ABSTRACT
As a continuation of the theme of the preceding chapter, in chapter 9 the analysis commences by focusing narrowly upon differences in patterns of formal education in Birmingham and Sheffield between the establishment of the school boards and the publication of the Bryce Report. However, the argument subsequently broadens. In the course of chapter 10 and chapter 11 specific features of the evolving class structures and institutional orders of the two cities are located in the wider context of the development of the national society during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This chapter opens with a comparative analysis of the development of elementary, secondary and higher education in the two cities during the late nineteenth century. It is argued that the policies of the school boards in the sphere of elementary education reflected the contrasting processes of political conflict and industrial growth whose early stages were noticed in previous chapters. In the spheres of secondary and higher education an apparently paradoxical pattern took shape. A classical or ‘liberal’ curriculum held pride of place in Birmingham’s secondary schools and Sheffield’s university college whereas a science-based curriculum was dominant in Sheffield’s secondary schools and Birmingham’s university college. An explanation for this pattern is suggested in terms of three aspects of local social structure: the relationships between the middle class and local secondary schools in the two cities inherited from the previous period; the orientations towards the local colleges of industrialists in Birmingham and Sheffield; and the capacity of municipal establishments in the two cities to institutionalise forms of 209higher education contrary to metropolitan definitions which were subject to the influence of Oxford and Cambridge.
