standards.
 * 12) Teachers; - To guarantee the quality & minimum professional standards of teachers by setting a teacher qualification examination before allowing teachers to practice and maintaining a register of qualified teachers so schools everywhere could confidently check teachers are duly registered, in addition any teacher showing professional misconduct could be struck off the register, preventing them from practising anywhere in the country.

The aims were to be met by the tripartite of the board:- the minister, the educational council or the civil servants of the board, with the three elements supporting each other.



Establishment of the Board of Education
Mar 1894 - Bryce Report was completed then published in 1895.

Aug 1899 - The uncontroversial Board of Education Act 1899 (63 & 63 Victoria Ch 33) was passed. The Education Department and the Science and Art Department were replaced by a Board of Education. The Act provided for the transfer to the Board by Order in Council of any powers of the Charity Commissioners or the Board of Agriculture relating to education. The board also took over responsibilities for endowed schools. The 1899 Act also provided for the creation of a Consultative Committee to advise the board and prepare a register of teachers.

Apr 1900 - The inaugural Board of Education came into force under the Prime Minister, the Marquess of Salisbury and all matters related to Education were transferred to the new Board of Education from: - (i) the Privy Council, (ii) the Board of Agriculture & (iii) the Charities Commission. To ensure continuity, the key positions in the Board of Education were simply inherited from the previous government bodies: -

The Board immediately commenced the preparatory work for the new Education Act to achieve the ultimate objective of the Bryce Report, to increase the supply and quality of secondary education. The private secretary (civil servant) to John Gorst, named Robert Morant was instrumental in drafting the legislation and was ultimately rewarded with the position of the Permanent Secretary.
 * The existing Lord President of the Privy Council, the Duke of Devonshire was also appointed as the first President of the Board of Education
 * The existing Vice-President of the Committee of the Privy Council on Education, Sir John Eldon Gorst took a seat on the Board and took on the de facto position of Parliamentary Secretary although the official position was only filled at his departure.
 * The existing senior civil servant for the Education Department and the Science & Art Department, Sir George William Kekewich became the first permanent Secretary to the Board

Mar 1902 - The first reading of the Education Act was carried out, the act proved to be hugely controversial because: -


 * It had provisions for the state to fund denominational schools including Roman Catholic schools, angering secularists and non-conformists
 * It separated elementary education from secondary education so ending free secondary school places through state funding of higher elementary schools, angering the working class
 * It replaced the popular & directly elected school boards with local education authorities
 * It led to increased taxation to pay for education

The legislation require 59 readings

Jul 1902 - Arthur Balfour became Prime Minister

Aug 1902 - The Marquess of Londonderry was appointed as the second President of the Board of Education and Sir William Anson, Bt was appointed as the first formal Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education under the Prime Minister, Balfour.

Dec 1902 - The Education Act 1902 (aka Balfour Act) was passed, creating Local Education Authorities to operate in tandem with the Board of Education as envisaged by James Bryce.

Apr 1903 - Robert Morant, who had been instrumental in drafting the 1902 Education Act was formally appointed as the first Permanent Secretary and senior civil servant of the Board of Education.

History of the Board of Education
The history of the Board of Education during its existence between 1899 and 1945, mirrors the history of education in England & Wales over this same period. This period is described as the period of; - 'Balfour and Local Education Authorities '.

Through the history of the Board of Education, multiple people have held the post of President of the Board of Education and the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education

Closing History
The Spens Report in 1938 which was confirmed by the Norwood report of 1943 called for an expansion of secondary education with the aim of making it both free and compulsory up to age 16, at the same time the second world war had shown the need to have an educated workforce in the modern world. Meanwhile, the Board of Education had been originally created with the deliberate minimalist objective of limiting its powers in order to foster the rich and diverse variety of educational institutions and to delegate authority to local authorities and schools wherever possible. Rab Butler, the President of the Board of Education through the second world war concluded that a new central government authority over education was needed with greatly increased powers and the ability to manage a substantially expanded budget. The vision for education was also to change with church and grammar schools to be subsumed into the state funded system

After almost a half century of existence the Board of Education was replaced in 1944 by the more powerful Ministry of Education with the passing of the Education Act (Butler Act)

Permanent Secretaries
The administration of the Board of Education was undertaken by the civil service under the leadership of the Permanent Secretary, the following secretaries served in this role over the history of the Board of Education: -