Originally published in 1979, the primary aim of The Department of Education and Science, was to provide a contemporary account of the Department at work, to explain what it tries to do and how it takes place in the machinery of government, central and local, and to say something about the people who work in it. There is necessarily some history of the department, which had undergone much change since the end of the second world war. Rather than try to bring it completely up to date, the chapters concentrate on developments in the Department's work over the three decades following the enactment of the Education Act 1944, during which it acquired its present shape and range of functions. Today it can be read in its historical context.