Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to Volume 2
- PART FIVE THE UNDERLYING FRAMEWORK
- PART SIX ACCOUNTING FOR SOCIAL SPENDING, JOBS, AND GROWTH
- APPENDICES
- A Time Series on School Enrollments and Teachers, 1830–1930
- B Conflicting Data on Elementary School Enrollments within the United Kingdom, 1851–1931
- C Public and Total Educational Expenditures as Percentages of National Product, since 1850
- D Regressions Predicting Schooling, Growth, Social Transfers, and Direct Taxes, 1880–1930
- E Regressions Predicting Social Spending, Growth, and Employment, OECD 1962–1995
- F Social Transfers circa 1990 versus History
- G Postregression Accounting Formulae
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
B - Conflicting Data on Elementary School Enrollments within the United Kingdom, 1851–1931
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to Volume 2
- PART FIVE THE UNDERLYING FRAMEWORK
- PART SIX ACCOUNTING FOR SOCIAL SPENDING, JOBS, AND GROWTH
- APPENDICES
- A Time Series on School Enrollments and Teachers, 1830–1930
- B Conflicting Data on Elementary School Enrollments within the United Kingdom, 1851–1931
- C Public and Total Educational Expenditures as Percentages of National Product, since 1850
- D Regressions Predicting Schooling, Growth, Social Transfers, and Direct Taxes, 1880–1930
- E Regressions Predicting Social Spending, Growth, and Employment, OECD 1962–1995
- F Social Transfers circa 1990 versus History
- G Postregression Accounting Formulae
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The data on primary-school enrollments before 1914 are as complicated and treacherous for the United Kingdom as for any major country. The government was slow to set up a consistent statistical coverage. There were census questions on children as “scholars” in the occupational part of the censuses of England and Wales in 1851 and 1871, and similar data for Scotland in 1851, 1871, and 1891. These probably gave household heads an opportunity to take a generous definition of enrollment in school, and for this reason might give somewhat higher figures than would other countries' enrollment counts supplied by institutions. On the side of underestimation, what became the eventual reporting series on pupils in inspected schools started out far too modestly in the middle of the nineteenth century. Only by 1891 at the earliest could the coverage of public and private schools have been nearly complete.
We are warned about this by Brian Mitchell:
[The statistics of education are] selected from the much greater amount of badly organised material which is available in the sources, beginning in the middle of the nineteenth century…. The nature of what is available may be judged from Sanderson's survey, which concludes that it is not yet possible to draw up a national balance sheet even as to literacy.
It was with some hesitation that even the schools statistics for the nineteenth century were included here, because the material is far from easily tractable. The authorities changed the coverage of what they collected, and their methods of collection as well, on numerous occasions, often with little to indicate to the user what changes had taken place.[…]
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Growing PublicSocial Spending and Economic Growth since the Eighteenth Century, pp. 147 - 152Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004