The Scottish school system and the Second World War : a study in central policy and administration

Abstract

Whilst reading for a master's degree in educational studies at the University of Liverpool, I became interested in the effects of the First World War on English education and this formed the subject of my dissertation. The research undertaken widened my concern to the coincidence of war and educational reform in Great Britain during the present century and, consequently, the genesis of the 1944 Education Act. My appointment to a lectureship at the University of Stirling eventually led, with the encouragement of Professor R.H. Campbell, to a consideration of the fortunes of Scottish education in the years of the Second World War. The new focus of my work proved to be particularly apt. At the end of the Second World War, Dr Sophia Weitzman of London University was appointed to write the education volume in the United Kingdom Civil Series of the history of the war, edited by Sir Keith Hancock. Dr Weitzman envisaged a grandiose British educational history, but by the time of her death in 1965, although drafts existed on phases and aspects of wartime education, the volume was far from completion. Indeed, it appeared with the failure of the Department of Education and Science to appoint a successor that the protracted project would lapse. Fortunately, however, the Social Science Research Council invited Dr. P.H.J.H. Gosden of the University of Leeds to undertake the task with their financial assistance, and in 1976 Education and the Second World War was published. His scholarly and comprehensive work, however, excludes consideration of the Scottish educational system. Thus, Or. Gosden writes, "there is need for a study of education in Scotland during the war”. This thesis marks, perhaps, the beginning of an attempt to meet this need. The subject of the study is the Scottish public school system and, as it draws heavily upon the surviving records of the Scottish Education Department, the frame of reference is very much that of the central government department for education in Scotland. The concentration on the schools means that there are important omissions to be repaired before a more complete picture of the impact and influence of the war on Scottish education emerges; the study, for example, does not examine the wartime history of youth welfare in Scotland, or the fortunes of the central institutions. There is also a need for local studies for, as Dr. Gosden points out, the impact of the war varied considerably from area to area. The range and complexity of the subject, moreover, has also required the observation of fairly strict chronological events and a selection of issues which, in some instances are given unduly restricted treatment, in an effort to keep the study within bounds. An attempt has been made to preserve a rough balance between examination of the impact of the war on the Scottish school system and its influence perceived in terms of the planning of the system's improvement through legislative and administrative action.