Edmund Beale Sargant

Who was Edmund Beale Sargant?

Edmund Beale Sargant was a colonial administrator in the British Empire, particularly notable for his policy of introducing English in the South African educational system in the first years of the twentieth century, as Director of Education for the Transvaal and Orange River Colony under Alfred Milner, and in the aftermath of the war. The Sargant Report was important for the future of education in the Transvaal.

Sargant founded and funded a shortlived school in Hackney, London,called 'School Field'. Its purpose was to demonstrate that children could be given a better education if their teachers were not bound by a narrow curriculum and were not requred to focus on success in attainment tests in order to ensure school funding.

He was also a poet, appearing in particular in the first of the Georgian Poetry anthologies.