From Dr G. F. Chorley
Sir, - I greatly appreciated the article by the Revd Dr
Stephen Spencer (Comment, 24 October) on
the life and work of Archbishop William Temple. May I add some
comments on Dr Spencer's treatment of education?
The 1918 Education Act raised the school-leaving age to 14 for
all pupils, but many children still received all their education in
one school. Some large urban centres had begun to provide separate
central schools for pupils over the age of 11 before the First
World War, but R. H. Tawney's pamphlet Secondary Education for
All in 1922 and the 1926 Hadow report, The Education of
the Adolescent, argued for the creation of separate primary
and secondary schools for all children. This, however, presented
financial difficulties for the Anglican Church.
Temple's contribution to the 1944 Education Act was not the
construction for the first time of a national system of education
encompassing church and state schools. Rather, he successfully
convinced a majority of Anglicans to support the proposals of R. A.
Butler in the wartime coalition government for a financial solution
for church schools. Thus the Anglican Church could continue its
significant contribution to a national education system of church
and non-denominational schools which had been evolving since
1870.
GEOFFREY F. CHORLEY
Hon. Research Fellow,
Department of Theology,
Philosophy and Religious Studies,
Liverpool Hope University; and sometime Additional
Inspector,
Office of Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Schools, England
10 Helvellyn Drive, Ightenhill
Burnley, Lancs BB12 0TA
