A letter to the Reading Chronicle which was published on 18th November 1969.

Mr Hannis in last Friday’s “Chronicle” asserts that my figures on the GCE performance of school leavers are wrong, taking as evidence the oft-quoted Pedley book on comprehensive schools and a recent speech by Lord Butler.  I cannot speak for Lord Butler, but unlike Mr Hannis I had before writing looked up the figures in the Department of Education and Science’s official Statistics of Education.

For 1967 (the latest available, 1966 figures are similar) tables 14 and 16 give five or more O-levels or CSE grade 1 as follows: for comprehensive  schools 10,320 out of 76,750 leavers, or 13.5 per cent, and for all other maintained schools 86,500 out of 474,620 leavers or 18.2 per cent.  Table 18 gives two or more A-levels as follows: for comprehensive schools 5,110 or 6.7 per cent and for all other maintained schools 45,890 or 9.7 per cent.  In his book (p. 95) Pedley in fact acknowledges the poor academic performance of comprehensive schools so far and attributes this to the substantial number of newly-formed comprehensive schools.  There is clearly something in this, but I have quoted the figures to show that the case for comprehensive schools is not, to say the least, made out and that there are significant pointers against the effectiveness of comprehensive education, particularly from abroad.

Thus in the case of the USA, if Mr Clifton (last Friday) would be satisfied with an academic performance which out of 11 Western countries placed his country bottom by a wide margin (T Husen, International Study of Achievement in Mathematics 1967) and which produced in California only a few teachers apparently able to deal with simple arithmetic (D A Pidgeon, Educational Research 1959), I would not be.  In some senses formal academic education in the USA only begins at 18, and in recognition of its comparative failure, some authorities, e.g. Dr Koerner of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) are actively considering forms of State-maintained selective schooling.

The USA owes its prodigious wealth, not to its formal educational system (it is in fact heavily dependent on the products of European selectively educated talent) but to its great natural resources and to the spirit of enterprise and hard work of its people, neither of which latter attributes is exactly stressed by the comprehensive principle.  In fact, in my experience, the spectacle of comprehensively and permissively educated American youth is probably the principal factor in inducing British scientists and engineers and their families to return to this country.

In some parts of the country, where for example there are small numbers of children, comprehensive schools, provided they adhere to scholastic discipline, will probably make the best use of limited educational resources.  What the proponents of comprehensive education, aided and abetted by a dictatorial Labour government, will not admit is that academic standards are crucial, and that our selective system has set levels which are outstandingly good by any standards.

Councillor Towner’s remark implying that examinations at 11 to predict the suitability of a child for different forms of education are unreliable is quite untrue.  Thus recent large-scale investigations (by e.g. the National Foundation for Education Research) showed an error of about 5 per cent in placing candidates and the errors were confined to borderline cases which could be easily remedied by transfer.  In fact many comprehensive schools administer just such tests on admission, for streaming purposes; others however wait a year or two before streaming.

A letter to the Reading Chronicle which was published on 4th July 1969.

In attacking my defence of the grammar schools’ role in the past, Mr Mander deceives himself and your readers if he imagines that many of the more vocal opponents of the eleven-plus examination are solely concerned with the quality of secondary education.  Many of the remarks made can be construed to mean oppostion to any examinations in education, and by extension, opposition to any objective assessment of ability.

Thus, if Mr Mander re-reads my letter he will see that I was, in fact, criticising remarks made by Mr Lee MP, when, referring to competitive examinations, he made it quite clear that he was opposed to the fostering of academic excellent on the grounds that it would lead to a new class system based on intelligence.

Now, in fact, discussions about all levels of education have been bedevilled by a snivelling complaint about the advantages supposedly unfairly gained by the middle class from this or that system of education.  One rather gathers that when educational resources are limited it is better that none benefit if otherwise some will benefit and some will not.

In fact if Mr Mander really is concerned about the full development of every child, he should recognise that resources will of necessity be deployed unevenly; the rarer talents will demand rarer, and therefore more expensive, resources for fulfilment and maturity.  This applies not only to academic ability, but to artistic, musical and athletic ability as well.

This will only bother people like Mr Lee who by ceaseless harping about class and equality foster an envious society more concerned to divide up existing wealth than to create new wealth.  The same carping criticism of the spirit of competition is apparent in much allegedly informed commentary on education.  In my view it is a serious educational and sociological point that the competitive spirit in this country has been seriously undermined by the continual jealous bickering about equality, as the view from North America or any Continental country will confirm.

A letter to the Reading Chronicle which was published on 20th June 1969.

In his attack on the grammar schools and the 11-plus examination reported in last Friday’s issue, Mr John Lee stands revealed in his true colours as an opponent of academic excellence of any kind.  In saying that grammar schools perpetuate the feeling that technological studies are of less importance than others, Mr Lee merely shows that on this subject, as on so many others, he does not know what he is talking about.

In attacking the 11-plus in the terms he did, he demonstrated his belief that every educational standard should be subordinated to a dull levelling egalitarianism; if there is an examination which some people cannot pass, away with it; if there is an institution demonstrably better than some others, abolish it.

Mr Lee and others like him should realise that every attempt they make to salve the pride of the lazy and mediocre, helps to destroy the spirit of ambition to excel which exists in all classes of people and without which this country simply will not survive.

The grammar schools have in fact rendered an immense service to our country by fostering the highest academic standards among millions of children whose homes rarely saw a book.  It must now be apparent to many readers that as a country we can only go on importing raw materials, performing a service on them, and selling the finished articles abroad, if we are considerably cleverer in many fields than our competitors.

Painful as it is to Socialist ideology, and valuable as everybody’s contribution is, this essential extra cleverness can be provided only by a minority of gifted children educated to the limit of their capacity.  Whether comprehensive schools can provide this education has yet to be demonstrated; that our present selective educational system has done this in the past and continues to do so now can be seen by reference, for example, to the number and quality of scientific papers produced, which like the number of Nobel prizes gained are out of all proportion to the population of the country.

I am entirely convinced that there is a need for experiment in the education of children of all classes of ability.  But it should be motivated by a quest for the highest standards of excellence, not by a desire to impose egalitarianism for its own sake and at all costs.