Britain's Education Debate

...That requires authorities to distribute students without regard to ability, and amendments to the bill have been opposed by Education Secretary Frederick Mulley...

...Since the national government has been unable to provide special funds for their physical reorganization, some schools have had to use buildings located at considerable distances from each other...

...He faults some teachers for not pushing motivated students hard enough (regarding them as less capable than grammar-school pupils), and for not adequately disciplining those who disrupted the learning process...

...More important, public support for the former system is weak...

...In 1965, 8.5 per cent of all secondary pupils attended compre-hensives...

...In 1965 the Labor party, denouncing the dual-system's failure to develop each child's talents, sent a circular to the local education authorities requesting that they draw up schemes of nonselective secondary education...

...When Creighton was established in 1967, a grammar school was joined with a secondary-modern more than a quarter of a mile away, and the students have been doing a lot of walking...

...Paul Newton, 20, attended grammar school for a number of years before his family moved to an area with a comprehensive...

...Their teachers were the most inexperienced and least qualified (in 1967 only 15.7 per cent had graduate degrees, compared to 73.9 per cent in the grammar schools...

...The structure of education, however, continues to be debated...

...It had been a select grammar school, boasting a staff that included at least one poet, a novelist, a writer of economic textbooks, and contributors to national journals...

...Now we just meet in year assemblies and everything is diffused...

...When the Conservatives took over, Secretary of State for Education Margaret Thatcher withdrew the circular, but the government decided not to oppose compre-hensives and the move toward them continued...

...Most significantly, Chicester's highly competitive atmosphere has vanished...

...per cent...

...Even the plaque of Oxbridge entrants has been discontinued...

...In the last year of primary school children are graded by achievement...

...Some parents who had previously sent their children to grammar schools are now willing to pay annual tuition fees approaching $2,000...

...Aware of this difficulty, some local education authorities have experimented with schemes to control the proportion of high and low achieving students in each school...

...Parents whose children do not get into nearby schools or their first choice have resisted this plan (and there is little support among educational authorities for the busing that is seen as causing great disturbances in the U.S...

...by the end of 1975, the figure had risen to 61 per cent...

...Of the 90,480 who graduated from secondary-moderns in 1972-3, 1,350 went into universities, polytechnics or teacher colleges...

...EXCELLENCE Britain's Education Debate by mike bernick Oxford Last winter Paul McCor-mick, a 25-year old Oxford graduate student, returned to Chicester, the secondary school he attended from 1962-70, and found it substantially changed...

...As Dr...

...Now in the largely formal committee and third-reading stage, the bill is expected to become law this summer...

...In the affluent areas they draw pupils who are generally more motivated and better prepared academically than those in working-class sections...

...The Henry Box School has a typical arrangement?classes for the first form and multiple-streaming thereafter...

...from the grammar schools, 25,860 of 80,-760 went on...

...A. H. Halsey, head of the Department of Social and Administrative studies at Oxford, explains, a solid majority of working-class voters favors comprehensivization, and even among the middle classes, 50 per cent back it...

...Those in the lower streams are not usually prepared for higher education (or for the nationally-administered "A" or "O" level exams that are important forms of certification), and especially in "single streaming," it is often difficult to move to more advanced groups...

...At age 11 all children in the area took what is known as the 11-plus examination, and roughly the top 20 per cent were admitted to Chicester while the others were assigned to the secondary-modern school across the road...

...Rhodes Boy-son, frequently argues that comprehensivization is most harmful for the bright student from a working-class area, who will not receive the encouragement and competition he needs to match the academic achievement of middle-class children...

...The roughly 15-18 boys admitted to Oxford or Cambridge every year also had their names lettered in gold on a large plaque in the main hallway...

...In practice, the more than three-quarters of the student population that "failed" the 11-plus exam received a vastly inferior education...

...Creighton also illustrates another complaint made against comprehensives: inconveniences caused by makeshift arrangements...

...In February the measure passed a second reading in the House of Commons...

...Mike Bernick, a past contributor to these pages, is currently doing graduate work at Oxford University...

...Three years ago, however, the two institutions were merged, forming a single comprehensive school...

...Last December Labor introduced the Comprehensive Education Bill, which for the first time would take the decision on school organization out of the hands of local education authorities and require them to complete the unitary process in the state sector...

...Homework was given nightly, and prizes that were a major source of esteem were awarded at assemblies on the basis of exams held each term...

...The Conservatives oppose the new bill, but they have shown no inclination to bring back grammar schools en masse...

...Comprehensives are further thwarted in their objectives by the differing socio-economic conditions of neighborhoods...

...He found the new school did not have the intense academic atmosphere he was aocustomed to...

...Morale in the secondary-moderns was low...

...Homework standards have been relaxed...

...In recognition of this problem many schools have instituted "streaming": separating children by ability...

...But where the two different type schools have been combined, as has most often been the case, the result is one institution of from 1,400-2,000 pupils...

...McCormick recalls the students striving to live up to the school's tradition of academic excellence...

...This has prompted 117 semiprivate direct-grant grammar schools to forgo public funds rather than comply with the new law...

...For many educators, meanwhile, the mixed-ability class that is central to a widely held comprehensive ideal has been quite troublesome...

...Throughout the past decade many grammar schools in England and Wales have been similarly affected by the trend toward a unitary system...

...Like many people of his social class, Paul McCormick regrets the passing of the grammar school that fostered academic excellence...

...Recalling with a grimace how Chicester students were warned not to associate with children from the secondary-modern school, he acknowledges that the grammar schools' high standards were purchased at too high a price in social divisiveness, not to mention the stifling of children's dreams and aspirations...

...Dorothy Hannah, who teaches languages at the Henry Box School in Witney, finds students' capabilities vary so much that even in the first-form classes (age 12) she can neither go as quickly as she would like with the brightest children nor give needed attention to the others...

...A number of the advanced subjects that had low enrollments, such as Russian, ancient history and Greek, have been dropped or are in the process of being phased out...

...But Chicester's experience is not unique...

...Some employ "single streams," placing pupils into the same group for all their classes...

...You only need a few cheeky kids to ruin the respect for education for all,' he declares...

...Other relatively minor developments associated with the shift to comprehensives include the easing of classroom regulations, the elimination of school uniforms and moves to allow students a greater say in the operation of their schools...

...But the major accusation against the comprehensives is that they are not conducive to encouraging high academic standards...

...Moreover, all banding schemes would be forbidden under the Comprehensive Education Bill...

...When the dual-school system was established in many areas following adoption of the 1944 Education Act, it was held up as the best way to serve children of varying aptitudes and interests: The bright would not be held back and the less bright would be given the attention they required...

...Most grammar and secondary-modern schools had from 400-800 pupils...

...independents?0 per cent, and technical schools...

...In London, for instance, a program of "banding" has been tried on a minor scale since 1972...

...That kind of size, it has been charged, destroys all sense of community...

...The remainder were divided between the grammar/secondary-moderns?26 per cent...

...Where they simply became individual comprehensives serving different areas, they maintained their original size...

...In addition, everyone recognizes the meaning of the different levels, and those on the bottom often become discouraged, feeling intellectually inadequate...

...Listening to them express their feelings on the size of schools, the relaxation of discipline, the mixing of ability levels in classes, and the drawing together of children from different neighborhoods, one cannot help being struck by the fact that English parents are troubled by pretty much the same issues that concern their American counterparts...

...Students are then normally assigned to the nearest comprehensive or to one chosen by their parents...

...One consequence of all this has been the strengthening of private schools...

...But all schools must have a share of the brighter pupils, and none may become a "sink school" with more than 25 per cent of its students from the lowest band...

...The new arrangement has brought in students who are little concerned about academic achievement...

...others use "multiple-streaming," dividing children into different levels for each subject...

...Older people in particular are concerned that these changes will contribute to reducing the discipline they feel children require...

...Unhappy about the reform because it deprived them of dealing only with the brightest children, many of McCormick's former teachers have departed for positions in private schools or have left the field of education altogether...

...Yet, as even its proponents acknowledge, streaming leads to the very differences in educational opportunities that comprehensives were meant to reduce...

...In a Sunday Times article last year, for example, a teacher who had been at one of the schools that combined to form Creighton (a comprehensive in North London with 1,500 pupils) complained of the loss of "the feeling of unity...

...the exams and prizes have lost much of their importance...

...Nonetheless, he supports comprehensivization, believing it does not hold back brighter children significantly...

...One of the champions of a return to the dual-system, Conservative Member of Parliament Dr...

...He explained: "There was a definite atmosphere in the old days when the whole school assembled to belt out a hymn...

...Despite the controversies surrounding comprehensives, though, there is little chance the concept will be discarded...

...Many parents, particularly among the articulate and influential middle class, have noticed the same changes in their schools that McCormick saw in Chicester and are unhappy about how comprehensivization is being carried out...

...The curriculum was neither technical nor, with very few exceptions, academically advanced enough to prepare students for higher education...