Born in
Hampstead, Morant was the older brother of
Amy Morant. He was educated at
Winchester College and
New College, Oxford where he took a
First in Theology. After a year teaching at a
Preparatory School he was appointed as tutor to the crown prince of
Siam. On his return he worked at the
Toynbee Hall settlement in the
East End of London. He then joined a research unit reporting to the
Privy Council on Education and thence to the
Board of Education, where he rose rapidly and served as private secretary to
Sir John Gorst,
Vice-President of the Committee on Education until 1902. He was responsible for some of the new ideas in the
Education Act 1902, and was appointed
Permanent Secretary to the Education Board in April 1903, being thus placed in a position to ensure the Board effectively implemented the act. He was appointed a Companion of the
Order of the Bath (CB) in the
1902 Coronation Honours, and promoted to Knight Commander (KCB) of the order in the
1907 Birthday Honours. In 1905 he was involved in a dispute concerning a school inspection report by
Katherine Bathurst and her outspoken views on elementary education for under fives. This resulted in Bathurst having to resign and for the ministry publishing her report but with Morant's apologies and annotations. In 1911 he was forced to resign as Permanent Secretary of the Board of Education after the leaking of a confidential report critical of school inspectors. Written by the chief inspector, it disparaged inspectors who had no more than an elementary education and recommended that inspectors should in future been drawn from Oxbridge graduates. Under pressure of work, Morant approved the report without reading it and, as a civil servant, was unable to reply to public criticism, including questions in the House of Commons, and from
Edmond Holmes. He then accepted a post chairing the commission to implement the
National Insurance Act 1911. This included a huge and wide-ranging task of administration and even included the foundation of the precursor of the
Medical Research Council. Morant promoted and largely drafted the
National Insurance Act 1913, correcting problems in the previous Act. He served on the
Haldane committee on the
machinery of government, 1917–18. When the Ministry of Health was created in 1919 he became its Permanent Secretary. He died of
influenza on 13 March 1920 aged 56. In 1917
Beatrice Webb called him "the one man of genius in the Civil Service", ==Family==