ABSTRACT
On 11 July 1921, Caroline Graveson, President of the Training College Association1 and Grace Fanner, President of the Association of Head Mistresses, wrote jointly to the President of the Board of Education, then H.A.L.Fisher. The letter alluded to a joint conference which had recently been held by the two associations ‘on the value of the Student-Teacher system’.2 It enclosed a summary of the principal arguments deployed during the conference, together with a reminder that a similar conference on the same topic had been held in May of the previous year.3 On that earlier occasion, representatives of the Association of Directors and Secretaries for Education (ADSE) and of the NUT had also been present. The burden of the resolution conveyed to the Board was
that the opportunities of a final year (17-18) at the secondary schools should be open to all intending teachers and it therefore invites the Board …to bring to the notice of the Local Education Authorities the desirability of making the position of an intending teacher, whose parent or guardian can show that he needs the assistance, equal financially in the last year of school life, to that of the Student Teacher.4
