ABSTRACT
Describing the rise of large preparatory schools as ‘one of the most remarkable developments of modern education’, Welldon had cited, as evidence of public school interest in preparatory schools, the institution of junior school departments. Since the institution of the secondary schools code of 1904 the preparatory schools, straddling the boundary between the age ranges of elementary and secondary schools, had been denied the right to receive free inspections, to which secondary schools were entitled. In the event the board of education compromised and gained sanction from the treasury to inspect up to twenty preparatory schools per year free of charge. Mansfield was a leader in the reform of the curriculum and in the provision of teacher training courses for preparatory schoolmasters, and he played a leading role in the establishment of the Common Entrance examination. It has been said of him that ‘if Frank Ritchie devised the machinery of the examination, Mansfield’s was the guiding spirit’.
