Mr Chataway's trap
To judge from the hysterical reaction from the fanatical adherents of 100 per cent com- prehensive education, it might appear as if the Tory-controlled Inner Lobdon Education Authority's new plan for secondary reorgani- sation involved the destruCtion of every single comprehensive school in the inner London area. No doubt this sadly predictable left-wing response was all very gratifying to ILEA'S majority leader, Mr Christopher Chataway, whose overriding political need has been to rehabilitate himself with the strong grammar school lobby in his own party, who had begun to regard him as little less than a traitor to the cause. But the reality could hardly be more different.
The Labour scheme for London's secon- dary school reorganisation, which Mr Chat- away's supplants, was already one of the most gradual in the country—largely because of the old ILEA'S insistence on an exclusively single-tier, eleven-to-eighteen year old, com- prehensive school system. Under it, full corn- prehensivisation would not have been reached until well into the 1980s. The halfway stage, with the proportion of secondary school- children at grammar schools reduced from today's 19 per cent to some 10 per cent or thereabouts, would have been reached around 1975. And what do the new, Tory, ILEA proposals amount to? That the propor- tion of London's secondary schoolchildren attending grammar schools should be re- duced to 10 per cent by 1975.
In short, the only significant difference is that the Tories are saying nothing about what is to happen after 1975. Certainly, they have no intention of paying even lip service to the principle of eventual total comprehen- sivisation. But, equally, Mr Chataway has refused to be drawn into giving any under- taking that the forty or so grammar schools that are still to be in existence in 1975 will continue for ever. Prudently, he has taken the line that any further reduction in gram- mar school places below the 10 per cent mark after 1975 should be decided, not today, but in the light of the success or failure of the comprehensive experiment and the develop- ment of parental wishes between now and 1975. Not even Mr Wilson himself could fault so pragmatic an approach.
In all probability, the sensible course will prove to be to allow the grammar school pto- portion to fall perhaps a little further still, but certainly not below 5 per cent. Not only would this allow the preservation of all the really first-class, grammar sehools which it would be educationally criminal to destroy; it would also enable the state system to pro- vide for the minority of high-fliers on whom —as this week's report on the Brain Drain underlines—the nation's future so dispro- portionately depends. Failure to segregate the intellectual high-fliers can only retard their development by depriving them of the stimulus of competition with their equals. It would also, incidentally, ensure, that the task of academic pacemaking was left entirely to the private sector, and make nbnsense of any hopes of achieving equality of oppor- tunity for the clever child. And if a system in which the eleven-plus is transformed from a compulsory hurdle for all to, in effect, a voluntary scholarship examination for the few is still to be dubbed educational apar- theid, then apartheid is just what we need.
But this is all some way in the future. For the present, Mr Chataway has laid' the Gov- ernment a very clear trap. If it accepts the new Tot), proposals it will be assailed by the comprehensivist fanatics on its own side, for whom faith matters more than fads. Arid if it attempts to fight them, either by withhold- ing funds for the development of London's education or by 'nationalising' ILEA itself, it will find that it has brought the great educa- tion debate to the centre of the national political arena On the worst possible ground for Labour.
There can be little doubt that, if Mr Cros- land had still been minister, he would have chosen the course of prudence, reflecting that by 1970 Labour will in all probability have regained control of ILEA anyway. But with Mr Gordon Walker there is always the chance that he will put his foot in it—particu- larly if he is stung by other local authorities deciding to follow London's lead. It is right to warn him now that if he does so, if he does decide to fight the undoctrinaire proposals of the elected government of London, then the children of London and the nation's educa- tional development will certainly suffer, but the principal victim will be Mr Gordon Walker himself and the Co' ernnaent of which he is a member. ' .
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