ABSTRACT
Kay-Shuttleworth, the English educational administrator, studied medicine in Edinburgh, qualifying in 1827. From there he secured a post as secretary to the Board of Health in Manchester. As Dr James Kay – the suffix Shuttleworth was added upon marriage, later – his publication Moral and Physical Condition of the Working Class in Manchester in 1832 (1833) brought him to national prominence after linking the city’s inadequate schooling with the destitution and degradation of the poor. In 1835 he was appointed as an assistant Poor Law commissioner, working in East Anglia and London. His talents as an administrator and author of reports led to his appointment, in 1839, as the first secretary to the new committee of the Privy Council on Education, which had been established to administer the first government grants for schooling. He held this post for ten years, during which he developed the administrative framework for the future Department of Education and school inspection system. He worked unbearably long hours and retired through ill health in 1849. As a private venture, Kay-Shuttleworth established the first English teacher training college in Battersea, London, in 1839–40. This became a model for later colleges, recruiting local pupils as trainee teachers. Two important publications were Public Education (1853) and Four Periods of Public Education (1862). To the end, Kay-Shuttleworth retained his belief that the state should not unnecessarily supplant the parent in provision of schooling.
