Payment by Results Revisited?

It is a pleasing myth, but not a fact, that Robert Lowe said, 'We must educate our masters' when the Reform Bill of 1870 was passed. He had, some eight years earlier, recommended his Revised Code to the House of Commons with the reassurance that 'If education is not cheap it should be efficient: if it is not efficient it should be cheap'. He was speaking to a House whose members were unfamiliar with elementary schools and to whom cheapness was more important than efficiency.

Lowe introduced his notorious reform in 1862. He saw the need for national thrift and, as a Benthamite wedded to calculation, recognised that examinations in the three 'Rs' were more precise than the general comments of inspectors in assessing the efficiency of elementary schools. Moreover, believing that schools for the labouring classes should prepare children for work suitable to their station in life he wanted no subsidised kills.