Respecto de la Jurisprudencia

The Education Act (1870) made formal state education compulsory for all children. It was introduced for two main reasons: firstly, as a means of policing and civilising society, following the decline of the social and regulatory influence of the church; and secondly, as a training ground for the requirements of an emerging need for industrial workers. These factors had a profound impact on the development of the educational experiences of working class girls and it is here that we begin to see the emergence of the demonisation of working class young women as the moral abject of a righteous society.

Until the passing of the Education Act it was not compulsory for children to attend formal schooling. Purvis (1991) suggests that prior to this Act any education received

by working class girls took place in dame schools, Sunday schools, ragged schools, factory schools, or day board schools run by the Church of England or the British Foreign Society. There is little indication of the attendance of working class girls at this time but, from available evidence, we can presume they attended in a relative minority. Laqueur (1976) suggests that, for many working class girls during this period, the only education they received was three to four hours per week at Sunday school, providing them with the opportunity to learn to read and write.

The 1870 Act was intended to instigate school attendance for all children across Britain (excluding Scotland and Wales) at state-funded schools between the ages of 5-13 years. Attendance at school for working class children had not been a requirement prior to this, and very few working class boys, and even fewer girls, had received any formal

schooling.

The introduction of elementary schools required education boards to be established to manage the infrastructure. Education boards varied in efficacy; the specifics of the Act included a range of reasons for exemption for working class children, which led many to continue to be denied a formal education. The 1870 Act proposed a means test for parents in order to establish if support was required for poorer children’s fees to be paid. However, this approach was not enforced and therefore not adopted by all education boards. McDermid (1995) found that in the instances where the educational offer for elementary education was made by the local education board, many working class children would still only partially attend due to work and other family commitments.

In 1870, the Taunton Commission reviewed all existing education paid for via

government funding. Originally this did not include women’s education; however the women’s movement within first wave feminism in the UK successfully lobbied for its inclusion (Middleton, 1970).

The findings of the Taunton Commission were primarily focused on boys. Nevertheless, the Commission was vital in the progression of women’s educational development as it denounced the current state of women’s education as weak and teaching as substandard. Roach (1986) indicates that the findings of the Commission argued, for the first time, that ‘girls had intellectual capabilities in line with their male counterparts and that there should be some parity between the subjects taught to boys and girls’ (Roach, 1986,

p152).

The Taunton Commission recommended three types of parental requirements for the education of male children. Williams (2011) depicts these as:

 First-grade school, established to meet the needs of boys who remain in education until the age of 18 years, with a liberal education including the classics Latin and Greek. This was considered necessary for the preparation of middle class boys for professional careers.

 Second-grade school, up to the age of 16 years, was recommended to prepare middle class boys for the newer professions, including the army. This would also include two modern languages.

 Third-grade schools, intended to provide for children who required an education up until the age of 14 years in order to prepare young men to become small scale farmers, tradesmen, or artisans.

These recommendations came to be seen as secondary educational routes, with elementary schooling made compulsory for both sexes only up to the age of 13 years. The Commission’s report can be considered to be the first policy directive to

recommend formalised classed and gendered routes through the education system.

While the 1870 Act included for the provision of education for girls, and argued for some parity between the education of boys and girls, this needs to be considered against the dominant patriarchal structures from which it emerged. The 1870 Act arose around the same time that it was still being argued that ‘[f]emale education it was felt should be geared towards women as mothers, but while it was necessary to make women fit mothers it was believed that too much education would render women infertile’

(McDermid, 1995, p108). Other similar views at the time included those which ‘argued that menstruation so diminished a girl’s whole strength as to make intellectual

development a positive danger’ (Hunt, 1991, p26).

Heggie (2011) indicates that as state-funded schools opened across Britain, there was an increasingly popular argument that school could be a place to prepare working class young women for a life of domesticity and service. A socially-structured and gendered curriculum later emerged, designed to support the education of women in service and

impose a middle class version of femininity on working class girls.

Purvis (1991) describes that during the 19th century middle class girls had access to an elementary education, attending private day schools run by other middle class women. The girls were not expected to engage in any acts of work, with the mainstay of their learning centred on creative and cultured pastimes to help them attract a good husband. Their education was far removed from that of working class girls’ preparation for a life of service and domesticity.

Secondary schooling remained fee-paying until the passing of the Education Act 1944, and was therefore populated by the middle and upper classes. Purvis (1989) indicates that financial assistance was available for both grammar and private schools through scholarships for bright middle and working class children emerging from the elementary system. However, applications from boys were prioritised.

Purvis (1991) suggests girls’ secondary education came in the form of private fee- paying girls’ schools, populated by the daughters of wealthy families or daughters from respectable families of limited means. Examples included daughters of the clergy, who might need to earn a living as a governess or teacher in later life.

High schools emerged in the 1850s and by 1900 over 90 girls grammar schools had been established in the UK. The Girls’ Public Day Schools Company set up a further 38 un-denominational schools and the Church Schools Company set up 33 Anglican High schools for girls (Purvis, 1991).

Girls’ high schools and grammar schools began to offer opportunities to learn subjects taught to boys (Senders Pedersen, 1979). However, by the turn of the 20th century, secondary education had narrowed to follow the same path as Victorian elementary education, in that a central function was to prepare girls for a domestic role, both in and out of the home. Hunt (1991) suggests there was very little deviation from this approach between 1900 and 1950. A rare example of this deviation can be seen in the

development of vocational learning for women, driven by the women’s movement.

In 1859, the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women was founded in London. Albissetti (2012) indicates that, as with other educational models across Europe, this

was primarily formed to solve the problem of employment and training for middle-class girls in the UK, with the inclusion of a lucky few working class girls.

Goodman (1998) found that around the same time as the elementary education system was introducing domestic education subjects to working class girls, a need arose to provide an extension to this for those working class girls leaving the elementary school system. However, the training initiatives ‘remained within existing parameters of female employment, rather than pushing the boundaries outwards’ (Goodman, 1998, p314). McDermid (1995) indicates that in the latter 19th century higher grade schools were created, which provided an additional three years’ study for lower middle and working class girls. These schools expanded the curriculum for young women but domestic subjects were retained as central to the offer. Working class girls were usually encouraged to choose the domestic subjects in order to prepare for realistic career options.

There is evidence of early examples of working class girls being prevented from accessing training and career development opportunities due to the immediate financial responsibilities they had at home. Goodman (1998) found that the Technical Education Board, a government department established to oversee the provision of technical education, provided technical instruction scholarships to girls’ secondary schools. Grants were made available to middle and working class girls to the London School of Economics and the Economics Faculty. In 1912 the Women’s Industrial Council conducted an inquiry into the take up of the educational grants. They found that girls from working class homes, when presented with these training opportunities, did not take up the offer. Instead, their families, in need of immediate income, would often send girls directly into the workplace, impeding any progress towards skilled employment the girls may have aspired to.

During this period, educational opportunities for working class girls can be viewed as designed to support and stabilise patriarchal relations. However, an example of working class education with emancipatory value did emerge. A growing movement of trade unions and socialism brought an understanding that every child should receive an education to ready themselves for roles which would encourage social development. Dick (1980) suggests that radicals and conservatives of both sexes began to see the need

for an educational offer for the masses, and it was from these opposing political positions that a unity was found. Dick describes the introduction of mass schooling as associated with two processes:

…first, the evolution of a self-conscious working class, beginning to define itself in opposition to the gentry and middle classes; secondly the attempt to create a community ethic, which aimed to overcome the conflict generated by class consciousness through the development of shared social values (Dick, 1980, p27).

The effect of this mass schooling was a wider dissemination and migration of middle class ideology, and a pseudo-growth of the middle classes serving the purpose of meeting the aspirations of the working classes while subduing them into a model of patriarchal hierarchy. This enabled the continuation of the church’s power and

supported capitalist developments, wealth gain and propagation of the ‘ruling classes.’

Recognition of the needs of the working class arose during the mid-19th century, giving rise to attempts to respond to church and state-run educational opportunities. Most notable of these is the Socialist Sunday School (SSS) movement, which mobilised in 1892 and continued into the 1970s.

Gerrard (2012) describes SSS as a community-led initiative which brought together working class children within a locality on the one free day during which adults and children could all contribute to their education. As she notes:

[t]he schools operated within locales of broader socialist activity in the attempt to create alternative educational opportunity and imbue a socialist ethic in children. Teaching science, literature, socialist interpretations of history, cooperative ethics and involving the children in a range of activities from needlecraft to rambling and singing, SSS took their remit to introduce children to socialist culture and ideas seriously (Gerrard, 2012, p541).

The visionary education provided by SSS can be seen as the most liberal and egalitarian model available to working class children and girls since the passing of the 1870

to emerge for working class children and girls across the UK.

During the period from the beginning of the 20th century to the passing of the Education Act (1944), working class girls’ overall educational progress was limited. Several attempts were made to propose secondary education for all, but there was resistance to them. Lawson and Silver (1973) refer to this period as one fraught with social change with a growing sense of responsibility for social problems emerging against a back-drop of economic hardship accentuated by the impacts of the Boer, First and Second World Wars. They suggest that education throughout this period became a social policy within which party politics were argued.

In the period preceding the 1944 Act, prior to the outbreak of the Second World War, there was consistent political agreement that there was a need for the implementation of reform of post-elementary education.

Section 2: The role of feminist educationalists and the establishment of negative