ABSTRACT
In this chapter we seek to summarize and to emphasize those factors that have influenced directly and significantly the relative and absolute cost of education in the United Kingdom since the end of the First World War. This was, paradoxically, one of the most difficult parts of our task. Our main object, the elucidation of the total true economic cost of education during this period, was a simple one in concept, although the complexity of the data and the processing to which it was submitted made it a tiresome one. But how to describe briefly the growth and changes of education itself? For to undertake such a task is to interpret a whole society, and the social structure not of one but of four countries. This chapter presents, therefore, a partial and inadequate review of the major elements that must be discussed in any such attempt, and the reader must be asked to look elsewhere, especially to those books mentioned in the bibliography, for a fuller understanding of the general history of the period. This chapter is intended for the general reader, unfamiliar with the detail of the education system.
