Today is Quintin Hogg’s Birthday so I am reblogging his best quotes. Enjoy!

1. “Incidentally, the difference between those who are admittedly first class in their own field, and those who are not, lies very often precisely in this, that the first are able to give coherent accounts, in lucid terms, of what they are trying to do, and what they believe, whilst the others are not.”

2. ” ‘Doing what comes naturally’ can cover almost any kind of moral obliquity and permissiveness. Indeed, since we are all inhabitants of the natural world, there is practically no sort of action, good or bad, which cannot, in some sense be described as natural.”

3. “Civil society is not a voluntary organization in its nature, and all talk of a social contract or compact which can bind its members is specious and pretentious nonsense”

4. “All religion has its myths. Anti-religion has its myths and its mythmakers no less. Two of the great myths of our time owe their origin to Sigmund Freud & Karl Marx… they have, I believe, done more to undermine Christian philosophy than any two men since the Crucifixion.”

5. “I think that the modern world needs loyalty and respect for authority more than anything else”

6. “Law is, of course, in a sense, no more than a gigantic confidence trick. If enough people did not obey the law it would be totally unenforceable.”

7. “The Labour Party never presented to me a package which I would have been happy accepting for myself”

8. “After four months of office this was promotion with a vengeneace. But strangely enough I was not at all pleased. I had given my heart to the Navy, and I believed I was popular”

9. “At the time, like most educational enthusiasts, I was a dogmatic supporter of the raising of the compulsory school leaving age to 16. I am now, at best, an agnostic, at worst an unbeliver”

10. “I do not wish in any way to reduce the credit of Harold Macmillan in achieving this. But I do not think he could have done it without me.”

11. “Some of the makers of opinion are beyond reach, because they are on the other side. But before an election even these can be pressed into service. They can be made to take notice, to twitter with rage and scream in derision and, if they can be made to twitter and scream at the wrong things, or, rather, from their point of view, at the wrong things, powerful allies can be wheeled into support from sources normally neutral, or, occassionally, even unfriendly.”

The Importance of Sir David Hancock

30/09/2013

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I have a filter in my RSS reader that picks up obituaries with the word ‘education’ in them. Sounds morbid, I know, but few things are more inspirational than reading about people whose lives were used to improve schools.

Last week Sir David Hancock appeared in the feed. Working as senior civil servant for the DfE during the tenure of Keith Joseph and Kenneth Baker, he is credited with getting the Education Reform Act 1988 onto the statute books (arguably the most important reform since the 1944 Act).

What surprised me as I read the obituary is how influential Hancock clearly was, and yet how few of the Edu Secs biographies so far have really discussed the role of civil servants, at least not in complimentary ways. I’ve started reading Maurice Kogan’s “The Politics of Education” in which he interviews Edward Boyle and Anthony Crosland, and dissects the way education policies are implemented. While short shrift is often shown to civil servants, he quotes a senior official saying:

“I can honestly say that there is not one new policy in my sector of responsibility that I have not either started or substantially contributed to over the last twenty years”

If this is true, does treatment of one’s civil servants matter? Do the Secs who eschew thanking others end up being considered more “great” simply because they have stolen the limelight from others more deserving? Or can their civil service relationships affect whether or not policies are successfully implemented?

It’s another thing to watch for as I continue reading….

Quintin Hogg’s Remarkable Thoughts About Twitter

20/09/2013

Best Quotes from..., Quintin Hogg

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Twice-Education Secretary Quintin Hogg died in 2001, however his words on ‘twitter’ are remarkably apt to today’s political context.

In his 1975 autobiography he wrote the following about his time as leader of the Conservative election strategy:

“Some of the makers of opinion are beyond reach, because they are on the other side. But before an election even these can be pressed into service. They can be made to take notice, to twitter with rage and scream in derision and, if they can be made to twitter and scream at the right things, or, rather from their point of view, at the wrong things, powerful allies can be wheeled into support from sources normally neutral, or, occasionally, even unfriendly“

Two things are remarkable about this quote. One: if you put a capital letter on the word ‘twitter’ it would make absolute sense in the context of today’s social media use. And, two: this tool has been an absolute mainstay of Gove’s time in office. He has been unbelievably canny in using soundbites to start a twitter storm of opponents shouting out against things they would otherwise normally be more sensible about, or pushing them to be more extreme in their reactions and hence framing themselves as unreasonable.

It’s a good trick, but it’s an old one. And it’s one worth bearing in mind as we head further into party conference season.

Where did the Education Secretaries go next?

21/08/2013

Comparing Secretaries

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Speculation is rife about a September Cabinet re-shuffle. If Gove leaves education, where might he go next?

Using the scientific medium of Wikipedia, it seems 12 of the 31 Ed Secs never transitioned to other roles (though many continued as MPs or Peers).

Since the early 90s, Home Secretary became a popular move. Not only have three Ed Secs in the past 25 years moved straight into this role, Alan Johnson also made it there after Health and Ed Balls took position as Shadow Home Secretary before becoming Shadow Chancellor (though admittedly that was only for 3 months).

Women seem to have done particularly poorly in moves, with only Ruth Kelly keeping a Ministerial position while still in power. However Margaret Thatcher did move from being Ed Sec to being Leader of the Conservative Party, which turned out to be a very important move indeed!

Subsequent roles taken by Ed Secs…..

1	Rab Butler	Chancellor of the Exchequer
2	Richard Law
3	Ellen Wilkinson
4	George Tomlinson
5	Florence Horsbrugh
6	Geoffrey Lloyd
7	David Eccles	(1st time) President of the Board of Trade(2nd time) Paymaster General & Minister for the Arts
8	Edward Boyle
9	Quintin Hogg	Lord President of the Council
10	Michael Stewart	Secretary of State for Economic Affairs
11	Anthony Crosland	Secretary of State for Local Government & Regional Planning
12	Patrick Gordon Walker
13	Edward Short	Leader of the House of Commons/Lord President of the Council
14	Margaret Thatcher	Leader of the Conservative Party
15	Reg Prentice	Minister of State for Overseas Development
16	Fred Mulley	Secretary of State for Defence
17	Shirley Williams
18	Mark Carlisle
19	Keith Joseph
20	Kenneth Baker	Chairman of the Conservative Party
21	John MacGregor	Leader of the House of Commons/Lord President of the Council
22	Kenneth Clarke	Home Secretary
23	John Patten
24	Gillian Shephard	Shadow Secretary of State for Education
25	David Blunkett	Home Secretary
26	Estelle Morris
27	Charles Clarke	Home Secretary
28	Ruth Kelly	Minister for Women
29	Alan Johnson	Secretary of State for Health
30	Edward Balls	Shadow Secretary of State for Education
31	Michael Gove	??

The Essential: Florence Horsbrugh

16/08/2013

The Essential

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Florence Gertrude Horsbrugh, Baroness Horsbrugh, GBE, PC

Born: 13 October 1889

Died: 6 December 1969 (aged 80)

Party: Conservative

Dates as Education Minister: 2 Nov 1951 – 18 Oct 1954 (1082 days)

Age when Minister: 62 yrs (0m) to 65 yrs (0m)

Best Fact: The first woman to hold a Cabinet seat in a Conservative government

Born in Edinburgh to an accountant father she was educated at Landsdowne House and St. Hilda’s in Folkestone, before completing a Liberal Arts education at Mills College in California.

Her initial rise to prominence was through her work as head of the Ministry of Munitions canteen during the First World War. During this time she created a ‘travelling kitchen’ that could feed people after the National Kitchens shut, and she even managed to secure an invite to feed the Queen.

In 1931 she overturned a 14,000 Labour majority to become MP in Dundee and in 1939 gained a junior position as parliamentary secretary at the Ministry of Health in 1939. During this time she oversaw the evacuation of children and the beginning of NHS reforms.

After losing her seat in 1945 she stood, and won, a seat in Manchester’s Moss Side in 1950 (can’t work out if this is even more surprising than a Conservative winning Dundee) . Shortly afterwards she became Education Secretary.

Unfortunately Horsbrugh inherited a bad lot. Churchill’s 1951 government put housing as its top priority and the budget for education was slashed right at the moment that the raising of the school leaving age and the 1946 baby boom were felt in force. The lack of money for school buildings meant over-crowding and squalor. In 1954 the TES argued that her policies were vague and she suffered ‘a want of courage’.

She left office in 1954, aged 65. In 1959 she took up residence in the House of Lords.

Is she a contender for ‘greatest’ ever education secretary? Highly unlikely.

How many children do Education Secretaries have?

12/08/2013

Comparing Secretaries

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After the recent post “Where did the Education Secretaries go to school?” several people asked whether it really mattered. One answer that came up several times was that it might be relevant if a Minister never used the service in their care.

But if an Ed Sec who doesn’t use service will inevitably do a less good job, then it matters whether or not the Ed Sec has children themselves. I therefore decided to work out which Ed Secs had children and which did not.

It was easier to find out this information for dead Ed Secs than live ones. Obituaries always have a section telling you about people’s partners and children. However, I managed to find information for all but two. I couldn’t find definite information on Geoffrey Lloyd or John MacGregor. Also, while I could find out that Richard Law had at least one child, I don’t know if he only had one.

There’s also the issue of stepchildren. Anthony Crosland, Gillian Shephard and Shirley Williams each have two stepchildren by marriage. For the purposes of this chart I haven’t included them because I wasn’t able to distinguish how much contact they had with the children.

As it stands the average number of children among Ed Secs is 1.79. If stepchildren are added it is 2.

The most common number is actually 0. Although this is largely down to the high number of childless secretaries pre-1965. Since 1967 there have only been two childless education secretaries, and none at all between 1967 and 1994.

0	Ellen Wilkinson	1945
	George Tomlinson	1947
	Florence Horsbrugh	1951
	Edward Boyle	1962
	Michael Stewart	1964
	Anthony Crosland	1965
	Gillian Shephard	1994
	Estelle Morris	2001
1	Richard Law	1945
	Reg Prentice	1974
	Shirley Williams	1976
	Mark Carlisle	1979
	Kenneth Baker	1986
	John Patten	1992
2	Edward Short	1968
	Margaret Thatcher	1970
	Fred Mulley	1975
	Kenneth Clarke	1990
	Charles Clarke	2002
	Michael Gove	2010
3	Rab Butler	1944
	David Eccles	1954
	David Blunkett	1997
	Edward Balls	2007
4	Keith Joseph	1981
	Ruth Kelly	2004
	Alan Johnson	2006
5	Quintin Hogg	1957
5	Patrick Gordon Walker	1967

What is perhaps most surprising is that there appears to be no pattern for women. Though several women had no children of their own, Ruth Kelly had four, Margaret Thatcher two, and Shirley Williams had one of her own plus two stepchildren.

The 10 Best Quotes from George Tomlinson

09/08/2013

Best Quotes from..., George Tomlinson

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Having left school at 12, George Tomlinson nevertheless crept his way to the lofty position of Education Minister. His biography, completed from manuscripts after his untimely death, describes his quirky sense of humour and even-handed wisdom:

On Education

1. In the Daily Express, 1948, defending the raising of the school leaving age: “Why should not a crossing sweeper be thinking of Shakespeare while he is leaning on his brush? He is going to lean on it anyway.”

2. As President of the Association for Education: “The real value of education to me lies in this: that it enables the individual to pierce the crust of things, to get beneath the surface, to see through the exterior to the reality what lies behind and beneath.”

3. On his motive for being Education Minister “I was glad of the opportunity to carry a step further a vow I had made as a youth deprived of the opportunity of a secondary education through poverty, that no handicap of a similar kind should be allowed to stand in the way of any young person if any action of mine could prevent it.”

4. On The Spectator’s unkind editorial about him: “They say there’s an ignoramus at the Ministry of Education and they’re quite right, but perhaps it’s only a man who’s never had any education himself who can appreciate it to the full”

5. At the NUT conference in 1947: “At a pinch you might do without Parliament. You could do without the Minister: you could certainly do without Civil Servants and almost as certainly without local education authorities. Without any or all of them the world might not seem much worse. But if there were no teachers the world would be back in barbarism within two generations.”

6. On class sizes: “I realise that it is not economical or common-sense to train a teacher and then put him in charge of such a large class that all he can do is prevent the children from breaking the furniture.”

On Employment & Politics

7. On his being appointed as Minister of Works in 1945: “I was put in charge of building materials when there wasn’t any”

8. Pointing out that the unemployed of the Depression were the army of the War: “There never were unemployables. There were neglected members of the community who saved the situation in the country’s greatest need”

9. When officials vetoed his policy on grounds of precedent: “Ah’m not ‘ere to follow precendents. Ah’m ‘ere to make ’em. If it were just a case o’ following precedents you’d have no need of me, you could carry on on your own.”

On death

10. On his death bed the biographer, Fred Blacburn, asked George what was giving him comfort as he lay in bed. Tomlinson answered that he was comforted because he would win either way. When pressed to explain Tomlinson said: “If I get better I shall go to Blackpool and rest with Ethel. If I don’t get better, I shall go to Heaven and rest with my Saviour”

The Essential: George Tomlinson

07/08/2013

George Tomlinson, The Essential

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George Tomlinson

Born: 21 March 1890

Died: 22 September 1952 (aged 62)

Party: Labour

Dates as Education Minister: 10 February 1947 – 26 October 1951 (1719 days – double the usual average)

Age when Minister: 56 yrs (10m) to 61 yrs (7m)

Best Fact: Left primary school to work in a cotton mill

*

Born to a large working-poor family in Rishton, Lancashire, Tomlinson’s parents immediate took out death insurance after his birth due to the doctor’s advice that he would only live for a matter of weeks.

This would be only the first of many times that Tomlinson overcame odds stacked against him.

After leaving school, aged 12, to become a cotton mill worker, George became intent on finding a way to ‘get out’ of factory life. During his teens, Tomlinson attended night school classes on textiles and decided that he liked learning and his local church enough that he wanted to become a preacher. To prepare for the church entrance exam, he studied each night for three years. Getting up at 1.30am, he read through the night until heading to the mill at 5.30am, where he would work a full shift, go home, eat dinner, sleep, and then start again. Finally, after years of work, he was called to London to take his oral entrance exam. He failed.

Over the next two decades Tomlinson instead threw himself into trade union and local government activity. His most favoured positions involved education or textiles workers. In 1935, Tomlinson returned to Rishton, working at the Weavers’, Winders’ & Warpers’ Association where he took part in the Textile Workers’ Parliamentary Panel. Through his work there, and the accolades he had gathered over the previous decades as a local councillor, he was eventually asked to stand as MP.

Ten years after entering the House of Commons, and only a few days after the unexpected death of Ellen Wilkinson, Tomlinson was finally asked to take up the role he had wanted to get his hands on ever since he had been denied schooling of his own. He would, at last, be Minister for Education.

Two issues were most prominent during his tenure: school-rebuilding and the recruitment of thousands of new teachers. Tomlinson’s prior position at the Ministry of Works helped him gain the resources needed for 6000 new prefab classrooms, and by the end of 1947 a scheme was in place bringing in 13,414 new teachers via 55 college providers. He also began a reform of the examination system (sounds familiar) and worked tirelessly to ensure the raising of the school leaving age.

Removed from office after Labour lost the 1951 Election Tomlinson described the position of Education Minister as his ultimate goa statingl: “I am always happy as Minister of Education. Any man who could not be happy as Minister of Education has not power within him to be happy at all.”

Is he a contender for ‘greatest’ ever education secretary? Almost universally respected during his tenure, it is hard to think of another Ed Sec who was so widely admired across the education spectrum. That Tomlinson ‘saved’ two failing policies also means his record sounds impressive, but it also means he was not the ‘creator’ of any great vision or policy which means that he is rarely remembered by most people today. (He was certainly new to me). Perhaps what Tomlinson best shows is that greatness in one’s own time does not always translate into ‘greatness’ as defined by those in the future.

Where did the Education Secretaries go to school?

05/08/2013

Comparing Secretaries

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93% of Education Secretaries attended private or grammar schools. Only two did not.

1	Rab Butler	Marlborough
2	Richard Law	Shrewsbury School
3	Ellen Wilkinson	Ardwick school
4	George Tomlinson	Rishton Wesleyan School
5	Florence Horsbrugh	Lansdown House
6	Geoffrey Lloyd	Harrow School
7	David Eccles	Winchester
8	Edward Boyle	Eton
9	Quintin Hogg	Eton
10	Michael Stewart	Christ’s Hospital
11	Anthony Crosland	Highgate School
12	Patrick Gordon Walker	Wellington
13	Edward Short	College of the Venerable Bede
14	Margaret Thatcher	Kevesten & Grantham Girls’ School
15	Reg Prentice	Whitgift School
16	Fred Mulley	Warwick School
17	Shirley Williams	St Paul’s Girl School
18	Mark Carlisle	Abingdon School
19	Keith Joseph	Harrow School
20	Kenneth Baker	Hampton Grammar
21	John MacGregor	Merchiston Castle School
22	Kenneth Clarke	Nottingham High School
23	John Patten	Wimbledon College
24	Gillian Shephard	North Walsham Girls School
25	David Blunkett	Royal National College for the Blind
26	Estelle Morris	Whalley Range Grammar
27	Charles Clarke	Highgate School
28	Ruth Kelly	Sutton High School
29	Alan Johnson	Sloane Grammar School
30	Edward Balls	Nottingham High School
31	Michael Gove	Robert Gordon’s College

The first was brought to my attention by @oldandrewuk who pointed out that David Blunkett bucked the trend. Denied the opportunity to sit the test for grammar school, Blunkett was sent to the residential Royal National College for the Blind. Once there his teacher insisted blind children did not need qualifications and instead taught him to type.

The second escaped my radar because he barely went to school at all. Only when reading his biography did I learn that George Tomlinson became a cotton mill ‘half-timer’ when he was aged 12. By 13, he worked there full-time.

Does it matter?

One can argue that the place where a Minister is schooled doesn’t really matter. Yet when George Tomlinson took up post The Spectator did not see it that way. Their editorial said:

“To put the Ministry of Education, concerned as it is with the whole range of secondary schools, grammar, modern and technical, as well as the primary schools, in the hands of a man who left a primary school at the age of 12 and has had no other formal education at all – that, it must be said again, is a surprising proceeding which raises disturbing questions as to what the conception of education in the present Government’s view is.”

Funny how a similar furore was never kicked up about the very many Ministers from independent schools who had not experienced a single one of these school types.

If Gove Really Was Going Back To The 1940s….

02/08/2013

Rab Butler

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When Rab Butler was summoned by Churchill to be informed of his new position as President of the Board of Education, Churchill was typically forthright.

Butler’s biography explains what Churchill said:

“I now want you to go the Board of Education. I think that you can leave your mark there. You will be independent. Besides,” he continued, with rising fervour, “you will be in the war. You will move poor children from here to here,” and he lifted up and evacuated imaginary children from one side of his blotting pad to the other; “this will be very difficult”. He went on: “I am too old now to think you can improve people’s nature. Everyone has to learn to defend himself. I should not object if you could introduce a note of patriotism into the schools.” And then, with a grin, recalling our conversation the previous week, “Tell the children that Wolfe won Quebec.”

When Butler said that he should like to directly influence the school curriculum but that such moves were commonly frowned upon, Churchill answered earnestly: “Of course not by instruction or order but by suggestion”