History of education in England
Prior to the arrival of Augustine of Canterbury in England in 597 education was an oral affair, or followed the Roman model in diaspora and integrated families.
[3] During the Middle Ages, schools were established to teach Latin grammar to the sons of the aristocracy destined for priesthood or monastic work with the ministry of government or the law.
A reformed system of "free grammar schools" was established in the reign of Edward VI; these too provided routes towards priesthood.
The vast majority of poor children did not attend these schools since their labour was economically critical to their families[citation needed].
The Protestant Reformation had a major influence on education and literacy in England, as it encouraged the reading of the Bible in English ("the vernacular").
These parish apprenticeships, which could be created with the assent of two Justices of the Peace, supplied apprentices for occupations of lower status such as farm labouring, brickmaking and menial household service.
Historian David Mitch argues that private philanthropy was a major source of funding by the 1640s, and in that regard England was distinctive among modern nations.
[5] In the 18th and 19th centuries, the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge founded many charity schools for poor students in the 7 to 11 age group.
He introduced a revised code in 1861; future grants would be allocated not by the subjective judgment of inspectors but rather on the basis of the number of students passing an examination in reading, writing, and arithmetic.
c. 75)[31] required partially state-funded board schools to be set up to provide elementary (primary, in modern parlance) education in areas where existing provision was inadequate.
As a compromise, William Cowper-Temple, a Liberal MP, proposed that religious teaching in the new state schools be non-denominational, avoiding points of dispute among the denominations.
A large conference was held at Manchester in 1872 to lead resistance to the section, and one of the campaigners was the Birmingham politician Joseph Chamberlain, who emerged as a national figure for the first time.
The resulting splits (some education campaigners, including Chamberlain, stood for Parliament as independent candidates) helped to cost the Liberals the 1874 election.
According to D. Evans, "It gave powers to the County Councils and the Urban Sanitary Authorities to levy a penny tax to support technical and manual instruction.
Funds were provided for denominational religious instruction in voluntary elementary schools, owned primarily by the Church of England and Roman Catholics.
[39] G. R. Searle, like nearly all historians, argues the Act was a short-term political disaster for the Conservative Party because it outraged Methodists, Baptists and other nonconformists.
Lowndes identified a "Silent Social Revolution" in England and Wales since 1895 that could be credited to the expansion of public education: A report of 1938 of a committee chaired by Will Spens, a former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, recommended that entry to schools would be based on intelligence testing.
It was beginning to be seen as the worst age for a sudden switch from education to employment, with the additional year in schooling to only provide benefits for the children when they leave.
The new law was widely praised by Conservatives because it honoured religion and social hierarchy, by Labour because it opened new opportunities for the working class, and by the general public because it ended the fees they had to pay.
[54] Defenders argued that grammar schools allow pupils to obtain a good education through merit rather than through family income.
[55] In 1965 the Labour government required all local education authorities to formulate proposals to move away from selection at eleven, replacing the tripartite system with comprehensive schools.
The Circular also requested consultation between LEAs and the partially state-funded direct grant grammar schools on their participation in a comprehensive system, but little movement occurred.
The ROSLA Buildings were delivered to schools in self assembly packs and were not intended to stand long-term, though some have proven to have stood much longer than was initially planned and were still in use in the 2010s.
The Higher Apprenticeship Framework was open to young people who had a minimum of 4 GCE "O" levels to enrol in an Ordinary National Certificate or Diploma or a City & Guilds technician course.
[citation needed] The Advanced Apprenticeship Framework offered clear pathways and outcomes that addressed the issues facing the industry.
The system provided young people with an alternative to staying in full-time education beyond 16/18 to gain pure academic qualifications without work-based learning.
Apprentices undertook a variety of job roles in numerous technical functions to assist the work of engineers, in the design, development, manufacture and maintenance of production system.
Traditional apprenticeships reached their lowest point in the 1980s: by that time, training programmes were rare and people who were apprentices learned mainly by example.
[61][62] The reforms included the following: In 1994, the government introduced Modern Apprenticeships (since renamed 'Apprenticeships'), based on frameworks devised by Sector Skills Councils.
The Academies Act 2010, one of the first government bills introduced in the Conservative – Liberal Democrat coalition government, allowed publicly funded schools in England to become academies, still publicly funded but with a vastly increased degree of autonomy in issues such as setting teachers' wages and diverging from the National Curriculum.
