Comprehensive Education
By SIR ERIC JAMES* WHATEVER their other faults, teachers have no excuse for complacency. It is probably good for us that a variety of critics should remind us of our responsibility for the shortage of scientists, the illiteracy of those we do produce, the class-structure of English society, and the existence of 'rock 'n' roll.' Now Dr. Pedley has written a bookj' which for two-thirds of its length criticises our whole secondary education in the most radical way, and in the remaining third proposes a complete reorganisation of its existing structure.
He starts with two principles. The first is that selection at 11 -1- is not only wrong but grossly inefficient. The second is that the grammar school sixth form is a wasteful and ineffective institution. We are, he maintains, failing to keep children at school beyond fifteen or sixteen because we treat them as children and not as young adults. When we do keep them, we teach them in uneconomically small groups and fail to offer them a sufficient range of subjects. What is to be done? The obvious solution to the alleged evils of selection is the comprehensive school. But this Dr. Pedley rejects. He has been compelled to realise, albeit reluctantly, that in its normal form it must be very large indeed to have a sixth form of reasonable size, and very large schools find it difficult to foster the sense of membership of a community to which he attaches great importance. With the undesirable alternatives of selection and mammoth schools before him. Dr. Pedley puts forward a third scheme of organisation. It is one that was put forward by the Labour Party some years ago and hurriedly dropped, and was also considered in a modified form more recently by Croydon. Instead of selection at eleven, all children of an age group will go to a comprehensive secondary school to the age of fifteen. Those who are suit-
* High Master of Manchester Grammar School.
t COMPREHENSIVE EDUCATION: A New Approach. By Robin Pedley. (Gollancz, 13s. 6d.) able for further education will then go on to a county college for a four-year course, one college absorbing the sixth forms of a number of grammar schools and taking over the non- adult work of technical schools and colleges. The grammar schools as we know them will cease to exist. The advantages that Dr. Pedley claims lie in the abolition of selection, in the ability to provide a greater variety of sixth-form courses, and in the fact that in a college exclusively for older pupils greater freedom will be possible. and a saving of specialist staff will occur by concentration of sixth forms. Further, it is his long-term object to associate with these county colleges the part-time education of the young worker.
There are aspects of Dr. Pedley's presentation that one may regret, because they make it more difficult to be fair to his central thesis. His determination to make our flesh creep over selection is so great that he can quote as evidence a newspaper report of a clergyman's statement that 'six children at my primary school collapsed the day before the grammar school entrance examination,' and can say, 'Even the colour bar is not so liable to segregate and divide brothers and sisters.' But in spite of a good deal of superficiality and some inaccuracy, he has put forward a plan that will gain adherents and which must be considered seriously. The selection of individuals on grounds of their ability does cause difficulties of all kinds, as Plato warned us that it would. The problem of staffing the sixth forms of small grammar schools is a grave one, and may well force us in some areas to amalgamate small schools into more economic units. But Dr. Pedley's plan as it stands is open to very serious objections. First, its mere practicability is surely very doubtful. In a county borough, it would, perhaps. be theoretically possible to carry it out, though the cost and difficulty of transforming an ordinary grammar school into one designed entirely for sixth-form work would be consider- able. But in a rural area to create a county college of reason- able size would involve transporting sixth-formers from such great distances that the amalgamation of existing schools would surely be preferable. Secondly, and more important. its effects on the standards of education would inevitably be disastrous. Dr. Pedley himself calculates that the staffs of exist- ing grammar schools would almost all be absorbed by the new county colleges, with their four-year courses and generous stall- ing ratio. But if this is so, where is the saving of manpower? Further, the implication is clear that the broad general educa- tion that he postulates for children up to fifteen is to be left mainly to non-graduates. Dr. Pedley is thus proposing a scheme which delays entry to the university for one and often two years, and in which the education, even of the ablest children. in science, mathematics and foreign languages is to be carried on for four years in unselective schools, and even unselective classes, by teachers who are not graduates. If I may borrow a phrase from Dr. Pedley, 'One human example pinpoints the situation.' Under his scheme a promising mathematician will _ be taught mainly by non-graduates in such a way that by the age of sixteen he reaches a standard 'roughly equivalent to the old pass level of the school certificate.' If Dr. Pedley seriously believes that such an arrangement is satisfactory. for either the child or the community, he can have encountered few clever little boys. To propose Such a wholesale retarda- tion of ability at a time when we are short of money and man- power is unrealistic, to use the kindest possible word. And. incidentally, nothing could do more than such a plan to accentuate the academic superiority of the independent schools to those in the State system that Dr. Pedley deplores and wishes to remedy.
Lastly. there arc serious psychological objections to Dr. 'Pedley's plan. Even if the scheme were good, the fact is that
most grammar-school teachers would not think. so. They will see it as a scheme to destroy institutions which they have built up over the years, and which they believe with some justifica- tion to be increasingly successful in every field. The solutions to the problems which Dr. Pedley puts to us will not be as simple or as spectacular as his; they will need years of experi- ment with many kinds of school; they will call for a much greater expenditure on education of all kinds. But whatever else they demand, the chief requirement will be for teachers of ability and high morale, who will encourage some of their best pupils to follow in their footsteps, and this is of far greater importance than any question of organisation and machinery. Does Dr. Pedley really think that to propose a decapitation of the grammar schools is going to stimulate the teachers in them to fresh efforts? It is good that we should be challenged to think afresh about our schools—but, to be effective, the challenge must show a greater regard than Dr. Pedley's for the fact that schools are not administrative abstractions, and that at this particular moment in our history it is dangerous to threaten in any way the flow of trained ability which our grammar schools increasingly provide.
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