ABSTRACT
'The mass of the English people have never yet evolved genuine schools of their own', Fred Clarke concluded in Education and the Social Order (1940), on the eve of wartime moves to open up education opportunity. 'Schools have always been provided for them from above, in a form and with a content of studies that suited the ruling interests.' 1 Sir Fred Clarke, as he became, had passed much of his professional life in the dominions before taking up the post of Director of the London University Institute of Education; he was also a supporter of the then influential Christian News Letter group, which pressed for reform on various fronts.
