History and politics of primary education - Essay Example

The Butler Act, also known as the 1944 Education Act, aimed at providing education for all school going children between the ages of 5 and 14. The Act stipulated that secondary education start at 11-years-old. In addition, it created a framework by which a ministry managed school affairs but the schools themselves were managed by Local Education Authorities (LEAs). However, the duration of school days, term dates, and the syllabus stayed under local management (Freedman, Lipson & Hargreaves, 2008:29).

The Butler Act also included requirements for Church Schools. The schools were to be incorporated into the state system using various arrangements, and the operating expenses of the Church Schools were to be borne by LEAs but remaining responsible for religious education in the syllabus. Although not stipulated by the Act, the consensus was that grammar schools were to be retained by the creation of a Tripartite framework in which students were to be enrolled in three variants of schools. Besides the grammar schools, there were to be secondary contemporary schools and technical schools.

Grammar schools were to admit the most capable 20 percent of the students (determined using the 11-plus tests) and were better financed compared to other schools. In addition, most of the teachers held degrees (Gorard, 2009:105). Various LEAs employed different admission criteria, but majority implemented types of intelligence assessments – supposing that intelligence was uniform and estimable to the extent where an individual’s ability was known by the age of 11. However, numerous injustices soon became common.

Grammar school slots were mainly fixed, implying that the challenges of admission to a grammar school deviated based on how many students were in a specific category. Comprehensive schools intended to offer education opportunities to children from all