Politics, politicians and English comprehensive schools

Abstract

Very few English secondary schools now include ‘Comprehensive’ in their titles, and political enthusiasm for comprehensive schools is hard to detect. According to David Skelton of Policy Exchange, politicians, like anthropologists, have often ‘investigated them, read thoroughly about them and even visited them, but they don’t really understand them’. Drawing on a variety of source materials, this article discusses the early comprehensive schools movement, the period of intensive circulars and legislation in the 1960s and 1970s and the subsequent waning of interest in comprehensive schools as a policy topic. At the heart of the discussion is a focus on politics and politicians at both the national and local levels, with close reference to some key personalities of the post-war period. It is argued that the story of comprehensive schooling in England needs more balance and that we should look to the present generation of politicians and historians to provide this.

Keywords:

• secondary education
• comprehensive
• politics
• politicians
• educational reform

Acknowledgements

The author is most grateful to the editors of this special issue, Peter Cunningham and Richard Aldrich, for their advice and comments on an earlier version of this paper. Thanks are also due to members of the Education Identities and Social Inclusion research group at Brunel University and to those who attended seminar presentations by the author in 2012 at Exeter University and the Institute of Historical Research, University of London. The ideas and suggestions of many individuals have helped to develop earlier workshop and conference papers into this published article.

Notes

¹David Skelton, “We must stop letting down bright state school pupils,” Yorkshire Post, February 27, 2012.

²Matthew Engel, “Dispatch from Buckinghamshire,” Financial Times, May 9, 2009.

³Department of Education and Science, Children and Their Primary Schools (Plowden Report, 2 vols) (London: HMSO, 1967).

⁴Northampton Chronicle and Echo, January 13, 2012. See also photograph of the former Parklands Middle School, Northampton, dated 2009 at http://everythinggoesquiet.blogspot.com/2009/09/coming-soon_25.html (last accessed March 19, 2013).

⁵David Crook, “Missing, Presumed Dead? What Happened to the Comprehensive School in England and Wales?,” in The Death of the Comprehensive High School? Historical, Contemporary and Comparative Perspectives, ed. Barry M. Franklin and Gary McCulloch (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 148.

⁶Margaret Cole, What is a Comprehensive School? The London School Plan in Practice (London: Labour Party, 1953), 3.

⁷National Archives (NA), ED 136/300, annotation by Butler, March 17, 1943 on an untitled typescript note by HMI R. H. Barrow, dated two days earlier.

⁸Billy Hughes, “In defence of Ellen Wilkinson,” History Workshop 7, no. 1 (Spring 1979): 157–60; David Rubinstein, “Ellen Wilkinson Re-considered,” History Workshop 7, no. 1 (Spring 1979): 161–69.

⁹David Rubinstein and Brian Simon, The Evolution of the Comprehensive School, 1926-1966 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969) remains an essential starting point for those interested in this topic. Clyde Chitty’s Towards a New Education System. The Victory of the New Right (Lewes: Falmer Press, 1989) set new standards in using policy texts, media outputs and interviews with policymakers as historical sources to understand the evolution of comprehensive schooling. Brian Simon’s Education and the Social Order, 1940-1990 (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1991) provided multiple examples of “grassroots-led” initiatives to establish comprehensive schools in the 1950s and early 1960s, and brilliantly exploded the emerging myth of that time that comprehensive education was a centrally imposed policy, promoted only by Labour governments. Going Comprehensive in England and Wales: A Study in Uneven Change, by Alan C. Kerckhoff, Ken Fogelman, David Crook and David Reeder (London: Woburn Press, 1996) uniquely offered ten case studies of LEAs which pursued diverse approaches to establishing comprehensive schools across their administrative units.

¹⁰For example, the 1994 two-part BBC television series, From Butler to Baker and the four-part 2005 BBC Radio 4 series, Comp.

¹¹LCC, The London School Plan: A Development Plan for Primary and Secondary Education (London: LCC, 1947).

¹² Hansard, House of Commons (HC), July 15 1948, vol. 453, cols. 1375-76.

¹³Ibid., July 15 1949, vol. 463, col. 1452.

¹⁴See Education, August 5 1949, 217.

¹⁵Labour Party, A Policy for Secondary Education (London: Labour Party, 1951).

¹⁶Ibid., 13.

¹⁷ Hansard, HC, May 18 1950, vol. 475, col. 1372.

¹⁸ The Times, March 29 1951, 5.

¹⁹ Hansard, HC, July 24 1951, vol. 491, cols. 227, 230.

²¹NA, CAB129/75, “Secondary Education: Memorandum by the Minister of Education,” April 18 1955.

²⁰Simon, Education and the Social Order, 171-72.

²³Ministry of Education, Secondary Education for All. A new drive (London: HMSO, 1958), para. 5.

²²Ibid.

²⁴Labour Party, Learning to Live. (London: Labour Party, 1958)

²⁵ The Times, July 7 1958, 5.

²⁶Ibid., September 28 1959, 7.

²⁷Ibid., July 7 1958, 5.

²⁸ Daily Mirror, August 16 1961, 2.

²⁹See, for example, A. Yates and D.A. Pidgeon, Admissions to Grammar Schools (London: Newnes, 1958).

³⁰University of Leeds Brotherton Library, Boyle papers (BP), MS 660/25225, transcript of a television party political broadcast by Boyle and his Parliamentary Secretary, Christopher Chataway, May 1 1963.

³¹Kerckhoff et al, Going Comprehensive, 25.

³²David Crook, “‘The middle school cometh’ . . . and goeth: Alec Clegg and the rise and fall of the English middle school,” Education 3-13: International Journal of Primary, Elementary and Early Years Education, 36, no. 2 (May 2008), 119-20.

³³BP MS 660/25217, briefing paper by Boyle, headed “Prime Minister,” July 3 1963.

³⁴ Education, July 12 1963, 101.

³⁵Simon, Education and the Social Order, 273.

³⁶ Hansard, HC, November 27 1964, vol. 702, col. 1784.

³⁷The debate occurred on January 21 1965.

³⁸NA, CAB 128/39, Cabinet minutes, 19 January 1965.

³⁹Ibid.

⁴⁰Department of Education and Science, The Organisation of Secondary Education (Circular 10/65), (London: DES, July 14 1965).

⁴¹ Daily Mirror, February 11 1965, 2.

⁴²Cartoon by Margaret Belsky, Sun, May 22 1965.

⁴³David Crook, “Edward Boyle: Conservative champion of comprehensives?,” History of Education, 22, no. 1 (March 1993), 53-4.

⁴⁴Dennis Dean, “Circular 10/65 revisited: The Labour government and the “comprehensive revolution” in 1964-1965,” Paedagogica Historica, 34, no. 1 (February 1998), 63-9.

⁴⁵Susan Crosland, Tony Crosland (London: Jonathan Cape, 1982), 148; interview with Susan Crosland, Comp, Programme Two, BBC Radio 4, September 8 2005. See also Maurice Kogan, “Anthony Crosland: Intellectual and politician,” Oxford Review of Education, 32, no. 1 (February 2006), 78.

⁴⁶Cartoon by Michael Cummings, Daily Express, September 15 1967.

⁵⁰BBC television, Panorama, July 27 1970, available online at http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/thatcher/6304.shtml (last accessed 19 March 2013).

⁴⁷Crook, “Missing, Presumed Dead?,” 160-61.

⁴⁸Department of Education and Science, The Organisation of Secondary Education (Circular 10/70), (London: DES, June 30 1970).

⁴⁹Rhodes Boyson, “The Essential Conditions for the Success of a Comprehensive School”. In Black Paper Two. The crisis in education, eds. C.B. Cox and A.E. Dyson (London: Critical Quarterly Society, 1969), 60

⁵¹Ibid. The same idea of smaller comprehensives and a mixed economy of specialist secondary schools was rehearsed in 1978 in two Times newspaper columns by Ronald Butt. See “Are the Tories ready to go comprehensive?,” March 16, 18; “Cutting the monster schools to size,” March 23, 16. These articles are surprisingly prophetic of the trend towards specialist schools from the late 1980s.

⁵²Department of Education and Science, The Organisation of Secondary Education (Circular 4/74), (London: DES, April 16 1974).

⁵³ The Times, April 1 1975, 12.

⁵⁴ Hansard, HC, November 19 1974, vol. 881, col. 1077.

⁵⁵ The Times, October 21 1977, 4.

⁵⁶Norman St John Stevas and Leon Brittan, How to Save Your Schools (London: Conservative Political Centre, 1975).

⁵⁷Bernard Donoughue, Downing Street Diary. With Harold Wilson in No. 10, (London: Jonathan Cape, 2005), entry for June 11 1975, 412-13.

⁵⁸Simon, Education and the Social Order, 454.

⁵⁹Department of Education and Science, Comprehensive Education. Report of a conference held at the invitation of the Secretary of State for Education and Science at the University of York on 16/17 December 1977, (London: HMSO, 1978).

⁶⁰ Hansard, HC, November 9 1976, vol. 919, col. 230.

⁶¹ The Times, October 14 1978, 3.

⁶²Ibid., March 11 1996, 1.

⁶³ Education, November 10 1995, 3; Observer, May 9 1999, 5. See also Terry Haydn, “The strange death of the comprehensive school in England and Wales, 1965-2002,” Research Papers in Education, 19, no. 4 (December 2004), 420.

⁶⁴ The Times, February 13 2001, 1; Guardian, June 25 2002, 1.

⁶⁵ The Times, October 2 2002, 10.

⁶⁶Ibid., July 8 2004, 13.

⁶⁷Sutton Trust, The Social Composition of Top Comprehensive Schools: Rates of eligibility for free school meals at the 200 highest performing comprehensive schools (London: Sutton Trust, January 2006).

⁶⁸Ofsted, inspection report on Watford Grammar School for Girls, 2007, available online at http://www.watfordgrammarschoolforgirls.org.uk/docs/ofsted-report.pdf (last accessed 19 March 2013).

⁶⁹Interview with Susan Crosland, Comp, Programme Two, BBC Radio 4, September 8 2005.

⁷⁰Shirley Williams, Climbing the Bookshelves (London, Little, Brown, 2009), 206.

⁷¹George Walden, “The big lie about scrapping grammars,” Evening Standard, November 17 1998); Times Educational Supplement, December 30 2012, 12.

⁷²Tony Blair, A Journey (London: Hutchinson, 2010), 87-8.

⁷³Ibid., 88.

⁷⁴C.B. Cox and Rhodes Boyson (eds.), Black Paper 1975: The Fight for Education (London: Dent, 1975); C.B. Cox and R Boyson (eds.), Black Paper 1977 (London: Maurice Temple Smith, 1977).

⁷⁵Boyson later associated comprehensive schools with “a slow decline in the general culture” and a cause of “the lumpen proletariat we have created,” BBC Radio 4, What If?, 23 October 1993.

⁷⁶Crook, “Edward Boyle,” 50.

⁷⁷Interview, BBC television Panorama, July 27 1970.

⁷⁸ Hansard, House of Lords, July 29 1976, vol. 373, col. 1512.

⁷⁹William Hague, “I, not Tony Blair, will end the comprehensive school system,” Daily Telegraph, February 14 2001, 28.

⁸⁰Ed Miliband”s speech to Labour Party Conference in Manchester, October 2 2012, available online at http://www.labour.org.uk/ed-miliband-speech-conf-2012 (last accessed 19 March 2013).

⁸¹Peter Oborne, “Should we rejoice at the death of comprehensives? Yes”, Daily Express, December 14 2001, 19.

⁸²See a report of statistics presented in Parliament, The Times, July 4 1974, 8; National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education, Higher Education in the Learning Society (Dearing Report) (London: HMSO, 1997), 21.