2 APRIL 1965, Page 15

As many of the public-school headmasters and schoolmasters whom I

have been meeting in the course of my inquiry into boarding education realise, integration in whatever form it comes needs a more robust, positive and flexible approach than this. One fundamental issue will be one of adjustment— bet just the adjustment of a new group of boys to the public-school environment but the deliberate adjustment of that environment to them. This will demand more than 'broadmindedness.' It will re- quire a sympathetic understanding and desire to Preserve the personal qualities and social strengths Which distinguish the newcomers from the boys already in the school and which derive from their different social class, their different family patterns, their local ties and the values and expectations im- Planted by eight previous years of day-schooling. To adjust to these new and formidable factors, aoltools will have to face considerable changes in 1:11eir own organisation and assumptions, particularly in regatd to the rigidity of their boarding patterns,