The Closure and Re-organisation of Institution of Teacher Education in England and Wales, 1972- 1981

Abstract

The closure and reorganization of the Colleges of Education in England and Wales during the 1970s will perhaps go down in the history of English education at the beginning of the end! That is the beginning of the end I of the era of affluence in higher education in Britain which characterized the sixties and early seventies and which led one commentator to characterize the dominant values of teacher education at the time as those of 'social and literary romanticism.' The erosion of such values began then and it has continued unceasingly from that day forward. This has been accompanied by a major increase in forms of bureaucratic control under the demands both of a shrinking numbers base and of increasing organizational differentiation. In many cases this process has resulted in the attempted marriage of such romantic values with those of the craft and technical tradition in English education where, in the case of the last two, the liturgy of rationality as a highly valued goal in modem industrial societies is daily intoned.