Education
Parents' Privilege
By ROBIN FEDLEY wo high-powered forces are on the move in the world of education—and they may be heading for an ominous clash. On the one hand the Minister of Education, for the first time since 1944, shows clear signs of vigorously using the constitutional power then given to him to 'promote, control and direct' the national system of education. On the other hand a ground-swell movement among middie-class parents, repre- sented by local 'Associations for the Advance- ment of State Education,' gives hope of an up- surge of popular interest in our schools, with its corollary—more local control of what goes on inside them. When the irresistible force (democracy on the march) meets the immovable object (entrenched Whitehall bureaucracy) what will happen? But long before battle is joined, if it ever is, there will be casualties among those who stand in the way. The local education authorities seem likely soon to be reduced to the status of mere instruments of the central government. Indeed, with Sir Edward Boyle's scrapping of the Burnham salaries machinery, that process has already begun. There is widespread belief that the Robbins Committee on Higher Education, now painfully in labour, will recommend that the local education authorities be shorn of their main responsibilities for further education, and that both technical colleges and teacher training colleges will be put under the control of either the universities or specially constituted boards.
The teachers, too, are watching apprehen- sively, The Minister's Cutriculum Study Group threatens to probe into jealously guarded' terri- tory—what the schools teach—more deeply than any government organisation has done before. It is now to be put under the respectable umbrella of a Schools Curriculum Council which will represent different educational interests. But the driving force will still come from the centre. Meanwhile, from the teachers' other flank a new factor in State education, a growing body of educated and knowledgeable parents, asks increasingly pertinent questions about how teachers discharge their responsibilities and expects both explanations and consultation.
Next term I go to science and you to the arts and we'll become completely incompatible!'
Major changes which override highly prized local rights are only accepted when the case for effective action seems irresistible. It is not only the Conservative Government which threatens local control of education. We are already being told that 'one of the first things the new Labour Government will do is tc abolish once and for all the eleven-plus exam. Now I have spent many years trying to persuade everyone concerned with education that this particular reform is urgent; but I have also pointed out that local education authorities are free to convert all their existing modern and grammar schools to a two- tier comprehensive system of junior and senior high schools without consulting the Minister at all. In fact there are six county councils and twenty-three county borough councils which have been under unbroken Labour control for the whole eighteen years since the war ended, yet not one of them has taken this course; though London and Coventry have pressed on with the provision of orthodoe comprehensive schools.
As the law stands at present, the famous para- graph which says that children must be educated according to 'age, ability and aptitude' does not prescribe one form of secondary school organisa- tion rather than another. Labour must therefore rely on other clauses which give the Minister more general, overriding powers. Conservative Ministers have exercised their legal right to veto proposals for the establishment of new compre- hensive schools. Labour is obviously proposing to exercise central direction more positively— that is, it will not merely stop local authorities doing what they want; it may compel them to do what they don't want. The initiative will pass, more clearly than ever before, from County Hall to Curzon Street; and once it has gone it will never be retrieved.
While these great issues are fought out, the teachers stand fearfully on the sidelines. The National Union 'of Teachers (of which I am a member) has shirked full-blooded debate and decision about the eleven-plus and secondary school organisation. Only salaries and related matters seem to stir this elephantine body to vigorous action. The teachers' natural allies, the parents, are kept coldly at arm's length by a curious insistence that what happens inside a school is solely the concern of teachers, that they alone are qualified to pronounce on the vexed questions of dress, rewards and punishments, 'streaming' by -dainty, courses of study, and so on. Like old-fashioned doctors who refuse to explain anything to their patients and expect their judgment to Le accepted with unquestioning awe, too many teachers confuse professional status with the enjoyment of respectful deference from ignorant inferiors.
It seems to me very likely, on the one hand, that teachers' freedom to decide what they teach will increasingly give way to Ministry control, and, on the other hand, that the initiative on future developments in the social organisation of school life will pass by default to the new middle class of lively, intelligent parents who are them- selves university products (as most teachers are not), and who refuse to be fobbed off.
I am prophesying, I ,agree. I may be wrong. The best way of ensuring that I do turn out to be wrong, as I fervently hope, is for us all to try to read the signs of the times aright.
The professional status of teachers may yet be preserved. The local education authorities may yet save those features of local control which have always seemed essential to the English form of democracy. The temptation of future Ministers to use to the full the far-reaching powers rashly given to them in 1944 may yet be curbed. The frustration of parents, tired of being cold-shouldered or treated as beginners, may yet be transformed into happy co-operation with their children's teachers. But how?
If we are to have a happy ending, all these people need to understand and to practise, far more than they do now, efiective communica- tion. At present this is sadly lacking. Teachers are suspicious of the intentions of the Minister. A local education authority upsets parents by announcing its eleven-plus results in an insensi- tive, ham-handed way. A mother is provoked .to indignation by he lordly decree of a headmaster who will countenance only the dress of 1943 in 1963.
do not believe for one moment that either the Minister or his civil servants are ogres who are planning a great project of self-aggrandisement. I know that all teachers are not selfish or dicta- torial, all local education officers not myoeie. The partnership of three equals—MinistrY, LEAs, teachers—has worked fairly well in the past. We must recognise, however, that it is not today working well enough to inspire confidence in its efficiency for the future. A fourth partner, the parents, must be brought in at school and neighbourhood level throughout the country. Above all, there must be more consultation and explanation of ideas and intentions, both before decisive action and while it is proceeding. Educators are supremely concerned with the effective transmission of ideas. It is their job. If they are worth their salt, this new challenge Will enrich the partnership of central, local, profes- sional and parental interests and make it the envy of the world.
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