The 1944 Education Act and Rab Butler

I have long been fascinated by the way that Britain not only functioned during the Second World War and in some ways even thrived – politically at least.  Of great interest has always been the 1944 Education Act which may or may not be described as the ‘Butler Act’ depending on your opinion of the level of his actual involvement in the drawing up of the legislation.

It has, however, been described as ‘arguably the most important social reform of the war years’. [1] The piece by Jefferys succinctly outlines the problems; religious schools, the lack of provision of universal secondary education and school fees.  There is a meandering journey as vested interests on various sides of the political and religious divide were brought on board.

Butler was a Conservative minister, yet in the end his act was supported by Labour MPs.  It is also suggested that his reforms were unpopular with the (Conservative) Prime Minister Churchill, who was keen to avoid contentious legislation in wartime.  We are also introduced to Chuter Ede, the Labour junior minister who played a major role in drafting the bill.

We see again that Labour members of this cabinet were far from the flat-capped working men of caricature.  Chuter Ede may have been the member for South Shields, but he was actually from Dorking and was a Cambridge graduate. Butler too graduated from Cambridge, but was schooled at Marlborough.

The bare bones of the problem were that reform of the education system in England and Wales was urgently required.  Despite the economic problems of the 1930s, it was clear that the countries did not have the sort of universal secondary education system suited to one of the world’s leading nations.  The church schools (Catholic, Anglican and non-conformist) were against state control, but not against receiving state money.  There were no clear rules on the way local government schools were run and there was a feeling that fees needed to be abolished if there was to be truly universal access to education. Finally, there was the issue of a standardised leaving age, ideally this would be sixteen.

These ideas of reform had been around before Butler arrived at the Board of Education in 1941 in the form of something known as the ‘Green Book’.  In 1941 it is suggested that Churchill was opposed to these reforms – radical ideas could come after the war had been concluded. As the Allies began to take the upper hand in 1942 and 1943, he relented somewhat.

It took these two years to untangle the Gordian knot of the religious schools.  Agreement was eventually reached on the basis that there would be two types of secondary school.  These were ‘controlled status’ where ownership and finance came under the control of the local authority and ‘aided status’ where fifty per cent of the costs were covered by government funds.  The former were to non-denominational in terms of the teaching of religion, whereas the latter could remain ‘church’ schools.

A key to understanding the success of the 1944 Act is to look at what it did not do.  It did not attempt to bring the private school sector into the state system.  The famous old schools like Marlborough and the less famous grammar schools like Dorking that had propelled Butler and Ede to Cambridge and thence to parliament were unaffected.  This kept certain sections of the Conservative benches quiet and mollified the centre-left sections of the Labour Party.  This left only those on the extreme left (who would espouse universal education meaning very rich and very poor should be taught together and extreme right (who could see little point in ‘wasting’ government money on educating the working classes) as the only opponents of the Bill as it went through parliament.

Butler and Ede also benefitted from the trials and tribulations surrounding the Beveridge report and the potential costs of a social security system.  The education reforms were cheap and uncontroversial in comparison.  Butler also knew the power of the press and kept them onside by giving them what he gloriously noted as ‘honey, butter and other sticky substances’. It evidently worked.

There have been suggestions that Butler’s name should not be so closely associated with something that was so much a team effort.  Around the ministerial table, Chuter Ede had significant input and the actual legislation was drawn up by civil servants – which is of course their job. It was, however, the guile and experience of Butler - an old foreign office and India hand - that guided the bill through despite the initial misgivings of the Prime Minister and a volatile wartime situation.

The 1944 Act set out the basic template for schooling that remains to this day.  The leaving age of sixteen was implemented much later (in 1973), but is still the earliest point at which you can leave school in England and Wales.  State schools have remained officially non-denominational and although subsequent acts have tried to mimic some of the more desirable aspect of the independent sector, those schools remain resolutely independent.

Did the Act go far enough? Possibly not, but the constant tinkering with education policy that continues to this day shows that there is no simple answer here.  It is perhaps easier to reach Oxford or Cambridge from a state school than it was in 1944, but there seems to be little change in the progression of graduates from those institutions into government in Britain.

---

[1] Kevin Jefferys, ‘R.A. Butler, the Board of Education, and the 1944 Education Act’, History (1987).