blog, Peter Hitchens justly affirms: ‘The reason why this controversy has run for so long is that it matters so much, and says so much about those who take sides in it.’5 The writer James Delingpole has even gone so far as to describe the actions of those who oppose free schools as ‘actively evil’.6
But the metaphor of war and battle resonates at another level, too. The current clashes over government plans represent the intensification of a struggle that has been going on, in different forms, for nearly fifty years. There has been a long and harsh battle between supporters of comprehensive schools and those who want to retain selection in some form, whether through the restitution of the grammar schools or through more subtle means.
In his calm, clear analysis of the recent history of state education, State Schools Since the 1950s: The Good News, Adrian Elliott compares the ideological divide over the grammar schools to a long-running Sicilian blood feud. It’s a good image. In his autobiography The Great Betrayal, Brian Cox, the chief figure behind the notorious Black Papers (a series of interventions from the political right that lambasted progressive developments in education, from comprehensive reform to more child-centred teaching methods, published in the 1960s and 70s), describes how he found himself ‘the most hated professor in the country … nicknamed the Enoch Powell of education.’7 The battle over how to organise our schools, and what to teach in them, has a long, bitter and tangled history.
Part of this political story inevitably involves a parallel and broader struggle over whether our public services are to be run by a democratic, devolved state, or whether they are to be put out to tender. In the United States over the last twenty years, privatised state schools on the so-called Charter model have gripped the imagination of everyone from hedge fund billionaires to the liberal elite; yet they have also posed a real danger to America’s much maligned public (state) schools. As the American educator and former adviser to the administration of George W. Bush, Diane Ravitch, says: ‘There is a clash of ideas occurring in education right now between those who believe that public education is not only a fundamental right but a vital public service, akin to the public provision of police, fire protection, parks, and public libraries, and those who believe that the private sector is always superior to the public sector.’8 Without an active, well-resourced and democratically accountable state, particularly at local level, we are in danger of throwing away the tools we need to ensure both high quality and equality in education; in a nation as economically and socially divided as ours, it is vital that we pursue both. At this political juncture, the case for the state and its benign potential seems particularly hard to make.
There is a third, equally vital strand to the battle for Britain’s education. We are immersed in culture wars, those bitter arguments that have raged in various media over the decades about everything from the merits of grammar schools to the legitimacy of private education and, of course, the aims and success of comprehensive education. Beneath the headlines hovers an often unarticulated anxiety, and frequently raw prejudice, about ethnic and religious difference, and a thinly veiled terror of downward mobility that fuels the frequently acrid, highly personalised clashes over school choice. Now, more than ever, we are subject to relentless coverage of our allegedly ‘dumbed-down’ state schools and the ‘curdling’ of the comprehensive experiment. Its purpose, I believe, is to soften up the public and justify further unhelpful reforms.
It is with keen awareness of all these different levels of battle that I have laid out my argument. I begin with an analysis of the politics of the Coalition and its more prominent and powerful allies. I then move back to consider the impact of the seminal 1944 Education Act, and to track the development of—and setbacks to—comprehensive education from the 1960s through New Labour’s time in office. I go on to analyse some of the key issues in schooling today, from the entrenched politics of selection to the development of the new ‘independent state’ schools, and the substantive changes seen in the more established private sector. In the final section I speculate on how the current schools revolution might develop, ending with an outline of an alternative vision for the coming century.
I write this book as someone deeply involved in the school wars. I hope that I convey this battle with the vividness that I have directly experienced as an engaged combatant, parent, writer and campaigner: a member of the steering group of Comprehensive Future, the campaign for fair admissions; and co-founder in 2010—with fellow activists and parents Fiona Millar, Francis Gilbert and Henry Stewart—of The Local Schools Network, a web-based campaign designed to debate the impact of the new school revolution and to provide a forum for the many thousands with positive experiences of state education who want to find ways to improve it, rather than disparage or dismantle it. Both organisations are part of an impressive wider network of campaigns and individuals who continue to press for a fair schools system for all our children. Even though the LSN is not yet a year old, I was proud to see it referred to more than once in parliamentary debates concerning the 2011 Education Bill.
This book is written partly out of anger and frustration, but mostly from a powerful sense of hope. I am myself a product of comprehensive education. I am fiercely proud of that inheritance, and grateful to have been able to give my own daughters a similar start in life. On a political level, I want to contribute to the creation of a genuinely non-selective system and the enrichment of education for all children, not just the lucky minority. Few have put it more eloquently than Michael Morpurgo, the writer and former children’s laureate, when he recently reaffirmed his passionate belief that ‘At the heart of every child … is a unique genius and personality. What we should be doing is to allow the spark of that genius to catch fire, to burn brightly and shine.’9 There is so much more to do. In the words of Robin Pedley, a forensic analyst and imaginative supporter of comprehensive reform in its early years, what is at stake is the encouragement of ‘a larger and more generous attitude’ within society and within us all. I hope the reader finds evidence of that spirit in this book. It represents my attempt to confront the realities of our divided school system, and to help bring the necessary forces together to remake it in a more inclusive, open-hearted and effective form.
Understanding the New Schools Revolution
Sometime in February 2010, rumours began to circulate that the American actress Goldie Hawn had flown into London for talks with Shadow Education Secretary Michael Gove on how she might help improve Britain’s schools. Hawn’s Foundation Charity runs a group of schools in the USA and Canada that emphasise Buddhist techniques of meditation and breathing. The prospect of a meeting between the would-be minister and the famous comedy actress was irresistible to the press. It felt like one of those quirky Orange cinema advertisements you get before the main film: Gove and Goldie practising enlightenment in a curtained House of Commons office, deep-breathing their way to intellectual excellence. In fact, the two never did meet in person, as Hawn rather huffily revealed later that year. ‘I’ll tell you exactly what I did. I had a meeting with an aide of his … in some lobby at one of the parliament buildings down there by the river … just in the place where you get the coffee from the vending machine.’1
But if the ‘vending machine’ discussions came to nothing—or not yet—Hawn’s surreal entry onto the UK education scene was a clear sign of the impending sea change in public service reform.
New. Free. Choice. Innovation. David Cameron’s rebranded party worked hard, when in opposition, to project itself as a fresh, engaging voice on education, to bury memories of the Tories’ miserable record on schools when last in office during the 1980s and 90s. In the months running up to the election, Gove and Cameron gave a number of press interviews revealing the fact that they shared the school run to a Church of England state primary in Kensington. Cameron’s
