Red House 1969–1972: the case for “intermediate” educational institutions

Abstract

In October 2010 the government confirmed it would introduce a “pupil premium” payable to schools with disadvantaged pupils. This shift towards resourcing by group rather than area may mark the closing of another chapter in efforts to produce a more meritocratic education system utilising what might be termed intermediate institutions. Their predecessors opened more than 3500 Children’s Centres to develop new strategies for working with the families of preschool children in order to alter long-term educational trajectories. This paper reflects on an earlier chapter in public efforts to secure greater educational equality, the first three years of the Red House Education Centre in Denaby Main, a mining village in Yorkshire’s West Riding, in the period 1969 to 1972. Red House was the most significant development arising from the West Riding Educational Priority Area (WREPA) Project and was an example of area-based positive discrimination. The paper explores two key questions. Can schools be re-positioned so that they offer the community an opportunity to develop as active participants in reshaped democratic processes, or are new institutional forms required? Did Red House offer parents and professionals the opportunity to improve educational outcomes in a neutral space where both felt a sense of ownership?

Keywords:

• positive discrimination
• area based policy
• poverty
• educational underachievement
• early years
• Children’s Centres

Notes

¹Michael Gove speech at Westminster Academy, September 2010, http://www.education.gov.uk/inthenews/speeches/a0064281/michael-gove-to-westminster-academy (accessed October 19, 2010).

²Ibid.

³Ibid.

⁴Ibid.

⁵DCFS, foreword to The Children’s Plan: Building Brighter Futures – Summary (London: Stationery Office, 2007).

⁶DCFS (2010).

⁷ http://www.education.gov.uk/childrenandyoungpeople/families/a0063444/dfe-response-to-public-comments-on-the-coalition-agreement-on-families-and-children, date: 30 July 2010 (accessed October 19, 2010); http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/spend_sr2010_speech.htm (accessed October 21, 2010).

⁸See, R. Benabou, F. Kramarz, and C. Prost, “The French Zones d’Education Prioritaire: Much Ado about Nothing?,” Economics of Education Review 28 (2009): 345–56; R. Hatcher and D. Leblond, “Education Action Zones and Zones d’Education Prioritaires”. In Social Justice and Inter-agency Working: Joined-up or fractured policy? ed. S. Riddell and L. Tett (London: Routledge, 2001); and Kloprogge, J., “The Evaluation of the New Dutch National Education Priority Programme,” Studies in Educational Evaluation 15, no. 2 (1989): 207–18.

⁹See for example, J. Floud and A. Halsey, “Homes and Schools: Social Determinants and Educability,” Educational Research 2, no. 2 (1961); J. Douglas, The Home and the School (London: McGibbon and Kee, 1964).

¹⁰The four objectives of the project, agreed nationally were, to raise educational performance, improve the morale of the schools, increase home involvement and generate a sense of community responsibility.

¹¹J. Tosh, Why History Matters (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 77.

¹²Tosh, Why History Matters, 61.

¹³Ibid., 67.

¹⁴Ibid., 77.

¹⁵P. Gardner, “Oral History in Education: Teachers’ Memory and Teachers’ ‘History’,” History of Education Quarterly 32, no. 2 (2003): 175–88.

¹⁶R.J. Evans, In Defence of History (London: Granta, 1997).

¹⁷C.E. Schorske, Thinking with History: Explorations in the Passage to Modernism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 3, cited in Tosh, Why History Matters, 7.

¹⁸Tosh, Why History Matters, 76.

¹⁹See, for example, E. Gamarnikow and A.G. Green, “The Third Way and Social Capital: Education Action Zones and a New Agenda for Education, Parents and Community?” International Studies in Sociology of Education 9, no. 1 (1999): 3–22. R. Hatcher and D. Leblond, Education Action Zones and Zones d’Education Prioritaires; D. Simpson and M. Cieslik, “Education Action Zones, Empowerment and Parents,” Educational Research 44, no. 2 (2002): 119–28; and I. Reid and K. Brain “Education Action Zones: Mission Impossible,” International Studies in Sociology of Education 13, no. 2 (2003):195–213.

²⁰See P. Bourdieu and J.-C. Passeron, Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture (London: Sage, 1977).

²¹Smith and Smith, Schooling in the City, 53.

²²This term is borrowed from George and Teresa Smith’s analysis of Red House: G. Smith and T. Smith, “The Community School – A Base for Community Development?,” in Schooling in the City, ed. J. Raynor and E. Harris (London: Ward Lock in association with the Open University, 1974).

²³See H. Ree, Educator Extraordinary: The Life and Achievement of Henry Morris (London: Longman, 1973).

²⁴See for example, D.V. Glass, Social Mobility in Britain (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1954); R. Titmuss, Essays on the Welfare State (London: Allen & Unwin, 1958); J. Floud and A. Halsey, “Homes and Schools: Social Determinants and Educability,” Educational Research 2, no. 2 (1961): 83–88; J. Douglas, The Home and the School (London: McGibbon and Kee, 1964); School Council Working Paper 27 (1970) “Cross’d with Adversity”, 7, suggested the home was four times more influential than the school on a child’s development.

²⁵M. Vaughan, ed., Summerhill and A.S. Neill (Maidenhead: Open University, 2006); P. Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (London: Penguin, 1970); and R. Barrow, Radical Education: A Critique of Freeschooling and Deschooling (Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1978). Schools Council, Cross’d with Adversity: The Education of Socially Disadvantaged Children in Secondary Schools. Working Paper 27. (London: Methuen, 1970).

²⁶M. Young and P. McGeeney, Learning Begins at Home: A Study of a Junior School and its Parents (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968); M. Young, The Rise of the Meritocracy 1870–2033: An Essay on Education and Equality (London: Thames & Hudson, 1958); J. Dewey, Experience and Education (New York: Macmillan, 1938); and R.H. Tawney, Equality (London: Unwin Books, 1931).

²⁷For a review of the compensatory educational initiatives stemming from the US ‘War on Poverty’ programme see A. Little and G. Smith, Strategies of Compensation: A Review of Educational Projects For the Disadvantaged in the United States (Paris: OECD, 1971). See, L. Stenhouse, “The Humanities Curriculum Project,” Journal of Curriculum Studies 1, no. 1 (1968): 26–33. See L. Green, Parents and Teachers: Partners or Rivals? (London: Allen & Unwin, 1968).

²⁸P. Gosden and P. Sharp, The Development of an Education Service: The West Riding 1889 to 1974 (Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1978), 150.

²⁹Interview with Mike Harvey (2008).

³¹Harvey interview (2008).

³⁰Smith and Smith, Schooling in the City, 50.

³²Ibid., 57.

³³Ibid., 57.

³⁵T. Smith interview, National Evaluation of the Neighbourhood Nurseries Initiative: Integrated Report (Nottingham: SureStart, 2007).

³⁴Ibid., 58.

³⁶Interview with Geoff Poulton (2007).

³⁷Interview with Geoff Poulton (November 2009).

³⁹Smith and Smith, Schooling in the City, 57.

³⁸G. Poulton and T. James, Pre-school Learning in the Community (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975).

⁴⁰Ibid.

⁴¹G. Smith, ed., Educational Priority, vol. 4: The West Riding Project (London: HMSO, 1975).

⁴²See, E. Goldwyn, “If At First You Don’t Succeed, You Don’t Succeed,” Horizon, BBC, 1971.

⁴³Ibid., 54.

⁴⁴B. Bernstein, in Education for Democracy, Penguin Education Special, ed., D. Rubenstein and C. Stoneman (London: Penguin, 1970), 120.

⁴⁵See Guardian (October 4, 1972) and The Times and Telegraph of the same date.

⁴⁶G. Armstrong and B. Brown, Five Years On A Follow-up Study of the Long Term Effects on Parents and Children of an Early Learning Programme in the Home (Oxford Social Evaluation Unit, 1979) .

⁴⁷G. Smith, interview (2008).

⁴⁹G. Armstrong, interview (2008).

⁴⁸G. Armstrong and B. Brown, Five Years On A Follow-up Study of the Long Term Effects on Parents and Children of an Early Learning Programme in the Home, 5.

⁵¹G. Smith, WREPA Project Report, vol. 5, The Home Visiting Project (1971). Unpublished report to EPA Project National Steering Committee.

⁵⁰Ibid.

⁵²Poulton and James, Pre-school Learning in the Community, 46.

⁵³Home visitor checklist, EPA papers (2008), Oxford archive.

⁵⁴Armstrong and Brown, Five Years On A Follow-up Study of the Long Term Effects on Parents and Children of an Early Learning Programme in the Home, 7.

⁵⁵Smith and Olds were influenced by the early US home visiting type projects developed in various Universities and similar to the work of Headstart. See, D.L. Olds, J. Eckenrode et al., “Improving the Delivery of Prenatal Care and Outcomes of Pregnancy: A Randomized Trial of Nurse Home Visitation,” Pediatrics 77 (1986): 16–28; J. Barnes, M. Ball et al., Nurse Family Partnership Programme: First Year Pilot Sites Implementation in England Pregnancy and the Post-Partum Period (London: DCSF, 2008).

⁵⁶Report by Mr Ayre, educational social worker, to Red House steering committee (April 1972, Oxford EPA archive).

⁵⁷For a detailed account of the courses see Smith, Schooling in the City, Chapter 12.

⁵⁸Smith, Educational Priority, 252.

⁵⁹Ibid., 227.

⁶⁰H. Silver and P. Silver, An Educational War on Poverty: American and British Policy-making 1960–1980 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991) and S. Marshall, An Experiment in Education (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963).

⁶¹G. Smith, Educational Priority, vol. 4, The West Riding Project (London: HMSO, 1975), 56.

⁶²Poulton, interview (2007).

⁶³Smith and Smith, Schooling in the City, 210.

⁶⁴Ibid., 243.

⁶⁵Smith and Smith, Schooling in the City, 56.

⁶⁶Smith and Smith, Schooling in the City, 230.

⁶⁹Poulton, interview (2007).

⁶⁷Ibid., 57.

⁶⁸A. Hargreaves and S. Lasky, “The Parent Gap: The Emotional Geographies of Teacher–Parent Relationships,” in Social Geoegraphies of Educational Change, ed. F. Fernandez and I. Goodson (Kluwer: Netherlands, 2004).

⁷⁰M. Hughes, “Parents, Teachers and Schools: Children, Research and Policy,” in Children, Research and Policy, eds. B. Bernstein and J. Brannen (London: Taylor & Francis, 1996), 96–110.

⁷¹Ibid., 98.

⁷²M. Grenfell, Bourdieu and Education: Acts of Practical Theory (Florence, KY: Taylor & Francis, 1998), 161.

⁷³L. McNay, “Gender, Habitus and the Field: Pierre Boudieu and the Limits of Reflexivity Theory,” Culture and Society 16, no. 1 (1999): 95–117.

⁷⁴Ibid., 105.

⁷⁵Ibid., 106.

⁷⁶Cultural capital is taken in the Bourdieuian sense to refer to capital connected to individuals – accent, dispositions, learning etc; connected to objects – books, qualifications, machines etc; and connected to institutions – places of learning, universities libraries, etc. (Grenfell, Bourdieu and Education: Acts of Practical Theory, 21). Essentially it is the product of education and teachers’ professionalism that is at the heart of tension surrounding the importance of teacher “training” as the guardian of pedagogic standards.

⁷⁷E. Gamarnikow and A.G. Green, International Studies in Sociology of Education, 7.

⁷⁸Gamarnikow and Green (1999), 2.

⁷⁹Ibid., 18.

⁸⁰P. Bourdieu, The Forms of Capital: Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, J. Richardson, ed. (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986), 248 in Gamarnikow and Green (1999) International Studies in Sociology of Education, 7.

⁸¹J. Mays, “The Research Smokescreen,” Guardian May 1, 1969. Mays had originally been invited to sit on the local steering committee for the EPA as part of the expected research link to the local university. However, this would have been a disaster for the project as Mays was disliked by the local schools following his highly critical analysis of their work in J. Mays, Education and the Urban Child (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1962).

⁸²B. Bernstein, “Education Cannot Compensate for Society,” New Society (1970): 26.

⁸³See Bernstein in D. Rubinstein and C. Stoneman, C., eds., Education for Democracy, Penguin Education Special (London: Penguin, 1970).

⁸⁴Smith, Educational Priority, 115–19.

⁸⁵Smith, interview (2008).

⁸⁶Ibid., 106.

⁸⁷Ibid., 106.

⁸⁸McNay, Culture and Society, 103.

⁸⁹G. Smith, ed., Educational Priority, 245.

⁹⁰Midwinter reflecting on the EPA approach to partnership in pre-school work: E. Midwinter, Pre-school Priorities: A Short History of Alternative Preschooling in Liverpool (Liverpool: ACE, 1978).

⁹²Ibid., 59.

⁹¹Ibid., 58.

⁹³Gosden and Sharp, The Development of an Education Service: The West Riding 1889 to 1974, 150.

⁹⁴Ibid., 151.

⁹⁵Poulton, interview (2007).

⁹⁶Ibid., 243.

⁹⁷Ibid., 243.

⁹⁸Ibid., 243.

⁹⁹DES, Education: A Framework for Expansion (London: DES, HMSO, 1972).

¹⁰⁰E. Batten, “Community Education and Ideology: A Case for Radicalism,” in Issues in Community Education, ed. C. Fletcher and N. Thompson (Lewes: Falmer Press, 1980), 27.

¹⁰¹G. Poulton and T. James, Pre-school Learning in the Community, 51.

¹⁰²Green, Parents and Teachers: Partners or Rivals?

¹⁰³A. Halsey, Educational Priority, vol. 1, EPA Problems and Policies (London: HMSO, 1972), and (Oxford EPA archive 2008) – letters came from Universities in the USA, Canada, France, Singapore and Australia amongst others.

¹⁰⁴See, D.L. Olds, J. Eckenrode et al., Pediatrics and The Observer (November 1, 2009).

¹⁰⁵A. Halsey, Educational Priority, vol. 1, EPA Problems and Policies (London: HMSO, 1972).

¹⁰⁶Smith, Schooling in the City, 242.

¹⁰⁷Goldwyn, Horizon (BBC).

¹⁰⁸EPA Papers (1968–1971, Oxford archive).

¹⁰⁹Minutes of the WREPA Steering committee, June (1971), EPA papers (1968–1971 Oxford archive).

¹¹⁰Gamarnikow and Green, International Studies in Sociology of Education, 6.

¹¹¹See, B. Franklin, “Gone Before You Know It: Urban School Reform and the Short Life of the Education Action Zone Initiative,” London Review of Education 3, no. 1 (2005): 3–27.