Sadler, Michael Ernest (1861-1943)

British administrator, educational pioneer, and art patron. One of the most distinguished pioneers of Comparative Education, Sadler worked as a secretary of the Oxford University examinations delegacy to develop university extension lectures, travelling libraries, and summer schools. He also helped to promote the civic universities and university colleges. He advocated continuation schools, which were to remedy some of the problems created by the early school-leaving age, and he was influential in having a Royal Commission on Secondary Education appointed which led to legislation.

Sadler was educated at Rugby School and Trinity College, Oxford University. As director of the office of special inquiries and reports in the government Board of Education (1895-1903), he was responsible for the publication of 11 volumes of information on educational policy and practices at home and abroad. He made a special study of German education and urged that the schools should be studied in relation to other aspects of society. After resigning from the Board of Education he became professor of education at Manchester. In 1917 he was largely responsible for the report of the commission on the University of Calcutta in India. In 1923 he became master of University College, Oxford University.