Emerging Trends in Higher Education

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Education, Democracy and Development

John Harriss^*

I am a child of the so-called ‘Butler’ Education Act of 1944 in the United Kingdom. This was the legislation that opened up and extended secondary education for British children, making it free for all, and establishing what were called ‘secondary modern’ schools, as well as technical schools, alongside the ‘grammar schools’ that already had a long history in England. The Act also introduced an examination that included intelligence tests as well as tests in English language and mathematics, and those were designed to assess which kind of school a child should go to at the age of 11, after six years of primary education. So I was one of the many children who grew up in the post-war period and ...