“One cause of this failure to match Britain’s competitors in creating a skilled nation lay in the cult of the ‘practical man’ itself, which maent that there was little demand from industry and trained personnel at whatever level of qualification. This proved especcially trueof technical training, as the Board of Education reported in, 1908-9, ‘The slow growth of these technical institutions is, however, in the main to be ascribed to the small demand in this country for the services of young men well trained in the theoretical side of industrial operations. But there were other causes too. According to the Liberal economic and social doctrine of Laissez-faire which prevailed in Britain from the 1840’s until the middle of the Great War, education should be left to private enterprise or private charity, and training to the ‘practical man’ on shop-floor or in office. The idea that the state should create a coherent and elaborate national structure of education and training thus appeared to the Victorian political consensus as positively un-English, not to say Prussian: hence the spasmodic and disconnected nature of British governments’ reluctant initiatives in this field. Moreopver, despite the doom-laden warnings of royal commissions, these governments – unlike European – regarded expenditure on education and training as a painful and politically unpopular load on the taxpayer rather than as a key investment in the country’s future prosperity.”
The Lost Victory – Correlli Barnett, 1995