Depression spreads to Europe. Teachers pay slashed by 10 per cent.

Hadow report on primary education recommends curriculum emphasising activity and experience rather than factual knowledge. Maximum of 40 for primary school classes, special training for teachers of backward children.

1932 First local authority child guidance clinic opens in Birmingham (22 by 1939).

Grammar schools open to all according to ability, rather than a proportion of places for the brightest elementary pupils.

NUT estimates more than more than 7,000 unqualified teachers in service.

1933 Hadow report on nursery and infant education emphasises need for new open-air schools. Nursery schools praised but home considered best for very young.

1934 Cyril Burt’s interpretation of intelligence tests refuted by research at LSE. Gordonstoun founded by Kurt Hahn.

Mumps organism isolated.

1935 A scheme to feed under-nourished mothers in the Rhondda valley reduces puerperal death rate by two-thirds.

Dramatic slow-down in growth of school meals 1935-39.

Marion Richardson publishes “Writing and Writing Patterns”.

1936 Education Act calls for raising of leaving age to 15 in September 1939 (postponed by the outbreak of war).

BBC television station opens at Alexandra Palace.

1937 Survey points to major vitamin deficiency in working class diet.

Billy Butlin opens his first holiday camp - at Skegness.

“Handbook of Suggestions for Teachers” emphasises need for child-centred primary education.

1938 Spens report on secondary education recommends expansion of technical schools: vocational courses: careers’ teachers; leaving age of 16: grammar, technical and secondary modern schools, but late transfers at 13 to be encouraged.

Hungarian inventor George Biro makes the first widely used ball-point pen.

1939 The Second World War begins in September. Evacuation: by end of year, a million children have had no schooling for four months.

Board schemes for encouraging music and the arts to combat social disruption of war and black-out.

First Welsh-language school opens in Aberystwyth.

1940 Ship evacuating 90 London children to Canada is sunk by torpedo.

Rationing starts.

Coalition under Churchill.

Herwald Ramsbotham, president of the Board of Education: refuses to ban conscientious objectors from teaching.

HC Dent becomes editor of “The TES”.

1933 425,000 London children now evacuated.

Labour’s Chuter Ede speaks of post-war reconstruction plans for education.

Gas mask practice for children every week or fortnight.

The Japanese bomb Pearl Harbour.

1942 Call to schools to keep rabbits for food.

Labour party calls for leaving age of 15, multilateral schools, free lunches, nurseries for under-fives.

1943 Norwood Report supports tripartite division of secondary education into grammar, technical and modern schools.

Lord Nuffield creates pound;10 million Foundation.

Government proposes child allowances of five shillings. Labour calls for maximum classes of 30.

White Paper on Educational Reconstruction followed by Bill.

1944 Butler Education Act: creation of Ministry of Education: end of fee-paying in maintained schools; public education to be organised in successive stages - primary, secondary and further.

County colleges to be established to continue education for school-leavers to the age of 18.

Fleming Report examines possible links between public schools and state system.

McNair Report recommends raising teachers’ status and three years’ training.

Wl survey reveals more than half of village schools have either earth or bucket lavatories.