History Of The Development Of Naval Education

The most important civil educational event of the war was the passing of the 1944 Education Act, which not only made provision for Further and Adult Educational Facilities a statuary requirement, but also had the general effect of ensuring that educational arrangements in the Services took their appropriate place in the Country's educational system. The implementation of the Act will take many years complete, since it involves the virtual rebuilding of the majority of schools, setting up of County Colleges and considerable re-equipment, particularly in technical schools, but the pattern of its application to the Services is already clear. Boys' and other training establishments to which boys are recruited before school-leaving age are required to conform more closely to the educational system obtaining in civilian schools, and a wider syllabus of instruction, to include more than the minimum naval technical requirements is followed. Further the education abroad of the children of service personnel has become the responsibility of the Services and as a result of naval policy to allow families to accompany personnel serving abroad, naval Children's Schools have been enlarged at Malta and Gibraltar and set up at Trincomalee, Colombo and Singapore.

The Act also affected H.M. Dockyard Schools which, founded as we saw in 1843, had for over a century led the way in giving a first class technical schooling to Dockyard Apprentices. The school buildings at Portsmouth, Devonport and Malta were destroyed during the war, but all continued to function even under the most difficult improvised conditions, maintaining a steady flow of potential professional officers and high grade craftsmen for the Yards. A Committee sent up in 1945 to consider the recruitment and training of civilian trade apprentices and boys recommended the provision of a broadened curriculum introducing a leavening of Arts subjects, and arrangements to ensure Ministry of Education recognition of the courses for the award of National certificates in Technology. All recommendations aimed at ensuring that the schools remained in the forefront of technical education, and in approving the report of the Committee the Admiralty showed their appreciation of the value of these schools, which are staffed at the Gibraltar and Malta yards by Instructor officers.

Towards the end of the war, problems of resettlement of volunteers and "Hostility Only" officers and ratings necessitated consideration of further educational arrangements. A Vocational Training scheme had been in force in the Navy since 1928 for men about to go to pension, and Vocational Training officers had been appointed to the chief naval ports at home and abroad to organise classes in a limited number of trade courses. From VE day onwards men and women officers and ratings were able to have a wide variety of courses varying from pre-university of professional refreshers and instruction in skilled trades to lowly but no less popular 'home maintenance'. These courses were organised and conducted by the Instructor branch with the assistance of qualified E.V.T. officers and ratings. In 1945 there were over 1000 officers and several hundred ratings engaged in this release E.V.T. work.

Reorganisation of the Navy for post-war conditions produced little fundamental change in the content of naval education. A renewed emphasis on the needs of the operational fleet was necessitated by the strictest economy in manpower and expenditure, but nearly all wartime provisions were retained, though on a reduced scale. But there was a fundamental change in the organization of the education branch in 1946. The Schoolmaster branch was abolished by the absorption into the Instructor Branch and thus all Instructor Officers attained full wardroom status - a process only made possible by the standards which the Schoolmaster branch had maintained during the war. A corollary of the reorganization was the introduction of the short service scheme for Instructor Officers, an arrangement by which the rapid expansion of the branch can be achieved in case of an emergency. The new corps of permanent officers is being built up from these by a process of transfers and subsequent selective promotion. At present about 320 Instructor Officers are short service officers.