ABSTRACT
The upheaval in the educational system in the autumn of 1939 put an end to any immediate prospect of continuing the efforts at mild reform which had been apparent in the last four years of the interwar period. Preparations for raising the school leaving age to fifteen as from September 1939, for the development of the senior school system and for possible changes in the secondary school curriculum arising on the Spens Report were all set aside under the impact of the evacuation, the closing of schools and the requisitioning of many school buildings.[ 1 ] Yet even within four weeks of the start of the war there were signs of a change in the public attitude to education. The Times Educational Supplement commented, while the traditional idea was that it was the business of the Board of Education to do no more than advise and watch, now its ministers were suddenly asked to plan and control — activities which local authorities would have strongly resented in peacetime.[ 2 ]
