Schooling and Social Change Since 1760

Roy Lowe is one of Britain’s best-known historians of education, having published extensively over a long period on the history of schools and universities. He was for some years President of the UK History of Education Society and was awarded an OBE for services to education in 2002.

'This book performs the important civic service of showing the ways in which the English education system has worked consistently for over two centuries to sustain and reinforce those inequalities which continue to be such a marked feature of contemporary English society. Clearly written and well-organised, the detailed narrative shows fully how the careful and critical study of education over the long term is such a valuable perspective from which to study British society.'Simon Szreter, Professor of History and Policy, University of Cambridge.''An essential guide to the troubling history of educational inequalities in the UK and how they explain our contemporary social problems.''Gary McCulloch, Brian Simon Professor of History of Education, UCL Institute of Education.

• PrefaceAcknowledgementsIntroductionEducation in England: intentions and outcomesIndustrialisation and educationThe characteristics of English societyChapter 1 An age of revolutions: 1760-1830‘The ever-whirling wheel of Change’Schooling in the Eighteenth CenturyA new context for educationPlanning for social stratificationEvangelicals and the Sunday school movementThe beginnings of systematisation: the monitorial schoolsSocialists, utopians and educationThe first stirrings of the StateEmbedding inequalitiesChapter 2 The workshop of the world: 1830-1895 ‘In a progressive country change is constant’‘Governing as little as they could’: schooling the poor in Victorian EnglandSystematising superiority: the education of a new eliteCreating a new middle class: the reform of the endowed schoolsRebuilding the ivory tower‘Places of moral rather than intellectual training’: the schooling of middleclass girls Chapter 3 Embedding privilege: the charitable status of elite schoolsA neglected issueCharitable status: the realitiesThe origins of charitable statusThe need for changeMoves towards reform‘A great concession’: the establishment of the Charity CommissionThe formative years of the Charity CommissionLong-term implicationsChapter 4 Schooling for a changing world: 1895-1914The Victorian legacyA new administration for educationTowards a new elementary educationRegulating secondary educationEducating the Edwardian eliteChapter 5 1914-1939: Schools fit for heroes?War and its aftermathConflicting aspirationsEconomising on educationPlanning educational futuresSchooling the common peopleGradations of schooling: educating elites between the WarsChapter 6 ‘The safeguard of social stratification’: 1939-1979Schooling during the Second World War‘The search for freedom from want’: the post-War yearsThe primary concern: building a new sector of educationThe false dawn of comprehensivisation: secondary schooling, 1945-79‘For all those who are qualified by ability and attainment…and who wish to do so’: the post-War expansion of higher educationA note of cautionChapter 7 Neo-Liberalism and multi-nationalism: 1979 to the presentA novel context?Implementing the new politics of educationThe realities of change: the primary sectorThe outsourcing of secondary educationThe private sectorHow higher education was marketizedConclusion Schooling and social classChildren as victimsImplications