I HAVE BEEN reading copies of the correspondence that has
been passing between the citizens of Aylesbury and the authorities on the case of Aylesbury Grammar School; and my sympathies are with the citizens. Their grammar school has been co-educational for the past fifty years; but in 1954 the local education committee decided to build a new school for girls, and to convert the present establishment into a boys' school. This is to be done, here as elsewhere, not in deference to local opinion—which is strongly against the change—but for administrative convenience, ignoring the Education Act, which asserts that pupils are to be educated in accordance with the wishes of their parents. Obviously there are diffi- culties in opening a second school in a town where one co-educational establishnient already exists; but they are not so great as to justify overriding the wishes of the parents concerned. And even if I were a fanatical opponent of co-education, I think I would be converted to it in this case by the specious arguments of the authorities against it.
PHAROS
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