Alternatives to Education Meltdown

By: Mike Scantlebury


Starting your life at school and going on through education is a learning experience for most of us, but we don't want to hear about you. Here in England we only want to talk about people at the extremes, the brightest at one end and the dumbest at the other. Why? Can't we have a debate about education where we begin to mention the majority, for once?


Why is it that education is never geared towards the majority?

Does that sound harsh? Well, that's certainly the impression you would get if you listened to the latest debate about education in England. Check your daily newspaper right now, and you'll see it concerns our Conservative Party's reluctance to endorse the idea of building new Grammar Schools. I know all about them, all right. At the tender age of 11 I was thrown into the '11-Plus' Exam that we had in Britain at the time. For some reason, maybe more good luck than judgement, I did well. That allowed me into one of the top Grammar Schools in my city, where I stayed for the next 7 years. Later, my mother proudly told me, 'Son, you managed to get into the top 2 per cent in the test'.

Hey, that's great, but how can you build an education system around the needs of the top 2 per cent? That leaves – how many? – out in the cold. Yes, 98 per cent. Damn, that's a lot of people, most of them directed towards a pretty second-rate schooling in what were then called 'Secondary Modern Schools'. They were 'Secondary', because that's schools for the 11 to 16 year olds, and they were 'Modern' because they got re-designed in the 1950s to meet the new needs of industry and commerce. They didn't last long. In the 1960s a new government came along, the Labour Party, and they promptly invented 'Comprehensive' schools, that is, schools that cater for everyone, at all levels.

Confused? You should be. While all this was going on, the real top dogs, the people who grew, went to school and ended up running the country, ignored the topsy-turvy policies and carried on doing what they always have done - going to what we Brits call 'Public Schools', (what the rest of the world might think of as private schools). Don't know what they are? Think about the film 'Four Weddings and a Funeral' and just take it for granted that all those posh speaking men in the movie would have been educated in English Public Schools. That will give you some idea.

So, British education comes out in levels. At the top level is the Public Schools, where rich people send their children to make sure they turn out like them. Next level down is the Grammar Schools, which we've still got! Yes folks, the Labour government said 'Let there be Comprehensives' in the 1960s, then forgot to abolish the Grammar Schools, so they carried on. They had to rely a bit on charity and a few floundered, but quite a lot milked the government for grants and survived. The Comprehensive Schools spread out into every parish and town, and Secondary Moderns disappeared, mainly by turning from the latter into the former. A change of name, some new buildings and 'Comprehensive' became the norm.