In the 1970s, when grammar schools were being rapidly culled, and there was all the indignant huffing and puffing that you might expect, I remember writing of the frustration of still having to make the case for comprehensive schools.
Well, what did I know. Here we are, 40 years on, still having to show patience as we face yet another surge of claims that the 11-plus is actually an engine of social mobility, based on evidence best summarised as: “It worked for me so it must be good for everybody.”
Why does selection continue to attract support? Part of the answer has to be self-interest on the part of those families who believe that their own kids are entitled always to turn left on the aeroplane of life. Others are convinced that some children are just clever, destined from the start to be lawyers and brain surgeons while others are more suited to hewing wood and drawing water. Educating them in the company of their peers is an obvious corollary. Certainly that was the view of the Norwood Report of 1943, a precursor of the 1944 Education Act.
A key suggestion from Sir Cyril Norwood was that there are three distinct “groupings” of children. His lengthy definitions are worth reading, but they can be summarised as:
- “The pupil who is interested in learning for its own sake, who can grasp an argument or follow a piece of connected reasoning...”
- Then, there is “... the pupil whose interests and abilities lie markedly in the field of applied science or applied art.”
- And finally – you know what’s coming – there is the pupil who, “...deals more easily with concrete things than with ideas. He may have much ability but it will be in the realm of facts.” This passage tends to ramble as Sir Cyril attempts to describe the child who is less able academically but has many other qualities.
The Norwood Report claims no scientific or psychological evidence for these “rough groupings”, presenting them instead as the received wisdom, of educators across the world.
The 1943 government White Paper on educational reconstruction also foreshadowed the 1944 Education Act. It supported the idea of a “tripartite” system of schools – Secondary Grammar, Secondary Technical and Secondary Modern. But there were significant caveats, notably that there should be co-operation and ease of transfer.
“It would be wrong to suppose that they will necessarily remain separate and apart ... In any case free interchange of pupils from one type to another must be facilitated.”
There’s also a paragraph that comes down strongly against secondary selection by curriculum-skewing exams. Instead, allocation to secondary school should be mainly by teacher judgement, existing records, parental wishes and, where appropriate, intelligence tests.
Given the educational thinking of the time, the White Paper was a well-intentioned plan to provide secondary education for all children, created in the optimistic spirit that held sway in those months when the first glimmer of peace was at last visible on the horizon. Even then, though, there must have been those hardened souls who suspected (or intended) that the reality would turn out differently.
How right they were. For one thing, technical schools were too expensive for most authorities, so virtually everywhere the system became a take-it-or-leave-it directed choice between grammar and sec mod, determined all too often by a battery of tests (Engish, arithmetic, intelligence) easy to set and mark. Some authorities provided a “second chance” for modern school pupils at 13-plus, but for the majority, the 11-plus really was a life-defining pass/fail moment – and, given its multiple flaws of both concept and execution, it was seasoned with a toxic dose of blind chance.
We know the rest. Many working class pupils either dropped out of grammars early or underperformed. (the Gurney-Dixon report, Early Leaving, 1954) Meanwhile, secondary moderns, finding they had significant numbers of able pupils, were raiding scarce resources and diverting staff to provide the very exam classes from which they were supposed to be free (Crowther Report, 15-18, 1959).
It was a dysfunctional mess, for which the only practical remedy available at the time was the establishment of non-selective comprehensive schools.
Maybe a modern grammar school system will be more flexible and socially responsive. It seems clear to me, though, that any selective system has built-in immutable characteristics. For example, if one local school is only for children who can satisfy a selection process, it inevitably gathers prestige, while the same mechanism downgrades the desirability of the “other” schools, making their job much more difficult.
Then, experience tells us that no system of selection can ever be anywhere near perfect. The “overlap” (as Crowther called it) will always exist, and be difficult to manage.
What parent wants be told, “sorry, we got it wrong. We now see that your grammar school child would be better off in a sec mod”?
And, finally, the wholesale grouping, selection and categorisation of children is another example of society’s persistent habit of dreaming up school systems, then working out how to make children fit them. One thing the 1943 White Paper did get right was to remind everyone that: “The keynote will be that the child is the centre of education.”
- Gerald Haigh was a teacher in primary, secondary and special schools for 30 years, 11 of them in headship. You can find him on Twitter @geraldhaigh1. His previous blogs and articles for SecEd can be found via http://bit.ly/1UojJ5B