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The Act, the Minister and a first move towards central control of the
Boards
Whatever its faults, the Butler Education Act at least introduced free secondary
education in England for all pupils to age 15 in one of three types of school. It also
resolved at least partially the thorny problem of church involvement in state
education. Its sweeping changes meant that drawing up the necessary regulations took
civil servants some months. By the time they had produced Circular 103 containing
the principal regulations, a general election had brought in Atlee’s Labour
Government with Ellen Wilkinson as Minister of Education - for the Board had been
upgraded to a full-fledged Ministry, with its Minister a member of the Cabinet. Yet
this change in political complexion did not affect the implementation of the Education
Act.
The new Minister defended the proposals at the Labour Party conference in the
autumn of 1945 and Circular 103 came into effect in May 1946. This episode was
cited by Denis Lawton, as mentioned above, as evidence for his claim of the growing
power of civil servants in the education department. Ellen Wilkinson has suffered
much posthumous criticism for her failure to introduce a comprehensive system and
for restricting examinations to grammar-school pupils. Such claims overlook the
issues that were in the foreground at the time. As has been stressed, when analysing
policy developments with hindsight, it is important to be aware of the pressures at the
time which might have obscured issues that loom larger at a later date. In Wilkinson’s
case, her overriding objective was to ensure the establishment of free secondary
education for all and to raise the leaving age to 15. Any flaws in the proposed triple-