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The focus of this work is the response and role of the Scotch Education Department in this restructuring and reorientating of education in Scotland. The work concentrates on two areas of education: technical and commercial education. Terminology is expanded to include the SED's overall policies toward what it considered the country's "commercial and industrial classes". However, the work does not analyse elementary education. Chapter One puts the questions into a historical context. It looks at the question of efficiency in education to meet the needs of a changing nation, international competition, and a variety of perceived inadequacies in the education system of Scotland. Larger issues of SED policy such as 'system building', raising levels of attendance, the introduction of certificates, and legislation are surveyed in Chapter Two. Even here the focus remains on related areas such as the Higher Grade Schools and Supplementary Courses which were meant to widen the educational scope of the class under discussion. In contrast, those issues of education that primarily related to university bound students, or those seeking a career in one of the old professions are omitted. Chapters Three and Four provide a wide analysis of the issues surrounding commercial and technical education in Scotland. Once again the focus is on SED policy and involvement. Therefore, the introduction and eventual failure of Leaving Certificates in Commercial and Technical studies receive primary attention. Other issues such as the development, or lack thereof, in non-state schools is not covered. In both cases the wider debate and environment that effected commercial and technical studies is discussed in an effort to put SED policy in perspective. Chapter Five examines continuation education, and the problems of creating a truly national system up until the monumental Educational (Scotland) Act of 1908. Chapter Six analyses the provisions of the Act as they related to Continuation Classes, and then the impact the legislation had on the developing, and blossoming system of Continuation Classes. In the case of Continuation Classes the focus is on the role of the SED. However, though the SED was often the catalyst of change and provided direction, much of continuation education policy was left in the hands of individual school boards. This included compulsory attendance and the provision of trade classes. Therefore, where appropriate local examples are included.

This thesis is concerned with the development of special schooling in Birmingham between 1870 and 1914, with particular focus upon education provision for children with learning disabilities. Using the extensive education records in Birmingham City Archives, this research explores the historical emergence of the knowledge used to identify and diagnose feeble-minded children and youth and develops methodological strategies for evaluating their impact. It also examines the development of varied educational programmes for the 'defective' and 'feeble-minded' and considers the competing professional arenas of doctors, educationalists and policymakers, together with those of philanthropists, within a mixed economy of welfare. Finally, it attempts to make visible the substantial contribution of women in local campaigning, policymaking and implementation. The substantial empirical research that informs this thesis offers an account of the practices of diagnosis and selection, policy formation and decision-making, and daily life in the Birmingham special schools. But the significance of this work also lies in the framework of 'institutional logic' - an iterative process of policy, implementation, feedback and adjustment - that informs this research, enabling policy decisions and change to be analysed and understood.

This work considers the issue of Elementary Education in Welsh society from the passing of the Forster Education Act in 1870 to the Balfour Act of 1902. The debate that occurred in Wales during the passage of the Bill is considered, with particular reference to the views of the nonconformist denominations and Liberal politicians. The response to the Act was further illustrated by the referenda that took place to determine whether or not School Boards should be established in Welsh parishes, referenda that resulted in a complex pattern emerging throughout Wales in which economic and personal considerations often conflicted with party or denominational loyalties. These conflicts were further in evidence in those occurrences when elementary education emerged as an issue in the local politics of Wales, considerable tensions emerging between the need to provide an education system and, on the other hand, limit expenditure and rate demands. The educational improvements that took place during this period are studied as well as the continuing prevalence of conservatism in teaching methods and a lack of resources. The changing attitude towards the Welsh language is examined, particularly the developing rift between the views of enlightened opinion and education policy makers on the one hand, and the attitudes of parents, teachers and members of local authorities on the other. The arguments over religious instruction are explained, particularly those between the advocates of secular education and those calling for the provision of a non-denominational form of religious instruction.

TIlls thesis investigates the experiences of women students at the University of Oxford during the inter-war period. Historians have tended to focus on the early decades of the women's colleges, during which time the colleges fostered a powerful separatism which sustained them during the difficult period before women were formally admitted to the university in 1920. TIlls thesis explores changes in the culture and experiences of women students at the University of Oxford in the two decades after university membership had been awarded to women. It investigates the educational, social, domestic and political effects of a period in which the university's policy towards women students was changeable and at times brutal.. The thesis initially takes a chronological approach, beginning by exploring the foundations of the women's colleges in Chapter One. Chapter Two explores the experiences of women students during the First World War, showing the tensions between feminine and masculine definitions of patriotism operating within the university at this time which underlined the still unofficial status of the women students. Chapter Three examines formal changes to the status of women in the inter-war period, the debates raised by such changes and the effect of their new status on women students. An important part of the remit of the thesis is to situate the experiences of women students within the wealth of historiography relating to gender and social change in the inter-war years, and subsequent chapters take a thematic approach. Chapter Four investigates women students' experiences of leisure in the university, while Chapter Five investigates the continued primacy of sport at the university, and the ways women students were able to engage with this crucial part of undergraduate identity. Chapter Six investigates the significance of clothing in the representation of women students in the interwar period, including a discussion of the importance of academic dress to their educational identities. The final chapter examines women students' experiences of education and careers during the period, offering some insight into the status of women's academic work within the university and on the e>'l'ectations of the outcomes of higher education for Oxford-educated women. Using this framework, the thesis shows that the academic, social and political culture of the university remained challenging to women students, as they negotiated deeply entrenched forms of discrimination and difference.

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