Norwoood and Reconstruction

Given that the Spens Report of 1938 had reported on examinations it is not easy to understand why the Board of Education should have set up a committee to examine this area again, among other aspects of secondary education. Furthermore, it was not the independent Consultative Committee of the Board of Education which had produced the major inter-war reports such as the two Hadow Reports of 1926 and 1931, or Spens, but the Secondary Schools Examination Council, whose chairperson, Cyril Norwood was asked to set up a small committee ‘to consider suggested changes in the secondary school curriculum and the question of school examinations in relation thereto’. Norwood was another traditionalist; Merchant Taylors School and Oxford, Classics teacher at Leeds Grammar School, head teacher at Bristol Grammar School, followed by teaching at Marlborough and a headship at Harrow, during which time he was initiated into the Freemason lodge of the school. ¹ He believed, ‘… it was the duty of the working class to know their place and to obey those in positions of authority… girls should be educated quite differently from boys. “The majority will eventually marry. At school they are taught exactly as if they were going to university”.’ ² By now he was President at St John’s College, Oxford University. He had written in favour of the elementary school system provided for the majority of children: ‘Incomplete as it is, elementary education has become a steadily civilising agency. It has, I think, been the main influence which has prevented Bolshevism, Communism, and theories of revolt and destruction from obtaining any real hold upon the people of this country.’ ³