Conclusion

This chapter considers evidence of broad continuity and limited change in the practice and ethos of the approved schools during their period of operation. It outlines new evidence for positioning distinctions within the populations of the approved schools, from the presence of younger children to the way that the Education Act (1944) was utilised to police the behaviour of “problem families,” long before the term came into common parlance. It suggests that when change came, it did so rapidly, but recognises that behaviour by girls deemed to be sexually “promiscuous” continued to act as barrier to, or brake on, progressive developments. Approved schools for girls arguably perpetuated attitudes and language associated with late nineteenth-century moral codes throughout their twentieth-century existence, despite some elements of progressive practice that emerged during the period they operated.