Ian Hislop's School Rules S01E02 - Class Struggles

The thirties are often thought of as the Golden Age of English education, with well-mannered children happy to be taught by kind but firm teachers. Behind the image, Ian Hislop discovers an overcrowded, underfunded system dominated by Victorian thinking and, above all, the cane. Not surprising then, that in reaction the thirties saw a wave of progressive teaching methods, left-wing teachers and attacks on public school privilege. The culmination of this was the Butler Education Act of World War II and a battle with both Churchill and the Church of England to get it passed.