British Private Schools: Research on Policy and Practice (Woburn Education Series)

BRITISH PRIVATE SCHOOLS

Woburn Education Series General Series Editor: Professor Peter Gordon ISSN 1462–2076 For over twenty years this series on the history, development and policy of education, under the distinguished editorship of Peter Gordon, has been evolving into a comprehensive and balanced survey of important trends in teaching and educational policy. The series is intended to reflect the changing nature of education in presentday society. The books are divided into four sections—educational policy studies, educational practice, the history of education and social history—and reflect the continuing interest in this area. For a full series listing, please visit our website: www.woburnpress.com Educational Practice Slow Learners. A Break in the Circle: A Practical Guide for TeachersDiane Griffin Games and Simulations in Action Alec Davison and Peter Gordon Music in Education: A Guide for Parents and Teachers Malcolm Carlton The Education of Gifted Children David Hopkinson Teaching and Learning Mathematics Peter G.Dean Comprehending Comprehensives Edward S.Conway Teaching the Humanities edited by Peter Gordon Teaching Science edited by Jenny Frost The Private Schooling of Girls: Past and Present edited by Geoffrey Walford International Yearbook of History Education, Volume 1 edited by Alaric Dickinson, Peter Gordon, Peter Lee and John Slater A Guide to Educational Research edited by Peter Gordon The TUC and Education Reform, 1926–1970 Clive Griggs

BRITISH PRIVATE SCHOOLS Research on Policy and Practice

Editor

GEOFFREY WALFORD University of Oxford

WOBURN PRESS LONDON • PORTLAND, OR

First published in 2003 in Great Britain by WOBURN PRESS Crown House, 47 Chase Side, Southgate London N14 5BP This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” and in the United States of America by WOBURN PRESS c/o ISBS 920 NE 58th Avenue, Suite 300 Portland, Oregon 97213–3786 Website: www.woburnpress.com Copyright © 2003 The Woburn Press Copyright of articles © 2003 individual contributors British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data British private schools: research on policy and practice. —(Woburn education series) 1. Private schools—Great Britain 2. Private schools—Great Britain—History I. Walford, Geoffrey 371’.02’0941 ISBN 0-203-49474-1 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-58112-1 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-7130-0228-X(cloth) ISBN 0-7130-4048-3 (paper) ISSN 1462-2076 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data British private schools: research on policy and practice/edited by Geoffrey Walford. p. cm.—(Woburn education series, ISSN 1462–2076) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7130-0228-X (cloth)—ISBN 0-7130-048-3 (pbk.) 1. Private schools—Great Britain. 2. Private schools—Government policy—Great Britain. I. Walford, Geoffrey. II. Series. LC53.G7B75 2003 371.02’0941–dc21 2002041477 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher of this book

Contents

Notes on Contributors Introduction Geoffrey Walford

vii 1

Part I— HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES 1

From Labour to New Labour: Bridging the Divide between State and Private Schooling Ted Tapper

9

2

The Trades Union Congress and the Public Schools 1870–1970 Clive Griggs

29

3

Planning Enlightenment and Dignity: The Girls’ Schools 1918–58 Sara Delamont

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4

Intakes and Examination Results at State and Private Schools Alice Sullivan and Anthony F.Heath

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Part II— PRESENT-DAY PRIVATE SCHOOLS 5

Teacher Sickness Absence in Independent Schools Tony Bowers

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6

Use and Ornament: Girls in Former Boys’ Independent Schools Pauline Dooley and Mary Fuller

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7

Independent Schools and Charitable Status: Legal Meaning, Taxation Advantages, and Potential Removal David Palfreyman

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8

Muslim Schools in Britain Geoffrey Walford

154

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Part III— SCHOOL AND UNIVERSITY CHOICE 9

Parental Choice and Involvement: Private and State Schools Anne West and Philip Noden

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10

Economic Aspirations, Cultural Replication and Social Dilemmas—Interpreting Parental Choice of British Private Schools Nick Foskett and Jane Hemsley-Brown

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11

Choice or Chance: The University Challenge How Schools Reproduce and Produce Social Capital in the Choice Process Lesley Pugsley

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Index

217

Note on Contributors

Tony Bowers is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge. Before moving to Cambridge, he taught in schools for ten years. He is a Chartered Psychologist with a background in both educational and occupational psychology. Tony has worked on a range of projects involving individual and organisational development with schools, LEAs, NHS Trusts and financial services companies. He has recently managed two major research projects commissioned by DfEE (now DfES). The second of these investigated the incidence and causes of ill health retirement in teachers and examined the incidence of absence due to sickness in publicly funded schools, linking this to data drawn from other industries. His contribution to this book draws on separate research he conducted among independent schools at around the same time. Sara Delamont is Reader in Sociology at Cardiff University. She graduated from Girton College, Cambridge, and did at Ph.D. at Edinburgh. She was the first woman to be President of BERA, and the first woman Dean of social sciences at Cardiff. Her work on women’s education is to be found in Knowledgeable Women (Routledge, 1989), A Woman’s Place in Education (Ashgate, 1996), and Feminism and the Classroom Teacher (Routledge Falmer, 2000, with Amanda Coffey). Currently joint editor of Qualitative Research, and author of Feminist Sociology (Sage, 2003), she has written five entries for the New Dictionary of National Biography on Emily Davies, Sara Burstall, Louisa Martindale, Elizabeth Cadbury and Agnata Frances Ramsay Butler. Sara Delamont was elected an Academician of The Academy for the Learned Societies in the Social Sciences in 2000. Pauline Dooley is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Health and Social Sciences at the University of Gloucestershire where she teaches courses in sociology and women’s studies at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. She held previous appointments at the University of Aston and the University of the South Pacific. Her research interests are in the broad area of gender and education and currently

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have a focus on self-harm among students in higher education, Muslim schools and the fee-paying sector of schooling. Nick Foskett is Professor of Education and Head of the Research and Graduate School of Education at the University of Southampton. His research interests are in educational policy and management with particular reference to the operation of markets in educational and training environments, and he is Director of the Centre for Research in Education Marketing (CREM) based at the University of Southampton. Recent publications include Choosing Futures: Young People’s Choices in Education, Training and Careers Markets (Routledge Falmer, 2001) (with Jane Hemsley-Brown) and Leading and Managing Education: International Dimensions (Paul Chapman, 2002) (with Jacky Lumby). Mary Fuller is Professor of Education at the University of Gloucestershire, having previously worked as lecturer and researcher at the universities of Oxford, Reading, Bristol and Bath. Originally a sociologist of organisations, she has been concerned with issues of equity and social justice throughout her career. She has researched schools as organisations, starting with a Ph.D. which documented the ways in which gender and race structured the school experiences, identities and educational outcomes of pupils in a multiracial comprehensive. Her research has also included adolescents’ ethnic identities and, currently, ways of enhancing the learning experiences of disabled students in higher education. She is the author of academic articles, chapters in books and has edited two books, most recently one on partnerships in education. Clive Griggs left school at 15 years of age and worked in a signal box on the London Underground before going to college and qualifying as a teacher. He later gained B.Sc.(Econ), MA and Ph.D. degrees from London University. He has taught in secondary modern, secondary technical and comprehensive schools in England and a language school in Bulgaria. He is Faculty Fellow in the Education Department of Brighton University and visiting lecturer at Sussex University. He was education correspondent for Tribune in the 1970s and has contributed articles to various journals concerned with education, and the labour movement. His publications include The TUC and the Struggle for Education 1868–1925 (Falmer, 1983), Private Education in Britain (Falmer, 1985), George MeekProtégé of H.G.Wells (with Bill Coxall) (New Millennium, 1996) and The TUC and Education Reform 1926–1970 (Woburn Press, 2002). Anthony F.Heath, FBA, is Professor of Sociology at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Nuffield College. He is the Co-Director of the ESRC Centre for Research into Elections and Social Trends. His main

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research is in the area of social stratification, with a particular interest in social class and ethnic differences in education, occupational and political behaviour. His books include Origins and Destination (with A.H.Halsey and John Ridge) (Clarendon Press, 1980), Educational Standards (edited with Harvey Goldstein) (Oxford University Press, 2000), Ireland North and South (edited with Richard Breen and Chris Whelan) (Oxford University Press, 1999) and The Rise of New Labour (with Roger Jowell and John Curtice) (Oxford University Press, 2001). Jane Hemsley-Brown is a Senior Research Fellow at the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER), having previously been based at the Centre for Research in Education Marketing at the University of Southampton. Her research interests are in the operation and impact of educational markets, particularly in post-compulsory education and training. Recent publications include Choosing Futures: Young People’s Choices in Education, Training and Careers Markets (with Nick Foskett) (Routledge Falmer, 2001). Philip Noden is a Research Officer at the Centre for Educational Research at LSE. He has also worked at the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion at LSE. He has worked on various research projects funded by the ESRC, European Commission and the Department of Education and Skills (DfES), focusing on parental involvement in education, school choice, evaluation in higher education and evaluations of the Specialist Schools Programme and Excellence in Cities Programme for the DfES. He previously worked as a residential social worker. He was educated at a private secondary school in Manchester, Oxford University and South Bank University. David Palfreyman is the Bursar and a Fellow of New College, Oxford. With David Warner he has edited Higher Education Management (Open University Press, 1996), Higher Education Law (Open University Press, 1998) and The State of UK Higher Education (Open University Press, 2001); they are also the General Editors of the 20-volume Managing Universities and Colleges Series. With Ted Tapper he co-authored Oxford and the Decline of the Collegiate Tradition (Woburn Press, 2000). David is a member of the editorial boards of the journals Education and the Law and Perspectives: Policy and Practice in Higher Education. He is the Studies). Lesley Pugsley is currently a lecturer in Postgraduate Medical education at the University of Wales College of Medicine. Prior to that she studied as a full-time ESRC-funded doctoral student at Cardiff University. Her research interests are centred on the sociology of

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education and include issues of education markets and choice; gender and educational achievement and the policy and practice of sex education in schools. In her current post, her research interests include undergraduate communication skills, retention issues in the medical profession in Wales, and continuing professional development. Alice Sullivan holds a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship at Nuffield College, Oxford. She gained her D.Phil. on ‘Cultural Capital, Rational Choice and Educational Inequalities’ at Oxford in 2000. Recent publications include ‘Cultural Capital and Educational Attainment’, Sociology 2001, 35, 4. Ted Tapper is Professor of Politics at the University of Sussex and the current Chair of the International Relations and Politics Subject Group. He has spent nearly all his academic life at the university having joined the faculty in 1968. His research has been constructed upon an analysis of the contemporary educational policy-making process in Britain. There have been two major empirical themes to his work: the British system of higher education, which focuses upon the loss of university autonomy, and the changing fortunes of the feepaying sector of schooling, which evaluates the political effectiveness of the private school lobby. His central theoretical interest is to explain the changing responsibilities of state and society for the provision of educational goods. His work is constructed upon the premise that educational institutions belong to both state and society and those that flourish have learnt the art of negotiating successfully with both forces to secure their long-term interests. In his work the dynamic of educational change is perceived as an interactive process between schooling, state and society. The outcomes of the process are determined by pluralistic political struggles that unfold within the context of economic, social and cultural parameters that do not operate neutrally. Geoffrey Walford is Professor of Education Policy and a Fellow of Green College at the University of Oxford. His books include: Life in Public Schools (Methuen, 1986), Privatization and Privilege in Education (Routledge, 1990), City Technology College (with Henry Miller) (Open University Press, 1991), Doing Educational Research (editor) (Routledge, 1991), Choice and Equity in Education (Cassell, 1994), Doing Research about Education (editor) (Falmer, 1998), Policy, Politics and EducationSponsored Grant-Maintained Schools and Religious Diversity (Ashgate, 2000) and Doing Qualitative Educational Research (Continuum, 2001). He is joint editor of the British Journal of Educational Studies and editor of the annual volume, Studies in Educational Ethnography.

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Anne West is a Professor and Director of the Centre for Educational Research in the Department of Social Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her main areas of interest are education policy, education reform and the financing of education. She has a particular interest in parental choice of school, an area which she first researched while working in the Research and Statistics Branch of the former Inner London Education Authority. Her research in this area has focused on the policy implications and equity issues. The research reported in this book was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and was one of the few studies to have compared choice of private and state schools; other projects in this area have been funded by local education authorities and the Leverhulme Trust.

Introduction Geoffrey Walford

The British private sector is characterised by its diversity. This may seem a surprising fact to many, as it is the well-known schools within the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference that are usually the continued focus of fascination and attention. Such schools (which used to be called ‘public schools’) have long been subjected to both criticism for their elitism and praise for their academic success, and most research and discussion of the private sector in Britain has been about these schools. One reason for such a focus is the historical relationship that the schools within the Headmasters’ Conference (and more recently the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference) have had with the British ruling class. Entry to such schools has been seen as a passport to academic success, to high-status universities and to prosperous and influential careers. This is certainly less true than it once was, but the majority of the schools themselves would obviously wish to foster such an image. The Independent Schools Information Service (ISIS) (recently renamed the Independent Schools Council information service, ISCis) has very successfully promoted the view that private schools offer ‘highquality’ education, and successive surveys of British parents show that a high proportion would use the private sector for their children if they could afford to do so. The Independent Schools Council (ISC) is the umbrella organisation that draws together all of the major associations serving the headteachers and governing bodies of private schools. The most well known are the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference and the Girls’ Schools Association which bring together the headteachers of boys’ and co-educational schools and girls’ schools respectively. The governing bodies of some schools are similarly members of the Governing Bodies Association and the Governing Bodies of Girls’ Schools Association. The Incorporated Association of Preparatory Schools serves the headteachers of preparatory schools for children up to the age of 14, while the Society of Headmasters and Headmistresses of Independent Schools brings together the headteachers of some of the

2 BRITISH PRIVATE SCHOOLS

less prestigious schools. Two final associations serving this less prestigious band are the Independent Schools Association and the Independent Schools’ Bursars Association. In 2002 there were 1,271 schools with membership of at least one of these associations, 1,052 of which were charities. Together they provided schooling for 500,966 children, 51.4 per cent of whom were boys. To give a very rough comparison, in 1982, 1,282 schools provided for 404,542 students. This would appear to indicate an expansion of about 24 per cent by 2002, but it is worth noting that the expansion for children aged 2–4 was 350 per cent (to 43,037), and for those aged 5–10 was 45 per cent (to 162, 088). In contrast, in what has traditionally been seen as the core of the system, the number of students aged 11–15 increased by just 5 per cent (to 215,715) over these 20 years, and those aged 16 and above actually declined by 1 per cent (to 77,372). Increases in numbers have mainly been for younger children through the expansion of nursery, infant and preparatory schools and through senior schools opening and developing their presecondary provision. In 2000, for example, there were a surprising 11 per cent of children in HMC schools who were aged 10 or under (all figures from ISC, 2002 and ISIS, 1982). Perhaps one of the greatest challenges to many people’s stereotype of the British private schools is the fact that only 13.9 per cent of these students were boarders in 2002. Twenty years ago the percentage for similar schools was nearly 30 per cent. The idea that private schools are where the rich send their children to get them out of the way is extremely dated. The heart of the system is now the day schools or those with very few boarders (sometimes just one house for overseas students and a few others). In 2002 57 per cent of these ISC schools had no boarders at all and 79.3 per cent had 20 per cent or less. Not only were there less than 2 per cent of schools that had over 95 per cent boarders, but for those who did board, boarding has changed dramatically. There are now far more weekends at home for students, flexible boarding to cater for students’ wishes, and greater contact between parents and the schools. Of the boarders, 58 per cent were boys. A further change, that is discussed in more detail in the chapter by Dooley and Fuller that follows, is that most of the schools are now coeducational. Only 11 per cent of schools are for boys only and 15.5 per cent provide only for girls. Eton and Harrow are now even more at the extreme of the private sector than they were—each being one of the very few schools for male boarders only. The slightly higher proportion of single-sex girls’ schools is in part due to cultural factors related to British Muslim parents’ desires to have their girls educated separately from boys. Within this book the terms ‘private’ and ‘independent’ (and, indeed, ‘fee-paying’) are used interchangeably to describe the whole range of

INTRODUCTION 3

schools that are not maintained by the state. In Britain, these schools are officially designated as ‘independent schools’ which encourages the idea that they are not in any way dependent upon local or central government for financial or other support. In practice, this is not the case, for while the substantial support derived from the Assisted Places Scheme is now being phased out, as Palfreyman’s chapter makes clear, most of the schools still derive considerable benefit from their charitable status. In practically every other country such schools are designated ‘private’ schools, a term that is widely accepted by the whole range of political opinion and is not open to misunderstanding. Sadly, I have been unable to convince all of the contributors to this volume of the wisdom of adopting a similar terminology, so various authors use different words to describe the schools that are the subject of this book. However, the potentially misleading term ‘public school’—which historically has been applied to the major schools and, in particular, the boys’ boarding schools whose headmasters were members of the Headmasters’ Conference—has not been used. The various private school associations have successfully tried to replace this term by that of ‘independent’ to avoid the former’s implications of elitism and privilege. But the various schools within the associations linked to the Independent Schools Council form only part of the entire private sector. While these schools do account for more than 80 per cent of the total number of students in private schools, they only represent about 53 per cent of the total number of schools. While there is diversity within the ISC schools, there is much more variety within those schools not in membership. From the percentages given above it is evident that the remaining approximately 1,140 private schools are mostly small schools. While the average ISC school had nearly 400 students, the average for the non-ISC schools was just 97. Amongst these are famous schools such as the Small School at Hartland and Summerhill School, but most are simply small schools formed by particular groups to suit their own purposes. There are schools that practise Transcendental Meditation and Buddhism; others that serve Seventh Day Adventists, Sikhs or Jews. There are more than 60 evangelical Christian schools (Walford, 2001) and more than 50 Muslim schools (discussed in my own later chapter in this book). Some of these non-ISC schools are very small indeed, and might be better thought of as parents home-schooling their children. However, when parents start to co-operate with one another, and there are more than five children not from the same family, their endeavour becomes a ‘school’ and they have to become registered. Others of the non-ISC schools are very well-organised and reasonably large schools. The

4 BRITISH PRIVATE SCHOOLS

average of 97 is the result of several schools with hundreds of students balancing the many schools with very low numbers. This range of non-ISC schools is grossly under-researched, but the private sector as a whole is also in need of greater study. The present government has reversed Labour’s traditional antipathy towards the private sector and has established several schemes designed to link schools in the maintained sector more closely to those in the private sector. Rather than attack these schools, it has assumed that they have something of value to share with the maintained sector and encouraged such a sharing. But there is little hard evidence about the quality of what the private sector offers—and the quality is certainly not homogeneous. Some of the chapters in this book offer new evidence on these important issues. The first four chapters in this collection give a historical context to the chapters that follow. In the first, Ted Tapper outlines the historical relationship between the Labour Party and the private sector of schooling, and then places Labour’s policy within the context of the general evolution of the Party’s social policies in the 1980s and 1990s. The main section of the chapter analyses the Blair government’s policies on fee-paying education, the responses to those policies and how, within the new political context, the fortunes of the fee-paying sector have fared. The analytical framework encompasses the lack of sustained interest in fee-paying schooling per se; the need to improve standards in the maintained sector; the acceptance of the need to sustain parental choice; the willingness to accept academic selection; the government’s acceptance that quality schooling may be provided more effectively by private bodies; and the government’s pragmatic approach to achieving educational goals. The chapter concludes by considering whether the Blair government has established a coherent perspective on fee-paying schools that will stand the test of time. The second chapter, by Clive Griggs, examines the particular role that the Trades Union Congress has played in the development of policy on private schools. He shows that from its inception in 1868 the Trades Union Congress showed an interest in education, however it was not until the 1940s that the whole area of fee-paying education came under the scrutiny of the TUC Education Committee when they were asked to respond to the Flemming Committee’s enquiry into public schools. From that time onwards, policy on fee-paying schools gradually developed but the principles on which it was based remained constant. For example, while committees examining fee-paying schools (such as that of Newsom in 1968) sought to preserve them through various plans to integrate them into the maintained sector, the TUC rejected such policies, arguing that such changes merely transferred associated privileges from one set of pupils to another. This chapter follows TUC

INTRODUCTION 5

policy in this area through the 30-year period to the abortive Education Act of 1970 which Edward Short intended to introduce. Sara Delamont’s chapter focuses on the goals and achievements of the private schools for girls through the depression, the Second World War and the years 1944–68. This period is characterised by some historians as an era when feminism was dead or dormant, before second wave (or social) feminism arose in the 1960s. Others choose to call this era second wave (or social) feminism and label the post-1968 era as ‘third wave’. Whichever term is used, there is no doubt that historians of women’s education have tended to concentrate on the campaigns of the pioneers (1848–1918) and ignored the years 1918–68. Equally, there is no doubt that private schools for girls faced enormous challenges in this period. Delamont uses histories of girls’ schools, autobiographies of pupils and teachers, fiction and the academic (and pseudo-academic) writings of the period as source materials for the chapter and shows how Freudian ideas became widely accepted among the intelligentsia, and how Freudianism was used to attack the pioneering girls’ schools. What had been the moral high ground (heterosexual celibacy among spinster schoolteachers) suddenly became sinister repression and unnatural perversion after 1918. The portrayals of the school mistresses in popular fiction of the time are explored alongside evidence of what schools were actually doing between 1918 and 1939. The final chapter in this section, by Alice Sullivan and Anthony Heath, investigates the educational success of students at different types of state and private schools in England and Wales. The investigation uses data from the National Child Development Study. After controlling for the characteristics of the intake to the different types of school, it is found that, for this group of students, those at grammar schools and private schools had superior examination results at the age of 16 to students at secondary modern and comprehensive schools. Significant differences persist after taking account of various school characteristics, and the only school-level variable that is found to be significant is the social composition of the school. Moving from an historical analysis, the next five chapters discuss various aspects of present-day private schooling. The chapter by Tony Bowers examines the almost totally unresearched, yet important, area of teacher sickness absence. Drawing upon telephone interviews with a large sample of headteachers of English private schools, he demonstrates that sickness absences in the private sector are lower than in the statemaintained sector but still significant. He examines management practices in the private sector designed to reduce staff absences, and classifies them in terms of their inhibitory, preventative and curative policies. By concentrating on a rather small, but important, detail of the

6 BRITISH PRIVATE SCHOOLS

operation of the private schools, the author is able to show the diversity within the sector and to examine some of the difficulties that staff and headteachers face. In the next chapter, Pauline Dooley and Mary Fuller report some of their research on the experiences of girls in what were formerly boys’ private schools. Over the last few decades many private schools that were previously for boys only have become mixed. This has occurred either throughout the school or just at sixth-form level. The authors draw on interview and documentary data to assess the extent to which girls in these schools are treated equally to the boys and find that there are many examples of their being ‘second-class citizens’ in schools that have not adjusted sufficiently to the needs of girls. The chapter also examines the view of themselves that the schools present in advertising and prospectuses and assesses the extent to which the rhetoric matches reality. Many of the private schools in Britain benefit from having charitable status. David Palfreyman’s chapter explains the current legal status of charities and estimates the fiscal advantages to private schools of such status. He examines the development of the law on the charitable status of private schools and discusses Old Labour’s views on charitable status in contrast with those of New Labour. He specifically looks at the Deakin Commission on Charities (1996), the responses to that review, and the current ongoing Charity Commission review of the Register. Finally, he discusses the likelihood of VAT being imposed on fees and charitable status being removed. Geoffrey Walford’s chapter describes the range and nature of private Muslim schools in Britain. Following an outline of the nature of Muslim immigration into Britain and the development of relevant government educational policies, the range of current options available to Muslim parents is described. While most children of Muslim parents are in statemaintained schools, some parents have started their own private schools to ensure that their religious beliefs and practices are taught and to provide separation between post-puberty boys and girls. The chapter describes the nature of the more open of these primary and secondary schools, and examines the reasons for their establishment and the nature of their curriculum and ethos. The final three chapters focus on issues of choice of school and of university. The first of these, by Anne West and Philip Noden, reports upon their considerable ongoing research into parental choice of schools in both the private and state-maintained sectors. Drawing upon largescale data sets derived from interviews with parents in London, they discuss reasons for choice of school and the involvement of parents with their children’s schools in both sectors. They present qualitative data to show how parents seek academic excellence and the avoidance of risk by

INTRODUCTION 7

choosing the private sector. The chapter shows that choices about schools are made at different times and in different ways by parents whose children attend private and state schools. Nick Foskett and Jane Hemsley-Brown examine the evidence for the process of choice amongst parents considering private education for their children, drawing principally from the findings of the Tarents’ Choice of Independent Schools’ research project. The chapter considers the process from primary and pre-preparatory school through to secondary and post16 education, focusing on the influence of parents’long-term lifestyle aspirations for their children, financial planning, peer and social pressures and schools’ responsiveness to parental demands. The authors emphasise the importance of ‘choice announcement strategies’ in constructing parents’ (and their children’s) models of social esteem and status, and show how choosing an independent school is part of the wider process of social interaction. They develop two hypotheses about private school choice which are supported by the data, but which also require further investigation. Finally, Lesley Pugsley throws some light on the process of university choice within the private sector. The chapter is based on qualitative data collected in two schools—one in the state sector and one in the private sector in south-east Wales. The data illuminate current debates about access to high-ranking universities, and begin to identify the infrastructures that are in place within some private schools to facilitate university applications. The conclusions drawn from these data are that the lack of support and guidance through the UCAS process for some state school pupils, coupled with limited cultural capital within their family units, simply serves to further exacerbate the issues associated with an inequity of access to higher education. The author then makes some suggestions about how the situation might be improved. REFERENCES Independent Schools Council (2002) Annual Census 2002, London, ISC. Independent Schools Information Service (1982) Annual Census 1982, London, ISIS. Independent Schools Information Service (2000) ISIS Annual Census 2000, London, ISIS. Walford, G. (2001) ‘The Fate of the New Christian Schools: From Growth to Decline?’, Educational Studies, 27, 4, pp.465–77.

Part I HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES

1 From Labour to New Labour: Bridging the Divide between State and Private Schooling Ted Tapper

INTERPRETING THE TRADITIONAL RELATIONSHIP The private sector of schooling has always had an ambivalent relationship to the state. In the 1860s it was the spectre of government intervention that led to the foundation of the Headmasters’ Conference. Some of the leading headmasters felt the need to discuss in common their responses to the Victorian commissions of enquiry and, in particular, how they were to address their strictures (Tapper, 1997:21). Nonetheless, if the relationship has invariably been tense this has not prevented the schools contemplating government assistance during periods of financial crisis. In both the First and Second World Wars there were calls from leading public school figures for government aid. Crises of recruitment stimulated the demand for scholarship schemes underwritten by public monies (Le Quesne, 1970). The purpose of the opening paragraph is to make the point that the analysis of the relationship between the Labour Party and the fee-paying sector of schooling needs to be placed within a wider context. The Labour Party is within the mainstream of British political life and it has been the governing party on several occasions since its foundation. It is inevitable, therefore, that the Party’s responses to private education have been shaped by its entrapment within this broader context. The Labour Party is a governing party with all the advantages and disadvantages that entails in its approach to social change. The historical relationship between the Labour Party and the private schools can be interpreted in three different ways. For much of its history the Party’s educational policies have been driven by the desire to maximise equality of educational opportunity. Whilst the principle is sufficiently broad to encompass apparently different policy positions (for example, the acceptance of the tripartite model of secondary schooling after the 1944 Education Act and the advocacy of the

10 BRITISH PRIVATE SCHOOLS

comprehensive principle from the 1960s onwards), such a commitment makes it difficult to establish an accommodation with the fee-paying sector. The private sector offends the principle both directly, because it enables families to purchase a valued form of schooling, and indirectly because it questions the credibility of the state sector, that is, the implication by definition is that state schooling is inferior. To follow the above line of argument is to imply that the Labour Party’s policy on private schooling has never been internally divisive. Or, at least, it is one of those policy areas that united more than it divided the Party across its ideological spectrum. However, social policy is not driven forward by only one dominant impulse. The drive for equality of educational opportunity was incorporated within a debate between those who saw schooling as creating opportunities for individuals (the meritocratic impulse) and those who saw it as a force for social change (the egalitarian impulse). But both camps could agree that ‘something needed to be done about the private sector’ for its presence offended both ‘the meritocrats’ and ‘the egalitarians’. But, not surprisingly, the debate about what was to be done quickly opened up another important internal party fissure: to what extent could a governing party interfere with individual and institutional liberties (in this case the right of parents to purchase private schooling and of schools to charge fees) in order to achieve its social goals. Moreover, the Labour Party has been conscious of the need to win elections (although to both friends and critics the converse has occasionally seemed closer to the truth) and Labour governments needed to be aware of the constraints of the parliamentary process. So, even if the issue of private schooling has tended to bring the Labour Party together rather than reveal its internal contradictions (57 varieties!), the question of how to proceed has always been problematic. How else could it be in view of the desire to build brave new worlds whilst working within the constraints of established electoral and parliamentary traditions? The pragmatic compromises suggested by the above line of argument are many. Perhaps the most notable is best described as stalling tactics. After the 1966 general election the Wilson government had more than a sufficiently commanding parliamentary majority to—at least in theory— take action, and yet the outcome was the appointment of the Public Schools Commission rather than action. The Commission, which had the obvious mandate of suggesting how closer relations between the state and fee-paying sections could be established, published its first Report in 1968 (Public Schools Commission, 1968). It satisfied few of the interested parties and was swiftly buried. The second Report, advocating the phasing out of public financial support for the direct grant schools, appeared in 1970 (Public Schools Commission, 1970). By

BRIDGING THE DIVIDE BETWEEN STATE AND PRIVATE SCHOOLING 11

then the Heath Government was in place and the Report was shelved. It was acted upon several years later with the return to office of the Labour Party and ironically, and disconcertingly for the Labour Party, the consequence was to increase the size of the independent sector rather than putting another nail in its coffin. But a Labour government had learnt the art of government by prevarication from an impeccable source. This was precisely the tactic that Butler had employed to secure Churchill’s agreement to educational reform during the Second World War (Butler, 1971:120). The national government’s commitment to the 1944 Education Act was secured by Butler’s creation of the Fleming Committee, which had the task of considering ‘the public school’ question (Committee on Public Schools, 1944). The answer to the question was not forthcoming until legislation was almost on the statute book and, like the Public Schools Commission some 25 years hence, it provided an equally unacceptable answer. This is a beautiful example of very different governments, located in contrasting historical contexts but driven by similar parliamentary and societal pressures, coming up with the same solution—to stall. It illustrates the extent to which the political context creates a constraining environment within which all governments, regardless of the strength of their commitments and parliamentary majorities, have to act. And, furthermore, this is one of those issues apparently especially designed to encourage caution. The strategy of prevarication is composed of some interesting ingredients. Labour Party hostility to private schooling would be more forthcoming in opposition than in government. Moreover, there could be clarion calls to action at party conferences only for them to be sidelined by Labour ministers. An important part of the strategy has been to threaten a number of alleged privileges that the fee-paying schools enjoyed, rather than challenge directly the principle that schools had the right to charge fees and parents to pay them. One consequence has been a very protracted debate on the charitable status of the schools. Do schools, which for the most part serve the more privileged members of society, have the right to charitable status given that, at least at face value, it would seem that a charitable pursuit should benefit the poorer members of society? This is a conundrum that has exercised some of the best legal minds over the centuries, led the Labour Party to threaten action on several occasions and the schools to mount vigorous defence campaigns (Tapper, 1997:54–75). But the interpretation of charitable status remains essentially the province of the courts and we still await intrusive legislative intervention. To be given charitable status is akin to being awarded a status symbol but it would be naïve to ignore the financial benefits that also accrue. Thus we enter the murky world of possible relief from both nationally and locally imposed taxation.

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The most decisive political action against the interests of the feepaying sector has been the state’s steady withdrawal from paying the fees of privately educated pupils. This has been led mainly by the Labour Party and put in place as much at the local as at the national level. It is possible to interpret this long-term development as the manifestation of a coherent Labour-led strategy that would lead to the eventual demise of private schooling. In other words what has been interpreted as caution verging on cowardice is in fact part of a grand plan! This alternative perspective rests upon the character of the relationship between the state and private sectors and, in particular, whether that relationship incorporates a significant element of pupil movement from the state to the private sector with fees paid for by the taxpayer. Over time the British educational system has developed pragmatically, some would say haphazardly. After the 1902 Education Act, local education authorities frequently brought places in secondary grammar schools in addition to, or in place of, building their own selective secondary schools. The 1944 Education Act made at least one major concession to the Labour Party: the selective grammar schools would be required to accept only publicly funded pupils who had successfully negotiated the required entrance hurdles (a clear attempt to put into operation the meritocratic principle). Those schools that were not willing to accept these terms would either close or become wholly fee-paying institutions. In other words, there was an intention to separate two worlds that had been entwined (Gosden, 1976:301–8). The only exception to the principle was the direct grant schools, and it was not until some 30 years later that the choice was also imposed upon them. Although it is evident that in 1944 elements within the Conservative Party, and especially Members of Parliament from those constituencies within which the direct grant schools were located, were in the vanguard of sustaining the direct grant principle, it is important to note that it was a national government, within which the Conservative Party was dominant, that took the first step to unravelling the interlocking worlds of private and state schooling. Thus again the point is made that it is unwise to polarise party policy unequivocally. Of course what had been decided nationally could be undermined surreptitiously at the local level. Thus, local education authorities, if they were so minded, could find ways of channelling children who had been educated in the state sector into the private sector especially if they had persevering parents. So, accompanying the phasing out of the direct grant schools in the late 1970s was the closing of this apparent ‘loophole’ with stricter central guidelines on whose fees the local education authorities could, and could not, pay. The broad drift of the guidance was to permit payments if the child had special educational needs or talents (such as a gift for music) that could not be

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met in the local state schools. The intention therefore was to regulate and to limit the relationship, although there is a certain amount of irony in the fact that the armed services continued to pay the school fees of some of its personnel. As always, principle was regulated by pragmatism. Once the separation had been completed then the goal was to create a level playing field with the expectation that the fee-paying sector would slowly wither on the vine. There would be two complementary dimensions to this policy: to improve the quality of schooling in the state sector whilst removing from the private schools those alleged privileges (such as charitable status) that apparently gave them unfair advantages. Thus parents would have no need to opt for private schools since the state schools would offer a quality education that was as good as, if not better than, that available in the private sector. Because it was a family tradition, a few parents might continue to choose a private education for their children but these would be insufficient in number to sustain a buoyant sector. Consequently, a declining fee-paying market would be steadily eroded, to disappear forever from the educational map. It is impossible to demonstrate that many, indeed if any, within the Labour Party thought along such long-term strategic lines. However, it does provide a plausible way of analysing the developments in party policy that occurred between the 1944 Education Act and the emergence of New Labour. It most definitely helps us to appreciate the vitriolic hostility that greeted the Assisted Places Scheme (APS) in the early 1980s. Mrs Thatcher’s first government was, in the vivid metaphor of one of her Secretaries of State for Education and Science, Sir Keith Joseph, reversing the ratchet (Joseph, 1976). Moreover, it was a reversal that undermined a key stage in a strategy that presupposed the permanent separation of pupils in the private and state sectors. When returned to government it would require the Labour Party to unravel this counter-attack before it would be possible to move on to the promised land. Of course, in reality there was no master plan. The three interpretations—of a broad-based principled opposition, of piecemeal pragmatism and of apparent long-term strategic thinking—interacted, overlapped and oscillated in importance over time. How else could it be, given the conflicts of principle within the Party, the differences as to how those principles should be put into effect, the failure of the Party to secure a consistent parliamentary majority and the need to work through the parliamentary process. But regardless of the constraints against taking decisive action, it is difficult not conclude that the Labour Party’s record up to the defeat of the Callaghan government in 1979 was, to put it mildly, disappointing. It failed both to curtail the overall strength of the private sector or to create a relationship between state

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and fee-paying schools that was widely supported and could be expected to endure. Not only did integration, however it was to be understood, remain an elusive goal but by 1979 it was not unreasonable to argue that state schooling itself was on the defensive and, moreover, the attack was being led by Callaghan himself (Lowe, 1997:68–9). Thus in a comparatively short space of time the feepaying schools changed their image from socially divisive, culturally isolated and pedagogically irrelevant institutions to desirable models of good practice. THE POLICY MELTING POT Whilst Callaghan’s government (the final ‘Old Labour’ administration?) undoubtedly started to question the ability of the state system of schooling to deliver higher educational standards, it took 18 years of successive Conservative governments to persuade the Labour Party that it needed to re-evaluate more broadly its understanding of the ends and means of schooling. The Labour Party has steadily redefined its policy positions in response to its exclusion from office with the intention of making itself reelectable. In the words of Pierson: ‘Labour Party policy on education (as on many other issues) has moved significantly in the past decade as it sought to re-position itself to win back power after a generation in the political wilderness’ (Pierson, 1998:139). The consequences for the Labour Party’s relationship to private schooling have been profound. There are two key variables. First, New Labour governments are more ready to embrace the idea that they are prepared to underwrite the private provision of social goods with state monies. At least implicitly they accept the idea that sometimes the market can provide social goods more effectively than the state. But part of the definition of the effective provision of services is the attempt to achieve policy goals. Consequently, governments need to put accountability mechanisms in place that will require private sector organisations to achieve politically determined targets. The private providers therefore operate within the context of a negotiated regulatory framework. The strategy therefore is based upon the idea of a partnership between the state and the market to provide social goods. Even after five years in government, and two massive electoral successes, there is still bitter internal party controversy as to whether this is a desirable way forward but nonetheless the leadership of the parliamentary party remains determined to press ahead. Secondly, New Labour has come to embrace the idea of diversification in the provision of schooling. ‘Bog-standard’ comprehensive schools are decidedly unfashionable so they are encouraged to seek specific labels that convey their particular strengths. The purpose is easy to discern: comprehensive schools can become

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centres of excellence with strong identities and widespread support in their local communities. Although this policy initiative does not go quite far enough to support the claim that New Labour embraces parental choice as a mechanism for determining the allocation of pupils to schools, it strongly suggests that there is more differentiation and selection within the state system of schooling. Moreover, if schools are encouraged to label themselves it seems logical that parents who are attracted by those labels should at least have the right to select them as appropriate places for the education of their children. Moreover, these developments occur within a context that saw Tory governments fragment the comprehensive system through the creation of City Technology Colleges (CTCs) and Grant Maintained Schools (GMS), which have re-appeared, albeit in somewhat different guises, in the age of New Labour. These politically inspired developments of privatisation and greater differentiation within the state system, that New Labour both inherited and encouraged, have occurred within a context of a broad societal pressure that cannot help but strongly influence government thinking about the relationship between fee-paying and state schools. Whether it was justified or not, the transition to comprehensive secondary schooling generated considerable antipathy, especially amongst middleclass parents who were not fortunate enough to live in those leafy suburbs that constituted the catchment areas for the better local comprehensive schools. Either governments took seriously the fears and complaints, even if unjustified, about declining educational standards in the comprehensive schools or they risked the possibility of ‘middle-class flight’ into a private sector which had done much to refurbish its tarnished image since the 1960s. The consequence was an inevitable shift in the emphasis of educational policy away from further major structural change towards thinking about how individual schools could be encouraged to raise their educational standards. In the 1997 General Election Manifesto we read: Our task is to raise the standards of every school. We will put behind us the old arguments that have be-devilled education in this country. We reject the Tories’ obsession with school structures: all parents should be offered real choice through good quality schools, each with its own strengths and individual ethos… Standards, more than structures, are the key to success (Labour Party, 1997). While one may muse whether the Tory obsession with structures was really much greater than Labour’s, the policy implication is obvious. As Webster and Parsons reflect: To talk in terms of standards is to

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encourage the view that a school by school approach to educational improvement is best’ (Webster and Parsons, 1999:551). Within this context there was little desire to undermine further the independent sector and every incentive to investigate whether it could teach the state sector a lesson or two about how to raise educational standards. However, it should be noted that Blair’s educational guru, Michael Barber, has had very little to say about state-private relations (Barber, 1996). Just as there may have been no possibility of going back to that nostalgic ideal of a ‘grammar school in every town’ equally there was no chance of going forward to the promised land of an all-inclusive system of comprehensive education. ESTABLISHING A FRAMEWORK FOR PARTNERSHIP The argument presented so far is that by the time of the election of the first Blair government the context within which the relationship between the state and fee-paying sectors was formed had changed radically. It was now highly unrealistic to think of integrating the two sectors in a manner that meant the death of private schooling in Britain. And yet the 1997 General Election Manifesto made two promises that suggested New Labour was cut from much the same cloth as Old Labour: the phasing out of the Assisted Places Scheme and the withdrawal of vouchers to pay for nursery education. Although it was to be expected that the private sector interests would level the charge that nothing had changed, a closer inspection of the evidence reveals that it is a bogus accusation. However, what is also revealed is a major quandary that remains a long way from resolution. Educational issues appear and disappear from the mainstream political agenda. When the first Thatcher government took office the major focus was upon economic issues: the cuts in direct taxation, the increases in indirect taxation (the raising of value-added tax to 17.5 per cent) and the attempts to curtail public expenditure. However, educational issues were also closer to the centre of the political agenda and educational policy would be subjected to close scrutiny. It is scarcely surprising therefore that the decision to create the Assisted Places Scheme generated such hostility even if, as was alleged, it was financed with resources that otherwise would not have been allocated to the educational budget while public expenditure on education was cut. Even private sector interests, while naturally pleased with the APS, realised that they had a public relations disaster on their hands and called for increased educational expenditure. The Labour Party’s attack on the APS, led in Parliament by Neil Kinnock, was vociferous, and the Party pledged itself to terminate the

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scheme immediately once it was returned to office. Given this context, and given the fact that it was an unequivocal manifesto commitment, it was inconceivable that the first Blair government could do anything else but act swiftly. However, there are two critical nuances that need to be considered. First, and although there were private sector quibbles on this point, the scheme has been phased out and not terminated. We are now into Blair’s second government and there will still be a few assisted place pupils in the private sector! Secondly, it was never officially conceded that the phasing out of the APS was designed as an attack on the interests of the private sector. Prior to 1997, in order to establish its credentials as a fiscally responsible party, New Labour promised not to increase direct taxes. Officially the phasing out of the APS was to provide the resources that would enable a New Labour government to lower class sizes in primary schools. Of course, whether the sums added up is a matter of dispute! There is enough evidence, however, to suggest that the official party line needs, at the very least, to be refined. It can be reasonably maintained that the Blair government’s action was not so much an attack upon the private sector but rather a decision to end a policy that it saw as iniquitous. If ending the policy harmed the private sector then that was a price worth paying but that was not the intention. Indeed, it could be argued the APS had installed unfair advantages upon feepaying schools and its termination would remove that injustice rather than harm irrevocably private sector interests. Subsequent developments suggest that this interpretation has a measure of validity. During the years of the APS there were claims that certain fee-paying schools were becoming heavily dependent, indeed over-dependent, upon pupils with assisted places. By implication, these schools would face financial insolvency and be forced to close if the APS was terminated. But with the phasing out of the Assisted Places Scheme few schools have been so financially stretched that they have been forced to close as a consequence. The phasing out has enabled the schools to adjust over time to the new realities either by finding resources to mount their own bursary schemes or by increasing the clientele who can and are willing to pay fees. The prophets of doom have been proven wrong and the New Labour government can claim that it eliminated an unfair social policy that bolstered the private sector but was not vital to its survival. But there is more to the argument than simply robbing Peter in order to pay Paul. It is difficult to know to what extent educational research influences policy-making but it is easy to document the wide body of evidence on the social consequences of the APS and to demonstrate that this was being picked up by key figures within the Labour Party. The charges against the APS can be summarised very concisely: it transferred academically able children from the state to the private sector; it enabled

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some parents who had already selected private schooling for their children to off-set at least some of the costs on to an assisted-place award; the scheme may have benefited families with comparatively small economic resources but invariably the selected children were from socially ambitious and culturally attuned backgrounds; and, finally, it was open to abuse (Edwards et al, 1989). Moreover, in view of the fact that schools with no pressing financial needs were the recipients of such largesse it is easy to see why New Labour had to act. It was a comparatively easy way for the leadership to demonstrate that it still adhered to some of Old Labour’s policies. The essence of the argument, therefore, is that the Assisted Places Scheme formed a bridge between the fee-paying and state sectors that not even New Labour could tolerate. To phase out the scheme did not represent a principled move against private sector interests, or even hostility to the idea that the two sectors needed to be bridged, but it was rather a vote against this particular link—which raises the question of whether it is possible to create new and more broadly acceptable bridges. This is the conundrum that New Labour is in the process of trying to resolve. New Labour’s opposition to nursery vouchers can be interpreted in equally pragmatic terms. Again there was the need to redirect resources to allegedly more worthy ends coupled with the claim that the administration of the voucher system had been chaotic. To quote Power and Whitty, the nursery voucher scheme ‘had been abandoned on the grounds that it created “expensive bureaucracy instead of effective cooperation’” (Power and Whitty, 1999:537). Moreover, as with the APS, there was hostility to directing resources to parents who could well afford to pay for their private nursery education while at the same time enhancing private sector provision at the expense of state nursery schools as well as those primary schools that wanted to build up their pre-primary classes. Of course there is a clear distinction between the APS and the nursery voucher scheme: the former purposefully constructed a relationship between the state and private sectors of schooling whereas the latter was designed to enhance access to nursery education and extend parental choice. Obviously voucher schemes impact upon the state-market provision of social goods but do so in a manner that is harder to regulate centrally. Again, the abolition of nursery vouchers can be seen as a convenient concession of New Labour to Old Labour. But it also demonstrates their affinity: both accord the state a key role in the distribution of social goods. New Labour may be more enamoured of the private sector’s ability to deliver services effectively but it remains keen to regulate the terms on which delivery is made. From the perspective of New Labour, nursery vouchers had negative social consequences (resources were

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allocated to the undeserving middle class’), potentially harmed the interests of state sector institutions (nursery and primary schools) and denied the state an effective regulatory role other than the provision of financial resources. Again, however, as with the Assisted Places Scheme, New Labour knew what it was against but did it know what it was for? Webster and Parsons, quoting the 1997 Manifesto (‘We wish to build bridges wherever we can across education divides. The educational apartheid created by the public/private divide diminishes the whole education system’—Labour Party, 1997) attack New Labour for adopting a policy strategy that is designed to tinker ‘with the symptoms’ and not address ‘the underlying cause’ of the educational apartheid (Webster and Parsons, 1999:553). Be that as it may, the traditional metaphor of building bridges between the two sectors gave way in the 2001 Manifesto to the idea of establishing partnerships: ‘Pupils will be given greater opportunities through the promotion of partnerships between schools. We will build on the partnerships established between the state and private sectors’ (Labour Party, 2001). Indeed, the idea of state/private partnerships is now central to New Labour’s thinking on how the two sectors of schooling should be linked. The partnership metaphor has certain advantages over the idea of creating a bridge between the two sectors. The latter was part of traditional Conservative Party thinking from which New Labour needed to distance itself. Moreover, although bridges suggest two-way communication flows, the bridge that historically linked fee-paying and state schooling established predominantly one-way traffic: pupils were transferred out of state schools and into private schools. No matter how indirectly, New Labour could not afford to be associated with this idea. Partnership suggests common endeavour in the pursuit of mutually agreed goals. Furthermore, there could be multiple partnerships: school with school, central government with educational trusts, local educational authorities with private sector bodies and so on. The intertwining and overlapping possibilities were ideally suited to New Labour as it searched for a ‘middle way’ to emerge out of the politics of consensus. If partnership is the overarching idea, then what are the central characteristics of its development over the past five years? There are four main points to consider: 1. the range of variables that the partnerships will incorporate; 2. the possibility of continuously extending partnerships; 3. the number of partners who have a part to play; 4. the potential for interactive flows of influence amongst the partners.

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What has to be analysed is how the state-private partnership has developed in terms of these dimensions and how, in the light of that analysis, it is to be evaluated. Webster and Parsons may be correct in arguing that bridge-building strategies are grossly inadequate in resolving the question of educational apartheid but it does not follow that the partnership idea will fail to create a broadly accepted policy consensus around an issue that has historically been very divisive. Notwithstanding the reference to educational apartheid (which, significantly, did NOT appear in the 2001 General Election Manifesto), it could be argued that consensus building is a goal more in keeping with the flavour of New Labour. There has been co-operation at the local level between state and private schools for a long period of time. Invariably this has involved some limited sharing of facilities and/or schools offering lessons in some subjects to all the partnership schools. While the local education authorities and governing bodies would be party to the agreements, the critical line of communication was from school to school, invariably from head teacher to head teacher. In more recent years such schemes have received financial support from both central government and private trusts (most notably Peter Lampl’s Sutton Trust working with the Department of Education and Skills to distribute resources to the worthy causes). In the process the schemes have been finessed and extended in various ways: short-term ‘master classes’ in particular subjects, experiments in the temporary transfer of teachers, workshops to construct curricula and devise teaching strategies, and summer schools for sixth formers who aspire to enter a prestigious university with invariably Oxbridge as the target. Such schemes reflect Lampl’s belief that many intelligent children from humble social backgrounds are denied access to our elite universities and that the private sector can help to ameliorate the situation. While these initiatives may have broad ramifications for the partners, it is difficult not to come to the conclusion that their impact is more upon reshaping individual educational careers rather than redirecting institutional relationships. Schools participating in such ventures may be working with one another for their mutual benefit but whether they are in a partnership is questionable. The points of contact, at least for the present, are too specific to merit the partnership label, although one could imagine discrete co-operative initiatives developing over time into a broad and deeply embedded relationship that appears to be a future development. Of greater significance are the partnerships that have emerged out of the initiatives on inspection and teacher training. These are much broader in their scope and clearly have wide institutional significance. Following the withdrawal by the Callaghan Government of official

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inspection of feepaying schools (inspections by HMI enabled the schools to label themselves as ‘Recognised as Efficient’), the independent sector set up two inspection regimes of its own: one for schools in what is now the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference (HMC) and one for all the other schools that were incorporated in the Independent Schools Council (ISC). In 1998 Estelle Morris, then Schools Minister, announced the government’s acceptance of these inspection regimes. Furthermore, the two regimes were to be unified in 2000 and known as the Independent Schools Inspectorate. In effect state agencies (most notably the Office of Standards in Education—OFSTED) were not only bridging institutional divides within the fee-paying sector but were also tying the sector into the state’s own institutional apparatus. It is not surprising that the Independent School Council’s General Secretary, Alistair Cooke, was moved to acclaim: This agreement is one of historic significance both for the schools within the ISC and for the hundreds of thousands of families who use those schools. From next year…parents can have the additional confidence that the accolade ‘Accredited by the ISC’ is one which enjoys the full support of the Government (ISIS, 1998). The independent sector could not help but have a distinct feeling that it was coming in from the cold. At the 1998 HMC Conference the idea of setting up a School Centred Initial Teacher Training (SCITT) scheme to involve co-operation between state and independent schools was floated. The first consortium to secure funding from the Teacher Training Agency (TTA) consisted of ten south London schools of which four were in the private sector (ISIS, 1999). Not only is there a link to a state institution that funds and approves the schemes but also there is institutional co-operation across a number of schools, which makes the partnership qualitatively different from the inter-school ventures. Of course the question is whether this remains an isolated initiative or whether it proves a harbinger of things to come. Is it a form of partnership that can be expanded? Inevitably those partnerships that involve co-operation on a broad front and necessitate institutional agreements (the Schools Joint Council/ OFSTED and inspection; the HMC/TTA and teacher training) are more difficult to construct. Consequently they will not unfold swiftly and continuously. The more local, especially school-to-school, partnerships are much easier to mount especially when there are resources (a combination of inputs from the state, the fee-paying schools and private benefactors) to oil the wheels. Conversely, therefore, they seem to appear in a never-ending sequence. But we need to keep a perspective: they are partnerships for limited goals, involve

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comparatively small sums of money and generally benefit particular individuals. However, a sense of momentum is created which gives the impression that an unstoppable social change is unfolding. In view of the nature of the partnerships the most important, certainly the most numerous, actors to date have been the schools themselves. But this is a partnership movement incorporating a range of institutional actors: government bodies up to and including the DfES; the private sector umbrella organisations in which the Independent Schools Council now plays the leading role; numerous private foundations of which the Sutton Trust is but the most important; and now—significantly—the local authorities. Historically the local authorities have been very divided in their attitude to private schooling, both quietly supportive and explicitly hostile. Therefore, for the private sector institutions it has been important to bring the local authorities on board. The ISC comments, Also noteworthy and welcome is the increasing evidence of involvement by local education authorities in partnership Schemes…To this end we have concluded a memorandum of understanding with the Local Government Association, and a joint working group will shortly be convened to examine ways in which partnerships can be further encouraged (ISIS, 2001). The critical point is the move beyond co-operation with individual local authorities to the creation of agreements at the broader institutional level. Once these are in place the momentum has a basis to sustain it. Although we may conclude that the partnership idea has developed on a number of significant fronts since New Labour came to power in 1997, that agreements are still being concluded and that the range of participants is impressive, there still remains the question of how meaningful is it to describe the agreements as partnerships. To put the issue concisely: do we have roughly equal flows of influence between the participating partners? The inter-school agreements suggest limited partnerships for very specific goals with, in most cases, the flow of influence very much from the private to the state sector. Invariably the state schools are invited to make use of superior facilities in the feepaying schools or there are agreements that lead to pupils in state schools taking lessons in private schools. The laudable desire to increase the representation of state school pupils at Oxbridge is based in part upon the premise that, because of the historically close ties of the independent sector to Oxbridge, it has a message for state school pupils and teachers on how to gain access to elite universities. It may be a realistic premise but it sets up what is essentially a one-way information

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flow. The agreements on inspection and teacher training are of a different order. Fee-paying schools benefit from an officially approved inspection scheme but this is a state-private sector partnership with little direct benefit to state schooling. The School Centred Initial Teacher Training Schemes do offer the possibility of more equal partnerships but the danger is that the state schools will end up participating in the training process but receive precious few of the new teachers. It is too soon to say that this will occur but the possibility for an interesting venture to turn sour is there for everyone to see. At present, therefore, while it is impossible to dispute that Tony Blair’s New Labour governments have adopted a very different policy perspective on the state-private educational divide from their Old Labour predecessors, it does not follow that they have yet succeeded in establishing a meaningful partnership model, let alone ending what their 1997 General Election Manifesto termed educational apartheid. But if the goal is to create a policy consensus around a traditionally divisive educational issue then it can be reasonably argued that the partnership model simply needs more time to demonstrate its potential. The current shallowness of the model may continue but with sufficient rewards for the participants to support its perpetuation. Furthermore, the momentum on this front will be sustained by the creation of the advisory group on partnerships between state and independent schools. The group’s report, ‘Building Bridges’, has been accepted by the government and there are resources, provided by both the state and the market, to sustain the momentum. Perhaps as important as these institutional developments is the evidence of parental pragmatism in selecting schooling for their children. The two sectors are ‘naturally’ linked by the fact that parents are increasingly prepared to opt in and out of the two sectors when mapping their children’s schooling. So there are no absolutes in parental thinking: they want what they consider to be the best schooling for their children and are prepared to pay for it if necessary, but it does not follow that they are abandoning the state sector permanently (Bridgeman and Fox, 1978; Fox, 1984). However, the current state of steady growth in partnerships needs to be placed within the context of two critically important ongoing developments: the attempts to revise a more acceptable assisted places scheme and the steady erosion of the traditional, that is post-1944, model of state schooling. THE FUTURE? It is evident that many interests within the independent sector of schooling do not believe that the partnership model can acquire real significance until there is in place a scheme that will lead to the transfer,

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in part at state expense, of significant numbers of pupils from the state to the private sector. The argument is that there needs to be a reconstituted assisted places scheme in place in order to put flesh on the partnership skeleton. In the words of the ISC’s chairman Ian Beer: ‘lt is not our intention to devise a new access scheme to replace the Assisted Places Scheme but to initiate debate on an important issue’ (ISIS, 2001). But, in spite of Beer’s denial, the drive is to create a new access scheme but one built on a more broadly acceptable foundation. In its consultation document, Open Access to Schools in the Independent Sector (OASIS), the ISC has enumerated the principles it feels should underlie any new scheme, which include its availability to pupils of a wide range of abilities, its confinement to those with genuine financial needs and safeguards to prevent abuses, and free places for those below an agreed income level with no obligation on the government to greater expenditure per pupil than it provides for those educated in the state sector, which would require fees to be subsidised by either the feepaying schools themselves or by other parties (ISIS, 2001). In other words the intention is to meet some of the objections levelled at the APS and thereby to secure broad-based political support. This socalled open access scheme is akin to the well-publicised proposals of the former Tory MP, George Walden—more ambitious because it would at least in theory embrace not only the academically able, but less ambitious in the sense that it would require access to be regulated by agreement. Walden is proposing meritocratic competition for school places in his proposed Open Sector of Independent Schools with the fees (determined by the schools) underwritten by a combination of personal, state and private resources with family poverty as no bar to entry (Walden, 1996: 74– 102). Given past political positions it is not surprising that a reconstituted assisted places scheme has found favour with the Conservative Party, although it is recognised there are weaknesses in reconstructing a scheme which benefits only the academically able and incurs higher per pupil costs for the government. Nonetheless, even if the Conservative Party can be persuaded to back a revamped assisted places scheme, there is little point in the private sector embracing it unless the Labour Party can also be brought on board. Without broad cross-party support any such plan is likely to face political turbulence similar to that experienced by Mrs Thatcher’s APS. So, at present there is considerable caution with few prepared to do more than embrace the partnership proposals that constitute New Labour’s current policy. George Walden’s book may have received a lot of publicity but it has been praised more for its bold statement of the iniquitous consequences of the divide in British education rather than for its policy proposals, which to apply a charitable gloss are politically naïve.

BRIDGING THE DIVIDE BETWEEN STATE AND PRIVATE SCHOOLING 25

The question, therefore, is whether a New Labour government would be prepared to support a revised assisted places scheme. Although on many policy fronts New Labour has distanced itself decisively from Old Labour, this could prove a step too far. In spite of the fact that any new scheme would undoubtedly attempt to remedy the alleged shortcomings of the old APS it would still generate considerable political hostility. It would be seen as the government using public monies to provide succour for the private sector, and give rise to the obvious riposte that if there are problems with state schools these should be tackled directly rather than by taking measures that further undermine their credibility. In effect no scheme, no matter how carefully drafted, would find it easy to escape the criticisms that enveloped the APS. Integral to the idea of assisted places is the belief that state schools are failing at least some of their pupils and, no matter how such schemes are presented, they cannot escape this implication. The ISC may authorise opinion polls that show increasing public support for an assisted places scheme (with the inference that to propose such a scheme would bring a positive electoral gain), but the problem for governments is that they have to deal with their own internal balance of interests as well as the wider electorate. New Labour would have to weigh up doubtful enhanced electoral appeal against the certainty of intense internal division. Furthermore, why should a Labour government risk internal party strife when its current partnership strategy appears to be succeeding. Moreover, success is brought at a relatively low price whereas any assisted places scheme is likely to cost several tens of millions of pounds when fully operational. As previously, the cry would go up that this would be money better spent on state schools. Of course a Blair government may come to the conclusion that the malaise within state schooling is so deeply rooted that rather than dealing with it head-on it needs to hasten the day when state schooling as we have known it in the past disappears forever, and a revitalised and enhanced assisted places scheme should be an integral part of such a strategy. But it appears to have a strategy for dealing with state schools that are deemed to be failing without needing to resort to such a move. Moreover, it is a strategy that reinforces its partnership principle. In its summary of the Education Bill 2001 the Department for Education and Skills writes: When a school is placed in special measures, the LEA draws up an action plan to submit to Ofsted and the Secretary of State setting out how the school will be turned around. Under new proposals introduced in the Bill, it would also invite proposals from external partners—including successful schools, other public sector bodies

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and the private and voluntary sectors—to help turn the school around (Department for Education and Skills, 2001:6–7). Within this context it is not surprising to learn that independent schools supported by the ISC are contemplating setting up companies both to run schools and to take over the functions performed by LEAs. It is not simply a question of fulfilling support tasks but running a core educational business, something that is already undertaken by private forprofit companies. Change in the private-public relationship is therefore occurring at both different levels (embracing both the co-operation of individual schools as well as agreements between important institutional actors) and within different arenas (the inspection of fee-paying schools comes under the auspices of the state while the core educational functions of public education are exposed to the possibility of private takeovers). Although private sector interests may believe that the further step of implementing a resuscitated assisted places scheme is required to cement the process of reconciliation, a New Labour government may feel that it has no need to take this further risky step. The 1944 Education Act instigated the separation of the private and state sectors of schooling whereas the policies of New Labour have started the process of reintegration. Furthermore, it is a pattern of partnership that, as occurred historically, is heavily dependent upon local agreements. If the state sector of schooling increasingly becomes a publicly funded set of institutions which are privately managed then the current political difficulties that surround the issue of moving relatively large numbers of pupils from the state to the private sector will be diluted. If an educational consortium manages both privately and publicly funded schools it is difficult to see on what basis one could object to its constructing avenues for the transfer of pupils between the institutions it manages. This is especially so if the state-financed schools are run with the support of increasing amounts of private capital. Moreover, in this context two-way flows of pupils become more of a reality. The movement is from privately managed to privately managed institution rather than from the private to the state sector. While the future is difficult to predict, it is evident that the Labour Party has modified radically its relationship to the private sector of schooling. A Labour Government intent on enhancing the overall quality of the education system looks to the fee-paying schools and their institutions for assistance while in turn they crave the security and respectability that state sponsorship can bring. Although the way forward cannot be plotted with any degree of certainty, we can be sure that there will not be a return to past hostilities. Obviously recent developments are not to everyone’s liking, especially those who are keen

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to defend the purity of the idea of the neighbourhood comprehensive school, but the political tide is running strongly against them. However, while the partnership model in its various guises has taken root it remains to be seen whether it will blossom. How long will it be before the inputs of the state and the market are so interwoven that it makes a nonsense to think of two different sectors of schooling with different sources of funding, different social bases, different educational missions and different links to the wider society? New Labour has instigated a significant change in how we understand the relationship between the state, the market and schooling but whether that change becomes a revolution remains to be seen. REFERENCES Barber, M. (1996) The Learning Game: Arguments for an Education Revolution, London: Victor Gollancz. Bridgeman, T. and Fox, I. (1978) Why People Choose Private Schools, New Society, 29 June, pp.702–5. Butler, R.A. (1971) The Art of the Possible, London: Hamish Hamilton. Committee on Public Schools (1944) The Public Schools and the General Educational System (Fleming Report), London: HMSO. Department for Education and Skills (2001) Education Bill 2001: Summary, London: Department for Education and Skills. Edwards, T., Fitz, J. and Whitty, G. (1989) The State and Private Education: An Evaluation of the Assisted Places Scheme, London: Falmer Press. Fox, I. (1984) The Demand for a Public School Education: A Crisis of Confidence in Comprehensive Schooling, in G. Walford (ed.) British Public Schools: Policy and Practice, Lewes: Falmer. Gosden, P. (1976) Education in the Second World War, London: Methuen. ISIS (1998) 1998 News, http://www.iscis.uk.net ISIS (1999) 1999 News, http://www.iscis.uk.net ISIS (2001) 2001 News, http://www.iscis.uk.net Joseph, K. (1976) Stranded in the Middle Ground, London: Centre for Policy Studies. Labour Party (1997) Manifesto, London: Labour Party. Labour Party (2001) Manifesto, London: Labour Party. Le Quesne, L. (1970) ‘The Headmasters’ Conference between Two Peaces’, Conference, 7, 1, pp.3–12. Lowe, R. (1997) Schooling and Social Change, 1964–1990, London: Routledge. Pierson, C. (1998) ‘The New Governance of Education: The Conservatives and Education, 1988–1997’, Oxford Review of Education, 24, 1, pp.131–42. Power, S. and Whitty, G. (1999) ‘New Labour’s Education Policy: First, Second or Third Way?’, Journal of Education Policy, 14, 5, pp.535–46. Public Schools Commission (1968) Report (Newsom Report), London: HMSO.

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Public Schools Commission (1970) Report (Donnison Report), London: HMSO. Tapper, T. (1997) Fee-paying Schools and Educational Change in Britain: Between the State and the Marketplace, London: Woburn Press. Walden, G. (1996) We Should Know Better: Solving the Education Crisis, London: Fourth Estate. Webster, D. and Parsons, K. (1999) ‘British Labour Party Policy on Educational Selection 1996–8: A Sociological Analysis’, Journal of Education Policy, 14, 5, pp.547–59.

2 The Trades Union Congress and the Public Schools 1870–1970 Clive Griggs

EARLY INTEREST OF THE TUC IN EDUCATION There is always a problem with the use of the name public school. It is utterly confusing to those foreign to schooling in Britain who find it difficult to grasp that the schools are not open to the public. The description British private schools or fee-paying school may well be more accurate today but not so suitable when dealing with the pre-1944 period. Fees were paid in elementary schools until 1891; indeed in some until 1918. They were paid for county secondary schools until 1944, the number of fee-payers in these schools slowly declining during the interwar years. For that reason the term public school is preferred here because it was in use for most of the period under discussion and for the major enquiries into these schools during both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Trades Union Congress (TUC), founded in 1868, is the oldest trade union organisation of its kind in the world. In some respects it can be seen as the parliament of British trade unions bearing in mind that some unions are or were not affiliated to Congress. Sometimes this was because the government of the time prohibited the link as was the case with the Civil Service Clerical Association and the Union of Post Office Workers who remained outside the TUC until the repeal of the Trades Disputes Act of 1927. At other times the union membership did not wish to be linked directly to Congress. This was true for teacher trade unions with the exception of the National Union of School Teachers (NUST) led by the formidable Miss Walsh. The NUST represented uncertificated and supplementary teachers initially denied access to other teacher unions. Her astute political move in joining the TUC meant that she was the only practising teacher at Congress and was included in deputations to the Board of Education. In 1919 the NUT Conference narrowly agreed to accept uncertiflcated teachers and 10, 000 joined the oldest teachers’union although a core remained in their own organisation in the belief their voice would be lost within the NUT.

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The NUST faded as the number of uncertificated teachers declined and ended with the death of Miss Walsh in 1945. By 1970 all of the major teacher unions were affiliated. In fact individual branches of these unions had often been members of trades councils long before then. The TUC has always been interested in education. Technical education was the sixth item on the agenda of the first Congress held in Manchester in 1868. Part of the interest in this form of education arose from the fact that most of those attending were members of craft unions with traditions of a lengthy period of apprenticeship which required technical knowledge of the craft being followed. Apart from this natural interest arising from the working lives of delegates they were aware of a national need which they would put forward to promote their support for technical education throughout the years to come: ‘[I]f continental countries excelled us in the quality of their manufactures it was because their governments had fostered technical education, which ours has not done.’1 Education policy was formed by resolutions proposed at Congress and agreed upon by a majority of delegates attending from affiliated unions. In general, until the 1914–18 War the resolutions were often formulated at the annual congress of a trade union and if passed submitted to the TUC as a possible item for its agenda. The delegates from the trade union responsible for the resolution were usually called upon to propose it at Congress. In fact, the origins of these policies were often to be found one step further back within the influential socialist groups such as the Independent Labour Party (ILP) and the Social Democratic Federation (SDF). A good example was the education policy agreed upon in the early years of the twentieth century at the TUC as advocated by J.R. Clynes, Pete Curran and Will Thorne, all members of the Gas Workers’ Union. The former two were members of the ILP whilst Thorne was in the SDF.2 This system continued in operation during the inter-war period. Upon his appointment as Assistant General Secretary (1924) then General Secretary (1926) to the TUC, Walter Citrine undertook a reorganisation which established eight departments mirroring those of government. At first, Alec Firth, was responsible for the education department but as he was also Assistant General Secretary of the TUC from 1926 to 1931 when he left to become Secretary of the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA), it was not until Jack Wray took over responsibility as Secretary of the TUC Education Department (TUCED) that it was possible to devote more time to policy concerning both education for trade unionists and that provided inadequately for the majority of children. Policy as decided by resolutions passed at Congress was taken up by the appropriate department and decisions made how best to persuade government to consider and if possible adopt their

THE TUC AND THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 1870–1970 31

ideas. The methods pursued were numerous. They might take the form of a letter to the Board of Education (BOE) setting out their ideas or a request to the President of the BOE to receive a deputation to discuss particular items in their policy. Other methods could be the calling of a public meeting to which other organisations sympathetic to TUC education policy might be invited to attend and provide platform speakers. The network of trades councils could also be used to both gather and distribute information and bring pressure to bear locally. Gradually the prestige of the TUC increased and with the exception of the years immediately following the 1926 General Strike, when many companies and a good number of Conservative MPs were hostile to organised labour, the knowledge and experience of members was recognised and their advice sought in an official capacity as representatives invited to join government education committees. Ivor Gwynne of the Tin and Sheet Millmen was the first to do so as a member of the Haddow Committee (1924–26). The education policies pursued by the TUC for about the first 70 years of its existence reflected various aspects of education. One was adult education to allow trade unionists who had received only a limited elementary schooling to have a chance to catch up on some of the schooling denied to them when they had been obliged to leave school for work in order to supplement the family income. Ruskin College, founded in 1899 and to which the TUC contributed financially, was one of several institutions providing education for mature adults, the Central Labour College another. These colleges became training grounds for many future union representatives and researchers. A second strand of education policy dealt with demands for improved elementary schooling, free secondary schooling for all and raising the school leaving age to 15 and by stages to 16. It is worth remembering that the school leaving age was only raised slowly from ten years in 1876 to 11 in 1893, 12 in 1899 and 14 in 1918. Until 1918 exemptions permitted these provisions to be ignored. To put this into perspective it would be the equivalent today of children leaving school whilst still in junior school and there were many trade unionists who were active politically well into the early years of the twentieth century whose experience of intermittent elementary schooling ended some time between six to eight years of age; among such examples were Joseph Arch, Thomas Burt, Will Crooks, Keir Hardie and Will Thorne, all of whom rose to prominence in their respective unions, some becoming MPs later. An integral part of TUC education policy was a demand for the supportive services necessary to enable children to benefit from the schooling provided, such as school meals, medical treatment and maintenance grants. These were the educational preoccupations of the TUC because they affected the needs of the majority of the children in

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the country. For this reason the public schools patronised by the higher income groups attracted little attention. EDUCATIONAL ENDOWMENTS There was however one aspect of the public school system which did attract criticism within the Labour movement and that was the manner in which educational endowments were being altered. There was a belief among some trade unionists that in certain areas children were being cheated of a free education provided for by a benefactor to help ordinary children in a town. Such actions originated from the enquiries into public schools during the second half of the nineteenth century. Criticism of the public schools emerged in a House of Commons Committee chaired by Henry Brougham which made a preliminary survey of some of the charities associated with the old schools and found enough evidence for the Committee to continue its work for another 18 years. In spite of objections from the periodical Tory Quarterly at the exposure of fraud, information was published showing widespread corruption of teachers, often clergymen in orders, who took revenue from schools without teaching, in one case not even living in the area. Flourishing grammar schools were left to decline until they contained only a few scholars, lacking serious tuition by teachers who neglected all their duties except that of taking their salaries from the foundation.3 Misgivings arising from this information led to the setting up of two Royal Commissions: Clarendon which reported in 1864 on nine public schools (Charterhouse, Eton, Harrow, Merchant Taylor’s, Rugby, St.Paul’s, Shrewsbury, Westminster and Winchester) and Taunton which reported four years later covering the schools not included by Clarendon or the Newcastle Report of 1861 which had examined the method by which ‘sound and cheap elementary instruction’ could be provided for all classes—in reality children from working-class backgrounds. The Clarendon Report confirmed accusations of financial corruption at Eton. During the previous 20 years the Provosts and Fellows of the College had pocketed £127,000 due to the foundation for themselves, a staggering sum of money in the mid-nineteenth century. During the years they were carrying out this practice theft was punishable by transportation and only a few years earlier, before 1828, had been a capital offence. The Warden and Fellows at Winchester were also found to be taking money from the foundation thereby starving the headmaster of funds intended for the school. In spite of this evidence of fraud and corruption at these two and other schools not one person was ever required to face charges in a court of law. Although confronted by this catalogue of financial impropriety the Commission concluded with

THE TUC AND THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 1870–1970 33

reference to the education provided in these schools that ‘these defects have not seriously marred its wholesome operation’. The Taunton Report was a massive undertaking dealing with grammar, proprietary and private schools for both boys and girls. It was composed of 20 volumes, half of which were devoted to details of hundreds of individual schools. All grammar schools were requested to complete questionnaires. Given the obsession with and frankness about social class in Victorian Britain it was no surprise to find the Commission banding schools into three grades, A, B and C, according to the proposed leaving age of the pupils, 18, 16 and 14 respectively, which in turn were related to their future occupations and the fees their parents were able to afford. This link between secondary school provision and social class reflected that developed by Canon N. Woodard, a high churchman, who established schools using differential fees to cater for the social divisions within the middle classes, the first of which was opened at Lancing in 1848. The question which needed to be faced was who would pay for these fee-paying secondary public schools for the middle classes recommended by the Endowed Schools Commission appointed under the 1869 Endowed Schools Act? Parental fees would obviously make up part of the school income but what the middle classes had their eye on were the hundreds of endowments scattered throughout the country ranging from comparatively small sums of money in some schools to thousands of pounds in others. In many cases benefactors had set out quite clearly who was intended to benefit from the endowment fund. They were often restricted to the sons and less frequently to the daughters of local people; not necessarily the very poor but neither the wealthy. They were intended in general for the sons, and occasionally the daughters, of clergymen, tradesmen, farmers; and the trustees of the endowment who could also usually offer a place to a local pupil. Two well-known examples of endowed schools will suffice. In 1567 Lawrence Sheriff, who had prospered as a hatter in London, provided endowments to establish a free grammar school at Rugby. Four years later, John Lyon, who had made a fortune as a grocer in London undertook a similar charitable act in the parish of Harrow. Their intentions were clear: free schooling for local boys with a few places reserved for fee-payers from high-income families. Yet, by the late nineteenth century, the largest and most dominant group were from the latter. This transformation had been encouraged by headmasters and staff using numerous devious means to exclude local boys. Vaughan, Headmaster at Harrow (1844–59) issued edicts that no boy could ride to school and this, accompanied by the calling of a register three times a day, one immediately after the mid-day meal, which local children took at home, made it impossible for local boys other than those living

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adjacent to the school to attend. A separate school was set up for local boys, ironically named the John Lyon School, financed from the endowments he had provided, the majority of which was now spent on boys from higher-income groups who had no connection with the town. In some areas local people fought back. William Wratislaw, a solicitor, successfully fought the trustees at Rugby in 1839 during Thomas Arnold’s reign (1828–42), a headmaster who was among the most active in his attempts to exclude local boys. However local protests brought only temporary respite for local pupils and the trend to reject them in favour of the children of wealthier families continued inexorably until by the late Victorian age these schools had become the bastions of the ruling class. The Commissioners set out to appropriate the funds of many endowed schools for the education of the rising middle classes whilst making their recommendations appear as worthwhile educational reforms or at the very least a tidying up and rationalisation of a system which had become inefficient. Having provided evidence of the poor state of many of the schools, the misuse of some endowments, the idiosyncratic qualifications for others and the small sums available in some schools, the proposal was to bring together a number of endowments in an area so that they could be used to support one school rather than attempt to finance several. The Commissioners decided that there was no point in squandering endowments on those who by their social situation did not need a good education. The scale of fees which would be introduced would also deter low-income parents from applying. With the concentration of endowments into one school, scholarships were to be offered and these would be open to all instead of being restricted to local pupils. Poorer scholars now found themselves in competition with middle-class pupils who had already received a good education. In most cases the latter gained the reduced-fee place. The idea of open competition fitted in well with the reforms brought in by Gladstone’s first ministry (1868–74) whereby entrance to the civil service, with the notable exception of the foreign office, would be by public examination (a system adopted for recruitment to the Indian civil service since 1854), whilst the purchase of commissions in the army was also abolished. In other words a move towards entry by merit whilst ignoring the fact that the opportunities for different social classes to compete were far from equal. It is unlikely that many trade unionists followed the deliberations of the Clarendon and Taunton Commissions nor the hundreds of detailed schemes proposed by the three Endowed School Commissioners within three years of their appointment following the 1869 Endowed Schools Act. Their work was to arouse so much resentment among the governing bodies of many of these schools that their functions were

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transferred in 1874 to the Charity Commission.4 On the other hand there were within the ranks of trade unions representing skilled workers men such as Potter, Odger and Howell, who were three of the early secretaries of the Trades Union Congress Parliamentary Committee (TUCPC) during the years 1869–75. These men were articulate, well read and fully aware of the findings of numerous official reports, government or otherwise. Potter was also secretary of the Council of Building Workers and publisher of the Beehive, founded in 1861, the most successful socialist newspaper of the time with an influence out of all proportion to its circulation of some 8,000 copies. This newspaper arose out of the nine-hour movement in the London building trades and was in turn the organ of the London Trades Council (LTC), the TUCPC and the London Working Men’s Association. Odger was a shoemaker by trade, a member of the LTC and President of the International Working Men’s Association during 1864–66. Howell was a bricklayer, who was in turn secretary of the Reform League and the Operative Builders’ Association. It would be from such people that protests to the changes would arise. George Odger, speaking on a National Education League platform, as early as 1870, ‘attacked the rich who had, he alleged, filched the schools from the people of England and now supported these institutions with money left for the education of the poor’.5 In the same year Robert Applegarth of the Carpenters’ Union, in a letter to the Beehive also mentioned how, ‘the middle class…had a monopoly of free education afforded by enormous and misused endowments’.6 The first mention of endowments at the TUC arose in 1881 from a reference to ‘attempts being made to confiscate the rights of the poorer classes in some of the educational institutions of Scotland’. Mr Fairburn from London supported the accompanying request by the Scottish delegates for the TUCPC to take the matter up, claiming ‘that £56,000 a year was taken away from the funds of the London charities for the benefit of the parson’.7 Four years later the matter gained greater prominence when T.P.Threlfall in his opening presidential address turned his attention to the matter of education and asked delegates: What has become of the vast sums of money which have been left in bygone times for education, for help to the poor? The records of the City companies are a sample of the uses to which this money has been put. The modern interpretation seems to be that the money was left for the poor in spirit—not the poor in worldly goods. It never would have been bequeathed if the ancient donors could have forseen its uses for costly banquets, middle class education and other foreign purposes.8

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The result of Threlfall’s statement was that the TUC Circular prepared by Henry Broadhurst, Secretary of the TUCPC, and distributed to trades councils for presentation to candidates in order to test their attitudes to TUC policy in the forthcoming General Election was a demand for ‘the restitution of educational and other endowments to the service of those for whom they were originally intended’.9 That the matter was gradually gaining attention can be illustrated by the fact that, almost immediately following the publication of the TUC Circular, the Labour Representation Association of Manchester and Salford, which had only been established in January 1885, issued their own circular just after the municipal elections outlining their aims for the consideration of parliamentary candidates intending to stand for election the following year. Among these aims was one ‘to secure that the educational endowments intended for the benefit of the working classes shall be applied to the purposes for which they were designed’.10 If the majority of trade unionists were unaware of proposed changes on a national scale they were quick to notice their own situation locally. This is born out by the objections which arose when moves were made by Commissioners to end free education in areas such as Sutton Coldfield, Kendall and Scarning in Norfolk. At the latter William Taylor, a platelayer on the railway, told the Select Committee of 1887 ‘that the people of Scarning who have a right to a free education are compelled to pay the school fee’ and that ‘the £2 exhibitions were awarded, not to the working class, but to a higher class’.11 In 1895 the Trades and Labour Councils together with the Co-operative Societies sent a memorial to the Bryce Commission signed by two ex-secretaries of the TUCPC and both now Liberal MPs stating ‘these endowments… were in most cases originally bequeathed for the education of poor children’. From 1904 a reference to endowments began to become incorporated into the TUC education programme. In that year it was just a phrase calling for the ‘proper management of educational endowments’. By 1905 the wording had changed to the ‘restoration of misappropriated endowments’; the identical phrase used by the Labour Party at their 1906 Annual Party Conference. In that same year at the Gas Workers’ Union Biennial Conference, Will Thorne, a man who had left school at six years of age and become a champion for improved schooling at the TUC, called for the ‘restoration of the educational endowments which had been stolen from the people’. Brian Simon has described the work of the Commissioners as privatisation.12 Initially this might seem to be an exaggeration. Privatisation has been associated with the Conservative governments of the 1980s and 1990s when industries which had been nationalised in the post-war era, with compensation paid to previous shareholders, notwithstanding that many of the industries were in parlous economic

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circumstances, were sold off to individual and corporate shareholders. Even allowing for the loss to the state of the true value of these public enterprises as some were sold below market price, or the high fees charged by financial institutions for organising the sales—at least some of the money from the sales went to the Treasury in what might be seen as going some way towards a compensatory payment. By contrast the educational endowments considered by the Commissioners had been provided by private philanthropists or companies and it could be argued they had not been financed by the state in the first place. However, whatever their original source of finance these educational endowments had been given to the community and to that extent were public property even if usually restricted to the citizens of a particular town or area. The taking over of these endowments was not accompanied by compensation on anything like the scale of their true value to those for whom the benefactors had originally provided the funds. If anything Simon has understated the action of the Commissioners which was in effect expropriation, or in the blunter terms of Will Thorne, theft! Not by the state from private individuals but rather by the rising middle classes from the lower-paid social classes and using the unrepresentative House of Lords as the conduit for much of the necessary legislation. During the Edwardian period Ramsay MacDonald, Philip Snowden and J.R.Clynes, all Labour MPs, attacked the government over the question of endowments and several requests were made for a Royal Commission to examine the way in which endowments had ‘gone astray’ as J.Cramp of the National Union of Railwaymen was to put it diplomatically. His fellow representative J.H.Thomas took a more critical approach: ‘today’s endowments are made class endowments…in the sense that a particular and special class benefit from them?’. H.A.L.Fisher, President of the Board of Education (BOE) was largely indifferent to such pleas. Whether the fact that his schooling had been received at Winchester, a school originally founded for ‘seventy poor and needy scholars’ together with ‘ten sons of noble and influential persons’ which had by the early twentieth century completely reversed these proportions, influenced his attitude it is impossible to know. The matter was raised again at the 1920 TUC but after that faded as the call of secondary education for all, spurred on by Tawney’s 1922 booklet of the same title, became the major education cause for the whole of the Labour movement. The endowment issue would re-surface again during the 1940s when Chuter Ede, Secretary of the BOE, in the House of Commons declared that when Labour formed a government ‘one of the things we shall have to do is to see that the ancient endowments of education are returned to the people for whom they were left’. G.G.Williams, principal Assistant Secretary Secondary Branch at the BOE, who had been educated at

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Westminster and taught at Wellington and Lancing Colleges, produced a paper on the subject for discussion within the Board which conceded ‘there is no doubt that the original intentions have been largely departed from…many of the older schools were founded with the intention of benefiting the poor’. THE FLEMING COMMITTEE Public schools became an issue once more at the TUC when they were asked to submit evidence to the Fleming Committee which published its report in 1944. G.Chester and Harold Clay, both from the TUC General Council (TUCGC) were invited to serve on the Committee. Some of the public schools had fallen on hard times during the inter-war period as the economic depression had led to a proportion of parents who had attended such schools themselves being unable to pay the required fees. The bestknown schools had fewer problems in filling their places but many small schools in seaside towns and leafy suburbs, unable to attract talented teachers or significant numbers of academically able children suffered closure. By 1941 a ‘strictly confidential’ memo prepared by Miss Goodfellow for the President of the BOE grouped public schools into four categories from A to D, with A being the most likely to survive financially. In the A group were Eton, Westminster and Winchester with no doubt as to their survival; B included Charterhouse, Rugby and Shrewsbury who had suffered a decline but were still considered to be in a healthy situation; C included Cranleigh and Harrow facing a doubtful future, whilst D, believed to be facing extinction, included Brighton and Dover. As with many organisations championing the cause of private enterprise whilst enjoying prosperity, the change in circumstances now led some to consider seeking government subsidies. The ‘old boy’ network came into play with correspondence going between Canon Spencer, Head of Winchester, Cyril Norwood, ex-Head of Harrow and Maurice Holmes (exWellington) Permanent Secretary at the BOE. G.G.Williams was also involved. It is interesting to note that whilst early questions by TUC representatives about endowments to the President of the Board had been met with the response that public schools were nothing to do with the BOE, when the schools were facing problems individuals within the Ministry were willing to help them in confidence. A Royal Commission was considered but rejected by the Headmasters’ Conference (HMC). The desire was to receive aid from the state whilst retaining complete control themselves over entry to and administration of the public schools. The most practical policy would be to offer some places to academically able pupils from elementary schools, with part of the fees

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being met by local authorities and possibly central government grants. This approach offered two benefits to the schools: financial subsidy from local ratepayers and taxpayers in general, together with academic selection which would enable them to ‘poach’ bright pupils from local education authority (LEA) schools and enhance the reputation of the public schools, albeit at the expense of the former. This has been the substance of all later offers by public schools offering places to significant numbers of non-fee payers from LEA schools in spite of variations in presentation. Finally in 1942 a Departmental Committee was established in response to a request made to the President of the BOE jointly by the Governing Bodies Association and the HMC which resulted in the appointment of the Fleming Committee, whose terms of reference were ‘To consider means whereby the association between the public schools… and the general educational system of the country could be developed and extended…’ As Gosden has pointed out in his major study of education during the Second World War, the aim was ‘not so much to “democratise” the public schools—even though that appeared to be its purpose—but rather an attempt to find a politically acceptable way of bringing state-supported pupils, and thereby public money, to the salvation of the financially unstable and threatened schools’.13 The initial response of the TUC in submitting evidence to the Fleming Committee was to forward to them a copy of their pamphlet Education After the War, drawing attention to paragraphs 12–14 dealing with feepaying schools. It was recommended that fees to Direct Grant Grammar Schools be abolished and that 186 of the 235 schools which recruited most of their pupils locally should be handed over to LEA control. Their views were shared by the WEA, the Labour Party and the Association of Local Authorities. The TUC believed this would be accepted as a majority of the Fleming Committee had come to the same conclusion. As for the remainder of the fee-paying sector, with the exception of a minority of schools which were experimental or run and fully financed by religious organisations, the remainder should not be permitted to continue: There would appear to be no reason for the continued existence of private schools. The great majority of these schools are based on class distinctions, and so far as that is their only claim to existence, they should be abolished. On the other hand, there are a number of private schools with very high educational claims. Such schools may well be brought within the State system, and it is hoped that they will be free to preserve and develop any special characteristics which they may possess. So far as entry of pupils is concerned,

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however, they would be placed on the same footing as all other schools.14 In addition they believed all fee-paying schools should be regularly inspected as to the suitability of their premises and all teachers required to be qualified as they were in LEA schools. They pointed to the existing anachronism whereby ‘anybody, whatever his or her qualifications, may start an independent school in any building’. They referred to an interwar Departmental Committee for 1931–32 which reported on ‘a number [of the schools] which were so defective, both structurally and educationally, as to be harmful to the mental and physical welfare of their pupils’. Considering the various suggestions being made to the Fleming Committee which might lessen some of the abuses of privilege associated with the public schools the TUC believed that, while the system remained whereby the schools controlled entry and set the scale of fees, they would remain socially exclusive and merely invite a comparatively small number of high-achieving pupils to join the privileged whilst doing nothing to help the vast majority of children in the country. As for the value of long-term boarding they were unconvinced believing that the best place for a child was at home with her or his parents although it was suggested that most adolescent pupils would benefit from a period of several weeks of communal living. The main conclusion of the TUC was that the ‘worst feature is that the whole system rests on private wealth and is open, in the main, only to those who can afford to pay. As for the claims made about the schools providing leaders this was believed to rest on ‘the assumption that the community consists of two pre-determined groups of leaders and led…the aim of the state should be to abolish this caste system’.15 In fact, this view was not restricted to those in the Labour movement for in 1939 Robert Boothby, an old Etonian, had written to Lloyd George, ‘lt is inconceivable that our present “caste” system of education can survive without drastic modification.’ Within the BOE it was felt that, as the TUC found the proposals of the Fleming Committee no answer to their own perception of the public school system, there was little point in discussing the matter with them. The President of the Board, R.A.Butler, was a product of Marlborough. Nearly all his family for generations had been to public schools; for example one uncle had been head of Haileybury and a grandfather head of Harrow at 26 years of age. Raised in India where his father, who had attended Haileybury, was Governor of the Central Provinces, Butler had no conception of the education experienced by the majority of British children. His loyalties were to the public schools and to all enquiries about the schools during the war years when the whole system of

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schooling was being considered for reform he replied that the Fleming Committee was dealing with this matter. In fact their report was delayed and came out only a week before the 1944 Education Act received the Royal Assent. That this was a conscious, astute political move on Butler’s part can be deduced by two remarks he made. The TUC forwarded a memorandum raising points of disagreement with the Fleming proposals and asking Butler to receive a deputation, to which he agreed. Prior to the meeting he wrote a note stating, They are of course too late. The Public Schools are saved.’ The other remark is the oftquoted railway analogy from his autobiography explaining his tactics in avoiding any discussion of the public schools; ‘the first class carriage had been shunted on to an immense “siding’” from which one is left to speculate to which class he considered the majority of the children in the country belonged. The meeting between the TUC and Butler achieved nothing; the TUC wanted all fees for secondary schooling abolished but as Butler had already rejected an earlier recommendation of the Fleming Committee to end fees in direct grant grammar schools there was no possibility that he would consider their proposal. They had to be content with platitudes from the President: ‘it was his desire and intention to ensure fairness in accessibility’ and that ‘the pupils were selected in accordance with their educational fitness and on no other grounds’. The TUC believed the key points they had raised with the Fleming Committee had been ignored, especially that of equal accessibility. The changes recommended by the Committee would result in a continuation of ‘a system inevitably accompanied by social and economic privilege. The TUC do not merely wish to transfer this privilege from one group in the community to another. They wish to abolish it.’16 In reality even without Butler’s active involvement in preventing serious discussion nationally (given that the political composition of the Coalition Government, still based upon the 1935 election results, was overwhelmingly Conservative), radical reform of the very schools which so many of these MPs had attended stood no chance of being accepted by the House of Commons. In any case the 1944 Education Act was greeted with such enthusiasm by almost every organisation and the majority of the population that it became the focus of attention and the public school question faded into the background as an area for serious discussion in the immediate post-war years. As a generalisation the major focus of attention during the 20 years following the election of the first majority Labour government in 1945 as far as schooling was concerned was the implementation of the 1944 Education Act and later the challenge to the divisive tripartite secondary school system which emerged during these years. Behind the scenes the public schools began slowly to regain their confidence as rising

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prosperity enabled a growing minority of parents to meet the school fees. A secret committee led by Maurice Holmes resulted in two circulars being issued, 90 and 120, which gave local authorities the power to finance attendance at boarding schools for ‘normal’ pupils as well as specific categories of pupils.17 George Tomlinson, who had succeeded Ellen Wilkinson at the Ministry of Education upon her death in 1947, defended the action when criticised by the WEA. Most people who came in contact with Tomlinson agreed as to his friendly nature; at the same time he was in awe of the institutions of the Establishment, including the public schools, and anxious that his party should not antagonise influential sections of opinion. Whilst the TUC were reluctant to criticise a government sympathetic to many of their aims they were preoccupied with the implementation of the Education Act, especially the fight to raise the school leaving age to 15, already postponed by Butler and only achieved after a considerable struggle by Wilkinson for its implementation in September 1947. Then there were problems of teacher supply to reduce class sizes, ending all-age rural schools, competition with other sections of the community for building materials in order to construct new schools, rebuilding those suffering from bomb damage and providing the extra accommodation required to deal with the further year of schooling planned. Compared to these problems facing the majority of the school population the public school issue seemed of little consequence. The educational concerns of the TUC were reflected in their debates at Congress annually. They were reduced employment of children, transport for children to school and reduced fares for those at school for all journeys, the provision of nursery schools, raising the school leaving age to 16, opposition to reductions in expenditure on education and increasing pressure to introduce comprehensive secondary schools. Only a few references to public schools can be found in the TUC archives at Warwick University during the post-war years until the mid1960s. In 1953 a resolution was sent from the Southern Federation of Trades Councils to the TUC Education Committee (TUCEC) requesting them to ask the Minister of Education to ‘implement as soon as possible Part 111 of the 1944 Education Act dealing with the registration and inspection of Independent Schools’. The resolution was discussed by the Committee but it was decided that no action would be taken because the first priority had to be improvements to publicly provided schools. The following year the TUC received a letter from Admiral of the Fleet Sir John Cunningham, President of the appeal for Reed’s School ‘which had developed from the school founded in the last century for fatherless children in the East End of London’. The school set in 50 acres of the Surrey countryside ‘was no longer restricted to those intended by the founder’ Andrew Reed when he established it in

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1813. Its origins were still to be seen in the minority of Foundation places still available but in other respects it had become another public school. The admiral asked the TUC for a contribution. The TUC replied regretting they could not contribute to the appeal. The most outspoken criticism of public schools came from Dame Anne Godwin, who as President of the TUC in 1962 and a member of the TUCEC for ten years, used her opening address to Congress to speak on education. Upon leaving school at 15 she had joined the suffragettes and later was to become the first woman to become secretary of a ‘mixed’ trade union, the Clerical and Administrative Workers’ Union. She told delegates:

The fact is that our educational system is riddled with class distinction and stratified by class assumptions. The influence of the public schools is all-pervasive. They have established an enclave of privilege for themselves in our midst. They have created barriers of speech, of social habits and of modes of thought that do great harm to our nation. In the same year Anthony Crosland was to express similar sentiments in his book The Conservative Enemy:

The public schools offend not only against the ‘weak’, let alone the ‘strong’ ideal of equal opportunity; they offend even more against any idea of social cohesion or democracy. The privileged stratum of education, the exclusive preserve of the wealthier classes, socially and physically segregated from the state educational system, is the greatest cause of stratification and class consciousness in Britain.18 By the mid-1960s whilst the major focus of educational debate was upon criticism of the 11-plus examination and the introduction of comprehensive secondary schools, a policy firmly supported by the TUC, public schools once more began to attract attention. In 1966 the TUC raised the issue on two occasions. The first was to ask Anthony Crosland why no mention of them was made in Circular 10/65 dealing with secondary school reorganisation. The Minister replied that he intended to appoint a Commission ‘to examine the best ways of integrating the independent schools with the State system of comprehensive secondary education’. The Commission was established in May 1966 and the TUC were invited to submit evidence to it.

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THE FRANKS COMMISSION The second reference to public schools came with their comments to the Franks Commission set up to examine the role of Oxford University in the UK. It was the admission system which was of particular interest to Congress. Statistics gathered by the Commission found that Oxford admitted a smaller proportion of maintained school pupils (41 per cent) and manual workers’ children (13 per cent) than any other British university except Cambridge. Trade unionists believed these results were influenced by a series of practices; that many public school pupils spent eight terms in the sixth form as opposed to five in maintained schools providing them with an extra year of tuition and study, the closed scholarships reserving places for pupils from certain public schools and that whether consciously or not social factors were involved in the interview process which favoured those from these schools. One result of all this was that often pupils from the maintained sector felt uncomfortable in the social atmosphere of these two ancient universities and were therefore deterred from applying. The TUC proposed admissions should be through the university rather than individual colleges, especially in the light of the admissions of Trinity and Christ Church at Oxford where nearly 75 per cent of the students were from fee-paying schools. They found it difficult to accept the view of the Commission that ‘the financial obstacle to working class children entering Oxford has entirely disappeared’. THE NEWSOM COMMITTEE The Public Schools Commission set up by Crosland was led by Sir John Newsom, consisted of 15 other members and reported in 1968. Members included Dame Kitty Anderson, ex-headteacher of North London Collegiate College for Girls, two headteachers of boys’ public schools, Mr Dancy of Marlborough and Mr T.Howarth of St Pauls, two headteachers of comprehensive schools, Mr W.Hill of Myers Grove, Sheffield and Dr H.Judge of Banbury School in Oxfordshire. There were four academics including Professor Donnison of the LSE, Sir John Davies of the CBI and Dame Anne Godwin of the TUC. Apart from seeking ways to integrate fee-paying schools with the maintained sector they also wished to assess the need for boarding education and to ‘ensure that the public schools should make their maximum contribution to meeting national education needs’ and to ‘create a socially mixed entry into the schools to reduce the divisive influence which they now exert’. It is difficult to believe the Labour Government was really serious about reform of the public schools. Crosland’s rather cynical view was that it would take two years to complete the Committee’s findings but that was

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fine because there was no money available to spend on reform. He believed the greater priority was to spend money to strengthen the state sector. The TUC submitted evidence in the belief that there was to be a genuine discussion on public schools which would arise from the evidence presented to the Committee which would in turn lead to reform. They made it clear that not one of their Education Committee had any direct experience of public schools but believed their views were valid because the schools affected the public education system and society and because they had been willing to participate in a similar manner with evidence to the Fleming Committee more than 20 years earlier. The statement they provided illustrates the principles upon which TUC education policy was formulated and provided an analysis explaining their objections to the public school system. The logic of their approach was that minor reform would make no difference; major reform would mean they were no longer public schools in the sense that parents would be willing to pay high fees for privileges no longer available. In any case the TUC rejected selection for secondary schools including the main criterion used by the schools, the capacity of parents to pay substantial fees. They wrote to the Education Minister including a copy of their evidence and suggesting little progress could be made until the government gave a clear declaration of its policy. Crosland replied that he ‘hoped that such a basis would emerge from the Commission’s report’ and he did not wish to jeopardise developments by making a statement until he had seen it. A reasonable enough reply but one which seemed to echo that of Butler years before when he had been actively scheming to protect the schools from reform. The Report was published on 22 July 1968. A week earlier it was before the Cabinet for discussion yet none took place. Tony Benn wrote that his wife Caroline ‘had done a great deal of work on this and had given me a big brief but Harold didn’t want to discuss it. It was agreed it would be published without comment.’19 He described it as ‘a ghastly document’. The Report found few friends. Wilson saw nothing but potential trouble ahead if he took any action which might adversely effect the privileges of the public schools. Knowing he would face criticism in his own Party if he gave any support to the schools, and being aware of the powerful lobby within the Establishment if he suggested serious reform, he chose to do nothing. A measure of his interest in the matter can be gauged from the fact that in the 1,000-page account he gave in his book The Labour Government 1964–10 whilst mention is made of the setting up of the Royal Commission in a list of items in the Queen’s speech there is no mention of the Report when it was published. The Labour government’s line on private schooling fitted in with their policy of inaction; a suggestion that the public schools would

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wither away when local authority schools became so good that everybody would want to send their children to them. This might be seen as naïve. More likely was the justified fear of the furore which would follow from any action perceived as detrimental to the interests of the fee-paying schools through their influential pressure groups. Wilson clearly did not think the positive gain which might be achieved was worth the divisive political battle which would be waged on Labour. The TUC was largely disappointed with the Newsom Report’s findings but they did respond with detailed comments on the points contained in the findings, commencing with a measure of agreement: They concur in the Commission’s general conclusion that independent schools are a divisive influence in society. However they regret that the doubts which they expressed in evidence to the Commission, as to whether its terms of reference would enable it to make consistent and radical recommendations concerning the public schools, are confirmed by the Report.20 In the main their comments reiterated the points contained in their initial statement of evidence. They concluded, ‘lt seemed that having established certain facts the Commission could not admit to their cause and consequences.’ Referring to the nature of the public schools the Commission had stated, That purpose is clearly the transmission of educational, occupational and social privileges from those who currently enjoy them to their children.’ The statistics supplied substantiated this conclusion. ‘Yet having accepted these facts, the Commission appears to regard them as incidental, rather than as central, to the nature of the public school system.’ On only one matter of substance could the TUC agree with the Commission: ‘the withdrawal of financial subsidies from public funds (in the form of tax relief and the like) at present available to schools for providing private education’. Even this minor reform was never acted upon. THE DONNISON COMMITTEE The Public Schools Commission was now reconstituted in 1968 under the chairmanship of Professor Donnison. There was a considerable change in membership although Dame Anne Godwin retained a place. The Commission was invited to consider how independent day and direct grant grammar schools could participate in the move towards comprehensive education. The direct grant grammar schools were somewhat of a mystery to most people including many in the educational world. Their origin lay in the 1926 Hadow Report which

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recommended all schools taking pupils over 11 years of age should be regarded as secondary. Grantaided secondary schools were given a choice in their source of funding; either by the LEA or by a direct grant from the central authority, namely the Board of Education. A minority, 235 schools, chose the latter system which meant they had to reserve 25 per cent of their free places to pupils selected by the LEA. When the 1944 Education Act was passed and LEAs abolished fees in their secondary schools an exception was made for the direct grant grammar schools, against the early advice of the Fleming Committee which Butler had rejected. The number of direct grant schools was reduced to 164. Of the 71 which lost their direct grant status, some became independent and became in effect public schools whilst some came under local education authority control.21 The direct grant grammar schools were selective schools with much in common with HMC day schools. The boarding pupils came from similar social backgrounds: 85 per cent had fathers from professional or managerial occupations, social classes I and II. For day schools the figure was 58 per cent. Those with semi-skilled and unskilled fathers were 1.3 per cent and 8 per cent respectively. In 1964 the schools received approximately 75 per cent of their income from the LEA and central government with the remaining coming from parental fees. Among the direct grant grammar schools were 57 Roman Catholic and seven Methodist. Neither of these two groups were hostile to nonselective secondary schooling. Just over half were girls’ schools. The direct grant system was largely an historical accident rather than evidence that all of the schools achieved high academic results. The bestknown was probably Manchester Grammar, but such a school was atypical. Only about ten schools were in this category, although the reputation of the best rubbed off on the rest of the schools in a similar manner to that of the top HMC schools, whereby some people thought they were typical of all feepaying schools. In some areas direct grant schools achieved better results than LEA grammar schools whilst in others the LEA school might do better, a fact pointed out by Sir Alec Clegg with reference to Bradford, Leeds and Sheffield. The question for the Labour government was how could they give funding to selective secondary schools when they supported a policy of comprehensive schooling and in addition justify spending more money on some pupils in the community than others? The Commission agreed the schools should participate in LEA reorganisation schemes and abolish fees in day schools but they could not agree on how this might be achieved. Two possible solutions were offered. Those with connections with the schools suggested they could retain full grant status receiving funding from a centrally financed School Grants Committee which would preserve their independence without giving them more influence

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than LEA schools. An equal number of the Committee, seven, suggested they should go and become ‘controlled or aided schools’ as was the case with religious schools. Professor Donnison and Lord Annan, the ViceChairman, were willing to support either scheme. Two Committee members wished to retain fees on a means-tested basis with at least some of the schools retained as selective grammar schools. It was suggested that the governing bodies should become more representative of local communities including employers and trade unions. The Labour government welcomed the Report; the Conservatives opposed it, rejecting any proposal which would integrate the schools into the LEA. The TUC saw it as contributing ‘a modest step towards comprehensive reorganisation’. In contrast to the Newsom Report they gave it a general welcome. They agreed with the analysis made of the direct grant system which provided ‘a good academic education for a minority of children (selected according to estimated academic ability and, in effect, by social class) at the expense of the majority, including most working-class children, who receive an inadequate minimum education’. They were unhappy about suggestions that direct grant schools could join the private sector because this implied ‘the continued existence of a private sector of education’. They also agreed with the conclusion of the Committee about gifted children: ‘for the sake of gifted and ordinary children alike, gifted children should be educated with their less gifted contemporaries in comprehensive schools…because there is no certain way of identifying such children’. It might also diminish the quality of the general education both of those children in ‘super selective’ schools and those excluded from them. CONCLUSION It is clear that the objectives of the public schools and their supporters were incompatible with those of the TUC. The features of these schools which made them attractive to the more affluent sections of society were the very practices to which the TUC objected—a segregated system of schooling which was overwhelmingly patronised by those in key positions of power. The validity of this claim is supported by statistics which appeared almost with regular monotony and had become so familiar as to be regarded as a part of the natural order of British society. To take only the latest figures compiled for the period under discussion, namely those from the Newsom Committee, the percentages attending public schools and fee-paying schools recognised as efficient were as follows:

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Vice Chancellors, Heads of Colleges, Professors of all English

and Welsh Universities 32.5%

Heads of colleges/Professors at Oxford or Cambridge Admirals, Generals, Field Marshals Physicians, surgeons at London Teaching hospitals on the GMC Directors of prominent firms Church of England Bishops Judges and QCs

49.3% 55% 68% 70.8% 75% 79.2%

These figures do not include ex-direct grant pupils. Nearly half of Conservative MPs had attended public schools and this was overwhelmingly true for Tory cabinets, a trend which continued so that by 1979 in the first Thatcher administration 152 of the 339 Tory MPs had been privately educated, including 51 from one school alone, Eton, whilst 95 per cent of the Cabinet had been educated outside the state sector. This was at a time when the overall percentage of public school pupils remained relatively small, about 6 per cent of the school population, although they made up a far larger percentage of pupils staying on into the sixth form. Nevertheless their positions in key sections of society in what can be referred to as the Establishment was out of all proportion to their numbers, and there is some evidence to suggest when it came to recruitment to the civil service, especially the foreign office, social as well as academic criteria played a part. The Fulton Commission of 1969 studied the trend of recruitment to the civil service and found that contrary to popular opinion ‘it has not been towards recruiting from a steadily widening social background…Overall it has been static.’ In their study they found that between 1964 and 1967 half of the applicants to the administrative class who were to get first class degrees were considered unsuitable by the Civil Service Commission and rejected whilst 12.5 per cent of those accepted were to obtain lower seconds or thirds. This was followed up after the publication date, the results appearing as a footnote in the final report. It was found that there seemed to be a strong association between attendance at public schools and Oxford and Cambridge universities. A majority of those obtaining first class degrees but rejected came from local authority schools.22 The major difference in the approach of the TUC and the Labour Party, as two of the major partners in the Labour movement could be seen in the reality of life experience, political power and influence. Most trade union leaders and prominent members of the TUC had risen through the ranks within their union which represented their occupation, be they miners, railway workers, engineers, shop assistants or clerical workers. This inevitably meant they if they had left school before the

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Second World War they had usually received only elementary education before leaving school at 14, even earlier if they had left school before 1918. Some had served an apprenticeship, others had pursued their formal education further by part-time study through correspondence courses or evening classes, an endurance test for people who have already worked a full day, especially if engaged in heavy manual work. During the inter-war period a few gained free places at secondary schools although even so there were always families too poor to allow their children to stay on at school to benefit from the extended schooling offered whilst some believed the sacrifice was not worth while if a daughter gained a place, rationalising that it might be wasted if she only worked for a few years before getting married! It would be a good many years before the post-1944 generation who had all been to secondary schools reached leading positions in the trade union world. As for a public school education it has not been possible to trace one trade unionist who took a significant role in her or his union who attended a public school from 1870 to 1970. Therefore unlike so many other sections of society most trade unionists knew from their own experience and that of their children of the constant campaigning necessary to persuade governments to provide a good basic schooling for all children. At the same time they were aware that they were often faced by people from the BOE and government ministers who were ignorant of the inadequate state education system for which they were responsible but did not patronise as pupils or parents themselves. For example, R.A. Butler at a meeting with senior officials in August 1941 asked, ‘What is an elementary school?’ By contrast the lack of direct experience by trade unionists of public schools did not prevent their awareness of the way the system worked in perpetuating an elite who dominated the society in which they had to earn their living. As the occupational base of the country began to change in the 1960s there was an increase in the number of professional workers and this was reflected in the increased number of trade unionists with formal qualifications in education, especially from white-collar unions such as the Association of Scientists, Technicians and Management Staff (ASTMS). They added to the comparatively few officers within trade unions and the TUC who were university graduates using their formal education skills in research departments producing reports and statistics to support the work of their unions and at the TUC. The arguments put forward by the TUC to abolish the numerous privileges enjoyed by the public schools became ever-more persuasive; the defence by the public school lobby increasingly exposed as a case of special pleading. It could be argued that the TUC could afford to be more objective about the educational issues in the debate over public schools. Unlike the Labour

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Party they were not called upon to introduce reforms and face the full political force of the public school lobby. The situation within the Labour Party was different. Increasingly from the inter-war period onwards the number of Labour MPs who were trade unionists with experience of unskilled or semi-skilled work declined and those from professional backgrounds increased. This trend would continue after the war as the structure of industry changed and numbers employed in primary industries decreased whilst those employed by the service sector increased. There were ex-public schoolboys in the Labour Party, especially in the Cabinet. To take a few well-known examples at random across the years, Clement Attlee (Haileybury), Hugh Dalton (Eton), Hugh Gaitskell and Richard Crossman (Winchester). All attended Cambridge or Oxford Universities. They therefore had personal knowledge of the system and could at times be critical of the schools. They also readily recognised the power of the schools with their old boy networks in the country. Whatever the injustice of the system they had to judge whether attempting reform was worth antagonising so many key figures in the community who could mount a sustained opposition to any Labour government. It was possible to take a pragmatic approach and suggest that because a comparatively small number of people were involved did it really matter so much? This attitude by-passed the difficult moral argument that there was nothing democratic about a situation in which those who in general already had many of the advantages which money could buy were able to purchase even more of a reasonable share of the limited educational resources available to the rest of the community in the form of smaller classes, better facilities and access to the higher education and career prospects which the public schools possessed through their social networks. The Labour Party had to face an electorate to gain approval for their programme in a way that the TUC did not. By contrast the Conservative Party were strong supporters of what many regarded as ‘their schools’ because this was the education experience of so many of them as pupils and later as parents. As supporters of the free market they believed most things should be available according to the ability of people to pay the required price, and above a basic minimum this should apply to education as much as to any other service. As Lord Hailsam, an old Etonian, explained in his book The Conservative Case published in 1959, ‘A man is as entitled to buy his wife the comfort of a hospital pay bed or his son a public school education as he is to buy his wife a dress or his son a bicycle.’ The public schools were in the education market with the leading HMC schools occupying the equivalent positions of Harrods or Fortnum and Mason in the departmental store trade. Hence strong support came for the schools from their patrons in the form of large sections within the

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Tory Party. On the other hand some local Conservative councillors were often strong supporters of their local schools and in certain areas pioneered the introduction of comprehensive schools. Among Conservative MPs, although the unpopularity of the 11-plus was recognised, they were less likely to be keen supporters of LEA schools. For one thing, the Ministry of Education was not considered to be an important department in which to work, except as a stepping stone to a more important ministry. Some measure of the low status in which it was held was the fact that Florence Horsbrugh who was appointed Education Minister by Winston Churchill in 1951 was not included in the Cabinet until two years later, whilst between her appointment and 1964 there were eight changes in that post with Hailsham doing two spells, one of which was for no more than six months. Edward Boyle, twice Conservative Minister of Education, was told by David Eccles, who also held the post twice, ‘You will find it difficult to get the Cabinet to understand education because so few of them have been involved in the maintained schools.’23 The Labour Party may well have agreed with the arguments concerning the public schools put forward by the TUC but Labour Cabinets were reluctant to appear hostile to these schools. Neither the special pleading of the Conservative Party for public schools to retain their privileges nor the inaction of the Labour Party fearful of the consequences of challenging the schools really faced up to the arguments of the TUC, especially that provided in the detailed evidence submitted to the Fleming, Newsom and Donnison Committees. In the long run it is doubtful whether the TUC was surprised with the lack of any serious moves to reform the public schools for their everyday lives were grounded in the political reality of pressure groups and they recognised the powerful vested interests supporting these schools only too well. NOTES This chapter is based upon research funded by a two-year Leverhulme Fellowship for which I am most grateful. I would also like to thank Professor Ted Tapper for reading this chapter and providing helpful advice. 1. E.Frow and M.Katanka (eds) (1968) 1868 Year of the Unions, p.34, London: Michel Katanka Books Ltd. 2. C.Griggs (1985) ‘Labour and Education’, pp.160–1, in K.D.Brown (ed.) The First Labour Party 1906–1914, Beckenham, Kent: Croom Helm. 3. For fuller details concerning the mismanagement of school endowments see T.W.Bamford (1967) The Rise of the Public Schools, pp.23–4, 179–80, London: Nelson; B.Simon (1960) Studies in the History of Education 1780–

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4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

1870, pp.319–36, London: Lawrence and Wishart; B.Simon (1994) The State and Educational Change, pp.61–72, London: Lawrence and Wishart. B.Simon (1960) Studies in the History of Education 1780–1870, p.328 W.P.McCann (1970) Trade Unionists, Artisans and the 1870 Education Act’, British Journal of Educational Studies, 18, 2, p.140. Beehive, 26 March 1870. TUC Report 1881,London: TUC, p.18. TUC Report 1885, London: TUC, p.19. R.Brown (1960) ‘The Labour Movement in Hull 1870–1900, with Special Reference to New Unionism’, p.95. M.Sc.(Econ) Hull University. L.Bather (1956) ‘A History of the Manchester and Salford Trades Council’, p. 125, Ph.D. Manchester University. B.Simon (1960) Studies in the History of Education 1780–1870, pp.329–32. B.Simon (1994) The State and Educational Change, p.71. P.H.J.H.Gosden (1976) Education in the Second World War: A Study in Policy an Administration, pp.323–33, London: Methuen and Co. Ltd. TUC Memorandum (1942), p.6. TUC Report 1943, London: TUC, p.68. TUC Report 1944, London: TUC, p.90. B.Simon (1991) Education and the Social Order; British Education since 1944, pp.136–39 London: Lawrence and Wishart. A.Crosland (1962) The Conversative Enemy: A Programme of Radical Reform for th 1960s, p.15, London: Jonathan Cape. T.Benn (1989) Office Without Power: Diaries 1968–72, p.91, London: Arrow Books Ltd. TUC Report 1969, London: TUC, p.313. E.Allsopp and D.Grugeon (1966) Direct Grant Grammar Schools, London: Fabia Research Series 256. The Civil Service, 3, 1, ‘Surveys and Investigations: Social Survey of the Civil Service (1969) see pp.51, 399 and 407, London: HMSO. M.Kogan (1971) The Politics of Education, p.90, Harmondsworth: Penguin.

3 Planning Enlightenment and Dignity The Girls’ Schools 1918–1958 Sara Delamont

INTRODUCTION This paper addresses four absences in those sections of the official histories of the girls’ schools that cover the years between 1918 and 1958. These absences are Freudianism, the great depression of 1929-39, the rise of fascism and the post-1945 cult of domesticity. The title comes from Winifred Holtby’s (1936) novel South Riding. The novel opens in 1932 in the depression with the heroine, Sarah Burton, appointed to be head of a small Yorkshire high school for girls. Her aims for the 53 day girls and 13 boarders are captured in the phrase ‘planning dignity, planning enlightenment’. The paper focuses on the goals and achievements of the private girls’ schools through the depression, the Second World War, and the Butskillite years of 1944–58. The main source material is the published histories of the girls’ schools from the whole United Kingdom. The school histories are supplemented with a discussion of the popular fiction read by the fee-paying parents, a mechanism for alerting the middle classes to fashionable ideas. Claud Cockburn (1975) explored ideas about religion, sex, race, class and the dangers of communism in 15 best-sellers published between 1903 and 1939, and the same strategy is deployed here. First wave feminism, from 1848 to 1918, produced the academic girls’ schools and universities. This feminist movement effectively ended in Britain with the vote being granted in 1918 (to women aged over 30 with property) and the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act which opened the professions to women. Second wave feminism followed in the period 1918–68. The feminism of this period is sometimes called social feminism, because the agenda was largely one of social reform: school meals, contraception, ante-natal clinics and the peace movement. Many feminists were active in supporting the League of Nations, and trying to prevent another war. Changes in the intellectual and economic climate of Britain after 1918 threatened the girls’ schools and universities founded by the first wave

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feminists. Many historians of women’s education have focused on the pre1918 era, and neglected the era from 1918 to 1958. Following two earlier papers (Delamont, 1993a, 1993b) which analysed published histories of girls’ schools to explore how they represented the issues facing their feminist founders, this paper was designed to see how the challenges to the girls’ schools after 1918 were reflected in them. It transpired that these challenges were totally absent from the histories. The paper, therefore, could not be an analysis of how the challenges were represented; but has to be an analysis of why they were not discussed. The paper explains the four challenges briefly, presents the analysis of the histories of the girls’ schools, and then draws on other evidence about the four challenges and their threats to education. FOUR CHALLENGES TO FEMINIST EDUCATION In the period between 1918 and 1958 there were four challenges to feminism: Freudianism, the great depression of 1929–38, the rise of fascism, and the post-1945 cult of domesticity. The first and fourth challenges were ideological, the second economic and the third political. In this paper it is the threats specifically to the girls’ schools and universities that are the focus, rather than to feminism as a whole. Each of the four challenges was potentially damaging to the academic girls’ schools and to the higher education for women that first wave feminists had achieved. It would be reasonable to expect to find the nature of the threats, and the strategies developed by the institutions against them, in the published histories of the schools and universities. Freudianism became intellectually fashionable in Britain in the years after the 1914–18 war. In part, this was because of the servicemen who suffered mental illness and needed psychological help. The plight of such men is epitomised by Peter Wimsey, Dorothy L.Sayers’ aristocratic detective, and the other veterans in The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (1921). A modern evocation of the need for psychoanalytic therapy is one central theme in Pat Barker’s trilogy, Regeneration (1991), The Eye in the Door (1993) and The Ghost Road (1995). As a new belief system (new in English that is) Freudianism as understood among British intellectuals had many attractions. It came from Vienna, a glamorous, continental capital, the source of new ideas, progressive in the fine and decorative arts, architecture, music and politics, which were radically different from the pre-war ideas of Victorian and Edwardian Britain. There is evidence in many of the popular novels of the inter-war years that the existence of the ‘new’ psychoanalytic ideas and their cult status among progressive metropolitan intellectuals was a conversation topic. It is mentioned, scornfully, in many John Buchan novels about tough

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masculine men, and ridiculed in the frothy home counties comedies of Angela Thirkell. For example, in Summer Half, readers are invited to laugh at ‘one of the assistant masters, who was encouraging the boys to think rather of politics and the new psychology than of their work’ (Thirkell, 1937:37). In Josephine Tey’s detective story Miss Pym Disposes (1946), the heroine has used psychology to escape poverty and drudgery. Miss Pym is the product of a girls’ school and university, who hated teaching French, and has written an anti-Freudian bestseller on psychology. She read her first book on psychology out of curiosity, because it seemed to her an interesting sort of thing; and she read all the rest to see if they were just as silly. By the time she had read thirtyseven books on the subject, she had evolved ideas of her own on psychology; at variance, of course, with all thirty-seven volumes read to date. In fact the thirty-seven volumes seemed to her so idiotic and made her so angry that she sat down there and then and wrote reams of refutal (Tey, 1946:7). When her book is published: ‘the intellectuals had tired of Freud and Company. They were longing for Some New Thing’ (p.8). And thus Miss Pym becomes famous. So in the inter-war years, the sort of parents who could pay school fees were likely to have heard of the new ideas of psychology and psychoanalysis and yet, simultaneously, to have had them ridiculed as a fad among the ‘chattering classes’, or the ‘half-baked’. Apart from the potential help it could offer the desperately shellshocked, Freudianism was simultaneously attractive for intellectuals and problematic for the girls’ schools and universities. Freudianism could be used to brand the girls’ schools as unscientific: because here was a new scientific theory which was interpreted to mean that biology was destiny. Freudianism could be used to argue that women were so biologically different from men that they should not have the same education as males. Also, and equally devastating, Freudian ideas could be used to challenge the heterosexual celibacy and spinsterhood which had given the feminist pioneers the moral high ground. During the years after 1851 the feminist pioneers had created a woman-centred lifestyle with all-female institutions. Vicinus (1985) deals with five of these: deaconesses, nursing, schools, universities and settlement houses. In these all-female institutions, women lived with dignity, improving the lives of other women. What had been a morally pure alternative to marriage in the nineteenth century was rendered deeply sinister by Freudianism after 1918. The vogue for Freud allowed critics of these feminist, separatist, institutions to attack them in the inter-war years. Meyrick Booth (1927, 1932) for example, a eugenicist, deployed

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Freudianism to decry the nineteenthcentury feminists as old-fashioned. The publication of a theory, by a doctor and scientist, which made it clear that everyone was a sexual being, that repressing that sexuality was dangerous, and that directing it to the same sex was perverted, made this woman-centred way of life suspect. This sinister reinterpretation of the woman-centred life appeared in fiction most famously in Clemence Dane’s Regiment of Women (1917). The depression of 1929–39 was a very different kind of threat to feminism and the schools and higher education the feminists had founded. There was hostility to women having paid employment when men were unemployed; and the middle—and upper-middle-class families had to make economies which often included less investment in school fees and higher education expenses for daughters. These themes are common in fiction. The ‘injustice’ of spinsters having employment when married men are unemployed is a central theme in Gaudy Night (Sayers, 1936). Squire Carne’s inability to send his daughter Midge to an appropriate school is a turning point in South Riding (Holtby, 1936). In the United States, several women’s colleges came close to financial collapse after the Wall Street Crash of 1929 (Bashaw, 1999; Kendall, 1975; Solomon, 1985). The rise of fascism was also a threat to feminism and to the feminist schools and higher education. The political philosophy that wanted women back in the home was explicitly anti-feminist, and hostile to the academic education of women. As it became clearer that the fascist regimes had to be fought, the commitment of the feminist pacifists also became suspect. Winifred Holtby (1934) and Dorothy L.Sayers (1946) both wrote essays defending feminism against the ideology of fascism. The opposition between feminist ideas and fascist ones is a central theme in one detective story of the period. Georgia Strangeways, the heroine of Nicholas Blake’s The Smiler with the Knife (1939) is a feminist, who sets out to infiltrate the fascist English Banner movement led by Chilton Canteloe (a scarcely disguised Oswald Moseley), and destroy it. English Banner believe ‘Woman is for the recreation of the warrior’ and ‘Women’s place is in the kitchen’, and their anti-feminism is portrayed as distinctly un-English. After the 1939–45 War, a new threat to feminist aims, the cult of domesticity, arose. It is brilliantly described in Elizabeth Wilson’s Halfway to Paradise (1980). There was the popular understanding of the theory of Bowlby (1946, 1951) about the importance of full time motherhood (Rutter, 1972), the desire to eat good home cooking after food rationing, the New Look in fashion, and the move to send women home so men could take up their ‘rightful’ place in the workforce again. The position of the private feminist academic girls’ schools was made particularly problematic by the 1944

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Education Act. While in one way the 1944 Act was a gain for women, because it made secondary education free and compulsory for girls, in another it challenged the existence of the private schools. If a grammar school offered a free education, why would anyone pay? Many of the schools joined the state system, and ceased to be feepaying altogether, or took direct grant status after 1944. (To provide enough grammar school places, many local authorities encouraged feepaying schools to change their status and become direct grant schools after 1944. Suitable children who passed the 11-plus exam were sent at local authority expense to them rather than to local authority grammar schools.) Looking back from 2002, the survival of the academic girls’ schools despite these threats is striking. One could expect to find accounts of these threats and the schools’ defence strategies in their histories. The next section describes the sample of books, and summarises the previous research done on the representations of the earlier period in 37 other school histories. THIS SAMPLE AND THE PREVIOUS RESEARCH A decade ago I used some histories of girls’. schools to explore the selfpresentation of those schools. In Delamont (1993a) I used 20 books about 11 schools to explore how they presented their histories. In a second paper (Delamont, 1993b) I analysed a further 27 books about ten schools to explore how far they explained, ignored, or ridiculed the feminist agenda of their nineteenth-century pioneering founders to their readers in the 1960s. For this paper I have drawn a third sample of 41 volumes of girls’ school histories. The volumes chosen for all three papers are shown in Tables 1, 2 and 3. The left-hand column in each of these tables shows the schools chosen for an analysis of their coverage of 1918–58. A list of the authors, titles and the name of the school covered is given in Appendix A. Those histories cited or quoted in the text also appear in the references. They include schools in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland, as well as England. There are day and boarding schools, famous institutions and obscure ones, schools across England from Penzance to Newcastle, some urban and some rural. For this exercise, where multiple histories of the same school exist, only the most recent was chosen. Thus for Wycombe Abbey, Flint (1989) is analysed not Bowerman (1966). Before the analysis could begin a selection of 41 books was made from the large, but indeterminate, universe of such books. The total size of the population is unknown. It is not entirely clear how many histories of girls’ schools in the United Kingdom have been published to date. Barr (1984) is the most comprehensive list published, but is by no means complete. Barr compiled her hand-list from information supplied by 27 librarians in charge of education collections in universities. It lists books about 152 different schools in the UK and Eire, along with sources of information for about as many more schools which were included in general works on education and biographies of individuals. There are at

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TABLE 1: HISTORIES ANALYSED IN THREE PAPERS: SCOTLAND, WALES AND N. IRELAND

TABLE 2: HISTORIES ANALYSED IN THREE PAPERS: ENGLAND (DAY SCHOOLS)

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TABLE 3: HISTORIES ANALYSED IN THREE PAPERS: ENGLAND (BOARDING SCHOOLS)

Note: The boarding schools include several intended for girls of a specific religious denomination. St Mary and St Anne is a Woodard School for Anglicans, St Mary’s Ascot for Roman Catholics, Polam Hall is for Quakers, Goudhurst for Methodists, and Walthamstow Hall was set up for the daughters of missionaries.

least 26 such school histories published before 1984, which none of the 27 education libraries owned, and so are not in Barr. Since 1984 other histories have appeared. Peter Cunningham (1976) had earlier produced an alternative list but there are two problems associated with using it as a source to try and define the total number of histories of girls’ schools. It is out of date especially because many girls’ schools celebrated their centenaries in the 1980s with new volumes. It is not clear from the name of any particular school whether it is mixed, or for boys only, or for girls. Getting hold of all the ambiguously titled volumes to check their clientele would itself be a major piece of research. The concept of a private, or fee-paying school is also a complex and shifting one. Girls’ schools often started as ‘private’ in the sense of being owned by one woman, or a small number of women. Subsequently they often became ‘public’ in that they became charities, or limited companies, with a Board of Governors, Trustees or Directors. Some moved in and out of local education authority control several times: joining a local authority as a grammar school, leaving it, becoming a direct grant school, becoming independent and so on. See for example the shifting status of two girls’ schools in Bedford described in Westaway (1932, 1945, 1957), Godber and Hutchins (1982), and Broadway and Buss (1982). I have therefore treated as ‘private’ for this paper any school that charged fees at any time between 1900 and 1960. The schools studied vary a good deal in their costs to parents and their social exclusiveness. Girls’ schools which exist today (which can be traced from the Local Authorities Year Book and the Public Schools Year Book) are not a guide to the range of schools which have existed since 1850. There are

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histories of schools which have closed down, gone co-educational, or merged with other schools, which should be in the population. In Edinburgh, for example, two schools of 1945 have vanished: St Trinnean’s (Lee, 1962), and Lansdowne House which merged with St George’s, leaving separate histories (Hale, 1959; Welsh, 1939) and, eventually, generating a joint one (Shepley, 1988). Very small, very new, or very private schools will not be listed in the published guide books at all, and their histories are most likely to be missed by libraries. There is a need for a regularly updated, complete annotated listing of the histories of girls’ schools in order to reduce these complications. In the light of these difficulties in establishing the total universe of girls’ school histories, there was no ideal way to choose a sample for this analysis. Table 1 shows the school histories sampled from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, Table 2 shows the day schools chosen from England and Table 3 shows the English girls’ boarding schools. Table 1 shows that only two schools from Wales were analysed. There are few elite girls’ schools in Wales, and a shortage of histories of those that do exist. Howells in Cardiff, for example, has no history covering the period since 1890: there is only McCann (1972) on its early years. Lansdowne House merged with St George’s in 1976, so the ‘five’ Scottish Schools in Table 1 became four. Delamont (1993a) was based on detailed study of 20 volumes, listed in Tables 1, 2 and 3, to explore their self-presentation: (1) who wrote them, who published them, and their intended audience (2) their internal structure (3) the use and content of illustrations and (4) their coverage of six key issues which were potential barriers to their success (dress and deportment, sport, class and religion, chaperonage, curricula and feminism). Delamont (1993b) compared volumes about ten schools which had been chronicled both in a book published before 1939 and again in one produced after 1945 to see whether the coverage of six key issues (games and gym, dress and deportment, chaperonage, mixing social classes or religious denominations, the ‘male’ curriculum and suffrage) differed in the ‘older’ and the ‘younger’ books. Tables 1, 2 and 3 show the ten schools studied. From that analysis, I concluded that most histories of most girls’ schools failed to deal with the big issues that faced the feminists who founded them, and certainly failed to explain to an audience reading the books a century after their foundation why the threats were threats, and how the feminists defended their schools against them. The histories of 41 schools chosen for this analysis covered a similar range to the 37 analysed in the two previous studies. For this analysis, the focus was on the text rather than illustrations: the coming of lacrosse can produce a picture, the threat of Freudian ideas could not be expected to do so. In the next section the coverage of the four threats is

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discussed, and their absence contrasted with what the books actually focus upon. FOUR ABSENT THREATS AND THE ACTUAL COVERAGE The four threats to the very survival of the girls’ schools, Freudianism, the depression, the rise of fascism and the post-war domestic ideology, are all ‘absent’ from the bulk of the school histories. The authors and editors could have dealt with these threats and discussed how the schools triumphed over them. They do not. Table 4 shows how little coverage of the four threats there is. They are remarkably silent about all four. After this absence is demonstrated, there is a discussion of what they do cover in this period. TABLE 4: FOUR FEMINIST THEMES

The depression of the inter-war years does feature in the histories: 25 of the 41 histories mention the impact of the depression on the school, on parents, or on the girls themselves. At Benenden, a relatively young school (founded in 1924) the bank withdrew the overdraft and the staff took a pay cut (Titley, 1974:34). Similarly St Swithun’s faced a financial crisis and the staff took a pay cut (Bain, 1984:35–6). Beaumont and Maginnis (1993:99) report that teachers’ salaries were cut at the Princess Gardens School in 1931–32. The Perse School faced ruin (Scott, 1981:75) as did Walthamstow Hall (Pike, Curryer and Moore, 1973:50– 3). St Mary’s, Calne had been in financial crisis from 1911 to 1915 and tried to join the Woodard organisation: its survival to its Golden Jubilee in 1923 and Diamond Jubilee in 1933 is described as a minor miracle (Stedmond, 1986). Green (1991:70–1) reports that at James Allen’s Girls School the enrolment dropped during the depression, when the school was in fierce competition with Dulwich for pupils. Talbot Heath (1986:79) mentions the middle classes being effected by The Slump’, as does St Edmund’s Liverpool (Goodacre, 1991:83). However, no history suggests that the whole existence of all the fee-paying schools for girls was threatened by economic factors, and none discusses that many such schools had financial problems. Each case is treated as if it had been a problem unique to that school.

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A few histories mention refugees from fascism (mainly the Nazis, or Mussolini, not Franco and Salazar). At Nottingham High School for Girls (Boyden, 1975:126) we learn that: ‘One brilliant character was another German-Jewish refugee, Lotte Calmsohn, daughter of a dentist who had settled in Nottingham.’ At the Perse (Scott, 1981:101–3) ‘Leave was granted for the children of Dr Frankel, a refugee from Germany, to come into the school…without a fee.’ Similarly at City of Worcester Grammar School for Girls (1958:43): ‘We welcomed to School Edith Gulyas, a refugee from Hungary, and she stayed with us for three years.’ There is no general discussion of fascism, and its ideological threat to women’s education, only mentions of ‘gathering war clouds’. Not one of the histories mentions the ideological challenge of Freudianism and only one hints at the moral panic about spinsters and lesbians. There are a few passing comments about the cohorts of celibate ladies who made up the majority of the teaching staff and dominated the schools in their first 50 years, but many such comments are positive. Nottingham High School, whose ‘history’ is entirely a collection of remi-niscences by former pupils, does contain a couple of comments on crushes (Boyden, 1975:91) and spinsters (115). Redland mentions spinsters (Bungay, 1982:83). One teacher from Nuneaton High School for Girls remembers the school buying a house (The Briars) where a group of single women could live together (Talbot, 1960:36) in some comfort and gentility. Nothing is said about any aspersions being cast on such a community. Only Sylvia Harrop’s (1988:104–9) history of Merchant Taylors’ School for Girls, Crosby discusses the issue, albeit without mentioning Freudianism or using the word lesbian. Harrop is an academic, and she discusses how Miss Fordham (headmistress 1922– 39) lectured girls who had ‘crushes’, promoting her favourites even when they were not the top of the stream, and having her ‘long term friend and companion, Miss Rose’ (83) on the staff as a domestic science teacher. Miss Rose ‘gave one girl the honour of darning Miss Fordham’s woollen combinations’ (107). Given the long-standing tensions around careers versus marriage, celibacy versus sexuality, chaperonage and domesticity (see Delamont, 1978a, 1978b, 1989, 1993a, 1993b), this issue is discussed more fully later in the paper. The domestic ideology of the post-1945 era is also generally absent from the school histories. The era from 1944 to 1958 was problematic for the girls’ schools because of a cult of domesticity (Wilson, 1980). The average age of first marriage dropped, and there was enthusiasm for a new role for women in an age of full employment and a celebration of consumption. In this climate, was it sensible to educate clever girls from either affluent or poorer families ‘like boys’: that is to give them a curriculum of Latin,

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Greek, physics and chemistry in an atmosphere of house colours, hockey and debating societies, when their futures were to be in early marriage, motherhood and homemaking. As Wolpe (1977) showed in her revisionist analysis of the official English reports on secondary and higher education in this period, there was a strong body of opinion that girls’ schools should abandon the male curriculum, and instead teach all girls to cook, clean, sew, care for children and look beautiful. The wives of both the marriages and the affluent workers would, it was argued, need skills in homemaking. The Norwood Report of 1943, the Crowther Report of 1959 and the Newson Report of 1963 all attacked the feminist, equality-based curricula, regime and mission of the girls’ schools. We know, from research, that the schools did not abandon their goals. The studies by Wober (1971) and Ollerenshaw (1967) make it clear that they did not. Wober explicitly attacked the girls’ boarding schools because they were not preparing girls for full time homemaking in a book that appeared just as third wave feminism was becoming known and was therefore instantly anachronistic. Given that, one could expect that the histories would chronicle the attacks, and explain why the schools resisted them. This might be found particularly in books written in the last 20 years, when third wave feminism had changed the agenda so that views like Newsom’s were totally unfashionable again. However, the histories, when describing the years from 1944 to 1958, focus on the retirements of elderly teachers, the new buildings, the updating of the uniform and the freedoms given to the sixth formers. If the four threats are absent, then what do the histories discuss? Table 5 shows four themes which are regularly covered. Additionally, the schools address their own jubilees, and, strangely to the modern eye, royalty. The jubilee and death of George V, the coronation of George VI, his death (but not the abdication crisis) and, if there were any, royal visits to the school loom large. Harrop (1988) even features a royal visit by Prince Andrew and his then wife to celebrate the school’s centenary. Nichol (1978) combines the two in the history of Northampton. The whole account, including the words of the song takes five pages. ‘Charles Laing composed the music for the Jubilee Song, written to celebrate the High School’s fiftieth anniversary in 1928. Various functions were planned to mark the occasion…most exciting of all, a Golden Jubilee Speech Day, attended by H.R.H. Princess Mary, Viscountess Lascelles (Nichol, 1978:127). The history of the King’s High School Warwick (Anon., 1979:53–4) gives more space to its Golden Jubilee in 1929 than to any of the three threats of that era. St Mary’s Calne (Stedmond, 1986:66, 88) covers its Golden and Diamond Jubilees, Roedean allocates two pages to its Golden Jubilee in 1935 (de Zouche, 1955). Henderson (1977:75) for

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TABLE 5: FOUR THEMES PRESENT

example writes about Westbourne: ‘During 1946 and 1947 we were preoccupied with projects to commemorate the 70th Anniversary of the School.’ Bradbeer (1973:288) dwells on the Golden Jubilee of Bishop Blackall School, which included a party ‘with a conjurer, games and dancing, supper and ice creams’. The school also celebrated with a new uniform. Unwin (1976:91) reports that the headmistress of the Royal Naval School was planning the centenary celebrations for 1940 when war broke out. The 1939–45 war is discussed in many of the histories, even though the rise of fascism was not. For many of the schools, evacuation is a major theme: either because the school was evacuated (e.g. Roedean away from Brighton to Keswick or St Edmund’s from Liverpool to Chester) or because it received an evacuated school as a ‘guest’. Tranter (1980) reports that Penzance received the Devenport High boys. Then too, many schools had their buildings requisitioned and when they returned found extensive damage and vandalism (see Avery, 1991 for a full account). The desecration of Charles Ryder’s murals at Brideshead (Waugh, 1945) is a fictional example of the damaged state of many buildings after the war, and similar vandalism happened to many of the girls schools. A few schools were actually bombed: Walthamstow Hall for example. Some, such as Queenswood, never returned to their old, pre-war premises and locations. These dislocations, and the girls’ war work in the potato fields, figure largely in the histories. For example at Warwick: Tart of the field was ploughed up for potatoes…it did not make games easier’ (Anon., 1979:80). Detailed analysis of the contents of 41 school histories of the period 1918–58 shows that they focus on achievements, such as building a new science block, on staff changes, on games and music, on anniversaries and on royal events. A comparison of Table 4 and Table 5 shows how common coverage of buildings is compared to any of the four threats. If any parents removed girls’ from school for fear of lesbians, because they had adopted fascist ideas about women, or because they wanted their daughters to learn more cookery and less chemistry, the school histories ignore their views completely. If the four threats actually threatened the 41 schools, there was little sign of it in their official histories. Exploring

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all the inclusions and exclusions would make an unwieldy paper. In this last section I have focused on two absences—Freudianism before 1939 and domesticity after 1945—and explored their importance in more detail, given the longstanding tension inherent in feminist educational institutions. MARRIAGE, SEX, HOUSEWORK Henderson (1977:32) includes a pupil at Westbourne from 1909 to 1921 whose mother told the owner ‘she hoped I would go on to the University when I left school, to which Mrs Levack commented “Mrs Kerr, My girls marry”’ (32). A fellow pupil (1923–34) remembers: ‘I was taught to open a bazaar and to write a reference for my cook.’ Despite this head, many girls left Westbourne for career training and higher education. The changing patterns of work, marriage and sexual behaviour for middleclass ladies first from 1850 to 1918 and then from 1918 to 1958, deserve further elucidation. The mission of the schools after 1918 was complicated by the feminists’ successes in opening up two new lifestyles in the years from 1850 to 1918. During the years from 1851 onwards the feminist educational pioneers had created two respectable middle-and uppermiddleclass life-styles as alternatives to the traditional marriage (Delamont, 1978a, 1978b, 1989). One, available only to a minority, was a new type of marriage to a man who cherished a scholarly wife. Such couples courted over Hesiod or Horace, and celebrated a shared high culture. Agnata Frances Ramsay Butler, who took a first in classics and then married the Master of Trinity College, Cambridge (Delamont, 2004) is a well-known example of this new type of marriage. The second, much commoner, alternative was the woman-centred lifestyle. Here ladies chose to set up homes or communities with other ladies, and focused their lives around women (Vicinus, 1985). We cannot know how far these women were totally celibate, heterosexually celibate, actively lesbian, or indeed anything about their sexualities and sexual behaviours. We do know that they made choices to live with dignity among other women and to improve women’s lives and life chances. The alternatives, such as working as a governess dependent in a family with a poverty-stricken old age ahead, or living as a spinster dependent or a marriage for economic reasons, were all seen as demeaning and highly insecure. George Gissing’s (1893) novel, The Odd Women, is a sympathetic portrait of two such ladies, Rhoda Nunn and Mary Barfoot, whose happy and productive lives are contrasted with the loveless marriage of Monica Madden, the degrading toil of shop work, the alcoholic poverty of Alice and Virginia Madden, and the descent into prostitution of Bella Royston and Miss Eade. Rhoda Nunn turns

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down a marriage offered by a man with ‘advanced’ ideas, preferring to stay with Mary Barfoot training ladies for useful occupations. Many of the educational and professional pioneers lived this way. Emily Davies (founder of Girton College), the headmistresses Dorothea Beale, Frances Mary Buss, Sara Burstall and Louisa Lumsden; the surgeon Louisa Martindale, and many like them chose such heterosexual celibacy. In the United States the women who founded Hull House and pioneered social science teaching and research at Chicago, led by Jane Addams and Marion Talbot (Deegan, 1988; Delamont, 1992), were woman-centred women. So too was Carey Thomas of Bryn Mawr. The phrase, Boston Marriage, is a useful shorthand for the relationships these women cultivated as their choice. During first wave feminism, the feminism of the long nineteenth century, career and marriage were generally oppositional. Widows might work, such as Sophie Bryant, the second headmistress of North London Collegiate, but married women with careers were rare. (Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and Milicent Fawcett are the best-known exceptions.) The first wave feminists paid public respect to, and seem to have believed in, the sexual double standard. Men were morally inferior to women, who needed to strive to raise men to their levels of sexual and other abstinences (Jackson, 1994; Jeffreys, 1987). The next generation of feminists, those who were young during the 1914–18 War, who had the vote by 1929, and who created second wave feminism, had totally different attitudes to marriage, to sexual behaviour, and to the double standard. Dora Russell, Naomi Mitchison, Vera Brittain, Winifred Holtby, Edith Summerskill and Dorothy L.Sayers rejected celibacy, and the theory that women were asexual, pure, morally superior creatures. Naomi Mitchison’s (1979) autobiography deals explicitly with this paradigm shift. Vera Brittain (1933), too, explains how her mother’s view that an engaged lady should only agree to marry a man who was himself ‘pure’, seemed to her and her contemporaries destined to lead only to sexual disaster in marriage. This generation of feminists included many women who wanted to be heterosexually active, perhaps to marry, to have children and to campaign for a set of causes that can be glossed as ‘social’ feminism. These included school meals, maternal welfare measures, contraception, child health and so on. One of this generation’s campaigns was pacifism: revolted by the 1914–18 war they were energetic activists for a variety of peace campaigns, especially for the League of Nations. Dale Spender (1983) deals with this generation, whose writings are anthologised in Spender (1984). The issues of celibacy, of the end of the woman-centred life, of how marriage is to be conducted after emancipation all figure in the detective stories of the Golden Age written by women, especially in those by Dorothy L.Sayers,

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Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham and Josephine Tey. This argument is developed in detail elsewhere (Delamont, 1996, Chapter 11) and is only summarised here. In the detective stories by Sayers about Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane, by Marsh about Rory Alleyn and Agatha Troy, and by Allingham about Albert Campion and Amanda Fitton, a new kind of marriage is being negotiated. The women have careers and continue them both after marriage and after motherhood. Vane writes, Troy paints, Fitton is an aeronautical engineer. The men refuse pleasures and preferments which would impede the careers of their wives. The women are not expected to be virgins at marriage, and the men explicitly reject the sexual double standard. Sexual pleasure is explicit, and men have emotional weaknesses. In these bestselling novels, new types of marriage are being explored. The issues are also present in serious novels by feminists of the period, in entirely frivolous fiction and in books by some thoughtful men. Alongside these fictional explorations of new styles of marriage, the future of the girls’ schools and of women’s high education is another theme in the fiction of 1918–58. It is not as noticeable as the future of marriage, but still apparent. Josephine Tey’s Miss Pym Disposes (1946) is set in the 1930s in Anstey PE College, a pioneering feminist institution. Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night (1936) is centred on whether celibacy, traditional marriage or modern marriage is ‘best’ for educated ladies. Winifred Holtby’s South Riding (1936) focuses on whether a headmistress should be celibate and whether a clever workingclass girl should have an academic education. The existence of lady PE teachers, Oxbridge graduates, and of high schools is not challenged in these books, although they do address tensions around class, heterosexual celibacy and female sexuality. Beyond the feminist novels, the girls’ school with a powerful headmistress had become a stock feature of the entirely frivolous novels of Angela Thirkell. Bestsellers in the period 1930–50, set in Trollope’s Barsetshire, there are regular appearances for a boys’ public school, Southbridge, and for the Barchester High School for Girls, with its formidable head, Miss Pettinger. There are two headmistresses in Thirkell’s work: Miss Pettinger appears in many of the books, Miss Sparling in only a couple. Miss Sparling, the head of the Hosiers Foundation Girls School which is evacuated to Barsetshire, (Thirkell, 1944) is contrasted with Miss Pettinger to that latter’s discredit. Miss Sparling is a true classical scholar with publications, she is tactful with governors and parents, does not have favourites, has excellent dress sense, and supports the Dean of Barchester. Miss Pettinger is a poor scholar, is tactless, has favourites, dresses poorly, and is a friend of the Bishop. (Readers of Trollope would, of course, get the joke that a

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century after the original novels, the county would still be divided into Bishop’s supporters and Dean’s supporters.) While readers are invited to mock Miss Pettinger, she is not a lesbian, she is not a danger to the girls, and all the middle-and upper-middle-class families continue to send their daughters to the High School to learn classics and play hockey. There is no reflection of the hostility to the girls’ schools found among Freudians like Meyrick Booth in Thirkell’s novels. Indeed, throughout all the novels the positively portrayed characters are anti-Freudian: the purveyors of and believers in psychology and psychoanalysis are all portrayed as cranks, communists and misfits. The academic education of women is seen as traditional, like the Church, Oxford and land ownership. Miss Pettinger and Miss Sparling are part of tradition: as is Miss PitcherJukes of St Mildred’s College, Oxford. The official histories of the 41 girls’ schools suggest a world between 1918 and 1939 more like Thirkell’s than that conjured up by any lesbianobsessed Freudian. Governors raise funds and build, royalty visit, hockey is played, choirs sing, uniforms change, old girls marry and reminisce, and there is still honey for tea. The fee-paying parents are undisturbed by the big ideological issues, and go on paying for a product. Why are the histories silent about the ideological pressures of the cult of domesticity? Perhaps because those calling for a domestic curriculum were seen as making the same points as the social Darwinists of the 1890–1920 era (Dyhouse, 1977). Perhaps because the discourse was seen as aimed at working-class and dim girls: and not really ‘about’ academic schools for which parents paid. APPENDIX A Benenden (Kent), Titley, E.D. (1974) Portrait of Benenden 1924–1974, Canterbury: Elvy & Gibbs. Berkhamsted (Herts), Williams, B.H.Garnons (1988) Berkhamsted School for Girls: A Centenary History 1888–1988, Aylesbury: Hazel, Watson and Viney. Camden (London), Burchell, D. (1971) Miss Buss’ Second School (1871–1971), Ipswich: Cowell Ltd. Clapham (London), Freeth, E. (1959) Clapham County School, London: O’Callaghan and Co. Dame Alice Harpur (Bedford), Broadway, C.I. and Buss, E.I. (1982) The History of the School: BGMS-DAHS, 1882–1982, Luton: White Crescent. Enniskillen, Malone, A. (1981) Enniskillen Collegiate School: Golden Jubilee 1931– 1981, Enniskillen: William Trimble. Exeter, Maynard School (The Exeter High School for Girls) and Bishop Blackall School . Bradbeer, D.M. (1973) Joyful Schooldays: A Digest of the History of the Exeter Grammar Schools, Exeter: Sydney Lee.

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Goudhurst (Kent), Kendon, M. (1963) Ladies College, Goudhurst, Ashford: Privately Printed for the School. Hitchin (Herts), Douglas, P.M. (1988) The School on the Hill: A History of the Hitchin Girls’ (Grammar) School 1889–1989, Lavenham: Lavenham Press. James Allen’s (London), Green, B. (1991) To Read and Sew: James Allen’s Girls’ School 1741–1991, Lavenham: Lavenham Press. Lansdowne House (Edinburgh), Hale, E.M. (1959) Lansdowne House School 1878– 1950, Edinburgh: Mitchell & Sons. Laurel Bank (Glasgow), Cuthbert, E.M. (1953) Laurel Bank School 1903–1953, Glasgow: John Smith. Merchant Taylors’ Crosby (Liverpool), Harrop, S. (1988) The Merchant Taylors’ School for Girls, Crosby, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Newcastle upon Tyne, The Newcastle Upon Tyne Church High School (1935) The Newcastle Upon Tyne Church High School 1885–1935, Newcastle: Reid. Northampton, Nichol, P.D. (1978) The First 100 Years: A History of Northampton High School, Wellingborough: Skelton’s Press. Nottingham, Boyden, B. (1975) Call Back Yesterday: Nottingham High School for Girls 1875–1975, Nottingham: Derry & Sons. Nuneaton, Talbot, M. (1960) Nuneaton High School for Girls 1910–1960, Nuneaton: The School. Penzance, Tranter, G.M. (1980) The Human Spring: The Story of Penzance Girls’ Grammar School 1913–1980, Penzance: Headland Printers. Perse (Cambridge), Scott, M.A. (1981) The Perse School for Girls: The First Hundred Years, 1881–1981, Cambridge: Privately printed for the School. Polam Hall (Darlington), Davies, K. (1981) Polam Hall, Darlington: Prudhoe and Co. Princess Gardens (Belfast), Beaumont, P. and Maginnis, H. (1993) Princess Gardens School: A Goodly Heritage 1862–1987, Belfast: MW Publications. Queenswood (Herts), Stafford, H.M. (1954) Queenswood: The First Sixty Years 1894–1954, St Albans: Staples. Redland (Bristol), Bungay, J. (1982) Redland High School 1882–1982. Bristol: The School and Shaw, M.G. (1932) Redland High School, Bristol: Arrowsmith. Roedean (Brighton), Zouche, E.E. de (1955) Roedean School 1885–1955, Brighton: Privately Printed. Royal Naval School (Bath), Unwin, P. (1976) The Royal Naval School 1840–1975, Haslemere: The School. Rutherford (Newcastle), Horsley, P.M. (1967) The Years Between: The History of Rutherford College Girls’ School and Rutherford High School, Newcastle: The School. Sherborne (Dorset), Sherborne School (1949) Sherborne School for Girls 1899– 1949, Sherborne: The School. St Edmund’s (Liverpool), Goodacre, K.A. (1991) A History of St Edmund’s College, Liverpool, Oxford: Alden Press. St. George’s (Edinburgh), Shepley, Nigel (1988) Women of Independent Mind, Edinburgh: The School also Welsh, B.W. (1939) After the Dawn, Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd. St Mary’s, Ascot (Berkshire), Wake, Roy (1994) St Mary’s School, Ascot, London: Haggeston.

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St Mary’s, Calne (Wiltshire), Stedmond, K. (1986) St Mary’s School, Calne: 1873– 1986, Nailsworth: Hathaway. St. Swithun’s (Winchester), Bain, P. (1984) St Swithun’s: A Centenary History, Southampton: Phillimore. St Winifred’s, (Llanfairfechan, N.Wales), Roberts, N. (1937) S. Winifred’s, Llanfairfechan: The Story of Fifty Years 1887–1937, Shrewsbury: Wilding and Sons. Sunderland, Bowling, H.G. (1964) The First Eighty Years: A History of Sunderland Church High School, Sunderland: The School. Swansea, Cameron, H.H. (1948) High School for Girls, Swansea: Diamond Jubilee 1888–1948, Swansea: The School. Talbot Heath (Bournemouth), Bournemouth High School (1946) Talbot Heath 1886–1946 The Jubilee Book, Cheltenham: Burrow’s Press. Walthamstow Hall (Kent), Pike, E., Curryer, C.E. and Moore, U.K. (eds) (1973) The Story of Walthamstow Hall 1838–1970, Oxford: Longmore Press. Warwick, The King’s High School Anon. (1979) The King’s High School, Warwick 1879–1979, Kineton: Published by the Governors. Westbourne (Glasgow), Henderson, E.K. (1977) Westbourne School for Girls 1877– 1977, Glasgow: The School. Worcester, City of Worcester Grammar School for Girls (1958) City of Worcester Grammar School for Girls 1908–1858, Worcester: Trinity Press. Wycombe Abbey (Bucks), Bowerman, E. (1966) Stands There a School. Brighton: Privately Printed, also Flint, Lorna (1989) Wycombe Abbey School 1896–1986. Oxford: Privately Printed for the School.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Anon. (1948) High School for Girls, Swansea: Diamond Jubilee 1888–1948, Swansea: The School. Anon. (1979) The King’s High School Warwick 1879–1979: A Portrait, Kineton: Private Printed by the Governors. Avery, Gillian (1991) The Best Type of Girl, London: Andre Deutsch. Bain, P. (1984) St Swithun’s: A Centenary History, Southampton: Phillimore. Barker, Pat (1991) Regeneration, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Barker, Pat (1993) The Eye in the Door, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Barker, Pat (1995) The Ghost Road, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Bashaw, C.T. (1999) Stalwart Women, New York: Teachers College Press. Bain, P. (1984) St Swithun’s: A Centenary History, Southampton: Phillimore. Barr, Barbara (1984) Histories of Girls’ Schools and Related Biographical Material, Leicester: School of Education. Beaumont, P. and Maginnis, H. (1993) Princess Gardens School: A Goodly Heritage 1862–1987, Belfast: MW Publications. Blake, Nicholas (1939) The Smiler with the Knife, Glasgow: Collins. Booth, Meyrick (1927) Youth and Sex, London: Allen and Unwin. Booth, Meyrick (1932) ‘The Present Day Education of Girls’, The Nineteenth Century and After, 102, pp.259–69. Bowerman, E. (1966) Stands There a School, Brighton: Privately Printed.

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Bowlby, John (1946) Forty-Four Juvenile Thieves, London: Balliere, Tindall and Cox. Bowlby, John (1951) Maternal Care and Mental Health, Geneva: World Health Organization. Bowling, H.G. (1964) The First Eighty Years: A History of Sunderland Church High School, Sunderland: The School. Boyden, B. (1975) Call Back Yesterday: Nottingham High School for Girls 1875– 1975, Nottingham: Derry & Sons. Bradbeer, D.M. (1973) Joyful Schooldays: A Digest of the History of the Exeter Grammar Schools, Exeter: Sydney Lee. Brittain, V. (1933) Testament of Youth, London: Victor Gollancz. Broadway, C.I. and Buss, E.I. (1982) The History of the School: BGMS-DAHS, 1882–1982, Luton: White Crescent. Bungay, J. (1982) Redland High School 1882–1982, Bristol: The School. City of Worcester Grammar School for Girls (1958) City of Worcester Grammar School for Girls 1908–1858, Worcester: The Trinity Press. Cockburn, Claud (1975) Bestseller, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Cunningham, Peter (1976) Local History of Education in England and Wales: A Bibliography, Leeds: Museum of the History of Education, University of Leeds. Dane, Clemence (1917) Regiment of Women, London: Heinemann. Deegan, M.J. (1988) Jane Addams and the Men of the Chicago School, New Brunswick:Transaction. Delamont, S. (1978a) ‘The Contradictions in Ladies’ Education’, in S. Delamont and L.Duffin (eds) The Nineteenth Century Woman, London: Croom Helm. Delamont, S. (1978b) The Domestic Ideology and Women’s Education’, in S.Delamont and L. Duffin (eds) The Nineteenth Century Woman, London: Croom Helm. Delamont, S. (1989) Knowledgeable Women, London: Routledge. Delamont, S. (1992) ‘Old Fogies and Intellectual Women’, Women’s History Review, 1, 1, pp.39–61. Delamont, S. (1993a) ‘The Beech-Covered Hill Side’, in G. Walford (ed.) The Private Schooling of Girls, London: The Woburn Press, pp.79–100. Delamont, S. (1993b) ‘Distant Dangers and Forgotten Standards’, Women’s History Review, 2,2, pp.233–51. Delamont, S. (1996) A Woman’s Place in Education, Aldershot: Avebury. Delamont, S. (2004) ‘Agnata Frances Ramsay Butler’, New Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dyhouse, Carol (1977) ‘Good Wives and Little Mothers’, Oxford Review of Education, 3, 1, pp.21–35. Flint, Lorna (1989) Wycombe Abbey School 1896–1986, Oxford: Privately Printed for the School. Gissing, G. (1893) The Odd Women (reprinted by Virago, London, 1980). Godber, J. and Hutchins, I. (1982) A Century of Challenge: Bedford High School 1882–1982, Bedford: The School. Goodacre, K.A. (1991) A History of St Edmund’s College, Liverpool, Oxford: Alden Press.

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Green, B. (1991) To Read and Sew: James Allen’s Girls’ School 1741–1991, Lavenham: Lavenham Press. Hale, E.M. (1959) Lansdowne House School 1878–1950, Edinburgh: Mitchell & Sons. Harrop, S. (1988) The Merchant Taylors’ School for Girls, Crosby, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Henderson, E.K. (1977) Westbourne School for Girls 1877–1977, Glasgow: The School. Holtby, Winifred (1934) Women and a Changing Civilisation, London: Bodley Head. Holtby, Winifred (1936) South Riding (reprinted by Fontana, Glasgow, 1974). Jackson, M. (1994) The Real Facts of Life, London: Taylor and Frances. Jeffreys, S. (ed.) (1987) The Sexuality Debates, London: Routledge. Kendall, E. (1975) Peculiar Institutions, New York: Putnam’s. Lee, C. Fraser (1962) The Real St Trinnean’s, Edinburgh: W. Brown. McCann, J.E. (1972) Thomas Howell and the School at Llandaff, Cowbridge: Brown & Sons. Mitchison, N. (1979) You May Well Ask, London: Gollancz. Nichol, P.D. (1978) The First 100 Years: A History of Northampton High School, Wellingborough: Skelton’s Press. Ollerenshaw, K. (1967) The Girls’ Schools, London: Faber and Faber. Pike, E., Curryer, C.E. and Moore, U.K. (eds) (1973) The Story of Walthamstow Hall 1838–1970, Oxford: Longmore Press. Rutter, M. (1972) Maternal Deprivation Reassessed, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Sayers, D.L. (1921) The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, London: Gollancz. Sayers, D.L. (1936) Gaudy Night, London: Gollancz. Sayers, D.L. (1946) Unpopular Opinions, London: Gollancz. Scott, M.A. (1981) The Perse School for Girls: The First Hundred Years, 1881– 1981, Cambridge: Perse School. Shepley, Nigel (1988) Women of Independent Mind, Edinburgh: The School. Solomon, B.M. (1985) In the Company of Educated Women, New Haven: Yale University Press. Spender, D. (1983) There’s Always Been a Woman’s Movement This Century, London: Pandora. Spender, D. (ed.) (1984) Time and Tide Wait for No Man, London: Pandora. Stedmond, K. (1986) St Mary’s School, Calne: 1873–1986, Nailsworth: Hathaway. Talbot Heath (1986) The Centenary Book, Ringwood: Brown and Son. Talbot, M. (1960) Nuneaton High School for Girls 1910–1960, Nuneaton: The School. Tey, J. (1946) Miss Pym Disposes, London: Peter Davies. Thirkell, A. (1937) Summer Half, London: Hamish Hamilton. Thirkell, A. (1944) The Headmistress, London: Hamish Hamilton. Titley, E.D. (1974) Portrait of Benenden 1924–1974, Canterbury: Elvy & Gibbs. Tranter, G.M. (1980) The Human Spring: The Story of Penzance Girls’ Grammar School 1913–1980, Penzance: Headland Printers. Unwin, P. (1976) The Royal Naval School 1840–1975, Haslemere: The School. Vicinus, M. (1985) Independent Women, London: Virago. Volpe, A.M. (1977) Some Processes in Sexist Education, London: WRRC.

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Wake, Roy (1994) St Mary’s School, Ascot, London: Haggeston. Waugh, E.A. (1945) Brideshead Revisited, London: Chapman & Hall. Welsh, B.W. (1939) After the Dawn, Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd. Westaway, K.M. (1932) History of Bedford High School, Bedford: Hockliffe. Westaway, K.M. (1945) Old Girls in New Times, Bedford: Hockliffe. Westaway, K.M. (1957) Seventy Five Years: The Story of Bedford High School 1882–1957, Bedford: Diemer and Reynolds. Wilson, Elizabeth (1980) Halfway to Paradise, London: Tavistock. Wober, M. (1971) English Girls’ Boarding Schools, London: Allen Lane. Wolpe, M.A. (1977) Some Processes in Sexist Education, London: Women’s Research and Resource Centre.

4 Intakes and Examination Results at State and Private Schools Alice Sullivan and Anthony F.Heath

INTRODUCTION The question of whether private education is superior to state education has been fiercely debated in Britain and elsewhere. School examination results and figures on entry to elite universities suggest that pupils at private schools in Britain perform considerably better educationally than do those in the state sector. For example, whereas less than 10 per cent of the age group attend private schools, nearly half the student entry into Oxford and Cambridge universities comes from the private sector. Advocates of private schooling have claimed that, since the British private sector is a highly competitive market-based system, and since private schools must respond to parental demands in order to survive, private schools will be better run and more effective than state schools. Opponents of private schooling sometimes seem torn between the view that private schools give an unfair advantage to the children of the rich, and the claim that the academic success of these schools is entirely due to their intake of able students from affluent backgrounds (Griggs, 1985). Yet there is surprisingly little research in Britain to answer the question whether the private schools actually achieve better results than the state sector once students’ individual and family characteristics have been taken into account. There has been much more work on this topic in the United States. The major US study carried out by Coleman, Hoffer and Kilgore (1982a) found that students in private schools, particularly in Catholic private schools, achieved higher test scores than those in public schools. They put forward a ‘social capital’ explanation in terms of inter-generational social closure. This generated much debate at the time (see for example Goldberger and Cain, 1982; Noell, 1982; Coleman, Hoffer and Kilgore, 1982b and c; Cain and Goldberger, 1983; Alexander and Pallas, 1983; Alexander and Pallas, 1985). The case for the educational benefit of Catholic schooling has been given recent support (Gamoran, 1996; Lee et al, 1998) although debate on Coleman’s findings and their

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interpretation has continued (Witte, 1992; Morgan and Sorensen, 1999a and b; Sampson, Morenhoff and Earls, 1999; Carbanaro, 1999; Hallinan and Kubitschek, 1999). The issue remains largely unresolved. American evidence on private schooling cannot be applied directly to other countries, and the status of private schools in Britain is quite different from that of private schools in either the United States or continental Europe. Whereas in the United States, and in most other developed countries, private schools are primarily religious and often highly subsidised (by church or state), British private schools are in the main socially and (often) academically exclusive institutions, which, being unsubsidised, are far too expensive for the bulk of the population.1 Because Britain managed to incorporate most denominational schools within the state sector, its private sector is relatively small. As Hillman (1994:403) puts it: ‘In most countries private schools provide for religious, ethnic and cultural diversity. In Britain they provide an often highpowered preparation for a significant proportion of the future members of high-status occupations.’ The domination of elite occupations by alumni of the top private schools (often, for historical reasons, termed ‘public schools’) has long been apparent (Boyd, 1973). This makes the British case particularly interesting. It provides a test case of the operation of market forces on educational outcomes. British private schools operate within a competitive market place where parents pay considerable fees, presumably in the expectation that they will be achieving some benefits that would not be available to them in the rival free state schools. Despite the level of public interest in this question, the last systematic study of the effectiveness of different types of school in Britain was carried out by Halsey, Heath and Ridge (1980, 1984) using the 1972 Oxford Mobility Study. This study related to a period when British state education was still organised along selective lines: that is to say, within the state sector pupils were allocated, on the basis of a competitive examination at age 11, either to a grammar school (with a strong academic curriculum preparing students for entry to university), to a technical school (with a more vocational curriculum) or to a secondary modern school (with a much less academic curriculum and preparing students for early entry into the labour market). This was often referred to as the ‘tripartite’ system. Many private schools at this time catered for pupils who had failed the ‘11-plus’ examination and were destined for secondary modern schools if they remained within the state sector. Halsey, Heath and Ridge suggested that boys at the major private schools fared little better than those from similar backgrounds at the grammar schools, but that the minor private schools provided much better chances to less able boys than did the secondary moderns. However, Halsey and his colleagues were unable to control for pupils’

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ability on entry to the schools and their results must therefore be regarded as, at best, provisional. Moreover, there have been important changes in the nature of the British educational system since the time of Halsey and his colleagues’ work. In particular in 1965 the Labour government began a process of abolishing selection at age 11 and of replacing the tripartite system of grammar, technical and secondary modern schools with comprehensive schools. By the late 1970s the majority of British state secondary education was organised along comprehensive lines. There has been a great deal of analysis of this reform (Steedman, 1980, 1983a and b; Cox and Marks, 1980; Marks, Cox and PomianSrednicki, 1983; Fogelman, 1983; Kerckhoff and Trott, 1993; Kerckhoff, Fogelman, Crook and Reeder, 1996; Heath and Jacobs, 1999). Analyses have focused on whether the selective ‘tripartite’ system was superior or inferior to the comprehensive system that was replacing it. However, these studies have not examined the effects of the reforms on the private sector. The competitive environment that private schools face is now very different from that which they faced during the era of selective state education. The demand for private education from parents whose less able children had failed the ‘11-plus’ examination has now largely vanished. Instead, private schools have to compete with Comprehensive schools. The affluent parents who can afford private school fees will often have the choice of a free suburban comprehensive school with a socially advantaged intake which their children could attend. Despite these changes, British private schools regularly top the ‘league tables’ of educational success at the public examinations for the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE), which most pupils take at the end of the period of compulsory schooling at age 16. EXPLANATIONS OF SCHOOL SECTOR DIFFERENCES IN ACHIEVEMENT A number of explanations have been offered for the overall differences in educational outcomes between pupils in state and private schools. These explanations have focused on differences between state and private schools in their student and parental characteristics, differences in school financial resources, differences in the nature of home/school social relationships, and differences in the social composition of peer groups. First, apparent sectoral differences may simply be due to the characteristics of the students. Schools with superior educational outcomes often have socially or academically privileged intakes, and so it is clear that controls for background variables such as social class, parental education and students’ cognitive skills on entry to the school are

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necessary. Moreover, additional controls are likely to be needed in order to deal with the selection bias inherent in the parental choice of school. Parents can marshal a host of resources to get their children into the schools that are perceived to be best. Money, cultural capital, social capital and sheer pushiness all seem to be relevant (Carroll and Walford, 1997; Fox, 1986; Gewirtz, Ball and Bowe, 1995; Glatter, Woods and Bagley, 1997; West, Varlaam and Scott, 1991; Woods, Bagley and Glatter, 1998). For example, parents who have high aspirations for their children are likely to make more effort to get them into an academically successful school than are parents with low aspirations. Parents who are well-educated and possess high levels of cultural capital are likely to have an advantage in gathering and interpreting information about schools, and in finding out about opportunities such as bursaries and scholarships at private schools, which may not be widely publicised. As well as being associated with parental choice of school, factors such as these are likely to be directly associated with educational outcomes for students. Secondly, many private schools have greater resources than do state schools (although, there is great variation within the private sector and some of the lesser private schools may even have poorer resources than some state schools). In general, the high fees charged by private schools allow them to provide relatively well-maintained buildings, smaller classes, better equipment and facilities. Walford (1984) argues that the private schools are also advantaged in the teachers they attract, as they are better paid and more highly qualified than teachers at state schools, and are encouraged by their schools to pursue their academic subject. However, it is not clear that financial resources do actually make a difference to schools’ performance. Coleman et al. (1966) found no impact of school resources on academic performance. Debate on this question has continued in the United States (for a good summary see Burtless, 1996). Studies using school-level data have tended to find only small effects, if any (Betts, 1995; Grogger, 1996) and, in general, studies examining overall school resources have not found large, significant effects on outcomes for students (Hanushek, 1986,1989).2 Whether specific types of expenditure, such as expenditure directed at classroom teaching and class sizes, can make a difference is also debatable (Hoxby, 2000; Wenglinsky, 1997). Experimental evidence on class sizes suggests that only large cuts in class size in the earliest years of school make a difference (Hanushek, 1999; Prais, 1996). One positive finding from this literature is that teachers’ characteristics seem to matter. There is evidence that teachers’ assessed verbal abilities (Ehrenberg and Brewer, 1995), their knowledge of the subject (Rowan, Chiang and Miller, 1997) and the selectiveness of the institution where teachers obtained

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their degree (Ehrenberg and Brewer, 1994) have an effect on students’ performance. Thirdly, Coleman and his colleagues (1982a) accounted for the success of Catholic schools in terms of social capital, which they understood as inter-generational social closure. For Coleman, social capital consists of social norms and networks. It exists in the community surrounding a school where parents know each other (and possibly also know the teachers). ‘A child’s friends and associates in school are sons and daughters of friends and associates of the child’s parents’ (Coleman, 1990:318). This, it is claimed, affects the relationship of parents to the school. Parents are able to get more information about what is going on in the school, and about the behaviour of their own child. Parents who talk to each other can establish strong norms of behaviour for their children. According to Coleman, this enables private schools to place high demands on students, both in terms of discipline and academic attainment. Coleman argues that the community around Catholic schools, which is created by the church, fosters and enforces strong norms against dropping out of high school, and that this explains the lower drop-out rate in Catholic schools than in other private schools. Interaction and communication between parents and teachers can be seen as a further aspect of social capital. Schools that maintain close personal links with parents may be able to exert more effective control over students. However, children often travel long distances to attend private schools in Britain (and some private schools are residential establishments), so it may be that there is less inter-generational social closure among parents and pupils at these schools than at state schools, which are more likely to take the majority of their pupils from the local area. Fourthly, there is a consensus that peer group processes are important and that schools with a high proportion of students of low social status or low academic ability are at a disadvantage (Coleman et al, 1966; Summers and Wolfe, 1977; Henderson et al., 1978; Rutter et al, 1979; Willms, 1986; Mortimore et al, 1988; Smith and Tomlinson, 1989). The desire for a peer group that will have a positive effect on the child seems to be an important factor in school choice (Carroll and Walford, 1997), and may be a partial explanation for any ‘private school effect’. However, Evans, Oates and Schwab (1992) strike a note of caution, pointing out that since peer groups are chosen to some degree, apparent peer-group effects may be due to unmeasured family characteristics and should not therefore be regarded simply as exogenous explanations of school success. Peer-group processes may account for the belief that private schools provide a better ‘ethos’ or ‘atmosphere’ than state schools. This is often given as a reason for why parents choose private education for their

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children (Gewirtz et al, 1995; Walford, 1994). For instance, Elgin (1984: 94) quotes a headteacher who explains the appeal of the private sector as follows: This is a place where a sensitive boy can flourish. A boy can walk here carrying a violin without ridicule.’ The fear that comprehensive schools sometimes provide socially problematic environments for able children may be justified. For example, Power, Whitty, Edwards and Wigfall (1998) find that, whereas academically able pupils at a grammar school were likely to worry about not being able to keep up with the work, academically able pupils at a comprehensive school were much more likely to worry about other pupils thinking they were too clever. One could argue that, in this sense, the social norms among school students may vary according to the social and academic composition of the school. The aim of this paper is to investigate these explanations for the overall differences in educational outcomes between state and private schools in Britain at the time of the National Child Development Study (NCDS), which we study because of the importance of using longitudinal data with prior measures of students’ ability and other characteristics. This study has data on students and their families at ages 7, 11, 16, 23 and 33. It contains measures that enable us to control for prior pupil characteristics and various selective processes; it also contains measures of various school characteristics, of some variables that proxy for social capital, and for measures of school composition that proxy for peer-group processes. Performance in public examinations has real-world consequences for pupils in gaining access to higher education and for success in the labour market (see for example Heath and Cheung, 1998). We aim therefore to answer the following questions: • How did the various types of school attended by the NCDS children vary in terms of student intake, in school resources and other school characteristics, and in students’ examination performance? • To what extent are differences in academic outcomes for students at the different types of school explained by differences in the characteristics of the children who attended the schools? Were parents right to believe that, by paying fees for private education, they achieved better results for their children than they would have obtained in a state school? • Are the better results, if any, obtained at private schools to be explained by the schools’ financial resources, social capital or peer group processes? We recognise that, even with longitudinal data, it is never possible to control fully for selection biases. Furthermore, more direct measures of

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social capital and peer-group processes would be preferable to the proxies that we have available. The interpretation of any remaining ‘school effects’, after controls for intake and school characteristics, will always be problematic: we can never be sure that such ‘school effects’ are not simply a product of unmeasured selection processes. Our focus instead is on whether there are any measurable school characteristics that account for the sectoral differences in students’ educational outcomes after the most rigorous possible controls for student characteristics. Moreover, the NCDS is by far the richest British dataset currently available for exploring these questions, and it enables us to study in some depth an important example of private schooling. DATA AND MEASURES The National Child Development Survey (NCDS) is a longitudinal study of a single cohort born in England and Wales in the week of 3–9 March 1958. Data were collected at six time points: • 1958 (shortly after birth), • sweep 1—the first follow-up in 1965 when the studied children were aged 7, • sweep 2 in 1969 at age 11, • sweep 3 in 1974 at age 16, • sweep 4 in 1981 at age 23 and • sweep 5 in 1991 at aged 33. The initial sample was designed to be nationally representative of all children in England and Wales and achieved a sample size of 17,414 (Shepherd, 1995). By the third follow up (sweep 3), when the children were aged 16, 14,761 respondents remained in the study. In the present paper we draw on sweeps 1, 2 and 3. We exclude Scottish students (n=2, 703) from the sample, as the Scottish education system is different from that in England and Wales. Our effective sample size is reduced since data on type of secondary school attended was missing for 1,472 respondents. We also exclude the small number of students who attended technical schools (n=65) from our analyses, along with those students who attended schools classified as ‘other’ (n=284). This leaves us with a sample of n=10,237. The sample size for the analyses is further limited by missing data for the outcome variable, examination results (valid n=9,549). The NCDS cohort experienced a state secondary education system that was in transition from the tripartite system to the comprehensive system. After 1965, local authorities started to transfer to the comprehensive system. However, as the reorganisation had not been

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TABLE 1: FREQUENCIES

completed, some of the NCDS respondents attended comprehensive schools, while others attended grammar, technical or secondary modern schools. In addition, many of the new comprehensives were simply renamed secondary moderns, which still shared catchment areas with selective grammar schools. Private schools at the time were quite diverse, varying in their social and academic prestige; some had demanding entrance examinations taken at age 13 (the ‘common entrance’ exam) while others were essentially non-selective. We shall refer to fee-paying schools not in receipt of state support as ‘independent’ schools in order to distinguish them from a second, hybrid type of school, termed ‘direct grant’ schools. The direct grant schools charged fees to some students, who may have failed the 11plus, but also received state funding in return for accepting non-fee paying pupils selected on the basis of the same ‘11-plus’ examination as was used for grammar school recruitment. The direct grant schools were generally highly selective academically and had a lot in common with the grammar schools. In 1975, the Labour government required the direct grant schools either to join the state sector or to become fully independent. However, at the time when the NCDS cohort were completing their secondary education, they remained a significant force. We therefore retain this category in our analysis. Table 1 shows the distribution of students according to type of school attended. We distinguish between the three main types of state school (grammar, secondary modern and comprehensive) and the two main types of private school (independent and direct grant). We exclude technical and specialist schools. As we can see from Table 1, the private sector accounted for only 7 per cent of the sample respondents at age 16. The majority of the cohort attended comprehensive schools. About twice as many students attended secondary modern schools as grammar schools. The major public examinations open to the NCDS cohort were the General Certificate of Education at Ordinary level (GCE O-level) and the Certificate of Secondary Education (CSE). These examinations took

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place at the end of compulsory schooling, at age 16. O-levels were more academically demanding than CSEs. Originally, the O-level curriculum was designed with Grammar school students in mind, while CSEs were designed for the students at Secondary Modern schools. A top CSE pass (grade 1) was deemed to be equivalent to an O-level pass. The NCDS gives exceptionally rich information on various aspects of the respondents and their parents. The parents were interviewed at the first three data collection exercises of the study, providing information on social background, age when parents left full-time education, sparetime activities of the parents, parents’ interest in the child’s education and so on. Data were also collected directly from the children through tests and questionnaires administered at school at the ages of 7, 11 and 16. In addition, teachers were asked for information, for example, on whether the parents of the NCDS child had visited the school, and how interested they seemed to be in their child’s education. Extensive information on examination results was also collected directly from the schools in 1978. From the age of 16 onwards, the respondents themselves were also interviewed. For a descriptive report on the test results and examination results achieved by the NCDS students see Steedman (1980, 1983a and b). The variables (and the sweeps in which they were measured) that we have selected for analysis from this dataset are described in an appendix. SCHOOL AND STUDENT CHARACTERISTICS Table 2 shows descriptive frequencies for the characteristics of the student intake to each of our main types of school. The different types of school clearly varied in terms of the cognitive skills of their intake. Table 2 shows the percentage of students who fell into the bottom, middle and top thirds of the distribution of test scores at age 11. As we described earlier, entry to the grammar schools was by examination (the ‘11-plus’), and this is reflected in the performance of the grammar school students in the NCDS tests administered at age 11. Less than 1 per cent of the Grammar school students fell into the bottom third of the distribution, while 86 per cent were in the top third. The distribution for the direct grant schools was close to that of the grammar schools, but the independent schools had a considerably less able intake (although a majority were nonetheless in the top third of the distribution). The comprehensive schools had a fairly even distribution, but with highly able pupils slightly under-represented. As one would expect, the secondary moderns had the least able students, but a significant minority who were in the top third on the NCDS tests were consigned to these schools.

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TABLE 2: SCHOOL DIFFERENCES IN INTAKE

Table 2 also shows summary statistics of the social backgrounds of the students at the different types of school. In general, students at the independent schools, followed by the direct grant and grammar schools, had the most advantaged social origins both in material and cultural terms. Thus they had the highest proportion of fathers in managerial and professional occupations, the highest proportion with one or other parent leaving full-time education at age 19 or later, and the highest proportion of mothers reading books regularly. Private and grammar

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school students also came from smaller families on average, and their mothers had higher levels of interest in their education (as reported by the child’s primary school teacher). At the other extreme were the comprehensive and secondary modern schools. These two types of school were very similar on average, although we must remember that there would have been considerable diversity between individual comprehensive schools given their geographically diverse catchment areas. Both these types of school scored relatively poorly on the measures of parents’ material and cultural circumstances. In general, then, we can say that the grammar schools were more academically selective than the independent schools, while the independent schools were more selective in social and cultural terms than the grammar schools. The direct grant schools in a sense had the best of both worlds, matching the grammar schools with respect to the cognitive skills of their intake and coming close to the independent schools on many of the sociocultural measures. All three outstripped the comprehensive school students on every single measure. Finally, secondary modern school students were the most disadvantaged on both academic and socio-cultural criteria. We turn next to the characteristics of the schools. In general, the fees charged by private schools allowed them to provide relatively good resources. In addition, grammar schools received greater funding per student than secondary moderns. Table 3 shows that pupil-teacher ratios were highest at the secondary moderns, which had the lowest levels of funding. Comprehensive schools had rather more favourable pupilteacher ratios, reflecting their higher level of state funding.3 Grammar schools had even more favourable pupil-teacher ratios, while the direct grant schools’ ratio was very similar to that of the grammar schools (reflecting the fact that the funding formula for pupils funded by the state would have been the same as that for grammar schools). However, independent schools had substantially more favourable pupilteacher ratios than did any other type of school. The teacher turnover rate (that is, the proportion of teachers leaving the school in the last year) can be seen as a proxy for teacher quality, since schools that have trouble retaining teachers are unlikely to be able to be as selective about who they recruit. Table 3 shows that the secondary modern schools had the highest teacher turnover, followed by the comprehensives. In contrast to the findings for pupil-teacher ratios, the direct grant schools had considerably lower levels of teacher turnover than did independent schools. It is not altogether clear why this should be the case. Table 3 also shows our measures of parent/school social capital. First, we show the proportions of each type of school that had a Parent-Teacher

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TABLE 3: DIFFERENCES IN SCHOOL CHARACTERISTICS

Association (PTA). PTAs encourage parental involvement in the running of the school and may be important in fostering home/school links. However, independent schools were much less likely to have PTAs than other school types while grammar schools were the most likely to have PTAs. Table 3 also shows the proportion of schools in each category that organised meetings between parents and teachers at least once a year. The majority of schools in all categories did this, but independent schools were the least likely to do so, while grammar and direct grant schools were the most likely to. These measures of parent/school social capital will not be entirely exogenous. It is quite likely that having large numbers of interested parents makes it easier to run a PTA. However, the relative lack of PTAs and other meetings with parents in the independent schools means that these measures cannot be straightforwardly reduced to the characteristics of parents. This may be because many independent schools lacked the neighbourhood catchment areas of the other types of school, as students often travelled in order to attend them. The fact that about 30 per cent of the independent schools were residential establishments

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TABLE 4: SCHOOL DIFFERENCES IN OUTCOMES

with parents who lived considerable distances from the school may have made it difficult for them to organise an effective PTA or close home/ school links. We can also see from Table 3 that our measure of the social composition of the school (the percentage of students from non-manual class origins at the respondent’s school) follows the same pattern as the individual social class measure, as one would expect. Independent schools reported the highest proportions of students from non-manual backgrounds, with 84 per cent of schools stating that four-fifths or more of their students were from non-manual backgrounds. Over 50 per cent of the direct grant schools stated that four-fifths or more of their intake were from non-manual backgrounds. Only 23.4 per cent of grammar schools fell into this category, and the comprehensives and secondary moderns typically had a far greater proportion of students from manual backgrounds. Table 4 gives the examination and test results achieved at age 16 by students at each type of school. The maths test scores at age 16 show that students at grammar and direct grant schools performed best with the independent schools only a little way behind. The comprehensive schools’ performance was substantially lower and only slightly better than that of the secondary modern schools. Turning next to the number of passes obtained at GCE O level, we see that the grammar, independent and direct grant schools had very similar success rates. All three types of school had over 60 per cent of their students gaining five or more O-levels or CSE grade 1s. (Recall that CSE grade 1 was seen as equivalent to an O-level pass). The direct grant schools had the highest proportion of students achieving 8 or

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more Olevels or equivalent. The secondary moderns were the least successful in securing any passes at all for their pupils. Overall, Table 4 shows that the academically selective schools all achieved an average of over five passes, while the comprehensive students gained 1.8 passes and the secondary modern students gained one pass on average. ANALYSIS OF EXAM RESULTS As a first, simplified overview of the data, Table 5 shows the association between examination outcomes and type of school attended, controlling for measured ability at age 11. We show the average O-level (or equivalent) scores for children of high, medium and low ability at each type of school. Children of high-tested ability at age 11 (that is in the top third of the distribution) gained on average about one and a half more O-level passes if they attended a comprehensive school (4.6) than if they attended a secondary modern school (3.0). High-ability children at grammar schools obtained on average about one and a half more O-level passes (6.0) than similar ability students at comprehensives. Another way of looking at these data is to note that a medium-ability student at a grammar, independent or direct grant school obtained a similar number of O-level passes as a high-ability student at a comprehensive, and a greater number of passes than a high-ability student at a secondary modern school. These are real and consequential differences. However, one must treat these comparisons with caution, as the mean age 11 test scores for pupils in each third of the ability range varied according to school type. The total number of O-level and CSEl passes was taken as the outcome measure for the linear regression (OLS) analysis shown in Table 6. The GCE O-level was an examination that was designed for pupils of higher ability, such as students at grammar schools, and few pupils at secondary modern schools would have been entered for these examinations. In the sample as a whole, therefore, the distribution of Olevel and CSEl passes is very highly skewed. It is therefore appropriate to restrict our sample, when analysing success at O-level, to students of high ability (that is, in the top third of the ability distribution measured at age 11). This corresponds to educational practice at the time these NCDS data were collected. In the analyses that follow, therefore, the sample is restricted to the top third of the ability distribution (measured at age 11). Our primary concern is how far these gross differences can be explained by our various measures of the characteristics of the pupils and their families and by the characteristics of the schools. We therefore introduce successive blocks of predictors, corresponding to the

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TABLE 5: ABILITY AND O-LEVEL AND CSEl PASSES

theoretical ideas outlined above, and check to see by how much each block reduces the estimated coefficients associated with each school type. Broadly speaking, we introduce blocks of factors according to their temporal order in the life cycle. Thus we begin with a block of ascribed characteristics and characteristics of the parents. We then move on to the respondents’ measured ability at age 11 before finally turning to the characteristics of the schools that the students attended after the age of 11. Since a wide range of background controls are used, we do not show these parameters, but simply show the effect their inclusion has on the school parameters. Model 1 shows the school sector effects without controls. Therefore, these parameters correspond to the means shown for the top third of the ability distribution in Table 5. There are substantial positive effects for grammar, direct grant, and independent schools (with comprehensives as the contrast parameter), and a significant negative effect of attending a secondary modern school.

Note: Significance levels (p) are denoted by *=0.05, **=0.01, ***=0.001.

TABLE 6: O-LEVEL AND CSE1 PASSES

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Model 2 includes a fairly standard set of social background measures; sex, father’s occupational class, parents’ age on leaving education, family structure and number of siblings. The school sector effects are reduced in this model. The independent school effect also shows a particularly strong reduction. We saw earlier that schools’ intakes varied not just in terms of the standard social background measures such as social class and parental education, but also in terms of parental interest and reading. Since these factors may influence the students’ educational success, and may also be associated with parents’ choice of school, it is crucial to control for them if we are to minimise unmeasured selection biases. Model 3 demonstrates that the inclusion of these additional controls leads to a further reduction in the school sector effect. Model 4 includes students’ tested ability at age 11, and a teacher’s assessment of the child when at primary school. This reduces the selective school effects to about half their original size. The reduction in the independent school effect is smaller than the reduction in the effects for the more academically selective direct grant and grammar schools. These school type estimates in Model 4 give us an idea of the maximum effect that schools might be having on their students’ progress while they are at secondary school. While there are almost certainly additional controls for social background and parental attributes that it would be desirable to include, it is unlikely that any background measures that are constant over time could successfully explain the estimated school differences in student progress that we see in Model 4. We now turn to consider whether any of our measures of school characteristics can explain these estimates of progress. Model 5 shows that teacher turnover and pupil-teacher ratio are insignificant, as are the existence of a PTA and the frequency of meetings between parents and teachers. However, Model 6 shows that the proportion of children in the school from non-manual backgrounds is significantly associated with exam passes. The school parameters are further reduced in this model, and the independent and direct grant school parameters are reduced in significance. This shows the importance of the social composition of the school, which may act in part as a proxy for the academic composition of the school. The private school parameters are not significantly different from the grammar school parameter in this model. CONCLUSIONS This paper has provided an exploration of some of the key differences between British private schools (both the independent and the hybrid direct grant) and the state schools (comprehensive, grammar and

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secondary modern) in terms of intake, school resources and examination results. We found clear differences in the schools’ intakes, which show the importance of including adequate controls in any analysis of schools’ results. Private schools had privileged intakes in terms of students’ cognitive skills and parents’ social class, education, reading behaviour and interest in their child’s education. However, there were some differences between the independent and direct grant schools. The direct grant schools had a lower proportion of parents from the employer and managerial classes but a greater proportion of very able students than the independent schools. This may reflect a trade-off between high fees and high entrance requirements; schools which set fees very high may not have been able to afford to make the entrance examination too demanding. The grammar schools’ intake was similar to that of the direct grant schools in terms of the cognitive skills of the students, but the grammar schools had a broader social class distribution, with a lower proportion of professional parents and a higher proportion of manual workers. The comprehensives, and especially the secondary moderns, had a relatively deprived intake in terms of both students’ cognitive skills and family characteristics. As one would expect, private schools were also privileged in terms of their resources. Independent schools had the lowest average pupilteacher ratios, while direct grant schools had similar pupil-teacher ratios to grammar schools. This almost certainly reflects a higher level of financial resources at the independent schools. The independent schools were the least likely to encourage parent-teacher interaction through meetings and a PTA. In contrast the secondary modern schools had the highest teacher turnover and highest pupil-teacher ratios, unsurprisingly as they were the least well-funded schools. The secondary moderns were also less likely than other state schools to have PTAs and regular parentteacher meetings. The analyses of O-level passes showed that test score at age 11 was the most powerful predictor of educational success at age 16, and the inclusion of measures of cognitive skills at age 11 and of students’ social backgrounds accounted for a substantial proportion of the school differences. However, the private and grammar school advantage and secondary modern disadvantage remained highly significant. One important finding is that the staff-student ratio, on which independent schools were especially advantaged, appeared to have no effect on examination results. This is in line with the growing body of literature suggesting that school resources do not have major impacts on school outcomes. To be sure, our results apply only to differences between types of school, and it is possible that variations in school resources between individual schools might have a significant impact.4

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However, given the financial advantages that independent schools have on average over the other types of school, it is noteworthy that neither staff-student ratios nor teacher turnover could account for independent school educational success. It is also noteworthy that our measures of home/school social capital failed to account for the differences in outcome. While our measures are far from ideal, there are also good practical reasons for suspecting that home/school social capital will not account for the success of the independent schools since these schools do not tend in Britain to have locally based catchment areas. It is in fact likely that independent schools have the most geographically diverse catchment areas, while the selective grammar and direct grant schools will also have drawn on pupils from quite a large geographical area. It is likely that home/school social capital, if it can account for variation in school outcomes, will largely do so within the comprehensive school sector since these schools typically have local catchment areas giving more scope for frequent social interaction between parents and between parents and the school. The sole school-level factor that appeared to explain sectoral differences in educational outcomes was the social composition of the school. This might operate through peer group processes, for example through norms regarding the social acceptability of academic effort and success as suggested earlier, although other mechanisms, such as teachers’ expectations are also possible. The superiority, therefore, of the independent, direct grant and grammar schools as compared to the comprehensives is partially but not entirely, explained in our analyses. It may be that our controls for individual and family characteristics are inadequate, although they are more thorough than the controls used in many analyses of school effects. It could also be that our measures of school resources were excessively limited and that unmeasured differences in resources could explain the school differences. Measures of teacher quality, such as teachers’ test scores or educational qualifications for example, may be expected to make a difference. Another possibility is that the need to attract feepaying parents has acted as a pressure on private schools to achieve good exam results. Once again, however, given that the success of the independent schools was shared by the academically selective but nonfee-paying grammar schools and by the hybrid direct grant schools, we suspect that explanations relying on market forces are unlikely to be successful. We need instead to look for explanations that might in principle apply to these three types of school but not to the comprehensive and secondary modern schools. One possibility is that the academic composition of the school would help to explain the remaining school differences. Certainly the grammar and direct grant schools share a high

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degree of academic selectivity, although the independent schools are not quite so selective academically. Other possibilities are that these three types of school may have some shared educational practices. For example, students at these schools would routinely be required to undertake homework in the evenings in addition to their regular schoolwork during the day. This would have been less common in comprehensive schools, and unusual in secondary modern schools, with their less academic orientations. Regular homework might also be expected to be accompanied by other less tangible aspects of school culture, such as an academic ethos and high teacher expectations. The effective implementation of homework also implies a degree of teacher authority and discipline. Grammar, direct grant and independent schools also probably shared an emphasis on extra-curricular activities that would have been less widespread in the comprehensive or secondary modern schools. Extracurricular activities such as school sports teams, school orchestras or drama productions were standard features of the former three types of school, and might well have indirect effects on student’s academic performance by fostering a degree of social solidarity and an ethos integrating students with teachers and developing a sense of shared purpose between staff and students. In that sense it would be an aspect of school social capital of the sort that Coleman described. Unlike Coleman, however, we see this as being largely internal to the school rather than involving parents closely. Finally, further research is needed to examine the effects of private schooling, and there is a need for new data to examine this question in the contemporary context. The data we use here is nearly 30 years old, and the British education system has changed substantially in the meantime (Smith, 2000). A key challenge for researchers will be to develop clear measures of such often vague notions as ‘academic ethos’ and ‘social capital’. APPENDIX: VARIABLES Student Characteristics Sex Test scores at age 11 (sweep 2). The children were given multiplechoice tests in reading comprehension, mathematics and tests of ‘general ability’ (both verbal and non-verbal). The reading comprehension test was a sentence completion test, designed to be parallel to the WattsVernon test of reading ability (see Start and Wells, 1972). All the tests were compiled by the National Foundation for Educational Research

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(NFER). The ranges of possible scores on the tests were as follows: Reading, 0–35; Mathematics, 0–40; General Ability, 0–80. Steedman (1980, 1983a and b) gives technical details. For reliability measures, see the statistical appendix in Steedman (1983b). Following the standard practice of other researchers who have used these data we have constructed a single scale from these tests. We have standardised this scale with mean of zero and standard deviation of one. Primary school teacher’s assessment of child’s ability (sweep 2). Teachers gave ratings from 1 (exceptional) to 5 (very limited) for the child’s use of books, number work, general knowledge and oral ability. Although this measure is associated with the child’s test score at age 11 (Pearson’s correlation coefficient 0.80, significant at the 0.01 level), it nevertheless explains additional variance in age-16 outcomes and we have therefore retained it in the analysis. Family Background Father’s social class (sweep 3). Father’s class is used as mother’s employment was less common at the time the data were collected. The official government measure of socio-economic group (SEG) is used. Following previous British research on social class, we have grouped the 16 categories of SEG into seven classes: employers and managers in large establishments, employers and managers in small establishments, professionals, own account (non-professional) workers, other nonmanual workers, skilled manual workers and manual foremen, and semi-and unskilled manual workers. We retain a category for missing data, since (as is not uncommon with data on social origins) substantial numbers did not report their father’s class (for example because they had no contact with their father at the time). Family structure (sweep 3). NCDS records whether the respondents had two original parents throughout their childhood. Single and stepparent families have consistently been found to be associated with lower levels of educational performance for children than ‘intact’ two parent families, although the reasons for this association are debated (Painter and Levine, 2000; Biblarz and Gottainer, 2000; Boggess, 1998; Downey, 1995; Elliott and Richards, 1991; Kiernan, 1992). We simply distinguish those who had lived with their two original parents throughout from all other family types (the latter consisting of a number of small and somewhat heterogeneous groups). Number of children under age 21 in the household (sweep 3). Research has consistently found a negative effect of larger family size on children’s educational attainment and test scores (Nisbet, 1953; Blake, 1981, 1985, 1989; Powell and Steelman, 1990). This is likely to be because both parental attention and economic resources are spread

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more thinly in larger families (Downey, 2001; Van Eijck and de Graaf, 1995). NCDS presents family size as a categorical variable, which we collapse into three categories: respondents in households with 1 or 2 children, those with 3 or 4 children, and those with five or more. The data refer to numbers of children living in the household at the time of the survey rather than to completed family size (which is less relevant to our present concerns). Age at which parents’ left full-time education (mother’s or father’s, whichever was higher) (sweep 3). We distinguish three categories. The minimum legal school-leaving age for the parents would have been age 15. We can think of this as elementary education only. Parents who stayed on until age 16, 17 or 18 would have had some schooling beyond the minimum. Those who stayed on in full-time education beyond the age of 18 would typically have received some tertiary education. Mother’s book reading (self-reported at sweep 1). Reading can be seen as a measure of ‘cultural capital’ (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977), and parents’ reading behaviour has been shown to be associated with children’s educational success (Crook, 1997; de Graaf, de Graaf and Kraaykamp, 2000; Sullivan, 2001). The NCDS distinguished whether mothers read ‘most weeks’, ‘occasionally’ or ‘hardly ever’. The NCDS also asked a similar question about father’s book reading, but there is a high degree of collinearity between the two sets of answers and we have found that including a control for father’s book reading as well as mother’s adds very little to the variance explained. We therefore restrict ourselves to mother’s book reading. Mother’s interest in the child’s education (reported by primary school teacher at sweep 2). Parental interest has been shown to be a major factor in children’s success in the ‘11-plus’ examination, and may well have influence at later ages too (Douglas, 1964). The NCDS distinguishes whether mothers were ‘over-concerned’, ‘very interested’, had ‘some interest’ or ‘little interest’ in the child’s education. We collapsed the ‘overconcerned’ and ‘very interested’ cases, as the former category was small. As with book reading, we have not included father’s interest in the models. School Resources Pupil-teacher ratio (collected from the school at sweep 3). This measure serves as a proxy for class size. It is likely to reflect a school’s level of funding and may be one of the crucial ways in which funding can affect student outcomes. Teacher turnover (collected from the school at sweep 3). This is measured by the proportion of teachers who left the school in the previous year. This can be seen as a proxy for teacher quality, but

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teaching stability may also be beneficial in its own right. Again it may reflect funding. Parent/School Social Capital Whether the school has a parent-teacher association (PTA) (collected from the school at sweep 3). This is simply a binary variable distinguishing schools that had a PTA from those that did not. Frequency of meetings between parents and teachers (collected from the school at sweep 3). This variable had four categories: termly, at least yearly, ad hoc, or none at all. These variables reflect parent-teacher interaction, which may be thought of as one aspect of a school’s social capital. Unfortunately, no data on relationships between the parents of students attending the same schools, which would provide a better test of Coleman’s hypothesis, are available in the NCDS. Peer Group Processes Proportion of children from non-manual backgrounds at the school (collected from the school at sweep 3). We treat this as a proxy for the social character of the individual student’s peer group. Student Outcomes Number of O-level passes or passes at CSE grade 1 (collected from the school at sweep 3).5 Test scores at age 16 (sweep 3). The NCDS administered the same test of reading comprehension at age 16 as was administered at age 11. This probably led to ceiling effects in measuring the improvement of those students who scored highly at age 11. However the pupils also took a test of mathematics attainment which was designed to be appropriate for the full ability range of 16-year-olds. It is the latter measure, therefore, which we use. The range for this variable was 0–31. NOTES 1 According to the Independent Schools Council Information Service (figures for September 2000), fees range from £1,700 per term for the cheapest private day school place to over £5,000 a term at an elite boarding school. (There are three terms in a British school year). A place at Eton College costs £5868 per term. 2 Some researchers have examined school resources at the state or district level, rather than the level of the individual school (Card and Krueger, 1992, 1996;

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Sander, 1999). Although these studies show significant effects of school resources on students’ outcomes, it can be argued that these results reflect other state and district level factors, rather than just school resources. 3 . In essence, there was higher funding for students staying on to take advanced courses after age 16, and comprehensive schools had higher proportions of such students than did secondary modern schools. However, it is likely that the benefits of such funding would have been spread to some extent among all students at the school and not restricted solely to those taking the advanced courses. 4 . In supplementary analysis we tested for interactions between type of school and staff-student ratio. In the case of comprehensive schools we found that higher ratios were associated with superior outcomes whereas in the other types of school there appeared to be no significant association between staffstudent ratios and educational outcomes. This probably reflects the fact that popular and successful comprehensive schools tend to be oversubscribed, and hence have less favourable staff-student ratios while less popular comprehensives would have falling school roles and less favourable ratios. These processes would not however apply to the other types of school. In the case of grammar and secondary modern schools, students were simply allocated by the Local Education Authority on the basis of the 11-plus examination, whereas in the case of independent schools market mechanisms would tend to prevent overcrowding. 5 . At the time these data were collected, O-level examination boards did not have consistent grading policies (some giving only informal grades and some giving percentage scores rather than grades) so the O-level results are analysed in terms of numbers of passes, rather than grades.

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Part II PRESENT-DAY PRIVATE SCHOOLS

5 Teacher Sickness Absence in Independent Schools Tony Bowers

ABSENT TEACHERS Teacher absenteeism can be a vexed issue. It arouses the interest of employers and the passion of teachers’ unions. It can be expensive to schools and—in the state sector—to the public purse. Even where its incidence is accurately measured, its causes are easily disputed. One reason for this is the difficulty of disentangling the notion of an illness which prevents the individual from attending work from that of ‘stress’ brought on by the pressures of the job or engendered by the management of the school. It seems intuitively obvious that teachers who are satisfied with their jobs and who work in a climate of trust and collaboration with colleagues will be less likely to take time away from work than those who are dissatisfied or whose schools offer difficult working climates. Although there is no unequivocal evidence that this is so, the idea persists. It has been around for some time. More than half a century ago, Pennington (1949) suggested that motivational and attitudinal factors were crucial in determining rates of attendance at work. A quarter of a century later another physician (Simpson, 1976) suggested links between some teachers’ frequent absences and what he termed ‘the morale structures of the organisation’ (15) rather than their actual physical health or personalities. Illness and individuals’ innate inclinations to attend or absent themselves, it seems, were of less significance than the way that head teachers and governors structured schools and defined roles. Recent work in the Netherlands (Imants and van Zoelen, 1995) appears to back up this environmentalist assumption. According to them, ‘strictly medical grounds’ (78) account for under 20 per cent of teacher absences in that country. There is certainly evidence to suggest that ‘stress’, whether or not it is engendered by the job, is a frequent companion of chronic illness in teachers. In our study of teachers who were granted early retirement on the grounds of ill health during 12 months at the end of the 1990s

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(Bowers and McIver, 2000), we found that in 48 per cent of all cases, mental health problems were instrumental in the Teachers’ Pensions Division’s decision to grant retirement. Stress is not an official category of illness, but depression, which appears to have been the term applied in nearly all of the cases examined, was recounted as stemming from stress-related experiences. Mental health difficulties constituted more than twice the figure for the most frequently reported physical condition leading to ill-health retirement. On the other hand, when we looked generally at teacher absence in the public sector, there was less to indicate a direct link between stress and absenteeism. For example, the area in which the lowest number (59 per cent) of teachers took any time off at all from work (the East Midlands) was also the area where the overall time lost by teachers (nearly 3.6 per cent) was among the highest in the country. Yet in outer London, where 75 per cent of teachers were away from work at some point during the year, the average time lost (2. 5 per cent) was the lowest in the country. From this we might infer that teachers who take a small amount of time off when necessary may be better able to cope with the demands of the job than those who report unremittingly for work. How such data sit with notions of motivation, attitude and morale is unclear. What is patently obvious, however, is that different ways of measuring absenteeism can often yield very different results. In England, the government appears to take the view that teacher absences in the public sector can be decreased by the application of suitable management practices. Shortly after it came to office in 1997, a report on absence in the public sector (Cabinet Office, 1998) emphasised the economic consequences of non-attendance at work; it also implied that increased quality of service would flow from lower rates of absenteeism. With one of the first of what was to become an avalanche of government targets, the report recommended that teacher absence rates should be reduced by 30 per cent by the year 2003. Surprisingly, up to that point there had been little systematic recording of teachers’ attendance at work, even though local education authorities (LEAs) still employed the majority of teachers. Plans were made to monitor the extent of teacher absenteeism and each May since 2000, figures for teacher absences in England have been issued by the Department for Education and Employment or Department for Education and Skills. They tend to be confusing, with press releases looking not at overall absence rates but at average absence rates for those teachers who have taken time off. Close scrutiny of the sample from which they are derived also shows that a substantial number of LEAs have submitted no returns. But if we look just at the flgures so far, it seems very unlikely that this particular target will be achieved.

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THE ‘PRIVATE SECTOR’ As I write, the relative merits of the public and private sectors are being hotly debated. Much of the spotlight falls currently on the ability of National Health Service organisations to provide services which are as efficient and cost-effective as those offered by organisations in private hands. A similar, if more muted, debate has arisen from time to time about schooling. It tends to have centred upon the ability of private (‘for profit’) organisations to run publicly funded schools or even, as exemplified by Islington, entire local education authorities. Other forms of privatisation of the education services have gone almost unremarked. Most OFSTED inspections, for example, are now conducted by independent contractors; most supply teachers are now provided (and employed) by profit-making companies. The focus of concern seems not at present to lie with the wellestablished independent school sector. Yet if the cost-effectiveness of publicly funded schools is to be assessed in terms of teachers’ rates of absence from work, it would seem reasonable to look to find a benchmark in those schools which not only exist but generally thrive in a commercial and competitive environment. As we might expect, no central body collects statistics on teacher absences in independent schools. Indeed, there appear to be no industryspecific figures for absenteeism in any part of the commercial world. Companies may keep their own records, but these tend to be commercially sensitive and therefore unavailable to outsiders. The Institute of Personnel and Development’s periodic survey of its members provides some guide to the amount of working time lost through absence in particular broadband industries. Interestingly, though, its reports offer no data relating either to teachers or to the broader category of ‘education’, perhaps indicating that it has yet to penetrate the management of schools. A STUDY OF INDEPENDENT SCHOOLS In the autumn of 1999, my colleague Malcolm Mclver and I set out to rectify this information gap. We approached a randomly drawn sample of 300 schools, all of them listed by DfEE as ‘independent’, asking them to provide us with details (suitably anonymised) of staff absences through the academic year 1998–99. After following up non-responses we eventually received replies from 224 of them: a response rate of nearly 75 per cent. However, 87 of those schools told us that their records of staff absences did not enable them to provide details of teacher absences over the previous 12 months. Some, it seemed, could not accurately offer any information relating even to the term which had just passed. Pupil absences were recorded, staff absences were not. This

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was not a surprising finding. The Institute of Personnel and Development (IPD, 2000) found that around 25 per cent of its members’ organisations kept no systematic records of staff sickness absence, so our figure of 29 per cent of the sample was consistent with that. However, while we could only surmise about the 25 per cent of schools which, despite prompting, did not reply to our survey, it may well be that their silence was stimulated by an inability to offer data. If so, it could be that as many as half the independent schools approached did not keep records of individual teachers’ absences. We were left with 137 independent schools which could provide records of teachers’ absences over the previous three terms. We asked only for details of full-time teachers’ absences, in part because part-time teachers’ contracts vary so widely but mainly because of the distorting effect of part-timers’ absences on overall time lost. For example, somebody who is expected to work for two days a week and misses one of them will actually appear as a 50 per cent absentee, even though he or she might have been perfectly fit for the other three days. This effect probably accounts for Bowers and McIver’s (2000) finding that a greater amount of time was lost by part-time teachers (3.7 per cent) in state schools in England than by full-time teachers (3.3 per cent) in the same schools. Indeed, when a smaller sample of 126 state schools was closely scrutinised, it was found that even though part-time teachers were less likely than full-time teachers to take any time off during the year, part-timers actually lost more time (4 per cent) than full-timers (3 per cent). In looking at the data below, it should be remembered that the actual number of teachers employed by many of the independent schools in our sample will have been higher than the figures reported. Our analysis relates solely to teachers employed full time by the 137 independent schools who provided staff absence information. It is not always easy to fit an independent school into a particular category; despite this, we tried to do so. We ended up with four. The classification ‘preparatory’ embraced any school which ceased to provide education for children by the time they had reached a maximum age of 13. ‘Secondary’ schools were those which admitted no children younger than 9 years old and kept them until they were 16 or 18, while ‘all-age’ schools catered for children whose ages spanned those defining the first two categories. Finally, there were ‘special’ schools. Such schools are formally recognised by the Department for Education and Skills and admit only children with statements of special educational need. Although there are now many state special schools, the very first schools for children with disabilities were independent schools (Department of Education and Science, 1978) and independent special schools set many examples which were subsequently followed by LEA provision (Bridgeland, 1971). Although we might usefully have done so,

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we did not differentiate between day and boarding schools within any of the above categories. MEASURING RATES OF ABSENCE Any attempt to calculate the average time lost by full-time teachers in these schools first requires knowledge of the number of days a teacher would normally be expected to work during the year. That work, of course, might not include pupil contact or even be on days when pupils are present. DfES statistics assume that a working year for teachers in maintained schools consists of 195 days, yet children attend such schools for a maximum of 190 days. The other five days are expected to be set aside for training and associated purposes. We found a wide variation in the number of days which teachers in our sample of independent schools were expected to work. The lowest was 162 and the highest 220. When we excluded special schools from the analysis, on average teachers were expected to work for 178 days. When special schools were included, this average rose to 181. We can only speculate on whether this figure equates more closely to the 190 days of pupil contact expected of state schools or the 195 days of actual attendance which the government (though not necessarily all heads and governors) expect of them. Table 1 sets out the details of the different categories of schools, together with numbers of full-time teachers employed by schools in those categories. The table also shows the number of teachers within each group who were recorded as having any time at all away from work due to sickness during the 12-month period. A discordant note is struck by the substantially higher proportion of teachers in independent special schools who take time away from work due to illness when compared with those in other independent schools. The difference is not simply due to chance; it is highly statistically TABLE 1: FULL-TIME TEACHERS IN 137 INDEPENDENT SCHOOLS DURING THE ACADEMIC YEAR 1998–99

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significant ( 2=80.2, d.f. 3, p