State Policy and Ideology in the Education of Women 1944–1980

Abstract

The 1944 Education Act, in theory, was supposed to widen the educational chances of the working classes through the provision of free secondary education for all. In practice, as Halsey, Heath and Ridge (1980) have recently shown, this has not been the case even for working-class boys. For working- and middle-class girls, the benefits have been even smaller. This is not surprising, as the Norwood Report in 1943 stressed the importance of relating boys’ education to the labour market, but emphasised that girls’ schooling must relate to their eventual place in the family. Despite the demonstration, for instance, by conservative researchers like Douglas (1967) that after 1944 girls in primary schools consistently demonstrated their academic superiority over boys, there is little evidence that this superiority followed girls into their secondary school. There are a number of possible explanations for girls’ superior primary school performance. First, the kinds of academic skills important in primary schools — especially reading and writing — are those for which girls’ earlier family socialisation may have prepared them better.