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This paper has as its focus the life and thinking of the educational theorist and schoolmaster J. H. Simpson (1883-1959), who was not only a reforming teacher at Rugby School but was also the first headmaster of the progressive Rendcomb College. His ideas around education were outlined in a number of books. At the heart of his thinking lay concerns around democracy and self-government and the article explores how these were enacted at various points of Simpson's life with a particular focus upon his work until 1932. Attention will be paid to how his thinking evolved, moving from simple democracy in the classroom to wider decision-making within an entire school. Linked to these concerns were a number of curricular initiatives that sought to offer a point of contrast to more traditional public schools. The article will conclude by attempting to offer consideration of the legacy of Simpson's ideas.

The focus of this paper is the history of how special needs technology in the UK was developed for people with special educational needs between 1970 and 1999. Despite the proclaimed potential of technology, this context and period has undergone very little historical examination. This paper will draw on interviews with 52 experienced professionals in order to illuminate this history. Analysis will attempt to extend our understanding of the perceived transformative potential of technologies and the factors that influenced the actual transformative potential of technologies. In particular the analysis will focus on three particular kinds of transformations: a transformation of the micro-technology industry; a transformation of teaching practice and a transformation of experience of special educational needs/disability. These three transformations and the potential tensions between them will be illuminated through two themes: 'Entrepreneurialism versus Creativity' and '"Miracle Cure" versus "Just a Tool"'.

Correspondence education, or learning by post, lasted over 100 years in the UK; it had its roots in the nineteenth century, peaking in the mid-1960s. It was also widespread, numbering hundreds of thousands of enrolments, significantly increasing access to higher education. Yet it has been marginalised in accounts of British higher education. This is partly because it was largely private and for-profit and so distinct from the public education system, while the state declined to play any significant role in its oversight. Consequently, little official data concerning correspondence education has ever been available. This paper constructs an account of the history of correspondence education in the UK in terms of its development as a form of academic and professional provision, and its regulatory framework. The paper also considers the reasons for the eventual demise of the correspondence education sector following changes in teaching methods, and the impact of digital technology.

Mission schools in Africa in the first half of the twentieth century were in many ways microcosms of the great educational debates of the times. The objectives of policies regarding access, governance and curriculum were part of a historical evolution of mission education but they were also increasingly a reflection of significant new trends that were to reshape the theory and practice of colonial education. New forms of educational research and professional expertise were to play an ever-increasing role in shaping the forms and content of the education provided. The brief of the mission churches was to meet with the increasing demand for schooling. Church and state gradually expanded their cooperation in the field as the costs of education outstripped the resources of the missions and the demand for mass education came to be linked to nationalist demands for political and economic rights. This paper is concerned to map the background to those international influences that shaped the policy and practices of mission education and the increasing engagement of colonial governments with the field of education. It addresses the question of the worldwide Protestant mission church's response to the changing political, social and economic environment of the first half of the twentieth century. In particular it seeks to explore how mission initiatives shaped thinking about education in Asia, Africa, Oceania and Latin America by the 1930s. It also attempts to situate those issues within a wider educational framework by linking them to the emergent debate concerning pragmatism and utilitarianism in regard to progressive education in the USA and the quest for social democratic education in the United Kingdom and Europe as part of a response to socialism, nationalism and totalitarianism. In short, the paper explores the influence of the Christian mission churches with regard to social policy, in general, and the provision of education, in particular, during the interwar years, with special reference to areas influenced by the work of the International Missionary Council. At a time when there was a crisis of support for "foreign missions" how did the debates between fundamentalist-evangelicals and supporters of a "social gospel" transform themselves into debates regarding the role of missions in non-Western societies? And how did these essentially ecclesiastical/theological issues come to influence public policy, specifically educational policy, in the long term? The conclusions are that mission churches had a very significant influence on the shaping of educational thinking in the colonial and imperial context at a time when state influence in the sector was still often quite weak. The origins of the conference and research culture that has informed educational policy since the establishment of the United Nations Organization had its roots in the broad context of the Charter of the League of Nations, with a meeting of religious and secular goals, prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. Between 1910 and 1939 there was a significant history of educational reform and community development that has only been partially documented in relation to its global significance. This is an attempt to build a framework for understanding the nature of those changes and what was achieved. The investigation is conducted through an exploration of the three great World Mission Conferences of the International Missionary Council (IMC) held at Edinburgh (1910), Jerusalem (1928) and Tambaram, India (1938). The attempts of Christian churches to engage with dramatic social changes associated with industrialisation, urbanisation, poverty, cultural change and the rise of anti-colonialism, with specific regard to the field of educational policy, are documented and analysed. (Contains 5 boxes and 114 footnotes.)

Shena Simon (1883–1972), a leading English socialist and educationist, actively called for the reform of secondary education in the 1930s and 1940s in order to bring the ideal of ‘equality of opportunity’ into the English educational system. This paper explores the continuity and changes in Simon’s proposed reforms in relation to her ideals of social democracy from the appearance of the Spens Report (1938) to the publication of her book,Three Schools or One?(1948). In addition, Simon’s transnational visits to the Soviet Union, the USA and Scotland, as well as the impact of her international and comparative perspectives on different educational systems on her policy agenda, are also examined. It concludes that as many policy issues shown in the current paper continue to be debated, Simon’s democratic ideals and discourses are still relevant in the present and suggest implications for the future of secondary education in England. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

"History of Education" has published a steady stream of papers on the history of secondary education over the first 40 years of its existence. This corpus of research has been generated in the context of renewed interest in the history of secondary education that has been stimulated by developments in social and historical inquiry as well as by the contemporary onset of intensive reform of secondary education in many countries. "History of Education" has made a distinguished contribution to this new literature, especially in relation to an understanding of the secondary school curriculum, elite forms of secondary education, and increasingly in relation to secondary education for girls and secondary education policy. Some other key themes and topics have been generally less to the fore and require further detailed investigation. (Contains 76 footnotes.)

Given American higher education's origins in British practice, it is surprising that training in the traditional "learned" professions follows such different patterns. Most strikingly, such training is post-graduate in the United States while it is often a first degree programme in Britain. Intriguingly, in the middle nineteenth century, the pattern was closer to the opposite. This paper examines why that reversal occurred and how the current American practice came into being. At the centre of the analysis is the revival and success of the "fin de siecle" America liberal arts college. Seemingly headed for oblivion in the face of the German model of specialized higher education and dissatisfaction with its Classical curriculum, the colleges re-invented themselves, becoming a rite of passage for the emerging upper middle class. Their desire to become gateways to the professions intersected symbiotically with those of the professional elites seeking to regain control of their professions. (Contains 26 footnotes.)

The conservativeness of Georgian grammar schools used to be emphasised; however, as the case of geography teaching shows, this picture is complex with the growth of British trade and empire and the requirements of polite society and culture fostering a demand for "modern" subjects. Drawing on work in the history of education, Georgian society and culture and the history of geography, this paper argues that there was considerable change and development in geographical teaching in some grammar schools stimulated by changes in the nature and perceptions of "classical" education and increasing demands for "modern" subjects. It contends that Robert Mayhew's emphasis on the continuity of the early-modern humanist textual geographical tradition within grammar schools does not sufficiently account for changes in teaching practices that occurred in these institutions. It explores how and why geographical subjects were introduced in grammar schools, including the role of teachers such as John Clarke and John Holmes, institutional government and external bodies, and assesses the importance of opposition to this process. (Contains 71 footnotes.)

This paper proposes a critical reflection on the use of quantitative sources for the historian of education. It identifies and discusses key promises and challenges related to the construction and interpretation of historical statistics in education, drawing on a number of British and some French historiographical examples. Ultimately, the article encourages, where possible and appropriate, a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods in order to identify trends and patterns in education and facilitate their contextualisation in terms of processes and meanings. (Contains 104 footnotes.)

This paper discusses the trial of Thomas Hopley, accused of killing his pupil Reginald Cancellor in 1860 during an act of corporal punishment. The case provoked immediate sensational interest and became an important defining point in how corporal punishment is treated in British law. Established by this trial was the test that any corporal punishment, most particularly that which went on at school, must be "moderate and reasonable", a test so central to discussion of punishment that it is described by modern legal experts as being of continuing relevance. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the Hopley trial was an important precedent in any legal consideration of corporal punishment. (Contains 111 footnotes.)

This paper offers an account of the historic and ongoing international interchange between Britain and Japan in the field of progressive education. Concentrating on the last half-century, it takes two reference points from Roy Lowe’s writings in 1977 and 2006. Eveline Lowe Primary was a newly built model progressive school when documented by him in a seminal work on school architecture, later becoming a key point of interest for Japanese educationists. The British educational policy context against which this exchange of ideas and practices occurred was later documented by Lowe in a major book. Contemporaneous debates and events within Japanese society and government meanwhile provided the impetus for networks of research and transmission of progressive practices. The most recent turn in the narrative presented here demonstrates Japanese support for independent progressive practice continuing in the UK. Responding to an extensive historical research literature on transnational migration of educational ideals and practices this paper constitutes a micro-study that draws on personal memory, oral testimony, records of classroom observation on site and by means of video-conferencing, in addition to more formal documentation of conference proceedings and policy-making. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the connections between the school building programme in England and the raising of the school leaving age (ROSLA) from 14 to 15 in 1947 and then to 16 in 1972. These two major developments were intended to help to ensure the realisation of ‘secondary education for all’ in the postwar period. The combination led in practice to severe strains in the education system as a whole, with lasting consequences for educational planning and central control. ROSLA was a key issue for the school building programme in terms of both finance and design. School building was also a significant constraint for ROSLA, which was marred by temporary expedients in building accommodation both in the 1940s with ‘HORSA huts’ and in the 1970s with ‘ROSLA blocks’, as well as by the cheap construction of new schools that soon became unfit for purpose. Together, school building needs and ROSLA helped to stimulate pressures towards centralisation of planning that were ultimately to undermine postwar partnerships in education, from the establishment of the Ministry of Education’s Architects and Building (A&B) Branch in 1948, through the Crowther Report of 1959 and the Newsom Report of 1963, to the assertion of central state control by the 1970s. The pressures arising from such investment and growth in education again became a key issue in the early twenty-first century with the Labour Government’s support for raising the participation age to 18 combined with an ambitious ‘Building Schools for the Future’ programme. The historical and contemporary significance of these developments has tended to be neglected but is pivotal to an understanding of medium-term educational change in its broader policy and political contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores the contribution of James Bryce as an Assistant Commissioner to the Taunton Commission from 1965 to 1868. It highlights his criticisms of the English middle class and of middle-class education represented in the endowed grammar schools of Lancashire, England. These criticisms were based partly on finely detailed observation of the buildings of these schools in their local and geographical settings. They also drew on acutely developed responses of a sensory and emotive nature relating to a broad sensory register of sight, sound, taste, touch and smell. The paper therefore helps to develop the potential value of sensory history in the history of education well as to provide a detailed examination of middle-class education in England in the 1860s. It also suggests that the realism characteristic of mid-Victorian writing and art may help to shed further light on the nature and experience of schooling in this period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Popular Front line made the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) a more hospitable place for ‘brain workers’. The emphasis the line placed on mass ideological and cultural struggle against fascism meant that they became important allies to be won for the working class. As the principal transmitters of ideology and culture to the masses, schoolteachers could be perceived as being at the forefront of the anti-fascist effort, just as important as the academics, artists, writers and musicians more traditionally associated with the pull of British communism in this period. But communist schoolteachers on the whole avoided the exploration of socialist ideas in their professional practice. Rather, their primary focus was on achieving the greatest possible unity against fascism in their profession. This stance largely excluded critical discussion of the theory or practice of the education of children under capitalism, such as combating imperialist bias in textbooks; ending corporal punishment; advocating secular education; promoting workers’ control of schools and ameliorating the capitalistic nature of competitive examinations, all of which had been debated by communist teachers at various points during the 1920s. But as well as the tactical considerations of the Popular Front line, this avoidance of a qualitative critique of British schooling was encouraged by Soviet educational conservatism, and often overlooked continuities between the Popular Front line and its predecessor, ‘Class Against Class’. Drawing on the personal papers of British communist schoolteachers, contemporary newspapers and periodicals, and policy statements of the CPGB in the period, this article seeks to shed light upon the communist contribution to the teacher politics of the labour movement in England and Wales during the late 1930s, an input hitherto unexplored in detail. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The separation of examining from teaching, pushed furthest in the ‘examining university’ of which London University, founded in 1836, was the model, was a much-debated principle in nineteenth-century Britain. This separation was generally rejected in Scotland, but only after complex controversies that illustrate how Scots defined their university tradition in comparative terms, and how Scottish developments interacted with those in England and Ireland. Among the issues involved were proposals for a National University or central examining board, and claims that graduates should have a right to give ‘extramural’ teaching in competition with professors. The paper traces this aspect of university reform in Scotland from the 1820s to the 1890s, and argues that the professorial model and the integration of teaching and examining were successfully consolidated and defended. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper is concerned with the recent history of science curriculum reform in England, though it traces these developments back to the mid-nineteenth century. It first reviews approaches to science in the curriculum until the mid-1960s, identifying the curricular settlement of the postwar years and the beginning of the so-called 'swing from science'. It then examines structural shifts which undermined this settlement, including the introduction of comprehensive schooling, and the declining relative recruitment to physical science in post-compulsory education. It goes on to explore subsequent attempts at reform, setting them in the context of increasingly centralised control of the curriculum and changing patterns of professional representation. Three reform themes are identified: a reconstruction of the notion of discovery learning around student investigation; increasing attention to social and ethical issues; and a growing emphasis on vocationalism. It argues that these themes have been merged into a new flexible curricular settlement, which imitates important characteristics of the humanities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brian Simon's Studies in the History of Education, 1780-1870, published in 1960, set out to counter nearly all work previously produced on the history of education in Britain in this period, and to direct the field towards a new course. It provided a Marxist perspective that drew upon Simon's involvement in campaigns for educational reform over the previous decade. It also reflected the character of the Cold War in the academy in Britain at this time. Overall, it produced a form of people's history that was shaped by politics and ideology and informed by Simon's leading position in the British Communist Party. His work in this period marks him out as a highly significant Marxist historian, as well as one of the leading Marxist educators of his generation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explores the philosophical and political antecedents of three of the principal actors behind the 1870 Education Act of Great Britain. Impact of the Education Act on the history of English and Welsh education; State's role in education provision; Personal, political and ideological cohesion among educators William Forster, Earl de Gray and Ripon and Henry Austin Bruce; Issues surrounding the creation of the law.

Very few English secondary schools now include ‘Comprehensive’ in their titles, and political enthusiasm for comprehensive schools is hard to detect. According to David Skelton of Policy Exchange, politicians, like anthropologists, have often ‘investigated them, read thoroughly about them and even visited them, but they don’t really understand them’. Drawing on a variety of source materials, this article discusses the early comprehensive schools movement, the period of intensive circulars and legislation in the 1960s and 1970s and the subsequent waning of interest in comprehensive schools as a policy topic. At the heart of the discussion is a focus on politics and politicians at both the national and local levels, with close reference to some key personalities of the post-war period. It is argued that the story of comprehensive schooling in England needs more balance and that we should look to the present generation of politicians and historians to provide this. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Historians have often recognised important links between the processes of university and civil service reform in mid-nineteenth-century England. Yet such connections are usually seen as forming part of a wider project of modernising reform with any conservative or counter-revolutionary aims largely discounted. However, as this article suggests, the decision to tie success in the new examinations to a career at the ancient English universities was not designed chiefly to recruit the most efficient people (as the report itself claims) or to provide new employment opportunities for Oxbridge graduates. Rather, the reformers sought to take advantage of the socialising function of the universities, to ensure the recruitment of men of sterling moral character, reliable and loyal, into a civil service increasingly called upon to serve as a bulwark of the state at a time of social and political upheaval. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2018 it is 30 years since the Educational Reform Act of 1988 introduced a National Curriculum to England, Wales and Northern Ireland. This article questions whether this policy became something to be celebrated, commemorated or ignored. The National Curriculum for history has proved contentious in media and academic circles, but the focus has been on documentation over lived experience. In contrast, this research used an oral history approach to explore how 13 history teachers perceived, experienced and enacted the National Curriculum in their own classrooms between 1991 and 2011. The findings show this period could be closely identified with increased prescription in the history classroom and, as a corollary, a potential loss of teacher autonomy. The National Curriculum played some part in that process but, after the initial shock, was not perceived as a restrictive force. Changing responses to the National Curriculum over four programmes of study illuminate changing experiences of history teaching from 1991 to 2011, a period fraught with developments in national educational policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how infant school reform took hold in London’s schools from the 1890s to the 1930s through examination of the work of two Froebelian head teachers, Elizabeth Mary Shaw and Frances Emily Roe. In contrast to teacher-led rote-learning methods and rigid discipline they implemented play-based activities drawing on children’s interests and introduced visits for nature study and projects. The research draws on logbooks, published accounts, reports of HMIs, local authority inspectors and school managers, and witness evidence submitted by Shaw and Roe for government reports. The data suggest that their work reflects developments in the educational experimentation which marked the period and demonstrates women’s agency in challenging conventional conceptions of infant teaching and expanding conceptions of educational spaces. The article illuminates how reform was disseminated and shows that as a result of their success both women achieved high professional status. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

1This article provides a detailed reconstruction of the processes leading to the formation of the widely influential Birmingham Agreed Syllabus of Religious Instruction (1975). This is contextualised within one of the most significant periods in the history of race relations in the United Kingdom. The authors discuss how this syllabus, and other landmark reforms in religious education (RE) in English schools from the late 1960s, responded to ethnic diversity by promoting supposedly culturally pluralist, multi-faith approaches to RE, which were subsequently perceived as eroding the Christian foundations of British/English national identity. They argue that the vilification of these curriculum reforms by culturally conservative critics was in fact based on an erroneous assessment of the extent to which these renounced the Christian hegemony of RE. They also critique the assumption that the religious clauses of the 1988 Education Reform Act represented a simple transition from culturally pluralist to assimilationist policies for the subject. 1 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

UK-based teacher educators formed the core membership of the History of Education Society when it was founded in 1967, and they were frequent early contributors to the Society’s journals. Given these origins, one might imagine that the history of teacher education would have featured more prominently in the pages of the first 40 volumes of the journal than it has. This article identifies and discusses examples of research into teacher education that have featured in History of Education since 1972, making connections with the contexts of political, social and educational change. The influence of feminist scholarship is particularly noted and it is argued that work relating to teacher education, which peaked in the 1990s, has both reflected and shaped new methodological approaches to studying the history of education. Notwithstanding the journal’s publication of some important work, it is argued that the theme remains under-researched and, in the period ahead, it is to be hoped that interest can be re-invigorated. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article considers the decline of the adult school movement, one of the largest voluntary movements in the history of adult education, and critically examines some of the reasons that have been used to explain it. It explores various features of the decline, using records of selected adult schools, and discussing variations by region and gender. It argues that adult schools pursued a strategy of 'resistance' to secularisation, and increasingly concentrated on their core religious activities rather than attempting to compete with secular adult education providers. As a result, whereas the late nineteenth century had seen a rapid turnover of adult scholars, by the 1930s they were increasingly restricted to a committed core, dominated by older men and, especially, women. Reasons for the decline include the availability of alternative leisure pursuits, a lack of unity within the movement, and the association of the schools with unfashionable styles of philanthropy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the nature of the relationship between universities and the state in Great Britain during the period of 1880-1914. History of educational reform; Development of universities into credible educational institutions; Influence of state interventions on educational reform within the national and provincial universities.