Reinterpreting the History of Secondary Education: The Case of England in the 1940s and 1950s

This article describes and reflects on reinterpretations of the history of secondary education in England in the 1940s and 1950s, following the Education Act of 1944 and the creation of a so-called ‘tripartite’ system of different kinds of secondary schools. It questions the notion that there was a gradual transition and change of focus from the elite secondary education of the 1920s and 1930s to the mass secondary education of the 1960s. In particular, it examines the underlying continuities in the Platonic ideals of ‘education for leadership’ that revolved around the Norwood Report of 1943 and the curriculum of the secondary schools, and how these were linked over the longer term to the elite traditions of the great public (independent) schools of the nineteenth century.