Soviet schooling
Rhodes Boyson
The dogma of the Labour Party knows no bounds. Mr Mulley's coercive comprehensive Bill heralds the end of variety and experiment in secondary schooling. It is ironic that on this issue at least Soviet Russia has a more open mind than the British Labour Party and that it quickly retreated from a total comprehensive structure when it realised that it was handicapping itself in science, commerce and technology.
Russia has more than 500 secondary schools specialising in individual science and mathematical subjects, and some select for entry at an age as early as seven. Almost 80 per cent of the leavers from these schools gain entry to universities and other institutions of higher education by competitive examination. The Soviet mathematician Kolmogorov set up a special boarding school attached to Moscow University for 300 to 400 pupils, and over 90 per cent of those who leave this school take LIP university places. There are also numerous specialist European and Oriental language schools with early selection for entry.
The most famous of Russia's 'special schools is the Physics-Mathematical School at Novosibirsk which draws gifted pupils from the Eastern territories. Children are selected by annual `olympiads'—regular mathematical competitions—and the children join as boarders, returning home only for holidays. Such pupils are virtually assured of uninterrupted progress to university and many of them go on to be research workers in scientific institutions.
In Czechoslovakia, children are selected at the age of eight for special modern language schools. Comprehensive schools there were abandoned in 1964 and fourteenyear-olds have to compete for places in four-year grammar schools. In Hungary, the top 30 per cent are selected at fourteen for the gymnasium or grammar school where they follow intensive specialist courses leading to university entrance examinations. Hungary has also more than 500 primary schools specialising in such subjects as mathematics, gymnastics, Russian, music and even Esperanto.
It is ironic that the Labour Party by driving the direct grant schools into the independent sector as an alternative to becoming neighbourhood comprehensive schools is destroying the only schools which by intake and results can rival the Russian and East European 'special' schools. It is also of interest that the Conservative Party is pledged not only to re-open but to extend the direct grant school list so that such places will be available, like the Russian `special' schools, everywhere.
It is also worthy of remark that the general comprehensive schools in Russia have a work and curriculum control rather like that exercised in Victorian England. Not in them the teacher-centred do-ityourself, so-called progressive non-structured education. Pupils attend six hours a day for six days a week for 217 days in the Year, and two to four hours additional daily homework is set. An established curriculum helps not only standards but also labour mobility. Parents who have moved in England with school-age children know the Present difficulties in matching children Into similar courses in different areas.
I once suggested that a public fund should be raised to send Mr Mulley to see the specialist schools in Russia. I am now informed he has visited such schools in Poland. Perhaps it would be better to hold the next Labour Conference not in BlackPool, but in Russia, and Leonard F. Kolesnikov, the Vice-Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Novosibirsk City Soviet of Working People's Deputies, should be asked to extend the invitation to them. There is no society we cannot learn something from, and even the Tribune Group might gain more advantage by a conducted tour of a Russian specialist school. At least it would be worth a try and, although not as attractive as a ride on a Blackpool tram at illuminations time, It might be more fruitful.
It might pay members of the Labour Party to travel more extensively—but to the right places, keeping their eyes open; and their minds as well.
Previous page
