ABSTRACT
Headmasters of many public schools believed that one of the distinguishing features of their schools was independence of the state and its educational agencies. It may therefore seem odd that it should be necessary for anyone attempting to give an overall picture of the planning for educational reconstruction to turn attention to these schools immediately after considering the redesigning of the legislative framework for the new statutory system. Yet the future of the public schools — both of the independent boarding and and direct-grant grammar varieties — was one of the principal educational and social issues of these years, and their influence was out of all relation to the very small proportion of the nation's children attending them. Ministers found members of the Commons only too ready to make an opportunity to discuss these schools even when the normal rules of debate might seem to preclude their consideration from the business formally before the House. Among the general public the future of the public schools almost certainly attracted more interest than did the dual system controversy. Within the Board of Education itself senior officials had become involved in various moves designed to help these schools from the very beginning of the war — indeed, from before the war — and their welfare occupied a good deal of the time and effort of the head of the Secondary Branch throughout the war, even though the independent boarding schools at any rate were of their very nature supposed not to be his direct concern.
