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Education and Skills Bill

I am familiar with the Geddes axe, but although there may have been public expenditure pressures, the story of why that Act was not fully implemented is more complicated and still relevant. The then Government decided, partly because of public expenditure pressures, that they could not afford to make the scheme a national, compulsory one. They instead gave local authorities, which then as now had a lot of responsibility for education, the ability to decide whether to oblige employers to provide their employees with some day release education. Some local authorities implemented the provisions of the Fisher Act. For example, London decided that pupils should be required to receive some kind of continuing education, even after they had left school, for 320 hours a year. However, the boundaries of London extended only as far north as the Edgware road. North of that was Middlesex, which made no such requirement of employers, the result of which was a significant problem—namely, that employers found that they would much rather recruit young people who lived north of the Edgware road than those who lived south of it. I do not know whether that is a warning about the perils of localism or a warning about the perils of compulsion, but we can learn lessons from the attempt to implement that legislation.