ABSTRACT
The 1944 Act had divided children at secondary age into groupings which assumed an economic structure already long out of date. Successive Secretaries of State for Education have explored the powers available to them to impact on an education system administered, and largely controlled, by local education authorities. During the three decades which followed the 1944 Act, Mrs Thatcher in her period as Secretary of State for Education was the only minister to pick up and examine the possibilities of the powers her office held over the qualifications of teachers. The recognition in the 1972 White Paper of the need for increased training for the teaching force already in post was, in retrospect, most far-reaching and far-sighted. It was perhaps a uniquely British tradition which assumed that teachers would perform their role as transmitters of values without its requirement being explicitly stated.
