Abstract
Norwood’s influence was clearly waning both in elite policy circles and among a newer generation of opinion formers. In the relative backwater of his old Oxford College, he faced retirement and a quiet end to his educational career. Yet the war gave him an unexpected opportunity to define the future of secondary education. He was invited to chair a committee that became a key forum for the major reforms developed in response to the new radical ideas that were circulating about education. His contribution to this wartime debate gave renewed force to the ideal of secondary education that he had cultivated in changing circumstances over the past forty years. It also gave rise to hostility that challenged and eventually undermined the reforms that were established under the Education Act of 1944.
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Notes
The Modern Churchman, vol. 46, no. 1 (March 1956), pp. 1–4. See also Cyril Norwood, “Christian Modernism and Education,” The Modern Churchman, vol. 38 (1948), pp. 226–33.
See Paul Addison, “Oxford and the Second World War,” in Brian Harrison (ed.), The History of the University of Oxford, vol. VIII, The Twentieth Century (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1994), pp. 167–88.
Andrew Motion, Philip Larkin: A Writer’s Life (London, Faber and Faber, 1993), p. 54.
See R.A. Butler, The Art of the Possible (London, Penguin, 1973), p. 10.
G.G. Williams, “Note on Future Policy in Secondary Education,” December 4, 1941 (Incorporated Association of Assistant Masters in Secondary Schools papers, E1/2 file 1 (Institute of Education London).
See also Gary McCulloch, “‘Spens v. Norwood’: Contesting the Educational State?,” History of Education, 22/2 (1993), pp. 163–80.
Board of Education, The Public Schools and the General Educational System (HMSO, London, 1944) (Fleming Report).
J.A. Lauwerys, “Curriculum and the Norwood Report,” Journal of Education, vol. 76, April 1944, pp. 164–68.
Cyril Norwood, “The Norwood Report—An Unrepentant Statement,” Journal of Education, vol. 76, May 1944, pp. 215–18.
J.A. Petch, Fifty Years of Examining: The Joint Matriculation Board, 1903–1953 (London, Harrap, 1953), p. 165.
See Gary McCulloch, “Local Education Authorities and the Organisation of Secondary Education, 1943–1950,” Oxford Review of Education, 28/2–3 (2002), pp. 235–46.
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© 2007 Gary McCulloch
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McCulloch, G. (2007). The Norwood Report and Secondary Education. In: Cyril Norwood and the Ideal of Secondary Education. Secondary Education in a Changing World. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230603523_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230603523_9
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