Social Work with Children

The Educational Perspective

Eric Blyth

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781317886693
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Health Care Delivery

The recent review of the Diploma in Social Work highlighted the fact that children and young people who are in care have less successsful records of educational achievement than their peers. Social Work with Children encourages students to view the educational experiences of the young people they will work with seriously and to provide them with the necessary information to do so with confidence and authority. It takes account of the problems asssociated with inter-agency and inter-professional work drawing upon the authors own practical experience and research. Illustrative case studies are provided.

CHAPTER 1
The purposes of education and the growth of welfare

Introduction

The availability of free and compulsory education for its children is generally considered a hallmark of the development of a society and is emphasised as a basic right to which children should be entitled by the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Convention on the Rights of the Child and the European Convention on Human Rights. However, while there is broad agreement that the purpose of education should be to prepare children for adult life, differing groups of people have placed differing emphases on the adult qualities desired. In the 1992 White Paper Choice and Diversity the government emphasises the moral dimensions of education's ability to shape future citizens: 'Regular attendance at school and taking advantage of a good education with a strong moral, spiritual and cultural context, are not only essential to becoming well qualified and growing up balanced, they are also one of the best deterrents against criminality' (DFE, 1992a, p. 6). The police, who could be expected to share this emphasis, demonstrate an equal interest in pupil safety. For example, a joint police/local education authority publication on curriculum liaison for responsible citizenship (West Yorkshire Police/West Yorkshire Local Education Authorities, 1988), views the police role in education with three- to nine-year olds entirely as one concerned with safety on the roads, in the home and near water, and with child abuse, leaving issues to do with inculcating respect for the law until the pupils are nine years old. Parents, who may well share the safety concerns of the police, are likely to emphasise education as preparation for successful participation in the world of work and protest strongly to schools about other pupils who disrupt their own children's academic progress. Pupils, on the other hand, are more likely to be concerned with the more immediate social realities of school, as the locus both of friendships and enmities and, in the case of extreme forms of the latter, expecting schools to protect them from bullying.

While there appears general agreement that education is a 'good thing', there has been no evidence of attempts to reconcile differences about the purpose of education. The history of the development of compulsory education in Britain reflects the differing emphases of various powerful groups which have influenced its avowed purposes: as a form of social control; promoting self advancement; and the means of providing a flexible labour force to meet the needs of the economy.

This chapter will examine the tensions arising from these conflicting aims not only in relation to the origins of compulsory education but also how they reflected subsequent debates. The complementary rise in welfare which accompanied a concern to deal with both 'deprived' and 'depraved' children will also be introduced and the scene set for the complex social issues which continue to test social workers in the educational context.

The origins of compulsory education in Britain

The development of formal compulsory education as a separate activity from education within the home under the influence of parents reflected power divisions in society. Although the power of the Church was to wane with the advent of industrialisation, until the late 1880s the major providers of formal education in Britain were the Church of England, the Roman Catholic and non-conformist churches and charitable bodies providing both day and Sunday schooling for children of the poor and of the very wealthy. These schools were characterised by strict discipline, emphasising the churches' focus on moral rescue and religious instruction. At the same time, the quality of teaching often left much to be desired: 'The master was often a man who had failed at other employment or was handicapped by some physical deformity' (Barnard, 1969, p. 3), indicating that teaching was not considered to be a highly skilled job which would demand universal respect.

These early themes of moral rescue and undervalued teaching permeate contemporary debates around education, the emphasis being on unruly pupils and inadequate teachers at times of civil unrest. Historically much has been expected of teachers in producing the 'right sort' of citizens with neither the skills required nor the puipose of the task being clearly articulated. It is here that the role of the teacher in loco parentis has its roots, with teachers - like parents - lacking support but receiving a large measure of criticism.

That state involvement in mass education did not occur earlier was the result of several factors including: the churches' unwillingness to relinquish their own powers as major providers of education; fears by non-established religious groups of interference from the established Church; the dominant political ideology of laissez-faire, resistance from employers at the prospect of losing a source of cheap labour; and similar resistance from parents at the prospect of losing the child's earnings (which for many would signify hardship of immense proportions); the shortage of teachers; and the costs to the state of providing education for all.

Although the strength of these sentiments did not themselves abate, there was a persistent pressure for increased state intervention in education. The common objective of compulsory state education was held by a variety of interest groups but with different motives and agenda. There was increased pressure from the poor themselves for access to education and the wherewithal to develop necessary skills to enable them to compete during a period of rapid industrialisation, coinciding with industry's need for a competent workforce. H. G. Wells wrote that: 'the Education Act of 1870 was not an act for common universal education, it was an act to educate the lower classes for employment on lower-class lines and with specially trained inferior teachers who had no university qualification' (cited in Coombes and Beer, 1984, p. 5).

A range of benevolent reformist pressures sought to 'improve' the working classes. The 'child-saving' movement had as its aim the liberation of children from oppressive working conditions and the preservation of their 'innocence' (Piatt, 1969) but education of working-class children was not intended to be too extensive (Maclure, 1965) and there was also a view that children were in need of surveillance: 'Education was desirable because it prevented juvenile delinquency and mendicancy, because it increased a labourer's skill, productivity and earning power; because it prevented the growth of criminal classes; and because it led the workman to realize his true interests lay not in Communism or Chartism but in harmony with his employers' (Finer, cited in Carlen et al., 1992, p. 19).

The value of compulsory education in ensuring that the working class learned to know their place - and stayed there - was a lesson quickly learned by the converts to 'enlightened self-interest' and one which has apparently not been forgotten: 'We are in a period of considerable social change. There may be social unrest, but we can cope with the Toxteths. But, if we have a highly educated and idle population we may possibly anticipate more serious social conflict. People must be educated once more to know their place' (DES official cited in Ranson, 1984, p. 241). The tension between education as a form of social control and a means of self-advancement and socio-economic mobility still remains. It clearly suits dominant socio-economic groups to hold out the carrot of self-improvement via education and the near-mythical figure of the self-made (wo)man as evidence that the system does reward those who are worthy and who make sufficient effort and that, conversely, failure to succeed is the result of individual rather than institutionalised shortcomings.

The development of compulsory education

The introduction of compulsory education in Britain was itself a gradual process. Although the Elementary Education Act of 1870 is conventionally regarded as the hallmark statute, its immediate effect was to do little more than plug the gaps in provision left by voluntary educational bodies and church schooling. It provided for the administration of education by local School Boards who were given powers to provide and maintain elementary schools from public funds. Full-time school attendance was not universally compulsory but Boards were given powers - if they wished - to introduce by-laws to compel attendance and to impose financial penalties on parents who failed to make proper arrangements for their children's education. In practice there was a national shortage of school places and considerable regional variations in local by-laws, the enforcement of parents' statutory obligations and arrangements for exemptions from attendance. Early graduation from school was legitimated by the acquisition of specified standards of educational proficiency. For example, the London School Board passed a by-law making attendance compulsory for children aged between five and thirteen years, but a child who had achieved a prescribed level of educational attainment was allowed to leave school at the age of ten years, while younger children adjudged to be 'beneficially and necessarily' at work were permitted to attend half-time only. Neither did the 1870 Act ensure free elementary education for all, although Boards were authorised to waive the school fees of children from impoverished families. School attendance officers did not always implement this legislation rigorously (for an overview, see Rubenstein, 1969) and magistrates also took a lenient view of truancy. Nevertheless, the introduction of the 1870 Act not only began the inexorable push for free compulsory schooling it also signalled a significant shift in the way in which children were perceived, their new relationship with education replacing that which they had previously had with employment. Prior to education legislation, earlier mines and factories legislation required minimal provision of education and school attendance as a condition of the employment of children. The Factory Act 1844, for example, permitted children over eight years of age to be employed half-time in workshops and factories and at thirteen they could be employed full-time. The 1874 Factory Act raised these ages to ten and fourteen years respectively. Two years later the 1876 Education Act prohibited the employment during school hours of children living more than two miles from an elementary school who were aged under ten years and of those between ten years and fourteen years unless they had reached certain specified educational targets. Children in rural areas were also permitted to be absent from school for up to six weeks so that they could assist with agricultural work. Rural traditions of children assisting with harvesting were responsible for the summer vacation during July and August. The aspirations of those who had sought to rescue children from oppressive working conditions were subjugated to the needs of the economy. While child employment during school hours was increasingly proscribed, the interests of employers and poor families meant that many children were forced to work before and after attending school. The employment of school-age children has continued to raise educational concerns and has contemporary relevance as a child protection issue, a topic to which we return in chapter 10.

The Education Act 1880 increased the upper age limit of compulsory education to ten years, although there was still no statutory regulation of how attendance was to be controlled or enforced, nor by whom. In 1899 the upper age of compulsory education was further increased to twelve years and by the end of the century most elementary school fees had been abolished (although the complete elimination of fees for elementary schooling had to wait until 1918). The Education Act 1902 increased the age of compulsory education to a child's thirteenth birthday and abolished ad hoc school boards, placing the responsibility for education provision on education authorities under the auspices of county and county-borough councils and enabling the running costs of voluntary (church) schools to be met from taxation and local rates revenues. However, although there was an obligation on local authorities to provide education, there remained widespread variation throughout the country because provision of education other than elementary was a discretionary power and not a statutory duty for councils of non-county boroughs with a population exceeding 10,000, and for urban districts with a population exceeding 20,000 at the 1901 census.

The 1918 Education Act finally abolished half-time schooling and raised the school leaving age to fourteen, at which it remained until 1947, when it was raised to fifteen, and was further raised to sixteen in 1972. However, because of continuing unresolved tensions between education as a means of self-advancement yet responding flexibly to the needs of the economy, the effective policing of compulsory education has always been perceived as problematic: 'The difficult thing would not be to pass a law making education compulsory; the difficult thing would be to work such a law after we had got it' (Matthew Arnold cited in Maclure, 1965, p. 82).

Enforcing school attendance

By the beginning of the 1900s, official records indicate 88 per cent of children under twelve years were on school rolls, although average daily attendance was only about 72 per cent. While attendance figures are now generally higher, little appears to have changed in the intervening period concerning the main reasons for absence, these still consisting of poverty, availability of juvenile employment, weather conditions, domestic duties and alternative attractions (Digby and Searby, 1981). However, then - as now - knowledge of attendance rates assumes accurate recording of registration. Throughout the nineteenth century grants to schools and reimbursement of teachers were dependent on pupil numbers and levels of attendance as well as pupil attainment in formal examinations. While the report of the Newcastle Commissioners in 1861 did not fully endorse the concept of 'payment by results' it did acknowledge the need for effective accountability in schools and in the 1880s more than a third of a head teacher's salary and more than a fifth of the salary of an assistant teacher were related to pupil numbers and attendance (Rubenstein, 1969). Payment by results did not disappear until the turn of the century. Much as contemporary concerns surround the accuracy of school attendance registers to minimise the prevalence of 'unauthorised' absence (see chapter 7), there was thus a strong incentive for schools to under-report absence.

As we have indicated above, early enforcement of attendance was both patchy and variable. Apart from the variable strength of opposition from families and employers, Carlen et al. (1992) observe that selective targeting was based on judgements about whether greater advantage would accrue from certain children continuing in domestic or industrial labour, especially if this relieved the state of providing financial support to families. Because of their higher visibility boys were more likely to be the focus of official intervention than girls whose absence tended to be associated with low-profile activities such as household, child-care and other domestic duties (Green, 1980).

The School Boards were empowered to appoint officers to enforce attendance. Stevenson and Hague (1954) outline the duties of an 1870s School Attendance Officer as:

• ensuring that the name of every child between the ages of five and fourteen years (unless previously exempted from attendance at school according to law) was on the register of a public elementary school, or to satisfy themselves that the child was under efficient instruction in some other manner;
• securing the regular and punctual attendance at school of children whose names were on the school roll;
• making enquiries and reporting with regard to the remission of school fees in necessitous cases and applications for part-time labour certificates.

Those appointed as school attendance officers tended to be middle-aged men who had previously been employed in the police or armed forces, a trend which continued well into the twentieth century and which has been at least partly responsible for the continuing authoritarian image of the education welfare service (Blyth and Milner, 1988). However, it would be a mistake to regard such recruitment practices as unique. The Victorian precursor of the Probation Service actively recruited former police officers, while other early recruits included a complete bench of magistrates and the chief constable of Liverpool. Despite being appointed because of an 'authoritarian' background, officials in all these settings shared a common missionary ideal, seeing themselves as the saviours of the 'deprived' as well as the 'depraved'. Although the central focus was on attendance enforcement, school attendance officers were well aware of the impact of poverty and material disadvantage on access to educational opportunity. Robert Aitken, an early president of the attendance officers' national association stated: 'Those with whom we are in contact require our sympathy and all our counsel. Children brought up too often in poverty and squalor and huddled in wretched homes, what thought have they for good education. School life can never succeed, or the influence of school, while home life is cramped and crushed by insanitary and often immoral surroundings' (cited in Coombes and Beer, 1984, p. 6).

The mottoes selected for the two national associations in education welfare at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries respectively ('Children: these we serve' and 'For every child a chance') indicate the welfare, rather than the purely attendance enforcement, orientations of officers' work. Education welfare is the oldest welfare service established by the state and the roots of modern social work, with its emphasis on child-centred interventions, are to be found in accounts of its inception. Despite subsequent policy reforms and the impact of financial constraints many of these functions remain and half a century after Aitken's pronouncement a Superintendent Attendance Officer was able to assert: 'Few vocations offer more scope for real social service' (Education, 1946).

The state, education and the family

The introduction of compulsory education marked a significant change in the relationship between children and work but it also had important ramifications for the relationship between children and their parents. Carlen et al. (1992) note that this is central to the debate about how education should best respond to the needs of industry and commerce.

The introduction of compulsory education and imposition of sanctions against parents who failed to secure their children's 'proper education' represented a significant dilution of the rights of parents over their children, not in favour of children themselves but in favour of the state. While education legislation did, and still does, allow for a child's exemption from registration at a school on the grounds that (s)he is being educated 'otherwise', very few parents are in a position to make alternative education provision other than in school. For most children, compulsory education effectively means compulsory schooling. When a child is in school, therefore, both responsibility and control are transferred from parents to the school. The legal definition of a teacher's duty while in loco parentis was established in the 1890s and outlined by Lord Esher (then Master of the Rolls) as a duty 'to take such care of his boys as a careful father would take care of his boys' (Williams v Eady, 1893). Subsequent legal decisions have determined that the concept of 'reasonable care' should be applied in the c...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• 1 The purposes of education and the growth of welfare
• 2 The impact of school
• 3 Education reform in Britain
• 4 Social work and schooling
• 5 The education of children in public care
• 6 Children who care for others
• 7 School attendance
• 8 Disabled children
• 9 Pupils with behaviour problems
• 10 Protecting children from abuse and exploitation
• Bibliography
• Index