`It really was rather disgraceful. Still, that is politics'
| Author | Peter Dorey |
| Date | 01 October 2008 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0952076708093251 |
| Published date | 01 October 2008 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
‘It really was rather
disgraceful. Still, that is
politics’
The 1967–8 Decision to Defer the Raising of the School
Leaving Age
Peter Dorey
Cardiff University, UK
Abstract The 1964–70 Labour Governments were formally committed to a major
expansion and reorganization of education in Britain, at both secondary and
higher levels. Alongside the commitment to ‘comprehensivisation’ of
secondary schools and the expansion of universities, Labour was also
committed to raising the school leaving age from 15 to 16. However, the
increasingly severe economic problems that affected Britain from 1966
onwards, culminating in devaluation in November 1967, prompted an urgent
search for significant cutbacks in public expenditure, with one of the
casualties being the raising of the school leaving age. A case study of this
decision reveals several aspects of interest to students of public policy and
administration, including the extent to which short-term economic exigencies
were privileged over long-term social objectives. This enabled the Treasury to
exercise dominance over spending Departments, with its senior officials
presenting the options for financial savings in a manner that led almost
ineluctably to the raising of the school leaving age being sacrificed. The
decision also revealed the existence of tensions within the Cabinet, not merely
on traditional ideological and inter-Departmental grounds, important though
these were, but also, to some extent, in terms of the socio-educational
backgrounds of Ministers. Consequently, the Treasury and its officials were
able to pursue a subtle process of ‘divide and rule’ among Ministers and their
Departments.
Keywords devaluation, education, Ministers, public expenditure, Treasury
DOI: 10.1177/0952076708093251
Peter Dorey, Department of Politics, School of European Studies, Cardiff University,
65–68 Park Place, Cardiff CF10 3AS, UK. [email: dorey@cardiff.ac.uk] 391
© Public Policy and Administration
SAGE Publications Ltd
Los Angeles, London, New Delhi
and Singapore
0952-0767
200810 23(4) 391–407
Introduction
When the Labour Party entered Office in 1964, the modernization and reform of
education, at all levels, constituted a key policy objective. Although the extension
of comprehensive secondary education and the expansion of higher education
(including the creation of the Open University) were the two aspects that have
received the most attention, the Party was also formally committed to raising the
school leaving age from 15 to 16, although this objective had also been pledged by
the previous Conservative Government, in January 1964. However, right from the
outset, the 1964–70 Labour Governments were beset by a series of economic
crises, which resulted in the Cabinet pursuing a succession of deflationary meas-
ures, initially in order to avoid devaluation, and then, once devaluation became
unavoidable, in November 1967, to ensure that devaluation ‘worked’.
With curbs on public expenditure inevitably forming a key element in the vari-
ous deflationary packages, the Cabinet was effectively obliged to reconsider its
educational priorities, for all were predicated upon, or necessitated, increased
expenditure, and consequently economic retrenchment unavoidably led to a re-
appraisal of specific education policies, and their ranking, both in terms of the
Cabinet’s overall objectives and in relation to each other. Ultimately, it was
the raising of the school leaving age that was offered as a short-term sacrifice, but
the decision to defer it for two years was one that proved deeply divisive, not
merely in terms of the traditional Left–Right ideological spectrum within the
Labour Party, but also, to some extent, with regard to the socio-educational back-
grounds of the Ministers involved. Moreover, in some instances, the decision also
reflected and reinforced Ministerial perceptions of their Department’s interests,
with some of them endorsing deferral of the raising of the school leaving age in
order to protect their own Departmental budgets, while other Ministers supported
the decision partly on the grounds that if they were going to have to accept cuts,
education should share the pain too.
The Commitment to Raising the School Leaving Age
Although it was the 1959–64 Conservative Government that formally announced
its intention, in January 1964, imminently to raise the school leaving age from 15
to 16, this policy objective was readily endorsed by the Labour Party. Indeed, a
school leaving age of 16 had originally been decreed a long-term objective in
the 1944 (Butler) Education Act, enacted by the Wartime Coalition Government,
but it was not until 1964 that both of the main political parties included this
commitment in their respective election manifestos. Labour’s commitment to
raising the school leaving age constituted one of three interrelated educational
policy objectives during this decade, the other two being the extension of com-
prehensive schooling and the expansion of higher education. Although both of
these policies had been initiated by the 1951–64 Conservative Governments, it
Public Policy and Administration 23(4)
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