Unintended but always significant? A re-examination of the consequences of national education reform on local developments in the pioneering of comprehensive schooling c.1918–1950

Olsson Rost, Kerstin ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7309-9721 (2020) Unintended but always significant? A re-examination of the consequences of national education reform on local developments in the pioneering of comprehensive schooling c.1918–1950. British Journal of Educational Studies, 68 (5). pp. 629-648. ISSN 0007-1005

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Abstract

Using the case study of Anglesey and its pioneering comprehensive scheme, this paper aims to re-examine education reforms and interventions by central government c.1918–1950. This is undertaken in a bid to reveal the significance of such reforms for the way in which comprehensive secondary education was able to evolve at the local level. Lesser-known consequences of well-known reforms will be explored with a view to assessing their significance for a Local Education Authority with a comprehensive vision. Furthermore, these localized findings will be discussed with the aim of discerning their significance beyond the local level. Attention will be paid to what the implications of the inclusion of the ‘Welsh dimension’ might mean for the wider historiography of comprehensive schooling in England and Wales. It will be argued here that this re-examination of education policy has implications for how the consequences of some of the key educational reforms of the twentieth century can be viewed and re-evaluated. Perhaps even more significantly, the findings from this investigation suggest that by re-examining the influence of key policies and central government intervention, our understanding of the pioneering of comprehensive schooling can be further developed.