Question 1
Using these four sources in their historical context, assess how far they support the view that the well-being of children was the main aim of education and young people’s reforms during the
period from 1902 to 1918.
Source A: Introducing the Education Bill to the House of Commons, the future prime minister explains why it is necessary to establish secondary schools in England and Wales.
Our reform must establish one authority for education, possessed of the power to weld higher technical and higher secondary education on to the university system. A vast expenditure of public money has, nonetheless, left this country behind all its continental and American rivals. Our technological institutions, I am afraid, do not yet rival those which America and Germany have produced, but, within their limits, they are admirable. However, these colleges and institutions never will achieve all they might do so long as our secondary education, which is their necessary preparation, is in the imperfect condition in which we find it.
A. J. Balfour, speech, 24 March 1902
Source B: Notes from a meeting of officials looking into the health of children in London schools, 1903.
In the slum schools he (Dr. Eicholz) found that 66 per cent of the children were unable to keep pace with the curriculum and were backward to the extent of one, two, three, four or even five years. The children were permanently imperfect in physical development and as one out of every six London schools was a slum school it might be taken as a low estimate that there were 60,000 physically inferior children in London alone. The cause of this was want of food; the London slum parents were not up when they should be preparing the children for school. The children consequently went to school without a proper meal in the morning.
Dr. Eicholz, medical inspector for the Education Board of the London Borough of Westminster, and some other London boroughs, 1903
Source C: A public warning issued after the passage of the Children Act, 1908.
Among other provisions of the Children Act, parents and other persons having the charge of children are made liable for fines or other penalties for:
1. Leaving a child under the age of 7 in a room with a fire without a fireguard if the child is burned to death or seriously injured.
2. Taking or sending a child under the age of 14 into the drinking bar of a public house.
Tobacconists must not sell to persons under the age of 16 cigarettes or cigarette papers (nor any other tobacco if it is believed it is for the use of the person under 16).
From a police notice from 1909 warning people about the terms of the new Children Act
Source D: A member of the family of chocolate manufacturers in York, a constituency which he served as Liberal MP, and a director of the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust from 1904 to 1951, writes approvingly of the Fisher Act.
State education may begin in nursery or elementary schools and must continue to 14 years of age in secondary schools. As such the exploitation of child labour is radically reduced. Physical training will be provided; handicapped children will receive special care; the curriculum will be more practical and there will be equality of educational opportunity. The public can criticise schemes before Local Education Authorities send them to the Board of Education for approval. Conditions of service should be such as to attract the very best teachers. If democracy is to succeed and the losses caused by war are to be made good, every child must be educated.
Arnold Rowntree, A Guide to the Education Act 1918, 15 November 1918
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