Fred Clarke (educationist)
English educator, Director of the Institute of Education in the University of London (1880-1952)
Sir Frederick (Fred) Clarke (2 August 1880 – 6 January 1952) was an English educationist who was Director of the Institute of Education in the University of London between 1936 and 1945.
During the 1930s and 1940s, he was also a strong advocate for educational reform in England and Wales. Clarke was fully involved in the public educational debate at the time and a member of a private group of leading educational thinkers known as 'The Moot'. He is known particularly for his book Education and Social Change: an English interpretation from 1940. Other books include the collection of essays Essays in the Politics of Education (1923) and Freedom in the Educative Society (1948).
Early life
Sir Fred Clarke was born on 2 August 1880 at High Cogges, Witney, Oxfordshire, his parents were Mr. & Mrs William Clarke. He moved with his family to Oxford where he attended St. Ebbe's Anglican Boys' School which was a monitorial school and where he was selected to be one of the pupil-teachers (1894-1899).
Sir Fred Clarke obtained a first-class in the Queen's Scholarship which entitled him to subsidised attendance at the Oxford University Day Training Teaching College at St.
“Fred Clarke (educationist)” enters the record as english educator, Director of the Institute of Education in the University of London (1880-1952). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Fred, Clarke and educationist can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5497542. VIAF identifies the subject as 2002107. The Library of Congress control number is nb2008018900. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1880, 1952, 1936 and 1945.
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This entry incorporates text from “Fred Clarke (educationist)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.