Tripartite System of education in England, Wales and Northern Ireland
The Tripartite System was the selective school system of state-funded secondary education between 1945 and the 1970s in England and Wales, and from 1947 onwards in Northern Ireland. It was an administrative implementation of the Education Act 1944 and the Education Act 1947. The tripartite system is not mentioned in either Act, this model was a consensus of both major political parties based on the 1938 Spens Report.
State-funded secondary education was to be structured as three types of school: grammar school; secondary technical school ; secondary modern school. Not all education authorities implemented the tripartite system; some maintained only two types of secondary school, the grammar and the secondary modern.
Pupils were allocated to their respective types of school according to their performance in the 11-plus or the 13-plus examination. It was the prevalent system under the Conservative governments of the 1951 to 1964 period, but was actively discouraged by the Labour government after 1965. The 1976 Education Act made provision to cease selection for secondary education with the intention of universal comprehensive education in England and Wales. However, elements of similar systems persist in several English counties such as Kent and Lincolnshire, which maintain the grammar schools alongside other less academic non-selective secondary schools. The system's merits and demerits, in particular the need and selection for grammar schools, were contentious issues at the time and remain so.
A new design for secondary education
Origins
Prior to 1944 the British secondary education system was fundamentally an ad hoc creation. Access was not universally available, and varied greatly by region. Schools had been created by local government, private charity and religious foundations. Education was often a serious drain on family resources, and subsidies for school expenses were sporadic. Secondary education was mainly the preserve of the middle classes, and in 1938 only 13% of working class 13-year-olds were still in school.Many of the schools created since the 1870s were grammar schools, which offered places based on an entrance test. Places were highly desired and seen as offering a great chance at success. These schools were widely admired, and were to become a model for the tier-structured education reforms of the 1940s.
There was also a strong belief in the value and accuracy of psychometric testing. Some in the educational establishment, particularly the psychologist Sir Cyril Burt, argued that testing students was a valid way of assessing their suitability for various types of education. Similar conclusions were drawn in a number of other countries, including France, Italy, Germany and Sweden, all of which operated a state-run system of selective schools.
The 1926 Hadow Report had recommended that the education system be formally split into separate stages at the age of eleven or twelve. Before this point there had been no formal demarcation between primary and secondary education as known in modern society. The creation of this break would encourage the establishment of selection at the point when pupils were changing schools. The Spens Report of 1938 recommended the tripartite system viz. grammar, technical high and 'modern' secondary schools. The 1943 Norwood Report echoed the tripartite recommendation. These reports established the basis of the post 1944 reform.
The Butler Act
The 1944 Butler Education Act radically overhauled education in England and Wales, and the Education Act 1947 set out a similar restructuring for Northern Ireland. For the first time, secondary education was to become a right, and was to be universally provided. It would also be free, with financial assistance for poor students. This was part of the major shake-up of government welfare in the wake of the 1942 Beveridge Report.In addition to promising universal secondary education, the act intended to improve the kind of education provided. Children would be provided with the type of education which most suited their needs and abilities. Calling their creation the Tripartite System, education officials envisaged a radical technocratic system in which skill was the major factor in deciding access to education, rather than financial resources. It would meet the needs of the economy, providing intellectuals, technicians and general workers, each with the required training.
The Act was created in the abstract, making the resultant system more idealistic than practical. In particular, it assumed that adequate resources would be allocated to implement the system fully.
Design of the system
The basic assumption of the Tripartite system was that all students, regardless of background, should be entitled to an education appropriate to their needs and abilities. It was also assumed that students with different abilities were suited to different curricula. It was believed that an IQ test was a legitimate way of determining a child's suitability to a particular tier.There would be three categories of state-run secondary schools. Each was designed with a specific purpose in mind, aiming to impart a range of skills appropriate to the needs and future careers of their pupils.
- Grammar schools were intended to teach a highly academic curriculum, teaching students to deal with abstract concepts. There was a strong focus on intellectual subjects, such as literature, classics and complex mathematics. As well as wholly state-funded grammar schools, schools that received state grants could become direct grant grammar schools, with some pupils funded by the state, the rest paying fees.
- Secondary technical schools were designed to train children adept in mechanical and scientific subjects. The focus of the schools was on providing high academic standards in demanding subjects such as physics, chemistry, advanced mathematics and biology to create pupils that could become scientists, engineers and technicians.
- Secondary modern schools would mainly train pupils in practical skills, aimed at equipping them for less skilled jobs and home management. Multiple secondary modern schools, however, offered academic streams to achieve CSE and GCE Ordinary Level qualifications in mainstream subject areas
The system in operation
Implementation
The Tripartite System was arguably the least politically controversial of the great post-war welfare reforms. The Butler Act had been written by a Conservative, and had received the full backing of Prime Minister Winston Churchill.Many in the Labour party, meanwhile, were enthusiastic about the ability of the Tripartite System to enable social mobility. A first-rate education would now be available to any capable child, not simply a rich one. The tripartite system seemed an excellent tool with which to erode class barriers.
In spite of this broad approval, the resources for implementing the system were slow in coming. The logistical difficulties of building enough secondary schools for the entire country delayed the introduction of tripartite education. It was not until 1951, and the election of a Conservative government, that the system began to be widely implemented. Some historians have argued that tripartite education was the Conservative answer to the attractions of the Welfare state, replacing collective benefits with individual opportunities. Even so, there was still a dramatic shortfall in resources for the new education system.
Very few technical schools were opened, due to the lack of money and a shortage of suitably qualified teachers. This failure to develop the technical part of the system undermined the whole structure. The tripartite system became, in effect, a two-tier system with grammar schools for the academically gifted and secondary modern schools for the others.
Grammar schools received the lion's share of the money, reinforcing their image as the best part of the system, and places in grammar schools were highly sought after. Around 25% of children went to a grammar school, although there was a severe regional imbalance, with several more grammar school places available in the South than in the North, and with fewer places available for girls. This was partly the result of a historical neglect of education in the north of England, which the tripartite system did much to correct. Nevertheless, in 1963 there were grammar school places for 33% of the children in Wales and only 22% of children in the Eastern region.
Secondary modern schools were correspondingly neglected, giving them the appearance of being 'sink schools'. Although explicitly not presented as such, the secondary modern was widely perceived as the bottom tier of the tripartite system. They suffered from underinvestment and poor reputations, in spite of educating around 70% of the UK's school children. The Newsom Report of 1963, looking at the education of average and below average children, found that secondary moderns in slum areas of London left fifteen-year-olds sitting on primary school furniture and faced teachers changing as often as once a term.
Existing beliefs about education and the failure to develop the technical schools led to the grammar schools being perceived as superior to the alternatives. The system failed to take into account the public perception of the different types of school. Whilst officially no type was seen as better than the other, it was a generally held belief amongst the general public that the grammar schools were the best schools available, and entry into the other two was considered a "failure".
Alongside this system existed a number of public schools and other fee-paying educational establishments. These organised their own intakes, and were not tied to the curricula of any of the above schools. In practice, most of these were educationally similar to grammar schools but with a full ability range amongst their pupils.