Education Act 1902

Last updated

Education Act 1902
Coat of arms of the United Kingdom (1901-1952).svg
Parliament of the United Kingdom
Long title An Act to make further provision with respect to Education in England and Wales
Citation 2 Edw. 7 c. 42
Territorial extent England and Wales (coverage in London began in 1904)
Dates
Royal assent 18 December 1902
Status: Repealed
Text of statute as originally enacted

The Education Act 1902 (2 Edw. 7 c. 42), also known as the Balfour Act, was a highly controversial Act of Parliament that set the pattern of elementary education in England and Wales for four decades. It was brought to Parliament by a Conservative government and was supported by the Church of England, opposed by many Nonconformists and the Liberal Party. The Act provided funds for denominational religious instruction in voluntary elementary schools, most of which were owned by the Church of England and the Roman Catholics. It reduced the divide between voluntary schools, which were largely administered by the Church of England, and schools provided and run by elected school boards, and reflected the influence of the Efficiency Movement in Britain. [1] It was extended in 1903 to cover London. [2]

Contents

The Act was a short-term political disaster for the Conservatives, who lost massively at the 1906 general election. However, G. R. Searle has argued that it was a long-term success. It standardized and upgraded the educational systems of England and Wales and led to a rapid growth of secondary schools, with over 1,000 opening by 1914, including 349 for girls only. The Church schools had financing from local ratepayers and had to meet uniform standards. Eventually, in the Butler Act of 1944, the Anglican schools were brought largely under the control of local education authorities. [3]

Terms

The "Cockerton Judgment" of 1901 caused a crisis by undermining the lawfulness of "higher grade schools" for children over the age of twelve. A temporary fix allowed the schools to operate one more year. A second issue involved the 14,000 church schools, called "voluntary schools", run chiefly by the Church of England and including some Roman Catholic schools. They were poorly funded and did not receive a share of local taxes, but they educated a third of school children.

Under the 1902 Act the existing overlapping jurisdictions, with 2,568 school boards set up by the Elementary Education Act 1870 (33 & 34 Vict. c. 75), as well as all existing School Attendance Committees, were abolished. Their duties were handed over to county councils or county borough councils, as local education authorities (LEAs). The 328 LEAs fixed local tax rates. The LEAs could establish new secondary and technical schools as well as developing the existing system of elementary schools. These LEAs were in charge of paying schoolteachers, ensuring they were properly qualified, and providing necessary books and equipment. They paid the teachers in the church schools, with the churches providing and maintaining the school buildings and providing the religious instruction. [4]

Church Party

The Church Party, a Conservative faction strongly supportive of the Church of England, largely shaped Conservative educational policy. Under the leadership of Lord Cranborne, it was determined to stop the spread of secularism in education. With John Gilbert Talbot, Cranborne organized opposition to the Education Department and the radical spokesman Arthur Acland from 1894. They blocked the Education Department's attempts to slow the growth of Anglican schools. They successfully passed the Voluntary Schools Act, an interim measure, in 1897. They demanded long-term legislation in 1897–1901, and scored their great victory in 1902. [5]

The design and drafting of the Bill was the work of Robert Laurie Morant, a civil servant in the Education Department. He worked closely with Arthur Balfour (who became Prime Minister in succession to Lord Salisbury in July 1902) and Church leaders in 1901 . [6]

Joseph Chamberlain

Joseph Chamberlain's support base was threatened by Balfour's introduction into Parliament of the Education Bill. This Bill was framed with the intention of promoting National Efficiency, a cause which Chamberlain thought worthy. However, the Education Bill proposed to abolish Britain's 2,568 school boards established under W. E. Forster's Elementary Education Act 1870 (33 & 34 Vict. c. 75), bodies that were popular with Nonconformists and Radicals. Liberals opposed the Act, arguing that the board schools had outperformed the voluntary Anglican schools. In their place, Balfour proposed to establish local education authorities, which would administer a state-centred system of primary, secondary and technical schools. Furthermore, the Bill would grant ratepayers' money to voluntary Church of England schools. Chamberlain, religiously a Unitarian, [7] was anxious about the Bill's proposals, aware that they would estrange Nonconformists, Radicals and many Liberal Unionists from the government.

However, as Colonial Secretary in the Conservative-Liberal Unionist coalition government, Chamberlain could not openly oppose the Bill. Chamberlain warned Robert Laurie Morant about the probability of Nonconformist dissent, asking why voluntary schools could not receive funds from the state rather than from the rates (local property taxes). In response, Morant argued that the Second Boer War had drained the Exchequer of finances.[ citation needed ]

The furore over the Education Bill imperilled the Liberal Unionist wing of the government, with the prospect of Nonconformist voters switching allegiance to the Liberal Party. Chamberlain sought to stem the feared exodus by securing a major concession: local authorities would be given discretion over the issue of rate aid to voluntary schools; yet even this was renounced before the guillotining of the Bill and its passage through Parliament in December 1902. Thus Chamberlain had to make the best of a hopeless situation, writing fatalistically that "I consider the Unionist cause is hopeless at the next election, and we shall certainly lose the majority of the Liberal Unionists once and for all."[ citation needed ] Chamberlain already regarded tariff reform as an issue that could revitalise support for Unionism.

Opposition

Opposition to the Act came especially from Methodists, Baptists and other Nonconformists outraged at support for Anglican and Catholic schools, and angry at losing their powerful role on elected school boards. Historian Standish Meacham explores their position:

the act put an end to the broad-based expansion of secondary education that had originated in the so-called higher grade schools established by progressive, popularly elected local boards. Instead, secondary education was [to be] administered by county council committees and occurred in specifically designated "secondary" schools, admission to which was strictly controlled so as to exclude all but a very few working-class children. This important issue [was] a matter of major concern to working-class reformers anxious to provide a democratic "highway" rather than an exclusionary "ladder" to secondary education. [8]

The Liberal Party led the opposition and made it a major issue especially in the election of 1906; the Labour Movement was mostly opposed. Nonconformist opposition was championed by John Clifford, the Baptist pastor of Westbourne Park Church in London, who became the recognized leader of the passive resistance to the education act. [9] Clifford formed the National Passive Resistance Committee, which hoped to convince more Nonconformists to resist the Act and stop paying their rates until it was repealed. By 1904 over 37,000 summonses for unpaid school taxes were issued, with thousands having their property seized and 80 protesters going to prison. It operated for another decade but had no impact on the school system. Clifford in 1906 worked tirelessly to mobilize Baptist voters to defeat Balfour. [10] [11] [12] [13]

The failed Education Bill of 1906

The 1902 Act developed into a major political issue, which contributed significantly to the Liberal Party landslide victory in the general election in 1906. Augustine Birrell was appointed President of the Board of Education and worked closely with David Lloyd George and other Liberals in 1906 to pass a new education bill. [14]

At the first Cabinet meeting of the new government, a committee was set up chaired by Lord Crewe, Lord President of the Council, which spent two months drawing up a bill. [15] The Birrell bill would have ended public support of all religious schools. [16] The initial priorities were, as pledged during the election, public control over voluntary (mainly church) schools and no religious tests for teachers (to prevent church schools employing only teachers of their own denomination). However, other questions soon arose, as to whether privately owned schools could be brought under state control without laying the government open to charges of confiscating property, or whether religious instruction should take place two days a week, or every day, and whether it should be within school hours or at the start or end of the day (i.e. to allow parents who objected to withdraw their children to attend religious instruction of their choice, as permitted under the 1870 Forster Act). Lloyd George appears to have been the dominant figure on the committee in its later stages, and insisted that the bill create a separate education committee for Wales. [15]

The Cabinet, hoping to bring an end to this long-standing matter of dispute, included many compromises to satisfy lobby groups, including Clause 4, which allowed any borough or urban district with population in excess of 5,000 to provide denominational teaching every day, provided at least 80% of parents demanded it – a condition likely to be met only in Catholic areas of Liverpool and perhaps other large cities. This satisfied neither Catholics, who preferred to keep control over their own schools, nor Anglicans, whose schools tended to be in rural areas where only the standard two days per week of denominational teaching was to be permitted, nor Nonconformists who tended to favour the existing system of non-denominational teaching in state schools. [15]

The bill was introduced in the Commons on 9 April 1906. Augustine Birrell proved a poor advocate, complaining privately that the bill owed more to Lloyd George and that he himself had had little say in its contents. The bill faced hundreds of protest meetings by Anglicans, who complained that non-denominational religious teaching was in breach of their consciences. There were also protest meetings by Nonconformists who objected to the proposed introduction of denominational teaching in state schools. For the rest of the year, Lloyd George made numerous public speeches attacking the House of Lords for mutilating the bill with wrecking amendments, accusing them of defying the Liberals' electoral mandate to reform the 1902 Act. [15] Unexpectedly a prominent then-Anglican layman, G. K. Chesterton, became a leader of the opposition to the Birrell Bill. [17]

In the end, Balfour, now leader of the Conservative opposition, used his mastery of parliamentary procedure to defeat any compromise and keep his 1902 Act intact. [18] On 12 December 1906 the Commons rejected the Lords' amendments by 414 votes to 107. After the Lords, which until 1911 still had equal say with the Commons over legislation, voted to reinstate its amendments, the bill was abandoned. Further bills were introduced in 1907 and 1908, and also abandoned. As a result of Lloyd George's lobbying, a separate department for Wales [lower-alpha 1] was created within the Board of Education. [19]

Nonconformists were bitterly upset by the failure of the Liberal Party to carry through on its most important promise to them. Support for Liberal candidates fell away. They eventually closed nearly all of their schools. [20]

American historian Bentley Gilbert evaluates the political wisdom of Liberal dependence on Nonconformist support:

The Campbell-Bannerman government was, as its sorry performance would show in the next three years, more the hostage than the master of its swollen and unhealthy majority. It seemed to be at the mercy of single-issue eccentrics and special-interest cranks who forced it to waste valuable parliamentary time attempting to enact huge and complicated quasi-constitutional measures that would best benefit only a minority of the king's subjects, while the rest, the majority, if not opposed, remained uninterested. [21]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Liberal Party (UK)</span> Major political party in the United Kingdom from 1859 to 1988

The Liberal Party was one of the two major political parties in the United Kingdom, along with the Conservative Party, in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Beginning as an alliance of Whigs, free trade–supporting Peelites, and reformist Radicals in the 1850s, by the end of the 19th century, it had formed four governments under William Gladstone. Despite being divided over the issue of Irish Home Rule, the party returned to government in 1905 and won a landslide victory in the 1906 general election. Under prime ministers Henry Campbell-Bannerman (1905–1908) and H. H. Asquith (1908–1916), the Liberal Party passed reforms that created a basic welfare state. Although Asquith was the party leader, its dominant figure was David Lloyd George.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Lloyd George</span> Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1916 to 1922

David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1916 to 1922. A Liberal Party politician from Wales, he was known for leading the United Kingdom during the First World War, for social-reform policies, for his role in the Paris Peace Conference, and for negotiating the establishment of the Irish Free State. He was the last Liberal prime minister; the party fell into third-party status towards the end of his premiership.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joseph Chamberlain</span> British politician (1836–1914)

Joseph Chamberlain was a British statesman who was first a radical Liberal, then a Liberal Unionist after opposing home rule for Ireland, and eventually was a leading imperialist in coalition with the Conservatives. He split both major British parties in the course of his career. He was the father, by different marriages, of Nobel Peace Prize winner Austen Chamberlain and of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain.

The Liberal Unionist Party was a British political party that was formed in 1886 by a faction that broke away from the Liberal Party. Led by Lord Hartington and Joseph Chamberlain, the party established a political alliance with the Conservative Party in opposition to Irish Home Rule. The two parties formed the ten-year-long coalition Unionist Government 1895–1905 but kept separate political funds and their own party organisations until a complete merger between the Liberal Unionist and the Conservative parties was agreed to in May 1912.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arthur Balfour</span> Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1902 to 1905

Arthur James Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour, was a British statesman and Conservative Party politician who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1902 to 1905. As foreign secretary in the Lloyd George ministry, he issued the Balfour Declaration of 1917 on behalf of the cabinet, which supported a "home for the Jewish people" in Palestine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nonconformist (Protestantism)</span> Protestant Christians in Wales and England who did not follow the Church of England

Nonconformists were Protestant Christians who did not "conform" to the governance and usages of the state church in England, and in Wales until 1914, the Church of England.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1906 United Kingdom general election</span> Last UK Liberal party electoral parliamentary majority result

The 1906 United Kingdom general election was held from 12 January to 8 February 1906. The Liberals, led by Prime Minister Henry Campbell-Bannerman, won a landslide majority at the election. The Conservatives led by Arthur Balfour, who had been in government until the month before the election, lost more than half their seats, including party leader Balfour's own seat in Manchester East, leaving the party with its fewest recorded seats ever in history until 2024. The election saw a 5.4% swing from the Conservative Party to the Liberal Party, the largest-ever seen at the time. This has resulted in the 1906 general election being dubbed the "Liberal landslide", and is now ranked alongside the 1924, 1931, 1945, 1983, 1997, 2001, and 2024 general elections as one of the largest landslide election victories.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Augustine Birrell</span> British politician (1850–1933)

Augustine Birrell KC was a British Liberal Party politician, who was Chief Secretary for Ireland from 1907 to 1916. In this post, he was praised for enabling tenant farmers to own their property, and for extending university education for Catholics, but was criticised for failing to take action against the rebels before the Easter Rising, leading to his subsequent resignation. A barrister by training, he was also an author, noted for humorous essays.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Clifford (minister)</span> British Baptist Nonconformist minister and politician (1836–1923)

John Clifford was a British Baptist Nonconformist minister and politician, who became famous as the advocate of passive resistance to the Education Act 1902.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elementary Education Act 1870</span> United Kingdom legislation

The Elementary Education Act 1870, commonly known as Forster's Education Act, set the framework for schooling of all children between the ages of 5 and 12 in England and Wales. It established local education authorities with defined powers, authorized public money to improve existing schools, and tried to frame conditions attached to this aid so as to earn the goodwill of managers. It has long been seen as a milestone in educational development, but recent commentators have stressed that it brought neither free nor compulsory education, and its importance has thus tended to be diminished rather than increased.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Birmingham board school</span>

The Birmingham board schools were set up very rapidly after the Forster Elementary Education Act 1870 was enacted, covering England and Wales. Over forty were created in Birmingham.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hugh Cecil, 1st Baron Quickswood</span> British politician

Hugh Richard Heathcote Gascoyne-Cecil, 1st Baron Quickswood PC, styled Lord Hugh Cecil until 1941, was a British Conservative Party politician.

The National Education League was a political movement in England and Wales which promoted elementary education for all children, free from religious control. It was founded in 1869 and dissolved in 1877. It developed from the Birmingham Education League, co-founded in 1867 by George Dixon, a Birmingham Member of Parliament (MP) and past mayor, Joseph Chamberlain, a nonconformist and future mayor of Birmingham, and Jesse Collings, but was expanded to include branches from all over England and Wales. Dixon was chairman of the League's council, Chamberlain chairman of the executive committee, and Collings the honorary secretary. Other leading founding members were R. W. Dale, A. Follett Osler, J. H. Chamberlain, George Dawson, and William Harris. Twenty founding members subscribed £14,000. The first general meeting was in October 1869, by which time William Dronfield of Sheffield was acting as Secretary. It resolved that a bill should be prepared to present to Parliament at the next session.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Liberal welfare reforms</span> Welfare state

The Liberal welfare reforms (1906–1914) were a series of acts of social legislation passed by the Liberal Party after the 1906 general election. They represent the Liberal Party's transition rejecting the old laissez faire policies and enacting interventionist state policies against poverty and thus launching the modern welfare state in the United Kingdom. David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill led in designing and passing the reforms, and building nationwide support.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Liberal government, 1905–1915</span> Government of the United Kingdom

The Liberal government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland that began in 1905 and ended in 1915 consisted of two ministries: the first led by Henry Campbell-Bannerman and the final three by H. H. Asquith.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clifford Cory</span> British politician (1859–1941)

Sir Clifford John Cory, 1st Baronet was a Welsh colliery owner, coal exporter and Liberal Party politician.

The 1904 Ashburton by-election was a parliamentary by-election held in England on 7 January 1904 to elect a new Member of Parliament (MP) for the British House of Commons constituency of Ashburton in Devon. It was triggered by the death of the sitting Liberal Party MP Charles Seale-Hayne.

The 1902 Bury by-election was a by-election held in England on 10 May 1902 for the House of Commons constituency of Bury in Lancashire.

The Nonconformist conscience was the moralistic influence of the Nonconformist churches in British politics in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Nonconformists, who were dissenters from the Church of England, believed in the autonomy of their churches and fought for religious freedom, social justice, and strong moral values in public life.

Nonconformity was a major religious movement in Wales from the 18th to the 20th centuries. The Welsh Methodist revival of the 18th century was one of the most significant religious and social movements in the modern history of Wales. The revival began within the Church of England in Wales, partly as a reaction to the neglect generally felt in Wales at the hands of absentee bishops and clergy. For two generations from the 1730s onwards the main Methodist leaders such as Howell Harris, Daniel Rowland and William Williams Pantycelyn remained within the Church of England, but the Welsh revival differed from the Methodist revival in England in that its theology was Calvinist rather than Arminian. Methodists in Wales gradually built up their own networks, structures, and meeting houses, which led, at the instigation of Thomas Charles, to the secession of 1811 and the formal establishment of the Calvinistic Methodist Presbyterian Church of Wales in 1823.

References

  1. ↑ Searle, G.R. (1971). The Quest For National Efficiency. p. 206.
  2. ↑ Cooter, Roger (1992). In the name of the child: health and welfare, 1880–1940. p. 69.
  3. ↑ Searle, G. R. (2005). A New England? Peace and War, 1886–1918. Oxford University Press. pp. 333–34. ISBN   978-0-19-928440-5.
  4. ↑ Geoffrey Russell Searle (1971). The Quest for National Efficiency: a Study in British Politics and Political Thought, 1899–1914. University of California Press. pp. 208–212. ISBN   9780520017948.
  5. ↑ Taylor, Tony (1993). "Lord Cranborne, The Church Party and Anglican Education 1893–1902: From Politics to Pressure". History of Education. 22 (2): 125–146. doi:10.1080/0046760930220202.
  6. ↑ Dugdale, Balfour 1:237–239.
  7. ↑ Ruston, Alan. "Neville Chamberlain". Unitarian Universalist Historical Society. Archived from the original on 21 February 2007. Retrieved 28 January 2022.
  8. ↑ Standish Meacham, "Looking for the Left", Journal of British Studies (1989) 28#2 pp. 191–199 at p. 92. JSTOR   1898753
  9. ↑ Dwight A. Honeycutt (1990). "Motivations of a Political Activist: John Clifford and the Education Bill of 1902". Journal of Church and State 32: 81ff.
  10. ↑ Donald Read (1994). The age of urban democracy, England, 1868–1914. Longman. p. 428. ISBN   9780582089211.
  11. ↑ D. R. Pugh (1990). "English Nonconformity, education and passive resistance 1903–6". History of Education 19#4: 355–373.
  12. ↑ N. R. Gullifer (1982). "Opposition to the 1902 Education Act". Oxford Review of Education 8#1 pp. 83–98. JSTOR   1050168
  13. ↑ Searle, G. R. (1971). The Quest for National Efficiency: a Study in British Politics and Political Thought, 1899–1914. University of California Press. pp. 207–216. ISBN   9780520017948.
  14. ↑ Samuel Porter (1907), The Education bill of 1906, an analysis, and a brief survey of the education question from 1870
  15. 1 2 3 4 Crosby 2014, pp. 74–77
  16. ↑ Neil D. Daglish (1994). "Lloyd George's Education Bill? Planning the 1906 Education Bill". History of Education 23.4: 375–384.
  17. ↑ Susan E. Hanssen (2008). "'English in Spirit': G. K. Chesterton, Church and State, and the 1906 Education Act Debate", Catholic Social Science Review vol. 13, pp. 47–76. doi : 10.5840/cssr2008136
  18. ↑ Élie Halévy (1932), The Rule of Democracy (1905–1914), pp. 64–69.
  19. ↑ Crosby 2014, pp.74-7
  20. ↑ Noel J. Richards (1972). "The Education Bill of 1906 and the Decline of Political Nonconformity". Journal of Ecclesiastical History 23#1. pp. 49–63
  21. ↑ Bentley Brinkerhoff Gilbert (1987). David Lloyd George: A Political Life, Volume 2. p. 292.

Notes

  1. ↑ Scotland had, and has, its own education system, separate from that of England and Wales.

Further reading

Primary sources

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.