ROSLA and the Emergence of Secondary Education

Abstract

After the First World War, and over the following 30 years, the issue of raising the school-leaving age was to be at the center of a strong educational campaign. Its advocates were often fervent in their support for such a measure and in many cases saw it as the key to further educational progress for the majority of children and for social progress more generally. Debate over the school-leaving age accompanied the emergence of a new kind of secondary education, designed to permit all children of the age range to take part rather than to exclude all but an academic elite. Foremost among the proponents of raising of the school-leaving age (ROSLA) at this time was the socialist intellectual R. H. Tawney. Yet issues around the school-leaving age continued to be controversial, and the measure was vigorously opposed on social and economic grounds especially in times of financial hardship. In the event, despite several false dawns, the school-leaving age was not raised even to 15 until after the Second World War, and ROSLA to 16 was destined to take even longer to achieve.