" The New Prospect "
THE schools of Britain are silent to-day as the Palace of Westminster. The teachers after a few days' rest may have time to think ; managers and administra- tors too are untroubled by the small details of education. It is therefore no bad moment to ask them to consider at leisure bigger questions that will shortly be thrust upon them. The voluminous " Hadow " Report (of the Con:. sultative Committee on the Education of the Adolescent) is more than a year old, but the older it is the more difficult to face the plunge into such a wide sea. The Board of Education has considerately issued from H.M.
Stationery Office a shorter pamphlet (No. 60, price 6d.) called The New Prospect in Education, in which the gist of the Report can be found, and some important informa- tion about the steps which the present energetic President is now taking, or means the Board to take as soon as possible, on the recommendation of the Report.
The great change will be the introduction of a clear cut in a child's education at the age of eleven years. Hitherto the only break in " elementary " education has been when a child of seven leaves the Infants' Depart- ment for the upper standards, sometimes with a dreary prospect of seven years to be spent under the same teachers (however adinirable) in the same rooms. A frequent result has been that a forward child has reached by the age of thirteen a point beyond which he or she makes scarcely any progress in the last year. The slowest child must often set the pace or be neglected, and the quickest must mark time. The teachers can find no time, means, or place to give to the clever one individual attention. When we have " primary " schools for children of five to eleven, with the old break at seven more or less as before, there is very good reason to hope that the average child of eleven at the top of the primary school will be nearer the level of the present children of thirteen and fourteen than he now is in, say, the fourth standard ; and there should be less stagnation at the top. This will be the more evident if about the same time the efforts that are being made to reduce the numbers in classes show their effect substantially.
The children under eleven, then, will remain much as they are, but their " junior " school will be regarded more as preparatory to the " senior " school. The pro- posed changes will affect all children of eleven to fourteen, or to fifteen, for already every Authority ought to have found room for those who stay voluntarily to the age of fifteen. One may say truly that the changes proposed are mainly " structural," intended to lead more easily to the Technical, Commercial or other secondary schools which are the rungs of the ladder from the Infants' School to the University. But that is the vague language by which we are as often bored as really inspired. The education in the senior school is to be based on a four-year course, for the leaving age will be boldly taken as fifteen, and it is meant to fit in with the secondary education already provided for boys and girls up to eighteen. The hope is that the general education of every child from eleveri to fifteen will improve, and early specialization will not, we are thankful to say, be an aim. We hope it will not plausibly creep in where it is found possible to relax uniformity and to vary courses slightly for children of varying powers and natural bents. A wise teacher would, if he has the chance, make good use of the variety, and hope is held out that scope will be given ; but that is easier in theory than in the practice of a hard-driven teacher. Those who are familiar with the working of the " central " schools which active Local Authorities have been lately starting will most readily imagine the future senior schools, bearing always in mind that while our central schools are selective, the senior schools will be for all children. In areas where schools of both types can exist, they will be there side by side, just as the central schools exist and will continue to exist side by side with the junior Technical Schools in which no change is now proposed. Elsewhere the senior schools will be in a sense central schools, but not selective. At the age of eleven the great majority of children will thus go to a fresh building. That alone will be a great stimulus to them. To start afresh in new surroundings with school-fellows all older and wiser than oneself, with no infants or younger children with whom to compare oneself, is a mightily different thing at the age of eleven from the often dreary progress in one school from five to fourteen.
The pamphlet is for those who are interested in national education, which ought to mean every intelligent person. It is not for those whose only educational interest lies in their local rates or the Board's Estimates. That very serious side of the shield is not dealt with and, so far as we know, no firm estimates of the costs have been attempted. We can only say that, although few of the parents realize how much money they take for their children, we grudge money for education less than for any other Socialistic public expenditure. (Let no one gall us by writing to say that " Money spent on education is an investment." It is, and none better ; but invest- ment is the luxury of those who have a surplus income. Where is ours to-day ?) The expense will he spread over several years, but we cannot have places for all children up to fifteen, which is expected to be the com- pulsory age within four years from now, when the decrease of the school-age population due to the War will have disappeared ; we cannot have more selective central schools ; we cannot have new senior schools ; we cannot have more teachers for more children in smaller classes without putting our hands in our pockets. We are surprised that Lord Eustace Percy said lately that the New Prospect was " not an expensive policy." It seems to us bound to be. There will be certain savings but they will look very small beside the expenditure. We cannot to-day go into the different ways in which the scheme will have to be worked out in rural and urban areas, nor into the different effects upon " provided " and " non-provided " schools.
There is a good deal of new nomenclature here which may or may not mean much. Educationists, like other -ists, are prone to invent a jargon, but on historical grounds we protest against a suggestion in Sir Henry Hadow's Report, to call all the Secondary Schools Grammar Schools. Since long before the days of Edward VI. a Grammar School was one that taught Latin and pro- duced " Glomerels." There has grown up through the centuries at least an " implied contract " that a Grammar School teaches Latin, and everyone who cares for the glorious history and traditions of British education would feel hurt by a rupture of that contract. We can only add that we hope that all " educationists " will study the pamphlet during the holidays if they have not already done so. Particularly we commend it to the thousands who do such a vast aggregate of voluntary educational work throughout the country.
They have our gratitude for the time and labour they spend, but they must be well informed of impending changes if their services or their criticisms arc to have full value.
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