Uses and abuses of primary education: the relation of primary to secondary schooling in England between 1870 and 2014

I analyse the relation of primary to secondary schooling. Primary has most of the time been subordinate to secondary. I identify the varying problems this durable inequality was used to address and the different meanings the distinction has accrued. In 1870 government sought to protect existing social stratification by distinguishing parallel and unequal systems of education – elementary and secondary. The contemporary distinction just on the basis of age was fully instituted in 1944 when the task of maintaining social advantage was passed to a selective secondary system. Following a brief period, when a distinctive primary practice was championed, subordinate status was reinstated through curriculum models and the appropriation by politicians of the right to prescribe professional practice. The analysis gives critical distance on key themes in current policy discourse, and helps to understand the differential capital of schools at a time when positioning in local competitive arenas is being renegotiated.