Going Comprehensive in England and Wales

A Study of Uneven Change

David Crook, Ken Fogelman, Alan C. Kerckhoff, David Reeder

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351565233
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación general

The transition of British secondary schools from predominantly selective to predominantly comprehensive was meant to transform a highly stratified system into a more equal one. However, this study shows that the new system was in fact highly diverse and retained features of the selective system.

1

The European Context of British Educational Reform

In the post-Second World War years in western Europe a new cycle of educational reform was initiated. An ideology of hope and belief in the importance of educational expansion was complemented by growing dissatisfaction with the stratified systems of schooling that most countries had inherited. Social, economic and demographic pressures combined to put structural reform on the agenda not only of popular movements and political groups but also of governments and educational policy-makers in several countries. Norway led the way in the 1950s, by extending an existing common school tradition. In the 1960s, several countries in Europe began to initiate programmes of secondary reorganisation to replace older parallel systems of schooling with comprehensive schools. A move to comprehensive reorganisation was made in countries such as Sweden, France, Scotland and England and Wales. In the 1970s, other European countries, including the West German states, followed suit, while France, which had restricted comprehensive reorganisation to five-year middle schools, began to reorganise higher secondary education.

Ideas about common schooling in Europe can be traced back to the nineteenth century as represented by the emergence of the concept of the Scandinavian basic school and the early ideas in France and Germany of Écoles Uniques and Gesamtschule. In most countries, however, including these and Britain too, a generally similar system of elementary schools plus selective secondary schooling eventually emerged. Recent studies of the rise of modern educational systems in Europe have emphasised the underlying structural similarities among these systems. Ringer argues, for example, that in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, European educational systems were characterised by an attempt to retain the exclusivity of higher status schooling while expanding the provision of lower status modern or post-elementary schooling (Ringer, 1979; Müller, Ringer and Simon, 1987).

In the post-Second World War period, however, the concept of the multilateral or comprehensive school, as an aspect of reformist educational policy, challenged, at least in theory if not necessarily in practice, the principles of selection and differentiation embodied in the way that most western European educational systems had evolved. This meant that when the idea of comprehensive education began to gain support as a viable policy, it represented a challenge to prevailing assumptions about the functions of secondary schools, and threatened the status and future of schools that participated to some degree in élite recruitment or shared the values of such schools. There were, nevertheless, important differences between countries in the degree of ideological support which comprehensive reorganisation received and the extent and effectiveness of the opposition to the comprehensive movement. There were also differences among countries in the rapidity and thoroughness with which the change to a comprehensive system was achieved.

Centralised and Pluralist Systems

In the literature on educational reform, Norway and Sweden are frequently cited as examples of countries that pushed through a comprehensive system in a relatively short time and in a thoroughgoing way, based on a clearly defined model of what a comprehensive school should be, not only in terms of recruitment but internal organisation, curricula and ethos. In both countries there was a tradition of support for the principles of common schooling associated with popular movements, and that support became widespread in the period of economic expansion of the 1950s and 1960s. Change was led by government but rested on a broad consensus about the need for educational reform to help bring about the good society in social democratic terms. Thus, in Sweden, after a short period of experimentation in the 1950s, and in line with the principle of continuous educational reform, the government legislated a change to nine-year comprehensive schools (ages 7 to 16) in 1962, imposing the same pattern of organisation and curricula on all schools at the same time. A similar process characterised the integration of higher secondary education in the early 1970s (Boucher, 1982; Thompson, 1975).

Commentators on educational change in Nordic countries have drawn attention to the role of their political systems, which can be regarded as characterised by centralist and corporatist features. In the political sphere, it is argued, the pluralist paradigm associated with such countries as the United States and England and Wales is not appropriate in considering the political systems in many European countries – not only Scandinavian countries but also the Netherlands, Belgium and France to an extent. Norway and Sweden have been seen as the ‘purist’ examples of social corporatism, with public policy an outcome of deliberate proceedings between government and bureau-cratised interest groups and, in regard to educational policy, incorporating educational professions in the decision-making process of the state (Paulston, 1968, pp. 142-6; Rust, 1990). The way in which comprehensive schooling was carried through in Norway, Rust has argued, shows how a political system with corporate features has provided viable mechanisms for dramatic and ultimately revolutionary policy formation. This throws a different light on a political system that has been previously represented as a powerful tool of social control (Rust, 1990, pp. 25-6).

Similarly, it has been argued that the centralist political system of Fifth Republic France was a key factor in explaining how a nearly uniform scheme of comprehensive reorganisation was achieved in the 1960s (Gaziell, 1989). In France there was no national consensus in favour of structural reform, and earlier projects failed to secure the consent of all the interest groups involved. In the early 1960s, comprehensive reorganisation was regarded still as a controversial issue and was subject to widespread public debate, as it was in England and Wales. But a new project was initiated from the centre, more for economic and demographic than social reasons. Outsiders brought into the Ministry of Education in 1961-62 guided a reform project based on the Collège Enseignement Secondaire (CES), a five-year middle school. The changeover to the CES was carried through by ministerial decree and involved a process described as interest group ‘co-optation’. While the central government was able to take advantage of the extra powers in the Fifth Republic constitution to initiate and promote the project, the consent and participation of interest groups such as business and the Catholic church was necessary to ensure the adoption of the reform in practice. This support meant that comprehensive reorganisation in France pushed ahead, despite continuing opposition from teachers’ unions and some parental groups.

Such corporatist and centralised political systems seem to be able to bring about institutional change more rapidly and more fully than pluralist political systems such as those found in England and Wales. One commentator has contrasted the rapidity and thoroughness of the reform process in France with that in England and Wales, where a move to comprehensive education based on a wider range of models was also under way in the 1960s (Neave, 1975b). By 1971, 60 per cent of ll-15–year-olds in state secondary education in France were in the reformed sector, compared with six per cent in 1964. The comparable figures for England and Wales were 36 per cent (38 per cent using a wider definition) in 1971, compared with seven per cent (nine per cent using a wider definition) in 1964. Put another way, in the period 1963-72, the average incremental turnover in terms of pupils moving into the reorganised schools was 7.7 per cent in France compared with 4.25 per cent in England and Wales. In addition, the French centralised system ensured a much greater uniformity not only of institutions, but of school size and definitions of catchment areas.

On the other hand, as in some other European countries, a second phase of reform was needed in France to deal with higher secondary education (age 15+), whereas the British comprehensive school movement involved the entire age range from 11 to 18. Moreover, in the late 1960s and through the 1970s in Britain, there was an accelerating shift from the selective system of grammar and secondary modern schools to the widespread introduction of comprehensive schools. Although reform began more slowly, it ultimately developed considerable momentum.

Given the strength of vested interests and ideological opposition to comprehensive reorganisation in Britain, the extent of comprehen-sivisation by the end of the 1970s, with 82 per cent of the secondary school population enrolled in comprehensive schools of some kind, must count as a considerable achievement. A comparison with the experience of West Germany, a decentralised federalist system is apposite. In the West German states, the pace and extent of comprehensive reorganisation closely followed party political lines, but overall progress was relatively slow. The first comprehensive schools appeared in West Berlin in 1968, but in the period to 1980 there were only 178 comprehensive schools in existence, to which might be added another 175 schools which would rather be called ‘multilateral’. Together, they accounted for less than 16 per cent of the secondary school population in West Germany in the late 1970s. In West Berlin and the state of Hessen, the most comprehensivised areas, the proportion reached 25 per cent and 40 per cent respectively, the latter state providing the one and only fully comprehensivised area, in a rural district (Geddes, 1980; Korner, 1981).

From a European perspective, then, the importance of England and Wales is that structural reform was carried through in the context of a political system generally recognised as having strong pluralist features. Most important were the open competition of pressure groups and the strong role of decentralised forms of government, as represented by the large number of local authorities.

The changeover from selective to comprehensive schooling has been a proving ground for theories of educational policy-making in Britain, with the leading authorities finding in comprehensive reorganisation in Britain a pluralist and indeterminate interplay between policy and practice, centre and periphery (Kogan, 1975, pp. 231-3; Archer, 1979, pp. 589-99; McPherson and Raab, 1988, p. 347). However, the significance of these pluralist features in shaping the nature and impact of comprehensive reform has not been given the same degree of attention. Hence, this book which focuses on the process of change and which can be described as a study of policy in action in a pluralist society.

Reorganisation in England and Wales

Great Britain, like most western European countries, has had a highly stratified educational system throughout most of the twentieth century. The 1944 Education Act organised British education in what was then viewed as a more liberal form than before the Second World War because it provided universal secondary schooling, and it offered at least an opportunity for students to follow advanced secondary school academic courses. At the secondary school level, the system clearly separated the more and less accomplished students into grammar and secondary modern schools, however. That separation was made at age 11 (10V2 for many), dependent in large part on the so-called 11 + examination. Transfers between the two types of secondary schools were seldom possible.

Although it did provide better schooling than in the past to less accomplished or less privileged students, such a selective system was not viewed with favour by all, and there were outspoken critics from the beginning, especially within the Labour Party. That dissatisfaction fuelled the reform movement calling for the establishment of comprehensive schools.

The creation of comprehensive schools in England and Wales can be traced from at least the immediate post-war period. Only a handful of local education authorities (LEAs) established comprehensives that early, however. Before the mid-1960s, which we designate a period of experimentation, a few pioneering and progressive LEAs introduced comprehensives. Although such experimentation is an indication of the pluralist nature of educational decision-making, those LEAs were still dependent on having their plans accepted by the centre, represented by the Ministry of Education, and there were undoubtedly fewer comprehensive schools established because of that central government involvement.

It was not until the mid-1960s that a national political initiative was taken by the central Labour administration to ‘go comprehensive\This took the form of ‘Circular 10/65’, a call by the central government for LEAs to submit plans for the establishment of comprehensive schools. Despite an overt ideological commitment on the part of Anthony Crosland, the minister concerned, to promote greater social equality through school reform, the circular only requested the local authorities to submit plans. Although the circular undoubtedly provided a major impetus, the pace of change was still dependent on the nature and timing of LEA responses.

Moreover, despite Crosland’s preference for an 11-18 ‘all-through’ model of reorganisation, the circular endorsed five other ways in which secondary schools might be organised on a non-selective basis. This flexibility of approach to comprehensive reorganisation was condoned and encouraged by the DES whose policy, Benn and Simon (1972, pp. 86-7) have argued, was ‘to get as much agreement as possible by pursuing a consensus line – [and] a strategy of an accelerated rate of growth for comprehensives within a bipartite structure’. Again, we see the results of a pluralist approach to reform.

By way of contrast, even within Great Britain, the implementation of comprehensive education in Scotland was more uniform than in England and Wales. This was partly because Circular 600, the Scottish equivalent to Circular 10/65, prescribed a single form of reorganisation, and the Scottish Education Department took a stronger line in securing its implementation. Although the pace of reform was dependent in Scotland, as in England and Wales, on the policies and attitudes of local education authorities, there was a different relationship between centre and periphery (McPherson and Raab 1988, pp. 396-7). For these reasons, the present study has been confined to England and Wales.

One element in the movement to comprehensive education in the 1960s was the growing dissatisfaction with the so-called 11+ examination, a mechanism used to separate students into the levels of the selective system. Discarding the 11+ examination made it possible to loosen the definition of the appropriate age at which secondary school begins. We will see that one of the features of the comprehensive movement in England and Wales was the introduction of different age ranges of students in secondary schools. In addition to the ‘all-through’ pattern, various ‘tiered’ systems were introduced, which sometimes involved some kind of middle school.

One reason to establish tiered systems was the frequent need to fit newly established comprehensive schools into buildings that had originally been used in the selective system of grammar and secondary modern schools. A large proportion of English and Welsh secondary school students left school at the age of 16, while others entered the sixth form, where study was focused on preparation for advanced (A-Level) examinations. Under the selective system, the great majority of secondary modern school students left at 15 (16 from 1974) or shortly thereafter, and the great majority of grammar school students stayed on for the sixth form. Secondary modern schools could thus have relatively large age 11 intakes but function without sixth forms, and grammar schools could have relatively small age 11 intakes and assume most students would stay into the sixth form. Most ‘all-through⁵ comprehensives were quite large because, to have an adequately sized sixth-form student body, it was necessary to have a relatively large pool of younger students from which the sixth formers would emerge. Many of the existing buildings were too small to accommodate enough of the full range of 11- 18-year-old students and still have a viable sixth form. So, one solution to the problem was to establish middle schools and take students into the comprehensives at older ages (Jones, 1989).

Another way in which some LEAs coped with this problem of school size was to use secondary schools that enrolled students only until the age of 16. In such cases, some other source of sixth-form instruction was provided. One way was to establish a ‘sixth-form college’, a separate location at which only sixth-form courses were offered (Bright, 1972). In other cases, only some comprehensives had sixth forms, and students enrolled in schools without sixth forms had to transfer if they were to stay on for post-compulsory education.

Thus, the 1960s and 1970s not only saw rapid change in the overall form of secondary education (from selective to comprehensive), but also diversity in the institutional arrangements used to provide that education. The diversity of changes in secondary schools did not stop there, however. Account has to be taken also of the manner in which different local authorities implemented reorganisation, whether as a uniform scheme or with a more ad hoc approach, and whether in terms of dealing with the local area as a whole or on a school-by–school basis. And, of course, the LEAs varied in the rapidity and the degree of com-prehensivisation. Some LEAs changed completely to comprehensive schools. Others resisted the comprehensive movement entirely and had still not implemented reorganisation schemes by the mid-1970s.

These kinds of variation among LEAs provide the basis for the analysis in this book. What differentiated the LEAs that took one form of action rather than another? Can we explain why some LEAs were at the forefront of the movement and others resisted it throughout? What led to the decisions about the ways the comprehensives were organised? In a pluralist society, can we make any general statements, or is every case a unique mixture of multiple forces? We will not claim to have answered those questions, but they have guided the work that is reported here.

Studying Diversity and Uneven Educational Change

The diversity of patterns of implementation and the variety of organisational features are then key features of the process of structural reform in England and Wales. The introduction of comprehensive schools was not a uniform process in the 1960s and 1970s. There was diversity, both in the ways LEAs changed their educational systems and the organisation of individual schools within many LEAs. To understand the nature of this diversity and the reasons for it necessitates pursuing the story of comprehensive reorganisation at both the national and the local level, so as to identify the nature and sources of variation and to assess the influences at work. Two factors that have received attention in previous discussions of educational reform are political party positions and social class.

Since the majority of local authorities that had started to reorganise by 1970 were Labour-controlled (Litt and Parkinson, 1979), the first question to arise concerns the role of political influence. Although comprehensive education appeared on the agenda of the Labour Party conferences in the 1950s, a number of writers have commented on the divided attitudes of the Labour Party towards selection and comprehensive reorganisation (Banks, 1955; Parkinson, 1970; Barker, 1972; Benn and Simon, 1972; Fenwick, 1976). These divisions were reflected in the range of opinions to be found among members of local Labour parties. In some authorities, such as, for example, Sheffield and Leicester, an Old guard’ among the controlling Labour group was only reluctantly converted to comprehensive education (Reeder, 1993). Conversely, as other studies have shown, some Conservative and Independent-controlled authorities, especially in rural areas, more readily accepted comprehensive reorganisation schemes (Jones, 1989; Fenwick, 1976).

We are not only concerned to study the origins of the demand for comprehensive ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• 1 The European Context of British Educational Reform
• 2 Comprehensive Reorganisation in England and Wales: An Overview
• 3 The Ten Case Studies of Local Education Authorities
• 4 The Evolutionary Capital Experience: London
• 5 The Urban, Political Reorganisation: Manchester, Bristol and Leeds
• 6 A Calculated Educational Reorganisation: Stoke-on-Trent
• 7 The Innovative County Experience: Leicestershire and the West Riding of Yorkshire
• 8 The Cautious County Approach: West Sussex, Glamorgan and Northumberland
• 9 Summary of the LEA Case Studies
• 10 Sources of Variation in LEA Action
• 11 Schools and Students in a Changing System
• 12 Selective versus Comprehensive Schools
• 13 Variations on a Theme
• Bibliography
• Index