Education
Save the direct grant schools Ilk Bruce Lockhart "rarnmar Schools ought to be abolished. They take boys and girls from perfectly good working ?ass homes and fill them with a ,„t' , of education. They leave and r, a job at £3,000 a year, go to 've in Solihull and vote Tory" — tributed to a former member of itrningham Education Committee
"hen Mr Wilson suspended
4rsdentence on the public schools ing the election campaign, 're were some little sighs of frelief from the centre as well as rrnn"I the right. When Mr Prentice teoPlaced Mr Hattersley it changed something• like a general and ss ,ua ss ,ua s ive grunt of satisfaction. It :Med the most generous gesture vv (2mciliation and moderation hich , a Labour Government more nri„`,e,nton building bridges than on c"'Icies of expensive destruction emuld have given. s ",,°w the election dust has iel.1"ed, we can see more clearly. pf,e news that execution is post is always joyful: it becomes r so when accompanied by a'"lours of the execution of one's a55 ours Supporters of the th:e1;endent schools must rally to uefence of the direct grant not brelY to save their own skins but 2-cause it is a good cause. It is no i,vc:g3,,d Pointing out now that he a, sups with the devil must use co,„°ng spoon and that to ii;"„Prornise over independence sn',.? a mistake, however much s'a""e of us were in a position to ta,,,Y "I told you so." It was a misici:el? policy undertaken for an sks-alistic motive, and no one ,"ould be reproached for that in a giaterialist age. a,,r,he Labour Party has blown hot ti"0:4 cold over its declared intengra?, of withdrawing the direct ut °Aggressively announced in dh'Ippsition, it was soft-pedalled ti.crtng the election and is being _reatened again in office. It may tTthdrav;/ into the background for e honeymoon months until all
the popular and practical measures have been implemented. The bemused electorate will then be bamboozled into giving wholehearted support at a second election to a Labour Party which will claim their allegiance as the only party able to co-operate with, love, honour and obey the unions. At this stage the mask will be dropped and the wild men will have their day. The end of the direct grant will then become a front runner.
There are obvious attractions in bringing the direct grant to an end. Although the independent public schools are much more unpopular in egalitarian circles, there is one decisive difference. To abolish the independent schools would be most expensive, to abolish the direct grant would be profitable. And profit weighs more with governments than principle. Although the state has no hesitation in disbursing over £1,000 a year per pupil on a selectively maintained boarding school of its own or an average of £1,700 per inmate for its prisoners, grants for those who have deserved rather better of the community arouse their moral indignation. Do not underestimate the threat. Hattersley's ghost still walks. If the direct grant schools are forced to choose between being swallowed up by the maintained sector and going independent, we know already that a large number will choose freedom: even though the competition will lead to casualties. The weakest will then be picked off one by one, by the tactics of sniping or guerrilla warfare rather than by a frontal attack: charitable status may be removed and rates raised, grants may be reduced, wealth tax will be introduced and any tax advantages for different ways of paying fees removed. This will eventually bring about the position which Hattersley aimed at: only a few of the most successful schools will be left.
As all ways of opening their doors wider will have been denied to them and all help refused to their clientele, they will have been effectively forced to become what they do not want to be: the exclusive privilege of the very rich. It will then be much easier to brand them as infamous and to persuade the electorate that they deserve to be disposed of.
A far cry from the present direct grant schools whose only crime has been that they have provided a first class education for many children whose parents cannot afford independent 'school fees. Some of them have done a wonderful job for their own areas, and not all of them are tied to 11+ selection. They have committed the unpardonable crime of trying to be both successful and democratic. The Marxist left traditionally prefers to see right-wing and extreme capitalist organisations in power, because it is difficult to ferment resentment and rebellion against enlightened liberal institutions. For that reason they are eager to dispose of schools which represent a genuine attempt to make good education available to wider circles and to build bridges between the maintained and the independent sector and might point the way to future compromise.
Most people believe that Mr Prentice, the new Secretary of State for Education, is a moderate man. His past pronouncements on the independent schools at least have been restrained. Whether he will be able to hold back his own party over the issue of direct grant must be doubtful, if the Labour Government should be returned with a solid majority. The continued existence in anything like their present form of schools like Norwich, Framlingham, Ipswich and the Perse is at stake. They will have to choose between raising their fees high and going independent in which case they will lose their unique role in giving a public school education to the not so well off, and becoming reluctant and faceless maintained schools comprehensive in intake, but not in design, experience, scale or inclination. East Anglian education would suffer, like the rest of the country, a bitter blow at a time of educational crisis. When good schools are so few and far between we cannot afford to lose hundreds of the best at one fell stroke. Perhaps the Liberals at least would not find it impossible to live up to their name and to show that in this case they are prepared to put freedom and moderation before doctrinaire egalitarianism.
I,ogie Bruce Lockhart is headmaster of Gresham's School
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