Education

Abstract

‘The Act of 1944, in common with its predecessors of 1870, 1902 and 1918, affords a classic example of what Dicey called “our inveterate prejudice for fragmentary and gradual legislation”. It did not, as some would have wished, sweep the board clean of existing institutions in order to start afresh .... Henceforth every child would have a right to free secondary education and in order that those secondary courses should become a full reality, they were to last for at least four and eventually five years. It was, however, equally important to ensure that a stigma of inferiority did not attach itself to those in secondary institutions .... Even so equality of opportunity would remain something of an empty phrase if children entered the period of compulsory schooling from conditons of family deprivation, or left it to pursue what Churchill called blind-alley occupations.’ (R.A. Butler, The Art of the Possible: Memoirs, Landan, Hamish Hamilton, 1971.)