Budget cuts
Tory education policy
In his book The Making of Tory Education Policy in Post-War Britain 1950-1986, Christopher Knight argues that 'in the period between 1950 and 1974 the Conservative Party failed to fashion an educational policy in line with Conservative philosophy' (Knight 1990:3).
However, the beginnings of a Tory education policy can be seen, Knight suggests, in One Nation - A Tory Approach to Social Problems, published by the Conservative Political Centre in 1950. It was written by nine members of what became known as the 'One Nation' group of Tory MPs, including Edward Heath, lain Macleod, Angus Maude and Enoch Powell, who were committed to preserving the church schools and the private sector, to defending the tripartite system, and to opposing what they saw as the enforced uniformity of comprehensive education.
In his contribution to One Nation, Maude wrote:
The modern insistence on 'humanising' teaching methods ... must not be made an excuse for abandoning the traditional disciplines of learning ... We deplore the present tendency to drag down the brighter children to the level of the dull ones (quoted in Knight 1990:12-13).
It was perhaps unsurprising that the Tories should have spent little effort in developing a coherent education policy in the early 1950s because, when they regained power in 1951, the overwhelming need was for more school places to cope with the rapidly rising birth rate. 'Oversize classes (forty or more pupils) and inadequate buildings were the dominant issues for politicians, civil servants and parents alike ... A wider vision of schooling was not yet developed' (Knight 1990:10).
These problems were, inevitably, exacerbated by the Tories' propensity for cutting the education budget.
Budget battles
Horsbrugh
Churchill appointed sixty-year-old Florence Horsbrugh (pictured) Minister of Education in November 1951, but denied her a seat in the Cabinet - 'an ominous move, implying, as it did, a serious demotion of education' (Simon 1991:162). Maurice Kogan has described her as 'a dreary and disliked minister who was brought only late into the Cabinet, who never fought for and never received an adequate educational budget' (Kogan 1978:34).
She was, however, under 'consistent, ruthless and unremitting pressure' (Simon 1991:163) from RAB Butler, now Chancellor of the Exchequer, to cut education spending to a minimum. One of Butler's first acts as Chancellor was to declare a three-month moratorium on school building - because the steel was needed for armaments.
In December 1951 Horsbrugh issued Circular 242, which called for a five per cent reduction in local authority estimates for 1952. The aim, she said, was to maintain 'the essential fabric' but to 'cut out the frills' (quoted in Simon 1991:164). Further cuts were made to the building programme in Circular 245 in February 1952.
From then on, Horsbrugh faced a three-year battle to maintain spending on education. In a letter to her, dated 7 October 1953, Butler wrote:
I need not conceal from you that I am most disturbed about the paucity of the economies we have been able to make in the last two years. We can't get healthy tax remissions, nor a healthy economy without these. There is no time to lose - we must think in terms of major changes in policy as well as constant pruning (quoted in Simon 1991:165).
Drastic measures were considered, including the possibility of lowering the school leaving age to fourteen (it had only been raised to fifteen in 1947), raising the school starting age to six, introducing fees in maintained schools, and reducing the Exchequer grant to local authorities. Meanwhile, the government tried to claw back money from teachers and local authorities through the Teachers Superannuation Bill. Horsbrugh now resisted all attempts to impose further drastic cuts.
The government's proposals were widely criticised. In a leader in the Manchester Guardian (12 December 1951), RH Tawney declared that lowering the leaving age would be a breach of faith - it was 'economising at the expense of the children' (quoted in Simon 1991:167). There were protests from the Association of Education Committees; from WO Lester Smith, formerly Manchester's distinguished Director of Education and now Professor at the London University Institute of Education; from the former Labour Minister of Education George Tomlinson; and from the Trades Union Congress. Local trades councils held public meetings and conferences. The Economist (21 March 1953) commented that 'No part of the government's economy drive has incurred so much criticism as the cuts in educational expenditure' (quoted in Simon 1991:166).
In the event, the government was forced to abandon its most damaging proposals.
But the fact that so much time and energy was spent on these issues indicates the atmosphere of the time. In the end the government had to be content with scrimping and saving in all directions, and in allowing no development, apart from the necessary one of providing roofs and teachers for the extra million children who crowded into the schools between 1950 and 1960 as a result of the post-war birth rate increase (Simon 1991:163-4).
In an exceptionally outspoken report in June 1952, the Commons Select Committee on the Estimates, with a majority of Tory MPs, reported that they were confronted with 'overcrowding, lack of schools, heavy transport costs, a shortage of teachers and often deteriorating and even dangerous school buildings' (quoted in Simon 1991:168-9).
Meanwhile, Kathleen Ollerenhaw, a Conservative councillor in Manchester, warned that almost half the city's schools had been built before 1903 and were in a 'truly terrible' state (quoted in Simon 1991:169). Yet the government had cut back on school building:
in 1953 there were 177 fewer schools under construction than two years earlier. Nine nursery schools had been opened in that year but fourteen closed. Junior and infant classes with over forty pupils had increased substantially (to a total of nearly 5,000) while the same for senior classes had only marginally decreased. It was not only school building that was suffering. In 1953 there were 2,000 fewer university students than two years earlier (Simon 1991:169).
Between 1938 and 1951 the proportion of national income spent on education had increased from 2 to 2.2 per cent - but the number of children in the schools had also increased by a tenth. WP Alexander (1905-1993), Secretary of the Association of Education Committees, argued that, in terms of purchasing power, expenditure per child was now actually less than it had been in 1938.
By 1953-54 the government was budgeting to spend seven times more on arms (£1.6bn) than on education (£231m) (Simon 1991:168). The economy was beginning to improve and Horsbrugh was hopeful that expenditure on education - especially on the school building programme - might be increased. She had 'borne the heat of the fray' (Simon 1991:180) but was now suddenly and unexpectedly removed from office - presumably because she was too closely associated with austerity and the government wanted a more positive image.
Eccles
She was replaced by Sir David Eccles (pictured), a wealthy businessman who, suggests Maurice Kogan, 'was perhaps the minister who best typified the optimism and opportunism of the time' (Kogan 1978:34).
At a Cabinet meeting chaired by Churchill on 29 November 1954, Eccles warned that the Teachers' Superannuation Bill was causing the government irreparable damage and should be dropped immediately, and he set out a modest development programme. Inaction, he warned, would be 'used to great effect by our opponents' (quoted in Simon 1991:181).
The Chancellor, RAB Butler, pointed out that expenditure on education had risen from £224m to £303m since the war, but he acknowledged that most of this increase was due to the larger number of pupils. Earlier proposals to shorten the period of schooling and increase charges for school meals were abandoned and a programme of capital investment was approved, though the Cabinet stressed that there should be 'no unnecessary extravagance' (quoted in Simon 1991:182).
In gaining Cabinet approval for his programme, Eccles 'made his mark as a competent, and determined Minister, whose antennae were sensitively directed to political advantage' (Simon 1991:182-3).
Following the general election in May 1955 (which the Tories won with an increased majority), relations between Butler and Eccles became even more strained. Butler demanded cuts in social service expenditure, including education; Eccles argued that this was impossible because of the rise in the number of children and increased expenditure on further education, which was government policy.
In October 1955 Butler by-passed Eccles and sent a 'Message' direct to local authorities asking them to curb expenditure. Eccles responded by taking the highly unusual step of issuing a press statement, headed 'No Cuts in Educational Building'. The planned programme was being maintained, he declared, and local authorities would therefore be 'expected to carry out all the projects in the approved programme for 1955-56 and 1956-57.' He did, however, ask for 'every possible economy to be made' (Simon 1991:190).
Butler immediately wrote to Eccles complaining that the press statement was 'not in accordance with the Message which I had sent to Local Authorities with your concurrence and that of the other ministers concerned' (Simon 1991:190). Eccles replied that he was trying to reconcile Butler's 'Message' with 'our statement on education'. Butler wrote again, claiming that he supported implementation of the full education programme but wanted it 'spaced out'.
At this point hostilities apparently ceased and Eccles turned his attention to the expansion of scientific and technological education, producing a five-year plan with the support of the Prime Minister.
Comprehensivisation
Tory hostility
Around the world, selective education systems were being replaced with comprehensive ones. The Scandinavian countries and Japan had begun the process immediately after the war; Israel and most of Europe had followed; New Zealand and Canada continued with the reforms they had started before the war; eastern Europe adopted the common school model of the Soviet Union.
Yet the Conservatives - some of whom still had lingering doubts about the benefits of any sort of mass education - seemed determined not to notice what was going on elsewhere, and remained committed to the tripartite system of grammar, technical and secondary modern schools established in 1945. They were supported by various right-wing commentators, including the poet and literary critic TS Eliot, who wrote:
In our headlong rush to educate everybody, we are lowering our standards, and more and more abandoning the study of those subjects by which the essentials of our culture ... are transmitted; destroying our ancient edifices to make ready the ground upon which the barbarian nomads of the future will encamp in the mechanised caravans (Eliot 1949:111, quoted in Jones 2003:36).
Horsbrugh
In 1951, while still in opposition, Horsbrugh had accused Labour of promoting comprehensive schools as part of a programme to create a socialist state - a bizarre accusation, given the Attlee government's rigid adherence to the tripartite system - and in the following two years Tory Party conferences voted almost unanimously for motions expressing complete opposition to the concept of comprehensive education.
In all but a handful of cases, most notably in London, the Tory government refused to allow local authorities in England to establish comprehensive schools. London County Council (LCC) had been planning a comprehensive system since the 1930s, and had opened eight 'interim' schools by 1948, formed by amalgamating selective 'central' schools with nearby secondary moderns. These experimental schools had enthusiastic staff and were working well, but faced hostility from Tory councillors, as Margaret Cole, a leading member of the LCC's Education Committee noted in What is a Comprehensive School? The London Plan in Practice, published in 1953:
They stage debate after debate in Committee and in Council; they fill the press with angry cries; they endeavour ... by means of engineered propaganda among teachers, parents and even children ... to ensure that each new school shall start life in an atmosphere of strife and prejudice ... they want them to be failures (quoted in Simon 1991:170).
The Tories were able to delay developments in London, thanks partly to George Tomlinson, Minister of Education in the Attlee government. He had approved The London School Plan in February 1950 - but with the crucial proviso that proposals relating to individual schools would be 'subject to further consideration' (Simon 1991:131).
Horsbrugh used this power when she intervened to prevent the LCC from closing Eltham Hill Girls' Grammar School, two technical and two secondary modern schools, and transferring their pupils to the new Kidbrooke School, which had been approved by Tomlinson in September 1949 and was due to open in September 1954.
In June 1953, she 'suddenly and unexpectedly required the LCC to issue public notices of its intention to cease maintaining the five separate schools concerned' (Simon 1991:171). WP Alexander described her action as 'unsound procedure', but the LCC was forced to comply.
Horsbrugh then treated the matter as a political issue (for which she was criticised in the Commons, notably by Herbert Morrison), urging London Conservatives to support her by organising local protests against the closing of the existing schools. They did so, raising a petition demanding that Eltham Hill School be kept open, and in March 1954 Horsbrugh announced that she would not approve the closure of the school.
As a result, 'London's first purpose-built comprehensive school was not as "comprehensive" as it might have been' (Chitty and Dunford 1999:20).
Horsbrugh went on to reject every proposal for a comprehensive school in London which involved the absorption of a grammar school. 'From now on the defence of the grammar school became a major issue of policy for succeeding Tory governments' (Simon 1991:172).
Meanwhile, Coventry, where schools had been severely damaged during the war, was also planning to go comprehensive. The Coventry Plan (which could not include the city's two direct grant boys' grammar schools because they were outside local authority control) was provisionally accepted by Horsbrugh towards the end of 1953, though she insisted that schools should, where possible, be split into separate units. Despite this ruling, 'Coventry's first purpose-built eleven-to-eighteen comprehensive schools marked a definite stage in the evolution of the comprehensive movement' (Simon 1991:174).
Horsbrugh did do one useful thing with regard to comprehensive schools: in a Commons Written Answer in March 1954, she supplied the government's official definition of them in the following terms:
The term 'comprehensive school' is used in a number of different senses. For the purposes of the Ministry's statistical returns, secondary schools are classified as comprehensive where they are intended to provide all the secondary education facilities needed by the children of a given area, but without being organised in clearly defined sides (Hansard House of Commons 4 March 1954 Vol 524 Col 104W).
Eccles
Horsbrugh's successor, Sir David Eccles, was equally hostile to comprehensive reorganisation. In a speech to grammar-school teachers shortly after his appointment in October 1954, he said that, with regard to the pattern of secondary education,
one has to choose between justice and equality, for it is impossible to apply both principles at once. Those who support comprehensive schools prefer equality. Her Majesty's present government prefer justice. My colleagues and I will never allow local authorities to assassinate the grammar schools (quoted in The Schoolmaster 7 January 1955).
At the annual Conference of the National Union of Teachers three months later he announced his new slogan: 'Selection for everybody' (as opposed to 'Selection for nobody' - his description of the comprehensive school). He attacked comprehensive schools as an 'untried and very costly experiment'. In his speech, which was 'an odd mixture of progressive (modernising) ideas and a reactionary traditionalism' (Simon 1991:184), he outlined five policy guidelines:
- local authorities should aim to provide 15-25 per cent of places in grammar and technical schools;
- new technical schools would be approved only where there was a very strong case;
- secondary modern schools would be encouraged to develop extended courses and to strengthen their links with grammar and technical schools and with further education;
- transfer between secondary schools should be made as early as possible (to put right 'glaring mistakes' in the selection process) and there should be opportunities for transfer at 15 and 16; and
- comprehensive schools would only be approved 'as an experiment', when 'all the conditions are favourable', and where no grammar school would be 'damaged' (Simon 1991:184).
With Anthony Eden now Prime Minister, Eccles circulated a memorandum on Secondary Education (20 April 1955) outlining the 'counter-measures' he was taking to preserve the tripartite system. He wrote:
the feelings aroused by the 11-plus exam, both justified and unjustified, force a move towards selection for nobody or towards selection for everybody. Selection for nobody means comprehensive schools with grammar schools abolished and parents' choice practically ruled out. The Socialists support this policy on the principle of fair shares for all. Selection for everybody means developing in each secondary modern school some special attraction and giving parents the widest possible scope (quoted in Simon 1991:186).
He would encourage secondary modern schools to offer 'special courses with a clear vocational interest', thus ensuring that 'each school will be able to offer something special that cannot be had elsewhere in the area'. This, he argued, would reduce parental complaints about selection. In conclusion, he claimed that most teachers were now 'against comprehensive schools and in favour of helping the secondary moderns' (quoted in Simon 1991:186).
The Conservatives' commitment to the tripartite system was made clear in their 1955 election manifesto:
What matters in education is the development of the child's talents and personality, not the forwarding of a political theory. To prepare for the increasing opportunities of the modern world we need all three kinds of secondary school, grammar, modern and technical, and we must see that each provides a full and distinctive education. We shall not permit the grammar schools to be swallowed up in comprehensive schools (Conservative election manifesto 1955).
The Tories won the election and Eccles continued to block the comprehensivisation schemes of local authorities, notably those of Oldham, Bradford, Manchester, Swansea, Carlisle and Walsall.
In Manchester, plans involving five schools had gone ahead and the reorganised schools were due to open in September 1955. Eccles intervened just four days before the school term began, and a selection test had to be hurriedly arranged so that the children could be 'unscrambled and classified to fit the three types of school available' (Simon 1991:187).
In Swansea, Eccles prevented four secondary schools becoming 'multilateral' schools. He told the authority he would not agree 'to the extinction of the existing grammar schools, whose traditions were too good and too precious to be endangered' (quoted in Simon 1991:187).
Carlisle finally withdrew its proposals under pressure from Eccles, though Walsall 'carried on a continuous battle, especially against ministerial procrastination' (Simon 1991:187).
Lloyd
The Tory policy of obstructing comprehensivisation continued under Lord Hailsham, who was Minister for just eight months, and then under Geoffrey Lloyd, who succeeded him in September 1957.
Lloyd apparently believed that class was no longer an issue in education. In his first major speech - at the opening of Brunel College of Technology at Acton - he declared that
Few people now remember the extreme class bitterness between the aristocracy and the rising middle class in the nineteenth century, because almost in a generation the public schools merged the two contestants to form what became known as the governing class. ... As I see it, the old class issues are dying and we should help them to die quickly (quoted in Middleton and Weitzman 1976:337-8).
In December 1958, Lloyd published a White Paper which borrowed RH Tawney's phrase for its title. Secondary Education for All: A New Drive announced a £300m school building programme consisting mostly of new secondary modern schools. As under Eccles, comprehensive schools would be allowed only in country districts with sparse populations or on new housing estates where there were no existing schools, and local authorities would not be allowed to close grammar schools
simply in order that a new comprehensive school may enjoy a monopoly of the abler children within its area. It cannot be right that good existing schools should be forcibly brought to an end, or that parents' freedom of choice should be so completely abolished (quoted in Simon 1991:204).
In their manifesto for the October 1959 election, the Tories promised 'a massive enlargement of educational opportunity at every level' and declared:
We shall defend the grammar schools against doctrinaire Socialist attack, and see that they are further developed. We shall bring the modern schools up to the same high standard. Then the choice of schooling for children can be more flexible and less worrying for parents. This is the right way to deal with the problem of the 'eleven-plus' (Conservative election manifesto 1959).
Meanwhile, a raft of reports published in the space of just four years all endorsed the findings of the 1954 report Early Leaving in warning of inadequacies in various aspects of education:
- the Jackson Report The Supply and Training of Teachers for Technical Colleges (1957);
- the Carr Report Recruitment and Training of Young Workers in Industry (1958);
- the McMeeking Report Report by the Advisory Committee on Further Education and Commerce (1959);
- the Coldstream Report National Advisory Council on Art and Education (1960);
- the Albermarle Report The Youth Service in England and Wales (1960);
- the Wolfenden Report Sport and the Community (1960); and
- Andrew Shonfield's Apprenticeship and Training Conditions in The Observer (4 June 1961).
Eccles (again)
Eccles, who became Minister for a second time in October 1959, was criticised for his complacency in the face of these reports. In response, he introduced a new theme into Conservative thinking on education - a concern about standards of work and behaviour in schools.
In October 1961 he sent a personal memorandum to the principals of all training colleges, in which he suggested that 'the juvenile delinquency, which so disfigures our affluent society' was partly caused by parents being too indulgent with their children and failing to provide moral guidance. Schools, he argued, had 'a special responsibility in shaping and upholding the ends which society should pursue' and should be places 'where good citizens are formed and where discipline is maintained' (quoted in Knight 1990:15-16).
Boyle
Sir Edward Boyle was 'one of few leading Conservatives with an informed interest in the State system of education' (Middleton and Weitzman 1976:337). When he replaced Eccles as Minister in July 1962, Eccles warned him: 'You will find it difficult to get the Cabinet to understand education because so few of them have been involved in the maintained schools' (quoted in Kogan 1971:90).
Boyle was more progressive in outlook than his predecessors: it is worth remembering, for example, that it was he who commissioned the Plowden Report on primary education (of which more in the next chapter).
By now, more than half of LEAs were beginning to plan for comprehensive reorganisation and, while the Conservative government offered little support for such moves, it was 'tolerating comprehensive school experiments and was prepared to acknowledge that some comprehensive schools were doing well' (Knight 1990:17). Nonetheless, the Tories continued to support the divided system and the eleven-plus, arguing that 'Britain's grammar schools and public schools were the envy of the world' (Benn and Chitty 1996:8).
Concerns about the tripartite system
Parental dissatisfaction
The Tories, however, were out of touch with what was happening in schools around the country: parental dissatisfaction with the tripartite system was growing, especially among the middle classes. As Benn and Chitty put it: 'The middle class was expanding and grammar schools were not' (Benn and Chitty (1996:8).
A survey in Hertfordshire in 1952, for example, showed that more than fifty per cent of all parents wanted their children to go to grammar schools, twenty per cent to technical schools, and only sixteen per cent to secondary modern schools (Simon 1991:150). In Nottingham in 1954, of the 2,716 children who competed for 447 grammar school places, 2,269 'failed'. 'What this meant in terms of human frustration to both parents and children is easy to imagine, less easy to express' (Simon 1991:151).
It was clear, then, that
Reforming and improving the secondary modern schools was no longer the answer. A significant number of 'middle income' parents now realised that they could clearly become the chief 'beneficiaries' of reorganisation provided the new comprehensives could be organised along lines which suited the perceived requirements of their children (Chitty 1989:35).
The selective system was perceived as failing because:
- research cast doubt on theories of inherited intelligence;
- there were many errors in school placements owing to the fallibility of the selection mechanism;
- there was a high level of inequality: provision of grammar school places ranged from 64 per cent in Merionethshire to just 8 per cent in Gateshead (Simon 1991:177);
- it was unfair to girls because many LEAs had single-sex grammar schools with far more places for boys;
- talent was being wasted as many children left school early - a view reinforced by the 1963 Newsom Report (see below); and
- the eleven-plus had damaging effects on primary schools in terms of their organisation, curriculum and pedagogy.
Intelligence testing
The National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) had been established in 1946, its funding shared equally by the local authorities and the Ministry. In the 1950s it began to focus almost exclusively on mental testing, becoming 'a large scale test agency - especially in the production of intelligence (and very similar English and arithmetic) tests required by local authorities for their selection examinations' (Simon 1991:158).
These tests depended for their validity on the notion of fixed or 'innate' intelligence, which had been promoted by Cyril Burt during the inter-war years. But it was becoming clear that intelligence quotients could be affected by coaching and were related to previous social and educational experience, as the eminent psychologist Philip Vernon (1905-1987) pointed out. Writing in The Times Educational Supplement (2 January, 1 February 1952), he declared that a limited amount of coaching could increase the supposedly unchangeable intelligence quotient by around 14 points - a finding of profound significance for the legitimacy of the eleven-plus exam.
Furthermore, by 1953 GCE results indicated that children who failed the eleven-plus sometimes achieved remarkably good results five years later, while many of those who had been selected for grammar schools performed less well. 'All this quite naturally cast increasing doubt on the viability of selection, and on the validity of intelligence test theory on which it was based' (Simon 1991:176).
In Intelligence Testing and the Comprehensive School (1953), Brian Simon argued that the intelligence tests used in the selection system were flawed because the questions favoured the middle-class child, and so defined the kind of 'intelligence' being measured:
It may be concluded, on these grounds alone, that the 'intelligence' measured by tests is anything but a pure intellectual power; it evidently comprehends what can only be described as a class element (Simon 1953:45).
He noted the findings of a detailed investigation undertaken by AH Halsey and L Gardner and published in 'Selection for Secondary Education' (British Journal of Sociology Vol. IV, No. 1, March 1953). Based on a sample of 700 13- to 14-year-old boys in four grammar and five secondary modern schools in Greater London, Halsey and Gardner found that
The difference in social composition between the two types of school is striking. The secondary modern schools cater very largely for the sons of manual workers, especially the semi-skilled and unskilled (quoted in Simon 1953:65).
In the grammar schools, on the other hand, this class constituted less than a quarter of the pupils - in one school just 6.9 per cent. Conversely, very few middle-class children were found in secondary modern schools. Halsey and Gardner concluded:
despite the changes introduced into secondary education by the Education Act of 1944, it remains the case that a boy has a greater chance of entering a grammar school if he comes from a middle-class rather than a working-class home (quoted in Simon 1953:65).
In seeking to explain why this should be, they pointed to 'the crucial role played by intelligence tests in the present selection procedure' (quoted in Simon 1953:65).
Simon noted that
In spite of the failure of mental testing, those interested in preserving the present system of secondary education still cling to the conception of 'intelligence', refusing to recognise that the practical failure implies also a theoretical failure (Simon 1953:89).
With this failure, he argued, 'the whole selective system of education stands condemned' (Simon 1953:89):
The conclusion must be that the fruitless and sterile search for a perfect selection technique should be abandoned, the divided or subdivided system of education be ended, and that, in its place, we begin to make secondary education for all a reality, and provide the opportunity for the systematic and purposeful teaching of all children alike (Simon 1953:89).
In 1954, the psychologist Alice Heim published The Appraisal of Intelligence, which was equally critical of the methodology and theoretical assumptions underlying testing; and, in Social Mobility in Britain, edited by the eminent sociologist David Glass (1911-1978), the German social psychologist Hildegard Himmelweit (1918-1989) wrote that
there is suggestive evidence that working-class children do relatively less well on the tests of attainment which comprise 66 per cent of the selection examination (Himmelweit 1954:158)
A wave of criticism now engulfed Cyril Burt, who turned to 'fraud and deception in a desperate attempt to shore up the pure "classic" theory of which he was by now the major proponent' (Simon 1991:177).
But the criticism continued. Robin Pedley summed up the view of many:
The evidence points to one overwhelming conclusion: that despite all the infinite care and painstaking research which has gone into this problem, we are attempting the impossible. We cannot continue, in fairness not only to odd individuals but to a multitude of them, to sort out children like sheep and goats, and send them willy-nilly to the special kinds of school that we, in an ignorance masquerading as wisdom, consider them best fitted for. All the manœuvring in the world before the age of 11, all the patching that can be contrived by late transfers afterwards, will not remedy the basic objection to the system. Nor can the community afford the heavy wastage of talent imposed by premature assessment of ability and aptitude, and limited selection for a superior type of school (Pedley 1956:56-7).
And in a contribution to Brian Simon's book New Trends in English Education (1957), the author and broadcaster Edward Blishen (1920-1996) wrote:
There are many ways of damaging a child; one of the worst, I think, is to imprison him in a definition. He is a secondary modern school child; he is capable of this or that limited amount of mental effort; this or that term must be placed on his schooling. It seems to me that at the back of all his everyday practical educating a teacher ought to sense the need to defy such of these definitions as he can, or at least to be profoundly sceptical of them. The best of schools probably is at its most excellent when it forgets for a while to be strictly and formally itself; when the definitions are blurred; when the child is seen to be more important than all the apparatus of lessons and assessments, and in the final analysis much too mysterious to be contained by them (Blishen 1957:74).
Two further publications - Secondary School Selection (1957) and Admission to Grammar Schools (1958) - also had a profound impact, particularly on education professionals and administrators.
Secondary School Selection was the report of a British Psychological Society inquiry led by Philip Vernon. Concerned about the way in which particular theories were being used to legitimate a school system increasingly seen as unfair, it 'explicitly rejected the theory of total genetic determination - and so distanced itself from the classic theories of Cyril Burt' (Simon 1991:209). It argued that intelligence could certainly be influenced by environment and upbringing and that therefore early selection for different types of secondary school was best avoided:
We have seen that any policy involving irreversible segregation at 11 years or earlier is psychologically unsound, and therefore that - in so far as public opinion allows - the common or comprehensive school would be preferable, at least up to the age of 13. And that failing this, or failing the diversification of schools which might lead to greater parity of esteem, the selection system should be supplemented by greater freedom of transfer, despite its admitted difficulties (Vernon 1957:53).
Admission to Grammar Schools, published by the NFER, was 'the first serious, large-scale and well-designed research report on the actual practice of selection and its results' (Simon 1991:209-10). Written by DA Pidgeon and Alfred Yates, it concluded that at least ten per cent of children - around 60,000 a year in the 1950s - were being allocated to the wrong type of school, and that since there was no serious possibility of further improving 'techniques of allocation', comprehensive or multilateral schools were desirable.
Writing in 1961, Raymond Williams argued that:
Differences in learning ability obviously exist, but there is great danger in making these into separate and absolute categories. It is right that a child should be taught in a way appropriate to his learning ability, but because this itself depends on his whole development, including not only questions of personal character growth but also questions of his real social environment and the stimulation received from it, too early a division into intellectual grades in part creates the situation which it is offering to meet (Williams 1961:146).
And in 1963 the Robbins Report Higher Education (of which more below) questioned whether any sort of selection test could be fair, given that the claim that testing could measure intelligence divorced from social determinants had now been discredited:
It is, of course, unquestionable that human beings vary considerably in native capacity for all sorts of tasks. No one who has taught young people will be disposed to urge that it is only the difference in educational opportunity that makes the difference between a Newton or a Leonardo and Poor Tom the Fool. But while it would be wrong to deny fundamental differences of nature, it is equally wrong to deny that performance in examinations or tests - or indeed any measurable ability - is affected by nurture in the widest sense of that word. Moreover, the belief that there exists some easy method of ascertaining an intelligence factor unaffected by education or background is outmoded. Years ago, performance in 'general intelligence tests' was thought to be relatively independent of earlier experience. It is now known that in fact it is dependent upon previous experience to a degree sufficiently large to be of great relevance. And once one passes beyond tests of this kind and examines for specific knowledge or aptitudes, the influence of education and environment becomes more and more important (Robbins 1963:49).
Effects on primary schools
Primary schools were still relatively new: they had become official government policy in 1928, and by 1939 almost half of the old all-age elementary schools had been reorganised into primary and post-primary (or junior and senior) departments or schools. Reorganisation had continued after the war but had been a slow process (in fact, it was only finally completed in 1972). Primary education was now provided either in two stages (infants from five to seven years and juniors from seven to eleven) or in a single primary school (five to eleven).
By the early 1950s it was already clear that the tripartite system - and particularly its associated testing regime - was having a damaging effect on primary schools in terms of their curriculum, as Dr Terry Wrigley points out:
The 11 Plus exams, on the basis of which grammar school places were awarded, also restricted the upper primary curriculum. Ironically, given that its 'general intelligence' paper was supposed to measure something fixed and innate, most final year classes spent a lot of time practising test papers to improve scores. Thus the majority of curriculum time was consumed by rapid and accurate processing in English and arithmetic and the artificial logic of 'intelligence' tests (Wrigley 2014:9).
As a result, schools felt obliged to operate the rigid system of streaming which had been promoted by Burt in the inter-war years, with pupils divided into A, B and C classes (and sometimes more). This, Brian Simon argued, had three negative effects on the children: it practically determined their future at the age of six or seven; it led to 'a mechanical and distorted form of education'; and it isolated the children from each other, and so broke up the unity of the school (Simon 1953:18).
A survey by Brian Jackson in 1962-3 (published in 1964) found that 96 per cent of the sampled schools streamed their pupils; only 4 per cent did not. Three-quarters of children were in streamed classes by the age of seven.
Grouping all the more 'advanced' children together in one class, and all the more 'backward' in another also provided the conditions whereby the differences between both groups were inevitably exacerbated in the process of schooling - thus transfers between streams were rare (Simon 1991:152).
Jackson confirmed what many had long suspected - that children from middle-class families tended to be allocated to A streams; those from manual working-class homes to C or D streams. As to the teachers, 85 per cent of those responding favoured streaming: 'support for streaming was overwhelming from every type of teacher and school' (Jackson 1964:31 quoted in Simon 1991:346).
Meanwhile, the teaching became dominated by the requirements of the eleven-plus examination which, in most areas, comprised 'objective' tests in 'intelligence', plus English and arithmetic. Children in the 'A' streams were intensively coached to pass these tests and the resulting narrowness of the primary school curriculum was widely criticised.
A few schools began experimenting with unstreamed classes in the 1950s. George Freeland, the head of one of three Leicester primary schools which did so from 1953 onwards, argued that standards had been raised and the school had functioned more effectively as a social unit:
As a result of the experience of the last three years, there are now no doubts in my mind as to the desirability of non-streaming. I would not dream of returning to the traditional system in which I spent so many years as a class teacher, years which convinced me of its deleterious effect on both children and teachers. I am firmly convinced that only where the school is unstreamed can the greatest opportunities be offered to the children. What remains to be done is to improve our methods of teaching, modify the syllabus in the light of our own experience and that of other unstreamed schools, and continue to replace the system of individual competition by collective effort. The aim must be to build up a positive educational and social spirit in the unified school, and so make our contribution to the raising of educational standards and the widening of opportunity (Freeland 1957:32-33).
Another head - E Harvey, of Weston Lane Junior School, Otley in Yorkshire - wrote in Forum that
After four years without streaming I have a happy and enthusiastic staff, all of whom prefer the present organisation, the standard of work has improved, and relations with the parents are excellent (Harvey 1960:47).
He concluded that 'the inherent flexibility of the unstreamed school is of great help when putting ... new ideas to the test in practice' (Harvey 1960:49).
As Freeland had noted, the decision whether or not to stream had implications for the teaching-learning process itself. The three schools in Leicester mentioned above adopted different approaches, one using whole-class teaching, another focusing on the individual child, and the third using group work with some class teaching and individualisation (Simon 1991:349).
The case against streaming 'lay primarily in a growing realisation that the original stream placement, at whatever level, determined children's life chances - often from the age of seven or even earlier' (Simon 1991:347). Research showed that transfer between streams was minimal (about 2 per cent) so that the great majority of children remained in their original stream throughout their school life. The result was that streaming became a self-fulfilling prophecy:
Children who are relegated to a low stream, to suit their present level of ability, are likely to be taught at a slower pace; whereas the brighter streams, often under the better teachers, are encouraged to proceed more rapidly. Thus initial differences become exacerbated, and those duller children who happen to improve later fall too far behind the higher streams in attainments to be able to catch up, and lose the chance to show their true merits (Vernon 1957:43).
While psychologists accepted that some differentiation of curriculum and teaching methods was needed, they warned against rigid streaming in the junior school:
Psychologists should frankly acknowledge that completely accurate classification of children, either by level or type of ability, is not possible at 11 years, still less on entry to the junior school at 7, and should therefore encourage any more flexible form of organisation and grouping which gives scope for the gradual unfolding and the variability of children's abilities and interests. But they should also recognise the strong case for providing the brighter children with more advanced, and the duller ones with a simpler, kind of schooling; and should uphold their claim to be able to diagnose the most suitable form of schooling, for, not all, but a great majority of children (Vernon 1957:169).
As their primary years came to an end, children then faced the eleven-plus exam, which acted
as a great sorting machine, separating the children into two or sometimes three groups. The children have arrived at the point of 'all change'. Friends in the same form, brothers and sisters from the same family, may be sent off to different types of schools, some to wear the caps and blazers of the grammar school, others to the modern school. From now on each of these groups will receive a different type of education, and their opportunity to make the most of their lives will vary accordingly (Simon 1953:21).
The link between non-streaming in the junior school and comprehensive secondary education was now clear:
Both movements were founded on a more positive educational premiss (in terms of children's potentialities) than was conceivable within the theory and practice of the divided system (Simon 1991:348).
There was much discussion of these issues in the early 1960s: a conference organised by Forum in November 1962 attracted more than two hundred teachers; under Edward Boyle, the Ministry's annual reports began to 'reflect a new enthusiasm, almost a new romanticism, especially in the general introduction signed by the minister' (Simon 1991:350); and the NFER was commissioned to conduct an enquiry into the question of streaming, though it did not publish its findings until after the publication of the Plowden Report (1967), by which time, 'life had moved well beyond their original concerns' (Simon 1991:350).
Streaming in comprehensive schools
Reformers such as Harold Dent and GTC Giles (see chapter 9) had sought not only the end of selection for different types of school but also the end of streaming within individual schools, at least up to the age of thirteen and preferably up to fifteen. Only in this way, they argued, would genuine comprehensive reform - offering all pupils a common educational experience - be achieved. There should be new forms of pupil grouping so that each class would 'reflect the make up of the whole of the local community - intellectually, socially, and in terms of gender and ethnic origin' (Simon 1991:302).
Given the slow progress towards comprehensivisation and the demands made on schools by a socially divided society, implementation of this objective was, inevitably, to prove difficult.
The earliest comprehensive schools had been established in what Brian Simon calls 'a sea of tripartism' (Simon 1991:302). At Holyhead School in Anglesey, for example, which in 1949 was the first fully comprehensive school in terms of its intake, the organisation was based on the Hadow principle of 'progressive differentiation', as its head, Trevor Lovett, explained in an article in The Times Educational Supplement (27 January1956). First-year pupils were divided into streams on the basis of tests given at the beginning of the school year. Thereafter, the segregation became more rigorous in order to separate the more advanced pupils from the average, and the average from the more 'backward' who left at fifteen.
Holyhead school appeared as a beacon to comprehensive supporters in the late 1940s. It showed beyond a doubt that such schools were viable. But it did so at the cost of accepting the ideology of the divided system from which it emerged (Simon 1991:302).
As more comprehensives were established in the 1950s and early 1960s, they were forced to demonstrate their effectiveness by achieving exam results which were at least as good as - and preferably better than - those of the schools they replaced. 'This target was, in general, achieved', but at the cost of importing 'values and practices characteristic of the divided system that comprehensive education was intended to overcome' (Simon 1991:303).
The grammar school lobby
As the arguments for the selective system crumbled, its supporters - who became known as the 'grammar school lobby' - fought back. In 1956 Harry Rée, head of Watford Grammar School, published The Essential Grammar School, in which he argued the importance of educating 'gifted' children in separate schools; and in 1958 the Incorporated Association of Head Masters (representing heads of maintained and direct-grant grammar schools and some public schools) issued The Grammar School: A Reply to the Labour Party's Educational Proposals, which demanded that grammar schools should be retained.
In 1959 CB (Brian) Cox (1928-2008) and AE (Anthony) Dyson (1928-2002), who had first met as undergraduates at Pembroke College Cambridge in 1949, founded the Critical Quarterly 'to advance the view that high standards of lucid English and a wide appreciation of great literature remained powerful elements of the nation's common culture' (Knight 1990:18).
As 'advocates of the traditional school, where children were instructed in real subjects and disciplines by teachers claiming authority' (Knight 1990:18), they were determined that the Critical Quarterly should be at the forefront of right-wing campaigning on education. They organised their first teachers' conference in 1961, and in 1963 they formed the Critical Quarterly Society and held their first conference for sixth-form students. They went on to publish a series of 'Black Papers' on education (see the next chapter) in which they - and other right-wing commentators - bemoaned the behaviour of university students, comprehensivisation, progressive teaching methods, and egalitarianism in general.
Progress
Labour
For the Conservatives, argues Maurice Kogan, education was 'a component of the Opportunity State'. They focused on those social objectives of education which aimed to produce 'an efficient workforce and a strong social fabric' - hence their 'strong support for the expansion of higher education in the 1960s' (Kogan 1978:21).
The Labour Party, on the other hand, saw education as 'an equalising force' (Kogan 1978:21), though there was at first some confusion between greater opportunity and greater equality. Increasingly, however, the party moved towards a 'strong' version of egalitarianism involving the creation of comprehensive schools. 'They hoped that the schools could heal the divisions of a class-ridden society' (Kogan 1978:21).
The party confirmed its commitment to comprehensive education at its annual conferences in 1952 and 1953 and in a policy document, Challenge to Britain, which was modified after the 1953 conference to include the statement that
Labour will abolish the practice of selection at 11-plus for different types of school because it is convinced that all children would benefit if during the whole of their secondary education they shared the facilities both social and educational of one comprehensive secondary school (quoted in Simon 1991:178).
With impassioned speeches in favour of comprehensive schools from grassroots delegates and party leaders, the 1953 conference marked a turning point for the party:
If it can be argued that earlier resolutions (from 1942) on this issue, though carried unanimously, never gained the full and passionate support of delegates, this could now no longer be said to be the case. The opposition of the Political Quarterly Fabians apparently made no impact on the party as a whole. From 1953 and the acceptance of the new programme, Challenge to Britain, the Labour Party nationally was clearly committed to non-selective schooling as a major plank in its platform. The issue was now firmly on the agenda for action by a Labour government (Simon 1991:179).
Nonetheless, a sizeable minority of Labour Party members remained committed to the grammar schools, and party leaders were 'anxious to play down the suggestion that comprehensive reorganisation entailed one type of school being abolished in order to create another' (Chitty 1989:35). Thus, in a letter to The Times (5 July 1958), Hugh Gaitskell (1906-1963), who had replaced Attlee as leader of the party in December 1955, argued that
It would be nearer the truth to describe our proposals as 'a grammar-school education for all' ... Our aim is greatly to widen the opportunities to receive what is now called a grammar-school education, and we also want to see grammar-school standards in the sense of higher quality education extended far more generally (quoted in Chitty 1989:36).
England
Around the country, despite the obstructiveness of successive Tory ministers, comprehensivisation was under way. Following the establishment of Kidbrooke School, London opened five more comprehensives in 1955, three of them in new buildings; Birmingham's first comprehensive school - Sheldon Heath - pioneered new forms of social organisation; and Essex began planning for 23 bilateral schools (combining grammar and secondary-modern streams). 'The pressure for structural change within the field of secondary education now sharply increased' (Simon 1991:188).
Writing in Forum (Summer 1959), BF Hobby noted an interesting development in West Bromwich in relation to parental choice:
This is the scheme which has worked most successfully since Churchfields High School was opened in 1956. Parents of children in the last year of junior schools in the Churchfields district are interviewed and asked to choose in principle between selective and non-selective education. The children of parents who prefer the former take the usual tests and are allocated accordingly to grammar, technical or modern schools. Where the parents prefer non-selective education the children do not take the 11 plus examination, but go automatically to the local comprehensive school.
So far, year by year, West Bromwich finds that about 90% choose the comprehensive school (Hobby 1959:91).
In another Forum report (Autumn 1959), this time from Yorkshire, Robin Pedley noted that Bradford planned to build nine comprehensives over a period of twenty years; in Leeds, Foxwood and Allerton Grange had opened in 1956 and 1958, and approval had been received for two more comprehensives - Holbeck and Cross Green - on new housing estates; Sheffield was seeking permission to transform a secondary modern into a comprehensive school; the East Riding had developed its first comprehensive for 900 pupils at Withernsea; Hull's five-year building programme included three new comprehensives; and the North Riding was creating bilateral schools such as that at Easingwold.
Summing up the position, Pedley commented:
Yorkshire as a whole has been slow to react to the challenge of new evidence and events in the field of secondary education; and one of the most curious features of this local apathy is the contrast between the avowed policy of the Labour Party and the inaction of local education authorities which are under Labour control. Labour controls ten of the sixteen LEAs in Yorkshire; but very few of these are as yet showing the kind of initiative in planning a comprehensive system that a Labour Minister will presumably expect if he finds himself in office later this year. His main preoccupation will presumably be with authorities which firmly believe in the tripartite system; he will not expect to have to dragoon those which, nominally at least, are already on his side (Pedley 1959:27).
Scotland
In Scotland, comprehensivisation was widely supported. Indeed, it had been awaited since 1947, when the Fyfe Report Secondary Education, produced by the Advisory Council on Education in Scotland, had recommended a comprehensive system for all secondary pupils aged 12 to 16 with a common core curriculum and a common leaving exam. This, the Council said, was 'the natural way for a democracy to order the post-primary schooling of a given area' (Fyfe 1947:36).
Glasgow opened its first two purpose-built comprehensives in 1954 and by 1962 Scotland had 22 such schools. Judith Hart, elected MP for Glasgow in 1959, reported that Duncarig school at East Kilbride - designed by Basil Spence - was already severely overcrowded.
Country-wide reorganisation began in 1965 following the publication of Circular 600, the Scottish equivalent of Circular 10/65 (of which more in the next chapter).
Wales
In Wales, where there was also widespread support for the comprehensive ideal, local authorities began opening comprehensive and 'bilateral' schools (the latter containing both grammar and secondary-modern streams). Anglesey was completely comprehensive by 1953 and other Welsh counties were 'looking forward to completely bilateral systems' (Jones-Davies 1962:9).
At Newport, where all the schools needed replacing, the decision was made in 1958 to move to a fully comprehensive system by 1960. The Tories opposed this in local elections and lost four seats to Labour. Boyle rejected the full plan, stating that the 'destruction' of a grammar school was inadmissible, but two comprehensives (Duffryn and Hartridge High Schools) were allowed to go ahead.
In 1958, Swansea planned to convert its existing 'multilateral' schools into full comprehensives; Pembrokeshire opened bilateral schools; Carmarthenshire, Breconshire and other authorities in predominantly rural areas established a mixture of comprehensive and bilateral schools (Simon 1991:205).
Glamorgan, a long-standing Labour authority whose earlier proposals had been rejected by Tomlinson, now obtained approval for some comprehensive schools and planned to abolish the eleven-plus in July 1959. Reporting on her visit to the area in the second issue of Forum (Spring 1959), Joan Simon noted that
In the excepted district of the Rhondda ... the absorption of a grammar school into a 10-form entry comprehensive school has, for once, been approved; this at Treorchy, which offers the only large site in the Rhondda Fawr valley (Simon 1959:46).
David Jones-Davies, Director of Education for Anglesey, observed that in a number of bilateral schools children who were 'low down in the selection test list when admitted' later performed well at O Level GCE, 'entering the sixth form, and going on to university and training colleges' (Jones-Davies 1962:9).
He concluded that
the question of the common school is less complicated by political and class considerations in Wales than in the rest of the country; and if political arguments are not deliberately stimulated and the educational situation is allowed to develop under its own impetus, it is likely that Welsh authorities will, during the next decade or so, make quite a considerable contribution to educational thought and experiment in terms of 'one Secondary School for all' (Jones-Davies 1962:11).
Two campaigners
Among the most determined advocates of comprehensive education during the 1950s and 60s were Robin Pedley and Brian Simon. In 1958 they founded - and jointly edited - the campaigning journal Forum.
Robin Pedley
Robin Pedley (1914-1988) (pictured) worked in Leicester University's Department of Education from 1947 until 1963, going on to become Director of the Institute of Education at Exeter University.
In 1954 the Councils and Education Press published Comprehensive Schools Today, containing three articles by Pedley which had recently appeared in the local authority journal Education.
In these articles, Pedley presented a factual description and an interpretation of what he had found in his survey of the fourteen schools in England, Wales and the Isle of Man which then called themselves comprehensive. There was 'abundant evidence', he said, of 'pupils who would have failed to qualify for a grammar school place ... yet who subsequently made remarkable strides and did well in G.C.E. - in some cases at Advanced level' (Pedley 1954:4). There was certainly no question of 'levelling down'.
Comprehensive Schools Today also included four commentaries by leading educationalists and local authority leaders: those by Harold Dent (a long-time opponent of the tripartite system - see chapter 9), Harold Shearman (who later became Chair of the Inner London Education Authority) and WP Alexander (Secretary of the Association of Education Committees) were supportive; Eric James (High Master of Manchester Grammar School) provided An Opposition View.
Two years later, in Comprehensive Education: a New Approach (1956), Pedley set out to show how the change to a comprehensive system could be achieved in practical terms. He noted that there were several different types of comprehensive school (some more comprehensive than others), and that they varied hugely in size - from 230 boys at Windermere to 1,800 girls at Kidbrooke. Birmingham was planning two schools - Great Barr and Sheldon Heath - which would each cater for 2,300 girls and boys (Pedley 1956:110).
The two greatest advantages of comprehensive schools, he argued, were that they removed the need for early selection, and that they encouraged a sense of community: they provided a 'positive influence towards building an integrated society, in which home and school are closely linked through their common roots in the life of the neighbourhood community' (Pedley 1956:116).
He called for the creation of neighbourhood centres and county schools, a review of the stages of schooling and the age ranges of schools, the introduction of a school-leaving certificate, and a new role for county colleges.
But the most urgent task was 'the abolition of selection at 11' (Pedley 1956:195). If this could be achieved, he argued, there would be no need to worry about the public schools:
The wise course must surely be not to abolish or annex the public schools, arousing passions and starting feuds which would offset any possible immediate gain; nor, on the other hand, to come to any arrangement such as the Fleming report proposed ... but to provide a national system of education not merely equal but superior to that of any independent venture. Although this is essential, it cannot be done so long as we cling to a form of organisation which, by combining voluntary advanced education for the minority with compulsory general education for all, renders both far less efficient and productive than they need be (Pedley 1956:133-4).
Pedley's most influential book was The Comprehensive School, first published in 1963 and reprinted many times.
He began by considering the philosophy underpinning comprehensive education, including the notion of equality:
The concept of equality in education, therefore, is in fact entirely opposite to the notion of sameness and uniformity, of turning out all children to one pattern. It is rather the concept of equal worth, that is, all equally deserving and needing such aids to personal growth as we can give.
In gradually replacing birth and wealth by the ability to pass examinations, we are doing no more than replace one rule for the queueing order by another. Our philosophy is still dominated by the belief that life is a race for a few limited prizes. It is fundamentally a philosophy of limitation and restriction. Its doctrines are that the weakest must go to the wall, that the race is always to the swift and the battle to the strong. It is the bitter, cynical conclusion of the materialist (Pedley 1963:25-26).
He went on to outline the history of secondary education in England and regretted that the post-war Labour government had not espoused the comprehensive ideal:
One might have supposed that an avowedly socialist party would look askance at plans for separate types of secondary school which offered courses of different length and scope to children judged superior or inferior in mental ability: schools which were, therefore, likely to vary greatly in social prestige (Pedley 1963:38).
But Labour, he said, was 'not an egalitarian party' and its thinking was 'a generation out of date' (Pedley 1963:38). However, he says,
the Labour Party as a whole has come to a much more enlightened position since 1951. Its policy is now clearly stated. When it resumes office, there is little doubt that reorganization of secondary schools on comprehensive lines will begin to move forward (Pedley 1963:46).
He then surveyed the position in 1962, describing progress towards comprehensivisation in rural areas and in towns and cities. He was particularly complimentary about London's record:
No observer of London's educational scene can fail to be impressed by the size and complexity of the task which faced the county's education committee in 1944 and afterwards, by the zeal with which it has been tackled, and by the degree of success already achieved. Whatever detailed criticisms are made, London's achievement is still a magnificent one. In 1962 there were sixty-eight comprehensive schools, of which forty were in new or substantially new buildings, twenty-eight in old buildings. They provided for nearly two thirds of all the pupils in county secondary schools. Half of London's fifteen-year-olds were deciding to stay at school beyond the minimum leaving age. Since 1958 the Council has been able to guarantee a five-year course to any pupil who desires it. This is a great record by a great administrative service (Pedley 1963:80).
In his chapter on the internal organisation of comprehensive schools, he noted the trend to abandon streaming in primary schools and asked 'if non-streaming works up to the age of eleven, need it be cut short there?' (Pedley 1963:92). He concluded that 'What we need ... is flexibility in our grouping of children and in our teaching of them' (Pedley 1963:94). He gave numerous examples of pupils 'who fail to get to a grammar school at eleven and later make good' (Pedley 1963:100)
He reviewed various forms of comprehensive education; wondered whether there was a case for doing away altogether with the division of schooling into primary and secondary phases; suggested that the grammar schools' future role might be as sixth-form colleges; and argued in favour of comprehensive county colleges for 16- to 18-year-olds.
He called for a university education for all teachers, and training for all graduates who wished to teach:
I have suggested earlier that the comprehensive school should be deeply concerned to help to shape and transmit a communal culture ... whose essentials all members of a liberal, democratic society can recognize and share. This task is impossible so long as our teachers are themselves sharply divided into what are in effect two classes, graduate and non-graduate, with their different backgrounds and correspondingly different social status and public esteem. The ending of this cleavage is one of the major reforms necessary for the effective development of a system of comprehensive education (Pedley 1963:197).
And he ended with a warning:
It is very important that our comprehensive schools shall not content themselves with merely achieving equal opportunity for the competitive success of individual pupils. In the years ahead, now that the folly of eleven-plus segregation is everywhere being recognized, they will be tempted of the devil. They will be shown and offered all the scholastic kingdoms, including Oxford and Cambridge, York and Canterbury. Tempting though such prizes are, they must not be allowed to divert the new schools from their larger purpose: the forging of a communal culture by the pursuit of quality with equality, by the education of their pupils in and for democracy, and by the creation of happy vigorous, local communities in which the school is the focus of social and educational life (Pedley 1963:199-200).
Brian Simon
Brian Simon (1915-2002) (pictured) grew up in Manchester, where his father was head of the family engineering firm and his mother was a member of the city's education committee. As a schoolboy in the early 1930s he was sent to Kurt Hahn's progressive school at Salem, which was already being attacked by the Nazis. Horrified by fascism, he turned to communism while at Trinity College Cambridge.
He was appointed to the Labour Party's newly-formed Education Advisory Committee in 1938. After the war he taught in an elementary school, a secondary modern school, and Salford Grammar School. He joined Pedley as a lecturer in education at Leicester in 1950, becoming a reader in 1964, professor in 1966, and emeritus professor in 1980.
Brian Simon's many books are quoted extensively throughout this history. They include:
- Intelligence Testing and the Comprehensive School (1953);
- New Trends in English Education (1957);
- Half Way There (with Caroline Benn) (1970);
- Intelligence Psychology & Education: A Marxist Critique (1971);
- Bending the Rules: the Baker 'reform' of education (1988);
- The State and Educational Change (1994)
and his major series Studies in the History of Education:
- The Two Nations & the Educational Structure 1780-1870 (first published under a different title in 1960),
- Education and the Labour Movement 1870-1920 (1965);
- The Politics of Educational Reform 1920-40 (1974); and
- Education and the Social Order 1940-1990 (1991).
The position in 1960
By the start of the 1960s, there were three million pupils in maintained secondary schools in England and Wales as a whole. Just a quarter of a million - about 8 per cent of the total - were in non-selective schools. The only local authorities which had completely comprehensive systems were Anglesey and the Isle of Man; London had 58 comprehensive schools, taking 53.4 per cent of its secondary pupils; and a further twenty authorities each had a handful of comprehensive schools.
In an article for Forum, Pedley summarised the position as revealed by Ministry of Education figures relating to January 1961. They showed that there were
only 106 secondary schools in England which are officially regarded as comprehensive ... together with 32 comprehensive schools in Wales. Of the 106 in England, more than half (58) are in London; 27 are scattered among twelve counties, and 21 among ten county boroughs.
These 106 comprehensive secondary schools are a very small part of the total provision of 5,400 maintained secondary schools in England. Only 23 local education authorities, out of 129, are represented (Pedley 1962:4).
London
Despite its commitment to comprehensive education, London still had grammar schools which, said Pedley, were 'creaming the intake of the nominally comprehensive schools of a considerable proportion of their most able pupils' (Pedley 1962:5). He also criticised the building of new single-sex schools in London: segregation of the sexes, he argued, was 'no more defensible than segregation for reasons of class or intellectual ability' (Pedley 1962:5).
These mistakes, however, did not 'seriously detract ... from the splendour of its [London's] achievement' (Pedley 1962:5).
Risinghill
The London School Plan of 1947 had made provision for a purpose-built, coeducational comprehensive school in Islington for up to 2,000 pupils.
Risinghill School, opened on 3 May 1960 under its charismatic head, Michael Duane (1915-1997), was an amalgamation of two secondary modern schools (Ritchie Girls School and Gifford Mixed School) and two technical schools (Northampton Technical School for Boys and Bloomsbury Technical School for Girls).
The school's progressive educational methods became the subject of acrimonious disputes with London County Council and HMI and led ultimately to its closure, against the wishes of staff, pupils and parents, just five years later, in 1965.
The controversy continued, however, with the publication in 1968 - after two years of legal wrangling - of Risinghill: Death of a Comprehensive School by the author and children's rights campaigner Leila Berg (1917-2012).
Fifty years on, in 2019, the Risinghill Research Group, including former pupils Isabel Sheridan and Philip Lord, published two books: Risinghill Revisited: The Killing of a Comprehensive School and Risinghill Revisited: The Waste Clay.
Leicestershire
Meanwhile, another pioneering authority - Leicestershire - was developing its own comprehensive system, involving junior high schools for all 11- to 14-year-olds. Pupils then either stayed in these schools until the leaving age or transferred to a senior grammar school, according to their parents' wishes. The Leicestershire Experiment, published in 1957 and based on some of Robin Pedley's ideas, attracted attention 'as a relatively simple way of adapting existing schools to a new comprehensive pattern' (Lawson and Silver 1973:438).
It was decided - by Lord Hailsham, now the Minister - that Leicestershire's reorganisation could go ahead without the need for Ministry approval or disapproval, on the basis that no existing schools were being closed.
Leicestershire's Director of Education, Stewart C Mason (1906-1983), explained the county's scheme in The Leicestershire Experiment and Plan, published in 1964. There were now, he wrote,
three links in a continuous chain of education - Primary School, High School, Grammar School ... boys and girls move naturally on from one to the next. At no point is the next step forward dependent on an examination (Mason 1964:15).
Turning point
Brian Simon describes 1963 as 'the crucial moment of change' (Simon 1991:271). The education committees in Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield and Bradford passed motions confirming their determination to go ahead with comprehensivisation by September 1965. Liverpool's resolution declared:
believing that comprehensive schools afford the greatest possible opportunities to boys and girls of all degrees of ability, affirms that it is its intention that a comprehensive system of secondary education shall be established in Liverpool, and that the county secondary schools shall be reorganised accordingly at the earliest possible date, and as a consequence the 11-plus shall be abolished, and instruct the secondary education sub-committee, as a matter of urgency, to prepare a scheme directed towards these ends after consultation with the teachers (quoted in Simon 1991:272).
Lancashire Education Committee - responsible for 29 districts with a total population of over 2.2m - followed suit in 1964, the Chief Education Officer for the county describing the 11-plus as an 'archaic monstrosity' (quoted in Simon 1991:273); while the West Riding of Yorkshire was planning a comprehensive system involving middle schools for 9- to 13-year-olds.
Edward Boyle, who had become Minister in July 1962, 'reacted warily but sympathetically' (Simon 1991:274). He recognised the strength of the reform movement and was 'increasingly sympathetic to its objectives' (Simon 1991:274). At the Conservative Party's conferences in 1962 and 1963 he sought to persuade delegates to accept change; and he told the 1963 annual conference of the Association of Education Committees that he believed the time had come to abandon the idea of the bipartite system as the norm, and that in future any proposals under Section 13 of the 1944 Act submitted for approval would be considered 'strictly on educational grounds' (quoted in Simon 1991:274).
He then persuaded Prime Minister Douglas Home to find parliamentary time for a bill - already in preparation - to make the establishment of middle schools (of which more below) legally possible. It was his last act as Minister: he later told Maurice Kogan: 'I suppose you might call the 1964 Act my parting gift to the ministry' (Kogan 1971:78).
Meanwhile, delegates at Labour's 1963 annual conference reaffirmed the party's commitment to comprehensive reorganisation. But, as Brian Simon points out:
Commitment of the party by conference decision, however, did not necessarily mean full commitment to such a reform by a future Labour government. This had already been evident, precisely in this sphere, during the 1945-51 Labour government's terms of office ... This difference in intentions, between party and government, was to dog the whole comprehensive movement in the years ahead (Simon 1991:275).
Nonetheless, the conference decision was taken to mean that when Labour returned to power - which was looking increasingly likely - it would pursue comprehensive reform.
Support for reform was provided by two reports - Newsom and Robbins (of which more below), both published in 1963. In his Foreword to the Newsom Report, Boyle wrote
I agree with the Council that there is above all a need for new modes of thought; and a change of heart, on the part of the community as a whole. ...
The essential point is that all children should have an equal opportunity of acquiring intelligence, and of developing their talents and abilities to the full (Newsom 1963:iv).
Those two words - 'acquiring intelligence' - were of immense significance: they acknowledged that the whole basis of eleven-plus testing - the notion of fixed or innate intelligence - was now officially discredited.
Harold Macmillan (1894-1986) (pictured), who served as Prime Minister from January 1957 until October 1963, was a 'One Nation' Tory in the Disraelian tradition. His early years in office were marked by increasing prosperity and low unemployment: in a speech in Bedford on 20 July 1957 he said 'most of our people have never had it so good'.
To avoid these problems, Sir Alec Clegg (pictured), Chief Education Officer of the West Riding of Yorkshire, proposed in 1963 that, rather than being organised in two tiers - primary and secondary - schools should be organised in three tiers, with age ranges 5-9 (lower or first schools), 9-13 (middle schools) and 13-18 (upper schools).
