The Higher Grant

In 1918, when the issue of the war was still uncertain, a new Education Act became law. Known as the Fisher Act, after the President of the Board of Education, the historian and politician H. A. L. Fisher, it was chiefly concerned with elementary education ¹¹² but, as Fisher pointed out in the House of Commons on May 9th, it was hoped that the L.E.A.s, whose powers under the Act were considerably increased, would be encouraged to provide more secondary schools, apply for grants, and ‘as a natural consequence’, offer free places at those schools. It was also hoped that L.E.A.s would prepare schemes to ‘ensure means whereby children and young persons shall not be debarred by poverty from the benefits of higher education’.