ABSTRACT
Since its beginnings in the nineteenth century English education policy has not been characterized by any distinctive, positive philosophy. At intervals we have been acutely aware of the conflicts in theory and practice that have prevented the emergence of any clear and coherent objectives for the English public system of education. Historians of education have shown how the schooling of the mass of the children came to be regarded as a painful necessity tempered, in times of war and emergency, by short-lived phases of indulgence. So long as the system fulfilled this negative, residual function the three Rs were thought sufficient to satisfy the popular urge for democracy; if not for education. And so long as it retained this negative virtue it was believed to be both efficient and cheap. To the members of the Geddes Committee in 1922 and the May Committee in 1931, whose reports exercised an important influence over education policies during the inter-war years, cheapness and efficiency were synonymous, just as they had been to the Royal Commission of 1858 set up to consider the question of 'sound and cheap elementary instruction to all classes of the people.'
