Patterns of segmentation within the teaching profession and teacher education in England, 1870–2020

Abstract

This chapter traces the historical construction of the segmentation of the teaching profession in England, particularly examining how teacher training reflected and influenced that process. The account considers three historical phases. The first, from 1870 to 1944, saw increasing state control over public education but also the preservation of existing forms of distinction. The second, from 1944 to the mid-1980s, encapsulates a period of post-war social-democratic political consensus that brought an important, but fragile, new status and cohesion to the state sector. Within the third, from the mid-1980s to the present, a performative view of the education system within a neoliberal framework revealed the profession's vulnerability to long-standing and new forms of segmentation. We argue that, although some deep-rooted forms of segmentation within the state sector appeared to have been largely overcome by the late-1970s, the newly secured status of the profession and limited internal cohesion left it ill-equipped to resist the fragmentation stimulated by neoliberal policies.