Education
The collapse of London's schools
Rhodes Boyson
Does the general public realise how dangerous is the situation in London's schools and how near they are to total collapse? Last week some eighty-three secondary schools in Greater London were on part-time schooling and some 40,000 children were sent home for part of the week. There are teacher shortages in various parts of the country and part-time schooling in Glasgow but it is in London where the position is most serious.
For the 1972-3 year the teacher turnover in London reached 30 per cent, 9 per cent more than for the rest of the country. It would be fascinating to know which age gro.tp was the one which moved out since the London shortage is denuding the city of all the thirtyto fifty-year-old teachers. Two-thirds of London's teachers are below the age of thirty-five and one-third are below the age of twentyfive. This means that London's schools are staffed by young and inexperienced teachers with a steadily declining proportion of the older, more stable and more experienced staff. No wonder that disciplinary problems abound.
The young teachers come to London for a few years to share flats and taste the life of the capital and often to take additional qualifications. Unless they are very fortunate they have to move out of London when they many. They just cannot afford to buy a house or flat in London and only rarely can they obtain a council house. If they do obtain a house the mortgage will probably take all the wife's salary so that they will have to move away before they can have children. As it is the average teacher in London travels ten miles each day to and from work and some travel up to thirty miles.
With part-timers, we have some eighty teaching staff at Highbury Grove, yet in my seven years as headmaster not one married male teacher has taken a job with us from outside London and bought a house in the capital. All such applicants have withdrawn before interview after they have visited the local estate agents. Thus the school is dependent upon the newly-trained transient teacher and the older teachers whose numbers decline every year as two or three more retire. One post, once vacant, may have six teachers covering it in two years, each staying a term before he or she moves on again. Out of nine special-responsibility post vacancies we have advertised in the last year, only two received any applications from outside the school and none were received from outside London.
It is this rapid turnover of inexperienced staff which has increased the disciplinary problems of London. Rapid turnover of staff and inexperienced teachers create disciplinary problems and these cause even more rapid turnover of staff. The Professional Association of Teachers in a recent survey of 279 London teachers found that the nervous strain of teaching in London was itself one of the main causes of the instability of staffing. Reference was also made, to the fact that many teachers feel that they received little backing from the headteacher or authority when attempting to keep order in London.
It is the raising of the school-leaving age which has made a very diffieult situation really dangerous. The raising of the schoolleaving age in 1949 was carried by-the mature ex-service emergency-trained teachers. These are no longer recruited. Teachers expect the situation to get worse rather than better over the next five years.
There has also been this year a 13.9 per cent fall in the number of applicants for Colleges of Education and a 19.5 per cent fall in graduate applications for the one-year certificate course and the fall among male applicants was even greater. Even if colleges and departments are filled the calibre of applicant accepted is very likely to show a further decline.
What is to be done? The teacher unions want an increase in the London allowance to £300 as against the £118 at which it has stood since November 1970. The National Association of Head Teachers wants a London allowance of £400. I doubt if anything below a net additional income of £500 per annum will bring or keep staff in London. Mrs Thatcher. has wisely attempted to relieve the specialist shortage in science and mathematics by permitting graduates to be recruited as teachers in these subjects without teacher training but this will only help in special cases.
From 1938-1968 the purchasing power of the wages of miners, railway porters and agricultural workers doubled while the purchasing power of schoolmasters, dons and general practitioners' salaries fell by roughly 10 per cent and the comparative income of civil servants fell by 25 per cent. White collar and professional men facing such a fall in relative standards do not mind unduly if their job is interesting and satisfying but where it has become more difficult and unpleasant theY walk with their feet away from it. In London, where many lessons are a sheer battle for control, the capable and well qualified teacher will change jobs or retreat to pleasanter areas and London's schools become even more difficult to staff. Meanwhile concerned parents notice that standards in schools are falling and will either move out to the suburbs or send their children to independent schools. Thus the intellectual calibre and enthusiasm of pupils will fall further and more teachers will leave.
There is one final point of interest. ILEA and the London boroughs are under statutorY obligation to provide schooling for pupils jO their area. If they can't provide full-time schooling could they be compelled to pay fees for pupils at independent schools provided the parents could find vacant places? People weary of the threat of power cuts buy their own generators. Parents weary of the declining standards of urban state education could perhaps find private schooling and send the authorities the bill. It would be an ill wind which blew nobody any good.
Dr Rhodes Boyson is Headmaster of Highball .Grove School in North London