Social Class and Educational Opportunity, by J.E. Floud, A.H. Halsey and F.M. Martin

[p033] Social Class and Educational Opportunity, by J. E. Floud, A. H. Halsey and F. M. Martin (Heinemann, 12s. 6d.) EDUCATIONAL research is, unfortunately, all too frequently merely the rediscovery of the obvious. This study, carried out in the prevailing Fabian climate of the London School of Economics, achieves this same objective. Nevertheless it surveys a useful piece of work and its results are presented with a crispness which goes well with the excellently presented and probably reliable statistical tables. Our present-day grammar schools became part of the national education system as a result of the 1902 Education Act, which had the declared object of providing advanced secondary education to the children of the middle classes. At the close of the nineteenth century, the expansion of British imperialist administrative machinery and the growing com- petition in the world market of German products (most of which were being produced in modernized factories using up-to-date scientific know-how) caused the British ruling class considerable alarm. They soon began to worry about the short supply of middle-strata technicians and administrators. The new grammar schools came into existence to satisfy this shortage, while at the same time, by marrying the new schools with the traditions of Victorian upper-class educa- tion, they ensured that the products of these schools would be so indoctrinated with bourgeois values as to be ‘safe men’ for imperialism. The number of children in secondary grammar schools steadily expanded during the first part of this century so that by 1938, in many areas, as many as 15 per cent. of all the children were attending this type of school. But there was little social equality about these grammar schools. In Middles- brough in 1938, for example, 16 per cent. of the pupils in grammar schools were children of ‘professional workers, business owners and managers’, while 46 per cent. were chil- dren of ‘manual workers’. Yet, because the working class is by far the largest class numerically, *. .. despite the expansion of the secondary school system and the greatly increased proportion of pupils who had won total or partial remission of fees in competition, class inequalities in educational opportunity had not been re- duced to the extent generally supposed. There were, of course, far more children from families low in the occu- pational scale entering secondary schools at the end of the period covered by the enquiry than there had been at the 30 January-February 1958 beginning; and almost all held free places. Yet their num- ber was still far from proportionate to their strength in the population. The chances of obtaining even a free place in a secondary school were shown to be greater at the top of the occupational scale than at the bottom. These facts could be fully explained only if they could be related to the social distribution of intelligence, and if the extent to which social factors influencing the process of selection for secondary education were known’. (p. xvii) The present work starts from this point and inquires whether the 1944 Education Act which, except for the ‘public schools’ and ‘direct grant grammar schools’, abolished fees and which was hailed by many reformists in the Labour movement as the final achievement of a democratic education system because now every child was supposed to have ‘equality of opportunity’, has equalized the opportunity of workers’ children with those of the children of the rich. Unfortunately for the Fabian panegyrists, the main product of this ‘democratic advance’ was—-the hated 11-plus examina- tion. ? Is it true that as a result of the 1944 Education Act the class structure of the grammar schools has changed and given equal opportunity for full secondary education to the children of the working class? This book provides the answer and gives the evidence. No—it is not true. I quoted as an example above the percentages of chil- dren of two social classes who in 1938 were entering the Middlesbrough grammar school. By comparison, in 1953, 23 per cent. of the pupils were sons of ‘professional workers, business owners and managers’, while 44 per cent. were chil- dren of ‘manual workers’. It will be seen that the result of the 1944 Act has been to increase the advantages of the children of the ruling class. Vv Taking Middlesbrough again as an example, in 1954 64 per cent of the children of the ‘professional workers, business owners and managers’ went to the municipal grammar schools and of course many of the remaining 36 per cent. went to private schools. A mere 12 per cent. of workers’ children in this same year entered the Middlesbrough grammar schools. There is hardly ‘equality of opportunity’ here. The answer which the Ministry pundits give to these facts is: ‘Ah—the upper class children, on the average, inherit greater “natural intelligence” from their parents and so do better in the 11-plus selection examination.’ Unfortunately, although this book does go on to make an analysis of the class distribution of intelligence quotients derived from the so-called intelligence tests, it does not even begin to uncover how the roots of class privilege in education have been built into these things called ‘intelligence tests’. Perhaps the London School of Economics will next turn its attention to this. JOHN DANIELS Biography of Bessie