'It is still my hope that the direct-grant schools will
find ways of co-operation within a system of comprehensive education. But if events prove me wrong, then the whole future of the direct-grant system will inevitably come into question.'—Secretary of State for Education, January 7.
Think Again, Mr. Crosland
By J. M. COBBAN, Headmaster of Abingdon School
irr may be, as Mr. Crosland says, that the 'warning shot he has fired across the bows of the direct-grant schools is neither a threat nor an ultimatum, but even the most rollicking of buccaneers could scarcely expect it to be regarded as a gesture of goodwill.
To define the direct-grant schools is easier than to describe them, for there is a wide variety even among the sixty-odd boys' schools represented on the Headmasters' Conference. Some of them are large day-schools with an academic reputa- tion second to none. Others are country schools with strong boarding sides. Some have a strong religious foundation. But there are certain common characteristics. In all of them the day- places, at any rate, are available to boys of every social background. If there is a privilege attached to admission, it is a privilege based on merit and not on father's income. In the school for which I speak the son of an air mar- shal can rub shoulders happily with the son of the school porter or of a working housekeeper. Nearly two-thirds of their entry come from grant-aided primary schools. The proportion of boys staying on for the sixth-form course and entering the universities is extremely high. Their existence alongside the schools of the main- tained system provides the parents who live within reach with a genuine freedom of choice. And this freedom of choice may be based on a wide variety of factors. In Abingdon a parent who wishes his son to be educated at a co-edu- cational school, or to learn Chinese, may quite properly choose to send his son to the excellent maintained grammar school which marches with us (and with which we enjoy the friendliest of relations). If, conversely, he prefers a single-sex school, or if he wants his son to learn Greek or to have specifically Anglican instruction, then he applies to us.
Of course the system is anomalous, but then so is much that we take for granted in this country, from the British Constitution down- wards; and the anomaly is less in these days when the frontiers of nationalisation are blurred and some form of partnership between the state and private enterprise is becoming more and more common in the economic and social fields. In general, the direct-grant system possesses two cardinal advantages. It provides a working ex- ample of a combination of liberty and control (which, among other things, engenders a remark- able spirit of devotion in all those who serve in it); and it forms a bridge between the state and the independent systems, but for which the country would be more sharply divided, edu- cationally speaking, into two nations.
It might have been thought that a new govern- ment, anxious to spread equality of opportunity as widely as possible, eager to break down all class divisions, would have looked with favour- able interest on schools which are not only socially comprehensive but also exemplify one
I. M. Cobban has been headmaster of Abing- don, a direct-grant day and boarding school with MO pupils, since 1997.
way, not necessarily the only way, in which the independent schools could be more closely inte- grated into the national system. At the very least it could have organised some form of in- quiry, at a national level, into what made these schools tick so successfully. But it didn't turn out like that. After ominous rumblings of thunder on the left came the egregious circular 10/65. It is not my province to point out what an impossible assignment this precipitate ukase has imposed on local education authorities, which are requested to prepare plans for a completely comprehensive system without waiting for the. Plowden Report and without extra expenditure. At this time their members must read the fifth chapter of Exodus with a new sympathy. But this circular includes a deceptively casual refer- ence to the direct-grant schools. While we were still digesting this came the pointed exclusion of the direct-grant schools from the scope of what is now so misleadingly called the Public Schools Commission. We should think it strange if a government were to consider ways and means of bringing the drink trade under state control without paying any regard to the Carlisle ex- periment. But the significance of this step is clear. The direct-grant schools are a tiresome piece of grit in the machinery of comprehension. They can best be dealt with by a policy of fragmenta- tion. That this lesson may not be lost on us, it has now been spelt out more clearly. We are to co-operate—or else.
In other words, for now the truth will out, the direct-grant schools are, of their very nature, selective schools, and as such are suspect. And here we must nail our own colours to the mast. We (for I think I can speak for other direct- grant school headmasters as well as for myself) have shared the general unease about the rigidity of selection at the age of eleven—a rigidity which
the natural process of time has already done much to break down. We are not opposed to the comprehensive school as such, but we think that there is room for diversity of system. In any case, there is need for much more experiment and research before the grave decision is taken to superimpose a uniformly comprehensive sys- tem on established and flourishing schools. The fact that money is not to be made available for the establishment of proper comprehension strengthens our case.
We have yet to be convinced that the com- prehensive school, as we know it, is as efficient as the selective school, or is any less socially divisive. Most of our schools are not large enough to become completely comprehensive without seriously affecting the range and in- tellectual standards of our sixth forms. (Here is much room for research. If I am right in think- ing that nowadays a workable sixth form, with a full range of courses, needs a reinforcement of at least sixty boys a year, what must be the size of the comprehensive school on which this sixth form is based?) We are built, equipped and staffed (an important point this) to provide a certain type of education. Where the demand for our places so greatly exceeds the supply, we think the fairest way of selection is by the ability to profit by that type of education, rather than by any arbitrary zoning. We are not, as a class, reactionary and we are eager to face the chal- lenge of the new age, but we are desperately anxious that in trying to accommodate ourselves to new conditions we do not sacrifice what we regard as our essential contribution to English education. We want to preserve our intellectual standards, we want to preserve the right of the school to order its own life, the right of the headmaster (within limits) to choose his own boys, the right of the parent (again within limits) to choose his own school.
It is in this spirit that we are all of us sin- cerely attempting to find a new modus operandi. As headmaster of one direct-grant school, and chairman of the governors of another (a girls' school), I have the good fortune to be nego- tiating with a local authority which is unusually friendly and enlightened and which shares my own desire to find some way of reconciliation. On the matter of age of entry there will be no difficulty. It is the question of selection that will be crucial. Of course, if it came to the crunch I know that I could recommend my governors either to give their own free places, or, if that resort were closed to us (as I surmise may well happen), to go completely independent. We could still be a viable unit, we should still have long waiting lists. But I feel this would be a betrayal of our obligation to the local com- munity which we have served for hundreds of years, and I should adopt such a course with real anguish. That is why I wish the Secretary of State for Education would think again, at this late hour, and would arrange an impartial inquiry into the nature, the function and the role of the direct-grant schools. Then we should at least know where we were.
Meanwhile, each of us in his own little world is faced with the responsibility of deciding just how far he can recommend his governors to fit in with the local comprehensive scheme, just where along the line he must dig his toes in to avoid irrevocable decisions which would take his school beyond the point of no return. The Secretary of State has said repeatedly that he has no wish to see a good school destroyed or maimed. If he leaves it to each school to make its own terms, then I am afraid that is just what will-happen.
Previous page
