Private Education : Tradition and Diversity [1 ed.] 9781847144089, 9780826485991

Citation preview

Private Education

Related titles Philosophy of Education - Richard Pring Analysing Underachievement in Schools - Emma Smith Theory of Education - David Turner

PRIVATE EDUCATION Tradition and diversity Geoffrey Watford

continuum

Continuum International Publishing Group

The Tower Building 11 York Road London SE1 7NX

15 East 26th Street New York NY 10010

© Geoffrey Walford 2005 First Published 2006 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing-in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: 0 8264 8599 5 (hardback) Typeset by BookEns Ltd, Royston, Herts. Printed and bound in Great Britain by Biddies Ltd, King's Lynn, Norfolk

Contents

Preface CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Private schools in England Based on a paper published in Journal on Non-Government Educational Development (2004)

PART I

Traditional private schools

CHAPTER 2

A revolution in chains? From G. Walford (1985) (ed.) Chapter 9 of Life in Public Schools. London: Methuen, pp. 204-33

CHAPTER 3

The changing professionalism of public school teachers From G.Walford (1984) (ed.) British Public Schools: policy and practice. Lewes: Palmer, pp. 111-35

CHAPTER 4

Classification and framing in English private boarding schools From P. Atkinson, B. Davies and S. Delamont (1995) (eds) Discourse and Reproduction. Essays in honor of Basil Bernstein. New Jersey, USA: Hampton Press, pp. 191-207

CHAPTER 5

Girls' private schooling: past and present From G. Walford (1993) (ed.) The Private Schooling of Girls: past and present. London:Woburn Press, pp. 9-32

PART II

Private schools and educational policy

CHAPTER 6

How dependent is the independent sector? From Oxford Review of Education (1987) 13, 3, pp. 275-96

Vii

1

13

39

61

77

101

VI

CONTENTS

CHAPTER 7

Independent schools and tax policy under Mrs Thatcher From Journal of Education Policy (1989) 4, 2, pp. 149-62 (with Mark H. Robson)

128

CHAPTER 8

City Technology Colleges: a private magnetism? 147 From G. Walford (1991) (ed.) Private Schooling: tradition, change and diversity. London: Paul Chapman, pp. 158-76

CHAPTER 9

From City Technology Colleges to sponsored grant-maintained schools 167 From Oxford Review of Education (2000) 26, 2, pp. 145-58

PART III

Private religious schools and diversity of schools

CHAPTER 10

The fate of the new Christian schools: from growth to decline? From Educational Studies (2001) 27, 4, pp. 465-77

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

Classification and framing of the curriculum in evangelical Christian and Muslim schools in England and the Netherlands From Educational Studies (2002) 28, 4, pp. 403-19

187

201

Muslim schools in Britain From G. Walford (2004) (ed.) British Private Schools: research on policy and practice. London: Woburn Press, pp. 158-74

219

References

235

Preface

British private schools have long been considered central to the continuation of inequality in our society. While they only provide for around 7 per cent of the school population, about half of the undergraduates at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge still come from the private sector, and these schools have long been associated with privilege and elitism. While this traditional elitist aspect is still important, the private school sector is actually far more diverse than is usually acknowledged. It now includes many small schools and faith-based schools that may not offer the traditional advantages of the private sector, but which offer a particular environment deemed desirable by parents. In spite of their central importance, there has been very little academic research and literature on British private schools. This book brings together a range of academic papers that I have written over several years. Published in a variety of academic journals and books, some are not easy to access: and so they have been collected together in book form so that they can be readily available to a new audience. They are all papers of a particular period, so I have resisted the temptation to try to bring them up-to-date, and have only made small changes to make them more suitable for book form. Following the Introduction, the book is in three parts. The Introduction gives an overview of the current extent and nature of the private sector. Part I includes academic chapters on the traditional 'public' schools. These articles are the oldest to be included here and date from the 1980s, but are still valuable as they deal with theoretical issues of teacher professionalism, and social class reproduction. Part II deals with government policy towards private schools. These case studies not only present empirical data, but also link to current theoretical issues. Part III discusses the diversity of the present-day private sector. This section includes chapters on evangelical Christian schools and Muslim schools, as well as discussing the extent and nature of the diversity.

This page intentionally left blank

CHAPTER 1 Introduction: Private schools in England

This introductory chapter gives an overview of the English private school sector as it was in 2003. It contextualizes the chapters that follow.

In 2003 there were about 2,160 registered private schools in England. Although the official name used for these schools in England is 'independent' schools, the chapters in this book will largely follow the terminology of the vast majority of other countries and use the term 'private', which is now the most commonly accepted and the appropriate choice (Walford, 1989). In 2003, private schools in England educated nearly 583,000 children, which is about 6.97 per cent of the school-age population, and 7.86 per cent of children in schools aged five and above. About half of these children in private schools are in just two of the nine geographical regions of England London and the South East. Scotland has about 3 per cent of its children in private schools, while Wales and Northern Ireland have even fewer. As there are considerable differences between the systems in the four constituent parts of the United Kingdom, the focus here will be on England only. The most well-known private schools in England are undoubtedly the old, established boarding schools that have long served the economic and political elite. Thus names like Eton College, Winchester College, Westminster School and Cheltenham Ladies College are recognized as' brand leaders' throughout the world. Such schools are highly selective both academically and financially, and have annual fees of up to £ 17,000 (plus some smaller extras). It is certainly true that the children who leave these schools usually do so with a clutch of very good A- levels and most often enter prestigious universities: but Based on a paper published in Chinese in the Journal on Non-Governmental Educational Development (2004). Statistical data in this chapter are taken from National Statistics (2003) and ISC (2002).

2

PRIVATE EDUCATION

whether their success is due to the schools or to the children's own social, economic and cultural capitals is open to question. However, these well-known schools form only a very small part of the English private sector, which far from being a homogeneous group, is highly diverse: and the study of this variety is unexpectedly fascinating (Hillman, 1994). There are some obvious ways in which the schools differ, such as in the age ranges and genders of pupils, their sizes, religious affiliations and geographical locations, but there is also great variety in their cultures, histories and traditions, and in the experiences that pupils receive. While some are highly selective by academic ability, others are more comprehensive in their intakes or may even cater for children with learning difficulties such as dyslexia. Diversity examined Most of the sociological research on the private sector has concentrated on the elite schools and, in particular, the boys' boarding schools. It is schools of this type that are the subject of Part I (although these chapters discuss them as they were some 20 years ago). Important, but dated, studies include those of Wakeford (1969), Lambert and Millham (1968) and Walford (1986a). It used to be that the term 'public school' was used for those elite schools whose headmasters had membership of the Headmasters' Conference (HMC), an organization formed in 1871 in a successful attempt to ward off an early political attack on the schools. The total number of members was limited initially to 50, although this has gradually grown to 244 (in the UK). The term 'public school' is now very seldom used, as it has associations with elitism that the schools themselves wish to reduce. But the HMC still includes the headteachers of the majority of the most prestigious schools. As the number of schools included grew, so did the diversity of schools involved - a development recognized by the change in name to the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference in the early 1990s - and they now range from the well-known schools, such as Eton College and Winchester College, that are of ancient foundation and provide (at a very high cost) a full boarding life for highly academically able boys, to many day schools, with a range of degrees of academic selectivity, that cater for children at about a quarter of the cost. Most schools are now coeducational, and only about 21 per cent of pupils in the HMC schools are boarders: 27 per cent of the pupils are girls. Even though the HMC schools only educate about a quarter of all privately educated children, the concentration of sociological research on them is justified by their historic position in educating the nation's elites. Research by Reid et al. (1991) has shown that a

INTRODUCTION: PRIVATE SCHOOLS IN ENGLAND

3

large proportion of high-ranking judges, civil servants, diplomats, directors of major banks and other similar prestigious and powerful professionals were educated at HMC schools. In 1984, for example, 84 per cent of the top judiciary, 70 per cent of bank directors and 49 per cent of high-ranking civil servants were from HMC schools. However, it is worth remembering that, while a disproportionate number of members of the present elites attended private schools some 40 years ago, this does not necessarily mean that present-day pupils will have advantaged entry to elite positions in the future. Also, as such schools are highly academically and socially selective, such success says practically nothing about the quality of the schooling provided. In fact, many of these highly prestigious schools do not score very highly on Value added' measures of academic achievement that measure school effectiveness based on the abilities of the children entering the school, as well as on their achievements on leaving. Therefore, entry into elite positions may have little to do with the educational success of these schools, but may be related to pre-existing social and cultural capital. There has been surprisingly little research that has sought to evaluate the effectiveness of the private sector in comparison to the state sector. The most thorough study, now more than 20 years old, concluded that in terms of academic results, the leading private schools were probably no more effective than the grammar schools that were available at that time for highly able children. In contrast, the second-ranking private schools were probably more effective than the secondary modern schools that the majority of children attended (Halsey et al, 1984). One recent study by Sullivan and Heath (2003) indicated that the only school-level factor that appeared to explain private schools' better examination results was the social composition of the school. This might operate through peer-group processes of encouraging academic work or other mechanisms. However, there are indications that attendance at these HMC schools may be still linked to future elite status for, along with some of the prestigious girls' private schools, these schools provide about 25 per cent of university undergraduates overall, and about 50 per cent of those at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Private schooling for girls has never been as popular or prestigious as it has been for boys, and there are fewer research studies. Although now dated, the most recent general survey is that of Wober (1971), while Avery (1991) gives a good history of girls' schools, and Delamont (1989) concentrates on the role of the elite girls' schools in social reproduction. The organization analogous with the HMC is

4

PRIVATE EDUCATION

the Girls' Schools Association (GSA), which has some 207 schools in membership. These schools have an even wider range of size, academic emphasis, geographical location, religious affiliation and so on than the HMC schools. As Chapter 5 shows, most were founded in the nineteenth century and can be linked to the greater emancipation of women that occurred at that time (Walford, 1993). In England in 2003, 49 per cent of private school pupils were girls. However, the proportion of girls being privately educated has increased faster than that of boys, which has enabled a few girls' schools to expand. Others have suffered a considerable loss to HMC schools that have gradually changed from all-boys' schools to coeducational. Over three-quarters of HMC schools now accept girls most at any age, although some only take girls aged 16 or over (Dooley and Fuller, 2003). The HMC schools have been very successful in attracting girls to these former all-boy schools, but the girls' schools that have attempted to attract boys have been almost completely unsuccessful. A number of girls' boarding schools have recently closed as a result of falling rolls. Another somewhat unexpected feature about these private schools is that, while the most highly prestigious schools are generally boarding schools, the percentage of children who board throughout the sector is now quite low. In 2003 only 14 per cent of pupils in Independent Schools Council schools boarded, and 42 per cent of boarders were girls. Overall, there has been a steady decline in the total number of boarders over the last two decades, with a decrease of some 3 per cent each year. The result is that many schools, even some of the well-known names, now find it difficult to attract enough pupils of sufficiently high academic ability to fill their boarding places. This has led to an increase in the number of foreign students in these schools who, of course, usually have to become boarders. Private schools that cater for children below the age of 11 or 13 are called preparatory schools. Traditionally, these schools have also been single sex, but the moves towards greater co-education at this age led, in 1981, to the amalgamation of the two separate preparatory school associations into the Incorporated Association of Preparatory Schools, which was the former name of the boys' association (Leinster-Mackay, 1984). This body now has some 490 schools in membership. All pupils must leave these schools by age 14, but most do so at any time between 11 and 13. It used to be that girls left to go to their secondary schools at 11, while boys stayed until entry to the HMC schools at 13, but the pattern is now much more confused. Most of these schools are far smaller than the secondary schools, and about 8 per cent of the pupils are either full or weekly boarders - approximately half the

INTRODUCTION: PRIVATE SCHOOLS IN ENGLAND

5

number of boarders there were at this age a decade ago. However, it is in the preparatory age range that the bulk of the recent increase in private school numbers is to be found, particularly at pre-school and pre-preparatory school levels. About two-thirds of all private school pupils are in schools in one of these three major groups (the HMC, the GSA or the Incorporated Association of Preparatory Schools). There are then schools that are members of groupings that aspire to be similar to this major three. The Society of Headmasters of Independent Schools (SHMIS) shelters some 60 schools, while the Independent Schools' Association has 267. These two organizations, together with the major three, cater for about 80 per cent of pupils in the private sector, but beyond them there is an interesting variety of unusual schools. The diversity of the private sector in England is well illustrated by a simple study of the size of various schools. Nearly 200 of these 2,160 schools are very small - having 25 or fewer pupils - while 708 of them have 100 or fewer pupils. A total of 1,230 of these schools (more than half of the total number of private schools) have 200 or fewer students. The majority of these small schools are not affiliated to the Independent Schools Council, and were established for a range of different reasons. Of particular interest are the small, religiously-based schools, many of which were established by parents and others who argue that the state-maintained sector does not offer an educational experience for their children that is congruent with the group's religious beliefs even though there have been religious schools within the statemaintained sector for more than 100 years. There are some 80 or so evangelical Christian, about 80 Muslim, and a few other Buddhist and Hindu schools. Some of this religious diversity is discussed in the chapters in Part III. The evangelical schools share an ideology of biblically-based Christianity that seeks to relate the message of the Bible to all aspects of present-day life, whether personal, spiritual or educational. These schools have usually been set up by teachers, parents or a church group to deal with dissatisfaction with what is seen as the secularism of the majority of schools. They aim to provide a distinctive Christian approach to every part of school life and the curriculum, and in most cases the parents have a substantial role in the management and organization of the schools. The facilities are usually poor, as most of the schools run on very low fees. Teachers are often not paid on national salary scales, but see their teaching as a Christian obligation of service to others. There has been an increase in the number of Muslim private

6

PRIVATE EDUCATION

schools, linked to a growing dissatisfaction with the state-maintained schools that their children attended. This dissatisfaction had several causes. One aspect was that some parents felt their children were not achieving academically as well as they might. The inner-city schools that many Muslim children attended did badly on test scores, and parents became more concerned that these schools might be failing their children. They were also concerned that the standards of discipline and respect for adults was often lower than they wished. But the main reasons for the growth in these schools was related directly to religious beliefs. Most British Muslims are descendants of Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi immigrants who came to Britain in the 1950s and 1960s. As they became more established and developed a variety of distinct Muslim communities, they became more religious in their outlook. There has been a growth in religious observance and a significant majority of British Muslims attach special importance to their faith. As they became more religious, their concerns about both the structure and content of the state-maintained educational system grew. There are about 80 private Muslim schools in England, and they provide for a total of about 7,000 children - about 2 per cent of Muslim children in England. They range from one expensive, London-based school with nearly 2,000 pupils, which is predominantly attended by children of diplomats, industrialists and professionals from the Middle East, to small, one-room schools for five or more children based in domestic houses. While the range in size is from five pupils to nearly 2,000, the average is about 120. A further group of small private schools has developed in response to parents who do not want their children to go to all-ability comprehensive schools. For those parents who are able and willing to pay fees, some of these private schools act to replace the academically selective grammar schools no longer available in the comprehensive system. In contrast, other parents believe that the highly competitive and structured nature of state schooling is undesirable, and wish their children to receive a more liberal and broad education. Taking advantage of the benefits of schools with fewer pupils, and of the fact that private schools do not have to follow the National Curriculum, there are now several small private schools that are designed to give more freedom to children's individual interests. These have formed umbrella organizations such as the Human Scale Movement and Education Now that campaign on their behalf. The number of children in these schools and the number being 'home educated' has been increasing over the past few years.

INTRODUCTION: PRIVATE SCHOOLS IN ENGLAND

7

Government policy on private schools Private schools in England receive no per-pupil funding from the state but have to rely on fees, donations and, in some cases, foundation income. Over the years, however, there have been specific schemes that have channelled government money to the private sector, and many of the schools receive tax benefits as a result of their charitable status. Private schools also do not have to pay VAT on their services (These policy issues are discussed in Part II of this book.) In very broad terms, the Conservative Party has tended to support private schooling when in power, while the Labour Party has generally attempted to reduce government support (Tapper, 1997). Thus, the Conservative government of 1979 onwards introduced an Assisted Places Scheme to allow academically gifted children from poor backgrounds to attend private schools. When Labour came to office in 1997, their first Education Act abolished this scheme. But the policies of the two major political parties are closer than they once were, and there are substantial continuities between the two periods of government. One of the interesting aspects of Conservative policy between 1979 and 1997 was that there was a blurring of the boundaries between the private and state-maintained sectors, with increased privatization within the state-maintained sector. The City Technology Colleges (CTCs: discussed in two chapters in this book), were designed to be the flagship of this process (Walford and Miller, 1991). Alongside the government, private industry and commerce were expected to help finance inner-city technological education. But the CTCs are officially independent private schools owned by trusts. They have their own conditions of service and salary scales for teachers, and overall control is vested in governing bodies dominated by industry. They are able to select well-motivated children and give them a standard of education denied to children from less educationally aware backgrounds. As is now well known, the scheme as a whole met with severe problems and only 15 CTCs are in operation: but the increased competition, privatization and blurring of boundaries inherent in the idea were developed further in later Education Acts. When Labour was returned to power in 1997, the abolition of the Assisted Places Scheme could be seen as part of its traditional policy of opposing the private sector. However, in some of its other policies there is both direct and indirect support. Within the first few months the new Labour government had established an advisory group to focus on the development of partnerships between the state and independent sectors. The Secretary of State for Education announced:

8

PRIVATE EDUCATION

Constructive collaboration and partnership is the way forward in education. We know that there is much that we can learn from the private sector and much that the private sector can share. We want to put aside the divisions of the past and build a new partnership which recognizes that private schools can make a real contribution to the communities in which they are situated. (Blunkett, 1997) Later announcements spoke of an end to 'educational apartheid' between the state-maintained and private sectors, and proposed a new partnership between them. Three 'golden rules' for Labour's new attitude towards private schools were set out. First, high standards in independent schools will not be compromised. Second, change will be voluntary. Third, there will be no imposition from above. It was also announced that £600,000 was to be made available for a partnership scheme between independent and state-maintained schools. Small grants of up to £25,000 were made available for innovative schemes involving literacy, technology, sport, music, art, and other areas that made links between schools in the two sectors and contributed to raising standards. What is significant about this scheme is not the relatively small amounts of funding made available, but the major change in policy that it represents, and the ideological support it gives to the private sector. The unspoken assumption behind the scheme is that private schools are 'better', and that they should share some of their expertise and facilities with local state-maintained schools. While it is certainly correct that many of the major schools do have far better facilities for sport, science, music and so on, it is not clear that the teachers in such schools are necessarily 'better' or that they are ideally suited to 'help' children from comprehensive schools, who often come from rather different social class backgrounds than the pupils private sector teachers usually teach. The scheme has been extended and continued throughout Labour's period of government. Rather than ending the CTCs, as some had expected would happen, Labour has supported and extended the idea. There are now about 30 'Academies' (mostly in inner-city areas) that are officially designated as independent schools, even though they receive all of their recurrent costs from the state. Again, the idea that being 'private' is better is dominant. As part of this new relationship with the private sector, the government also made it clear that it does not intend to remove charitable status from private schools, or impose VAT, which had been seen as a major threat in the 1992 General Election, as it would have led to significant increases in school fees (Palfreyman, 2003).

INTRODUCTION: PRIVATE SCHOOLS IN ENGLAND

9

While abolition of charitable status was not part of Labour's 1997 programme, the clear abandonment of this policy came in 1998. Conclusion The private sector in England provides schooling for about 7 per cent of children, but its significance is far greater than this proportion would suggest. Even though there is little evidence that the leading schools are actually more educationally effective, the belief that this is so is widely held, and it influences government policy towards both private and state-maintained schooling. Further, it has been shown that diversity is actually a central feature of the sector. Discussions that ignore this diversity are likely to be very misleading.

This page intentionally left blank

PARTI Traditional private schools

This page intentionally left blank

CHAPTER 2 A revolution in chains?

This chapter, and most of the other chapters in Part I, draws upon an ethnographic study of two major boys' boarding schools conducted about 20 years ago. The details of the descriptions are thus of historical interest, rather than representing present realities. However, each chapter has a theoretical intent as well as a descriptive one, and deals with issues that are of current interest. Thus, while this chapter gives a picture of both change and continuity, Chapter 3 is concerned with teacher professionalism; Chapter 4 applies Basil Bernstein's concepts of classification and framing to boarding schools; and Chapter 5 deals with gender issues. The arguments made in these chapters are still of considerable relevance.

He hadn't been prepared for separate studies, and was not a little ashamed and delighted with the palace in question. It wasn't very large certainly, being about six feet long by four broad ... The space under the window at the further end was a square table covered with a reasonably clean and whole red and blue check tablecloth; a hard-seated sofa covered with red stuff occupied one side, running up to the end, and making a seat for one, or by sitting close, for two, at the table; and a good stout wooden chair afforded a seat to another boy... Over the door were a row of hatpegs, and on each side bookcases with cupboards at the bottom, shelves and cupboards being filled indiscriminately with school books, a cap or two, a mousetrap and candlesticks, leather straps, a fustian bag, and some curious looking articles. (Hughes, 1857) Tom's first sight of a Rugby boy's study or 'citadel' serves to remind us of the continuities of experience of boys in the major private schools, From Chapter 9 of G. Walford (1985) (ed.) Life in Public Schools. London: Methuen, pp. 204-33.

14

PRIVATE EDUCATION

as well as the changes. The studies may now be larger and the mousetrap and candlesticks replaced by stereo system and strobe lights, but the site for 'study room culture' remains much the same. While some aspects of life have changed considerably, there are others that have remained more or less constant. The main theme in John Rae's The Public School Revolution (1981) is that between 1964 and 1979 the changes that occurred in Britain's private schools were so great as to constitute a revolution. Understandably, John Rae, as headmaster of Westminster School and onetime chairman of the HMC, was keen to emphasize the discontinuities with past practice rather than the continuities. He was prepared to reveal a few of the minor warts, but wished to present an image of private schools that was radically different from the past - one that was modern, relevant and enterprising. He was certainly correct that great changes did occur during his chosen 15-year timespan, but this chapter will argue that, rather than being revolutionary, these changes must be seen as part of a long process of adaption to new demands and circumstances. Further, the very nature of private boarding schools presents considerable constraints to rapid change. In short, if there was a revolution, it was a revolution in chains. Changes beget changes Salter and Tapper (1981) have argued, in a similar way to John Rae, that the rapidly growing emphasis on examination success has been one of the fundamental recent changes within private schools. They suggest that the major reasons for this development have been parental pressure, and the increasingly bureaucratic and qualificationorientated demands from the professions and industry. For the major schools, this push towards becoming an 'examination mill' has only occurred recently. But this does not mean that the change has been revolutionary; rather, as an article by Christine Heward (1984) shows, the change must be seen as part of a wider pattern of adaption and adjustment to external pressures. Heward's research is a historical case study of a single HMC school, and concentrates on the period before and after the Second World War. She shows that within her somewhat less prestigious Woodard school, the emphasis on examination success, encouraged by parental pressure and career requirements, has long historical roots. As industrial capitalism grew, there became greater need for trained professional officials selected through competitive examinations. By the time of the Taunton Commission in 1867, there was considerable concern that schools were not providing an adequate education for the middle classes, for - unlike the upper classes who could bestow

A REVOLUTION IN CHAINS?

15

wealth on their sons - the middle classes 'have only education to look to keep their sons on a high social level' (Taunton Commission, 1867). A group of new proprietary schools, in which middle-class parents sought to have their children educated at 'a price they could afford', arose primarily to fill this need. The Woodard schools, and many others, taught modern subjects such as English and mathematics alongside Latin, and structured the school in such a way that academic study and examination success were emphasized. Heward uses a mixture of archival sources and oral evidence to document the ways in which middle-class parents at this school put pressure on the headmaster to ensure that they obtained value for money. Such parents, who were forced to rely on education as the most important means of ensuring that the family maintained or improved its social position from one generation to the next, made vigorous efforts to ensure their sons entered a career giving security, a comfortable income and good long-term prospects. Entry into such careers required examination success and, it is made clear, it was in order to achieve this that these parents were prepared to invest in education at the school. Thus, rather than being a revolution, the change at the major private schools has been a continuation of a long historic process. As entry to more and more occupations and the universities has become increasingly bureaucratically organized and competitive, fewer and fewer families could be indifferent to their son's educational qualifications. The schools that had once been the preserve of an elite with substantial independent means, who required a classical education to distance their sons from the possible contamination of having to earn one's living, found that these parents, too, were demanding a more solid and encashable return on their investment. Indeed, it would seem that rather than the academic success of the independent sector being 'spear-headed by a handful of boys' public schools' as Rae suggests (1981: 161), it was this handful that were following the way the others had gone many years before. As Cross (1983) relates, The transfer of competitiveness from the sports field to the examination hall has taken about fifty years. The '30s slump started it; the Second World War had its effect; more important, perhaps, was the expansion and opening up of the universities under the post-war Robbins plan. Now even the best-heeled people, apparently, are feeling the effect of the current recession and deindustrialization and are making plans for their children to be sheltered from them.

16

PRIVATE EDUCATION

The old-boy network used to be seen as a way by which pupils could find out about, and be well placed to obtain, suitable jobs, but the increased bureaucratization of appointments procedures and the stiffening competition for available positions has meant that this network has become less important at the early stages. Whether or not it will retain its importance in the later stages of career development, when promotions and transfers are being considered, is unknown; but what is clear is that the major private schools have responded to the new situation at the career-entry stage. Careers guidance and information services have become a major part of school life. Some schools run their own comprehensive careers advisory service, but most of the major schools are now members of ISCO (Independent Schools Careers Organization), which was formed as long ago as 1942 as the Public Schools Employment Bureau. Once again, the date of formation shows that the development of such services for pupils has been a gradual process of adaption to a changing situation, rather than the result of a sudden shift of emphasis. Some 300 schools are now members of ISCO, which provides regular information, training for careers staff in schools, and a series of tests and questionnaires for use by trained staff. ISCO also provides a continuing service for those who have left school, until their twenty-third birthday. At both of the research schools career guidance was taken very seriously. The tests of abilities and interests supplied by ISCO were used as a basis on which pupils and careers staff could explore possibilities for employment. The full programme included an occupational check list, the Rothwell-Miller interest blank, and the Connolly occupational interests questionnaire, all of which were used to 'get the boys thinking' and to widen their horizon of possibilities. Very few boys needed to be pushed into thinking about their future at all. As one of the careers masters explained: I think the boys are far more aware than they used to be of the importance of working - far more aware of their futures. This is one of the reasons why the careers department has developed and expanded its operations - just to satisfy the consumer demand. There's a very serious and genuine worry about the future, whereas 10 or 15 years ago there wasn't. And they are absolutely right. The careers department at this school was, indeed, a large operation with periodic interviews between boys and careers staff, a careers room with information on universities, colleges and the requirements of entry into various occupations, and a series of careers talks for the

A REVOLUTION IN CHAINS?

17

older boys. These career lectures were usually treated seriously by the boys. As the same careers master explained, with more than a hint of sadness in his voice: It's quite interesting. We get careers speakers coming up to speak who start off by saying, 'You all probably think that industry and commerce and making money is a dirty word.' And I know they don't at all - it's ridiculous now. They don't think it's a dirty word at all. It's precisely what they are interested in, thank you very much, and they want to know how to get it - 'How do I get on to this rat race, and how do I make money, and how do I get a good job?' Boys and parents have gradually become more calculating in their attitude towards the schools. There has been a move towards instrumentalism and individualism. Boys are still fiercely competitive, not for the traditional house or school cricket, but for their own individual and future successes. This move towards greater individualism is also to be found in the sporting activities in the schools. Twenty years ago practically all sport played was in teams. Whether it be football, rugby, cricket or hockey, the aim was to establish and develop attitudes of group solidarity and dependence on the collectivity. Such sports are still important within the schools - at the very least, team games are easier for masters to organize and oversee than are the more individual games (the continuing popularity of rugby as against football probably owes something to its ability to keep 30 boys occupied rather than just 22). But team games are now only a part of the sporting activities of these schools. A growing variety of more individually competitive sports is now part of the formal extra-curriculum, and boys may now play tennis, squash or golf, or leam fencing, judo or swimming. The change in sport has, again, not been a rapid revolution but has been a gradual accommodation of new demands. More importantly, although the actual form of sporting activity may have changed to a degree, sport still plays an important part in the lives of these school boys. It is often a political choice as to whether the continuities or the changes are emphasized. In the same way, chapel, although still compulsory in most schools, is now an infrequent activity, and Combined Cadet Force (CCF) is often voluntary, and far less militaristic than previously. Those wishing to present a dynamic image of the private schools will point to the changes; those who wish to present them as anachronistic will emphasize that chapel, CCF and sport are still there, and that the changes are in degree rather than in substance.

18

PRIVATE EDUCATION

In practice, any institution such as a private school has very great difficulty in making rapid and dramatic changes, even if those with the power to initiate are agreed on a course of action. Private schools can only adapt and adjust to demands and perceived need for change slowly, for they are restricted in their possible actions by myriad constraints. Any revolution is a revolution which must take place within tight chains - chains that have the strength of tradition, geography, architecture and economics. The nature and form of architecture and physical facilities of any school are, perhaps, the most enduring aspects of these institutions. When the old boys go back to the old school for a Gaudy (reunion dinner), it is returning to the buildings themselves that is vital. The staff will have changed, the teaching will have changed, the school may now accept girls, but the buildings will have remained more or less the same. The buildings do not only act as physical reminders of youth and vitality, but reflect the educational ideologies of architects and educationalists of the time when they were built. The massive and central chapel now acts as a memorial to a time when Christianity, particularly the 'muscular' kind, was central to these institutions. The clustering of the main buildings of the school around the close, with its prominent cricket square, serves as a similar reminder of the importance of sport. Although many of the schools are housed in splendidly impressive buildings, the influence of architecture on the nature of social relations may go almost unnoticed. Buildings provide the physical structure within which social relations are generated and maintained. They embody, in a physical form, the educational ideologies of past architects, educationalists and teachers, still granting room for manoeuvre for the present occupants, but acting as obstacles to dramatic shifts of emphasis. It is evident that most of the major private boarding schools are housed in buildings which are now very different from those which any school would design for its presentday purposes. The classrooms are either too small or too large, and spread over too large a geographical area. The houses were designed for a different era, when all boys slept in spartan dormitories and heating costs were minimal. The chapel, which stands proudly at the centre, is used for at most one or two hours every week, while the dining hall is so small that the boys have to eat in shifts. The buildings themselves are not unloved by the occupants, and often act as a selling point to parents, but they are rarely ideally suited to modern requirements. Over the years the buildings can be added to and refurbished but this is expensive and can only occur slowly; meanwhile they act as solid reminders of past purposes and ideologies.

A REVOLUTION IN CHAINS?

19

The houses are a very good example of the difficulties that schools face in adapting to change. Ideally many schools, under pressure from both boys and parents, would wish to house all of the older boys and many of the younger ones in single or shared bedsitting rooms, which would give each boy a room where he can work and sleep undisturbed by others. Several of the boys and some of the masters pointed out to me that as term drew on boys got more and more tired, due, simply, to lack of sleep. As Graham Greene (1934) argued some 50 years ago, 'In a large dormitory hardly a quarter of an hour passes without someone snoring or talking in his sleep.' Most schools have now adapted their buildings or built additions so that some of the older boys can have bedsitting rooms: Charterhouse was able to sell land to raise sufficient money to totally rebuild seven of its eleven houses, and these now offer study bedrooms for each boarder. At Eton this has long been the case, but most of the schools are unable to do anything more than gradually improve their present buildings. Also, there are often more pressing needs on the boarding side than new buildings. Many of the houses give an immediate impression of squalor. Paintwork is plain and dull, sometimes peeling. The dormitories may have bare floorboards or perhaps hard-wearing carpet, but they offer few luxuries. The iron-framed, sagging beds offer little physical support or comfort. One of the research schools still had some hair rather than spring mattresses. It was not that it was thought that a spartan life was desirable for the boys, but that money spent on new mattresses could not be spent on anything else. The question of priorities in the distribution of money available is an interesting one, for the agents of tradition and history often have a major influence. The ultimate financial responsibility for these schools lies not with the headmaster or bursar but with the governing body of the school, a group of about 20 eminent people, practically always male. Typically the governing body, council or trustees will consist of powerful and high-ranking members of the Anglican church, the armed forces, universities, industry and the local community. There may also be some hereditary members who are distantly related to the original founders, and a few elected members. Many of the members will be old boys of the school. Uppingham's list of trustees is not untypical in having a colonel, a lord bishop, a cathedral dean, two university professors, a head of an Oxbridge college, a knight, an OBE, an MBE and a Lady. This group of peopl has to be convinced of the appropriateness of any major items of expenditure or any significant changes within the school. One would not expect such people to be among those most in favour of revolutionary changes. Not only has the established order of

20

PRIVATE EDUCATION

things ensured that they have achieved or maintained their positions of eminence, but, as many are old boys, to tamper with the school is to tamper with their own childhoods. Which old boy could countenance changing his old house to a girls' house, when so many memories, both good and painful, are reinforced by its remaining as it was when he was a boy? Which headmaster would be brave, or perhaps foolish, enough to suggest that the grossly underused and expensively heated chapel should be converted to a communal dining room, a move which would undoubtedly make excellent financial sense, but which would strike at the sanctity and centrality of both church and house? In practice, the governing bodies of these schools seem to have been more forward looking than one might expect. They have responded to the direct pressures from headmasters and teachers, and to the indirect pressures from parents, boys and potential employers. Parents are simply not prepared to tolerate complete squalor in the houses, and schools have recognized that, with rising labour costs, hard-wearing carpet may be easier to clean than floorboards, and thus represent a good investment. Money has also been found for new teaching equipment, and many schools, fearing to be left out of the race, have rushed into lavish provision of presently underused language laboratories and heavily-used computer centres. Governing bodies are themselves, however, highly constrained in what they can do. Their primary consideration is that any improvement must be paid for either by direct additions to every school bill or through appeals or gifts. Governors now recognize that their responsibilities do not end with the distribution of money, but that they are also expected to act as fundraisers. Indeed, those governors or trustees who have high positions in industry and commerce are now among the most important to the school. Fundraising and school appeals have become a major source of additional income. It is the unusual school that now does not have a fairly regular programme of appeals, which may be nominally a celebration of 50 or 500 years, but without which new swimming pools, sports halls and teaching blocks would not have been built. The journal of the HMC, Conference and Common Room, regularly contains advertisements from fundraising consultants touting for business. One company advertises that it has been responsible for raising nearly £10 million in the last four years. Individual schools now launch appeals for at least a quarter of a million pounds - some for much more. Such appeals have to be very carefully organized, and are not primarily aimed at parents of boys currently at the school. Instead, they aim to get a small number of large donations from major

A REVOLUTION IN CHAINS?

21

companies, institutions and possibly individuals, which can then be supplemented by a host of smaller contributions. Contacts with old boys who have risen in their careers to very senior posts are thus vital, for it is the directors of major companies who are able to ensure that their own old private schools can receive a share of the company's regular charitable contributions: (as the schools are registered charities, such donations can be claimed against tax and cost the company far less than would otherwise be the case). Such school fundraising campaigns thus have to be carefully managed to ensure that those with the ability to direct or make contributions can see the wisdom of their doing so. The Appeal Prospectus must contain within it major items that can justify donations. Too dramatic changes in the character and nature of the school are thus to be avoided, for institutional giving is likely to support gradual innovation rather than revolutionary change. Such constraints are likely to operate throughout the life of the school, for donations are not only given at times of special fundraising appeals. Many of the schools have gradually built up good relationships with local industries and institutions of higher education. This is often particularly important within the sciences, where it is not uncommon for schools to regularly receive 'cast-off equipment and supplies that, while no longer suitable for high-level research, are more than adequate for schools. The occasional supply of liquid nitrogen or solid carbon dioxide also often comes through local contacts. Such contacts are an important way to keep down fees and to provide better facilities. Being mainly one-way relationships, they are essentially fragile, and masters need to cultivate them and ensure that nothing the school does is seen as too unusual or against the interests of the donator. The forces are thus again towards gradual adaption to external pressures, rather than revolutionary change. The continued existence of CCF also owes much to questions of finance. CCF is much more voluntary than it used to be, as pressure from boys and parents in this area coincided with the feelings of many of the younger masters, who objected to all boys having to take part in what was seen as pre-military training. In some schools, however, all boys do still take part. At Malvern, for example, Boys join the Combined Cadet Force in their second year in the school. At the end of his first half year a boy takes his basic Army or RAF Proficiency Test and after that he may choose from a variety of half-year courses. Amongst these are RAF, NCO Cadre, Royal Signals, Royal Engineers, REME (Motor Transport), REME (Radar), Royal Artillery, Advanced Infantry, Skill at Arms,

22

PRIVATE EDUCATION

Canoeing, First Aid, Casualty Simulation, Typing, Fire Fighting, Police and Band. All boys do a half-year course in Adventure Training culminating in a 48-hour expedition in the Brecon Beacons in winter. (Malvern College Prospectus) At Malvem CCF is thus a compulsory activity and some military activity must be undertaken, but a boy with distinct anti-military feelings can turn to first aid, band or typing (if he is able to bear the taunts of his peers). More open alternatives are offered at Clifton, where, boys are invited to join the voluntary school contingent of the Combined Cadet Force. After a trial term as a recruit, during which he will be introduced to the activities of the CCF, a boy may then choose to serve on a yearly basis, or may join one of the other activities offered at the same time on Mondays. (Clifton College Prospectus) In spite of talk of revolutions occurring in private schools, CCF still retains a firm place, and it would appear that the Forces have recently risen again in importance in terms of providing careers for some of the less academically able boys. Yet, objectively there is little reason why schools should provide training for this future career in particular, as opposed to many others. The others, however, do not give financial support as HM Forces do. The Ministry of Defence gives a grant to schools (state maintained as well as independent) according to the number of boys enrolled in the corps. This can be used to finance equipment and consumables, which are related to, but not necessarily exclusively used by, CCF. Thus a contribution can be obtained towards the cost of sports equipment, physical training apparatus, canoes, musical instruments, transport and so on, which can be used both for CCF and wider school activities. This financial support is part of the reason for the continued existence of CCF in so many schools, and compulsory attendance means that the number of boys in the corps is at a maximum, thus obtaining the maximum grant. Teachers themselves can also often act to restrict dramatic changes. The long service at a single school that is so much a part of the housemaster system is such that the teachers with power and influence within the school often spend 30 or more years of their lives there. They are thus on the school staff for far longer than any headmaster, often serving under four or five in their time, weathering out the 'bad' headmasters and rejoicing with the 'good'. Their power to resist change is considerable. At the lowest level there is simply the

A REVOLUTION IN CHAINS?

23

problem that if a school has, for example, five classics masters who are largely unable to teach other subjects, classics must remain on the timetable until they retire or move. The problem is, unfortunately, at its worst with exactly those declining subjects that schools might most wish to change, for the lack of other opportunities in subjects such as Greek and Latin teaching means that staff movements are extremely rare. To be able to appoint a new computing specialist means that a vacancy must occur in an area in which the school is overstaffed. At a deeper level, masters may resist change simply because they like the school the way it is. The man who chooses to teach at a private school in part because he is a keen cricketer will fight to ensure that cricket maintains a firm place on the sporting calendar, and the same attitude is evident in those who are keen on rowing or mountaineering. It must be remembered that for many of the staff one of the attractions of these schools is that they enable them to further their own sporting and other interests within their work environment, and, although they may complain of overwork, they also would not wish to see these formal extra-curricular activities removed. Many of the masters have also shown resistance to the greater emphasis on examination success. They accept willingly that the schools should try to teach as well as possible in order to achieve examination successes and encourage university entry, but reject the idea that schools should become 'examination mills'. Private schools, the majority of masters argue, are about educating the whole man and must be concerned with the cultural, aesthetic, oral and social aspects of education as much as the academic. Masters have actively tried to resist the calls from parents and boys for increased specialization and even greater emphasis on examinations. The area is very much contested, as it can be in state schools too (Cullingford, 1984). In one of the research schools, for example, I attended a sixth-form parents' meeting where the headmaster was strongly criticized for his policy of forcing every student to take general studies. 'Why', asked one parent, 'can't they take an extra Alevel?' The headmaster initially argued in favour of a broader education than just that which was concerned with examination success, but was able to placate these parents finally only by using the argument that universities liked an element of wider study, and that the general studies in the school might help the pupils at interview. Pressure from parents and from boys was strong and constant. Almost without exception, masters resented this increased examination orientation. It severely restricted their autonomy by forcing them to neglect wider educational issues and confining their teaching to

24

PRIVATE EDUCATION

material on the examination syllabus. One very strong department at one of the schools was able to resist the pressure on the basis of good examination results. The pupils did nothing whatsoever directly concerned with the A-level syllabus in the first year of their A-level studies; in the second year it was 'a headlong rush' to get it done, the pupils had no chance to get bored, and most achieved excellent results. Most teachers, not having the strength of such excellent results to back them, found that the increased examination pressure reduced their independent action, acted against their professional ideology and made the underlying worker/employer relationship more explicit (see Chapter 3). For many masters it came down to the basic question of what the purpose of education is. Is it about offering opportunities for full personal development, or is it simply a means by which parents can virtually ensure higher education for their children and thus give them a very good chance of obtaining a reasonable job? If it is the latter, then some of the masters would find the whole process of what they were doing objectionable, for they clung to the wider definition. In Lambert's (1975) terms, they were still concerned with the 'expressive goals' of the school, and laid stress on character training in moral, religious and/or cultural terms. Serving the community was a more desirable goal than the pursuit of individual success. The boys mainly saw it differently, as less than a quarter of those answering questionnaires at one of the research schools felt that the school promoted service to the community, and most were convinced that the school's main purpose should be to ensure that they got their required examination results. This tension can be illustrated by one occasion in a masters' meeting that involved a long and heated discussion. It was one of the traditions of this particular school that various clubs and organizations for sixth-form pupils went out of school, usually to a pub or hotel, and had a communal annual dinner. On the surface the problem was a simple one: the headmaster had refused to allow the debating club to have a club dinner while allowing some of the other clubs such a privilege. He justified his action in terms of ensuring that parents did not have to pay for too many extra celebratory meals, and reducing the possibility of bad publicity for the school if pupils behaved badly in public. In appropriate debating style, some of the masters argued strongly for the retention of dinners, which they felt were a strong 'civilizing' influence on the boys. They felt that this, after all, was what the school should be about and that, if pupils did disgrace the school when in pubs, this was a sure sign that the dinners were even more necessary and that the school was failing in one of its

A REVOLUTION IN CHAINS?

25

major functions. The 'result' of the discussion was confused, but it seemed that the debating society would have its dinner the next year a small victory for tradition, and a small reaction against the direction of change. Change, when it occurs, is a gradual process of accommodation to new circumstances: many constraints act to slow down the process. Ten myths to be scotched John Rae (1981) tells us that as far back as the early 1960s the HMC was concerned about its unfavourable popular image. It drew up a 'Programme for Action' which was based upon ten 'popular myths that need to be scotched'. These were that private schools: (a) are a refuge for the brainless and the philistine (b) are consecrated to Latin and teach no science (c) are uninterested in sending boys to the new universities and redbricks (d) have privileged access to Oxbridge places, for example through closed awards (e) monopolize the City, Sandhurst, Whitehall and the Bar (f) do not send boys into industry and are disdainful of modern technology (g) foster bullying and sadism, particularly through corporal punishment and fagging (h) have barbaric living conditions (i) enjoy an unfairly high staff-pupil ratio (j) promote homosexuality (Rae, 1981:311) These ten points can act as convenient illustrations of the extent of change in private schools, while at the same showing the continued existence of constraints on change. The immediate reaction is that each of the ten is, indeed, a myth, but each point also needs further elaboration. A refuge for the brainless and the philistine Of the ten myths this is perhaps the one that these schools must now feel they have most effectively 'scotched'. We have seen already that present-day private schools certainly do not now cater for the brainless offspring of the wealthy. The Common Entrance Examination, although retaining considerable flexibility, ensures that the lowest level of 'braininess' (if we can for a moment forget the problem of this rather floppy concept and equate it with performance in IQ tests) accepted by the major schools is certainly above the national

26

PRIVATE EDUCATION

average. Parents now demand that their investment in the school is translated into examination success at O and A-level, and this awesome responsibility to succeed academically is accepted by most of the boys as well. Less prestigious schools, of course, still accept children with lower ability, and many of the independent non-HMC schools specifically aim for this end of the market, employing special teachers who are trained to help less academically able pupils. For the HMC schools, however, not only must the child be able, but he or she must also be prepared to work hard while at the school. Consistent failure to do so results in expulsion. While the first half of this myth is thus firmly quashed, the second is more open to doubt. The schools themselves are certainly not philistine in the variety of cultural experiences that they encourage. Some of the larger schools may even act as cultural centres in music or art for the local community. But there is a considerable danger that a growing number of pupils within the schools are becoming philistine in the sense of having a material outlook and being indifferent to culture. The increasingly instrumental and individualistic attitude of both parents and pupils is seen by many masters as a threat to the wider educational purposes of the school. Philistines, so long as they are academically able ones, can indeed find a home in these schools. Consecrated to Latin and teach no science We have seen that this second myth also has very little truth in it. The days when boys spent all their time on classics have now long gone, and, far from teaching no science, private schools were at the forefront of curriculum development in the sciences, as they were in several other 'modern' subjects. Yet, while no one would now say tha the schools are 'consecrated to Latin', they clearly give it far greater prominence than practically any other educational institute in the country. Some schools still have Latin as a compulsory subject for all pupils, and Rugby, for example, still has more classics masters than English masters. Most seem to still have more teachers of classics than of economics, politics or business studies. In the same way, although science is now a major subject in these schools, and 36 per cent of university entrants from HMC schools in 1983 studied science and engineering, this is less than the national figure of 42 per cent. Thus, while the national figure for arts undergraduates in universities is about 49 per cent, some 55 per cent of students from HMC schools enter this area. Only in medicine do HMC schools enter about the same proportion of students as the national figure (10 per cent). Thus, while the myth as plainly stated is

A REVOLUTION IN CHAINS?

27

untrue, the implication behind the statement, as with any good myth, still has some power. Uninterested in sending boys to the new universities and redbricks When thinking about any institution there is always a danger that the various people within it will be assumed to have homogeneous views and attitudes on policy concerned with the institution. Many masters, especially those most concerned with careers advisory work, are now often very keen to ensure that pupils find the higher education course that is the most suitable for him or her, no matter where it happens to be taught. The growing number of masters who themselves have been to new, redbrick and even technological universities also ensures that individuals within the schools are well aware of opportunities outside Oxbridge. But even so, most of the masters would still probably rather send boys to Oxbridge than the other universities or polytechnics. Indeed, as far as the polytechnics are concerned, Greg Eglin (1984) has shown that state school sixth formers have far more knowledge of this sector than those in independent school sixth forms. His study of sixth-form pupils in four independent and seven state-maintained schools in a single London borough showed that, while aspirations for higher education were the same for the two groups, those from the independent sector had far less knowledge of the polytechnics and much preferred to study for a degree at a university if possible. In general, private schools seem to be keen to send as many of their pupils as possible on to higher education: preferably to Oxbridge, but then to the other universities, and lastly to the polytechnics and colleges of higher education. In practice, it would be difficult for any headmaster of a private school to move away from this emphasis even if he wished to; for it parallels the hierarchy of higher education establishments held in the minds of most parents. The number of Oxbridge places achieved each year is also one of the most easily available public ways in which individual schools can now be ranked. Every year the major newspapers publish a list of Oxbridge places gained by individual schools, ranked by the proportion of pupils in each sixth form. The list, which incidentally also includes statemaintained schools and sixth-form colleges, thus acts as a very public measure of the 'worth' of a school. The pressures are on each headmaster, and hence members of staff, to try to encourage pupils to enter Oxbridge if they have a chance of gaining a place. Schools are sending pupils to other universities, but usually only once it is clear that the pupil is unlikely to reach Oxford or Cambridge.

28

PRIVATE EDUCATION

Privileged access to Oxbridge places, for example through closed awards There are now no closed awards at either Oxford or Cambridge, and both universities have made considerable adjustments to their admissions system to make it easier for pupils from state schools to obtain places. In some colleges there is now felt to be a strong feeling against private school candidates, who are expected to be able to perform at a higher level than those from state schools because they have had the benefit of private school teaching. Even so, at Cambridge in 1983, 46 per cent of acceptances were from independent schools although only 36 per cent of the applications were, and at Oxford 47 per cent of acceptances came from 39 per cent of the applications. Independent schools are clearly much more successful in getting places than are the maintained schools and colleges. The figures show that one of the major problems is that proportionately fewer pupils from state schools apply, either because they feel they will not be accepted or because they simply do not see Oxbridge as desirable. But on application, candidates from independent schools still fare much better. Part of their greater success is undoubtedly due to their schools' greater knowledge of the system and of the individual Oxbridge colleges. The application system for Oxford and Cambridge is still unique in the British university system, for candidates have to be accepted by an individual college for admission rather than the university as a whole. Once accepted by a college, the student has an automatic right to become a member of the university. Applicants have thus to make a very difficult choice between 24 colleges admitting ordinary undergraduates at Cambridge, and 29 at Oxford. Without detailed knowledge of the individual college it is very much a matter of luck as to whether the choice gives a good chance of being accepted or a poor one. The chance depends on the particular subject and the individual college, for candidates are interviewed by fellows of the college and the likelihood of acceptance thus depends, to a degree, on the number of other applicants to that college in the particular subject and on how stiff the competition is. Many fellows take great care with the selection process and will try very hard to ensure that a good candidate who cannot be accepted by the first-choice college gets accepted elsewhere, but, in practice, the number of acceptances by colleges other than the first-choice college is small. In 1983 only 12 per cent of Cambridge applicants gained acceptance at a college other than their first preference, and 11.5 per cent did so at Oxford. While the exceptional candidate will not be disadvantaged, those at the margin need to be very careful about their choice.

A REVOLUTION IN CHAINS?

29

One of my research schools generously allowed me to attend a joint meeting of housemasters and heads of department at which Oxbridge strategy was discussed. In all there were about 20 masters, who pooled their knowledge of the Oxbridge system to try to ensure that the candidates applied to the most 'appropriate' college. They drew upon their knowledge of individual college tutors who might be interviewing, the 'standing' of the college in each particular subject area, and their detailed records of what had happened to applicants in the previous years. The pupils' names were taken one by one and discussed by the group. X college had not accepted either of the applicants last year, Y college was looking for good geographers, Z college had few applicants in history. The recent move of a headmaster from a private school to the head of an Oxbridge college was not looked on favourably - 'He'll be looking for state school boys.' There were difficult long and short-term gains to be balanced in the process as, although the school wanted to get in as many pupils as possible, they also wanted to make sure that a 'poor' boy did not just scrape in and make the school's name 'mud' for next year's applicants. It was felt that they 'mustn't scupper a good college' with a boy who was marginal. 'Perhaps he should try one of the former women's colleges?' Masters tried hard to make and retain contact with individual colleges. Links made while an undergraduate, or sometimes postgraduate, or during a one-term school master fellowship were exploited to try to gain a competitive edge through greater, or more up-to-date, information. The admissions tutors of some colleges were invited to dine with the headmaster. Masters would take small groups of boys on visits to colleges. The information was incomplete and far from perfect, but as a result of that meeting housemasters would advise applicants on which college to apply for, and if they heeded that advice it is likely that they had just that slightly better chance of being accepted. It is thus no longer a case of private schools having privileged access to Oxbridge, merely that they are in a better position to be able to give appropriate advice. Nothing this school did could not be done by any state-maintained school, but the greater number of applicants in the past and probably closer contacts now gave the school a greater depth of knowledge to draw upon, and allowed its pupils a head-start in the race. Monopolize the City, Sandhurst, Whitehall and the Bar While not a monopoly in the strict sense, there is little doubt that there are proportionately more people from private schools in the

30

PRIVATE EDUCATION

City, Sandhurst, Whitehall and the Bar, than from state-maintained schools. Given, however, that HMC schools, at least, have a highly academically able intake, this should be no surprise. The question is really one of whether, ability for ability, there are proportionately more private school boys than state school boys in these elite groups. However, even if the data were available to answer this question, it would only tell us the relationship between elites now and private schools as they were some 40 or 50 years ago. It would tell us nothing about what we might expect the effect of a private school education to be on boys and girls who are at present attending private schools. The myth, if there is one, is thus concerned with the possible future rather than the present. Do not send boys into industry and are disdainful of modern technology This myth is linked to that concerning the teaching of Latin and science, which has been already discussed. It is difficult to generalize about the whole range of private schools in this respect, but as an overall statement it is plainly no longer true that they are antiindustry and commerce. In the last few years there has been a dramatic growth in the number of school/industry link schemes, and secondment schemes for teachers from both the state and independent sectors. Many of the major private boarding schools have played a part in these developments. Malvern, for example, appointed a master for a year who spent half of his time building links between the college and local industry, arranging visits and gathering information (Jenkins, 1982). Wellington has a similar scheme, where about 50 sixth-formers each year spend a few days on attachment to around 20 companies, which include such well-known names as British Steel, Marks and Spencer, and Racal (Hobson, 1983). There is now also a wide range of semi-autonomous groups working within both independent and state-maintained schools to 'improve the image of industry' and to make the school curriculum more appropriate for the perceived needs of industry. These include the Schools Council Industry Project, Project Technology and Young Enterprise. In the latter, groups of pupils establish and own their own mini productive companies for a limited period. Although they have several adult advisors, who may be drawn from the school and local industry and commerce, the pupils themselves make all the decisions as to production, finance, marketing and so on (Conference, 1979). By mid-1984, 24 of the HMC schools had been involved in Young Enterprise. In this area, too, the schools are responding to pressure from parents and boys as much as generating change internally. For

A REVOLUTION IN CHAINS?

31

most of the boys, it seems, industry is 'precisely what they are interested in, thank you very much, and they want to know how to get [money]' (see p. 17) and enter the rat-race. The schools have thus been forced to oblige. Modern technology, too, has a firm place in private schools, the first major injection, appropriately enough, being financed by industry. In the early 1950s there was considerable concern that the private schools might fall behind the state schools in science provision, as they received no state grant. An 'Industrial Fund for the Advancement of Scientific Education' was established, which was sponsored by 141 industrial companies and raised £3.25 million. This was used to give grants to independent and the then Direct Grant schools for building, modernizing, expanding and equipping school chemistry and physics laboratories (Waring, 1979). More recent modern technology has had to be financed on a more ad hoc basis, but computer centres have featured on several appeals, and gifts of out-of-date computers from companies have helped elsewhere. At the beginning of 1982 the HMC established the Independent Schools' Microelectronics Centre, which is housed at Westminster College, Oxford. It was set up in parallel with the government's Microelectronics Programme and aims to act as an information centre and focus for independent schools. It is particularly concerned with in-service education and the development of materials for the whole curriculum not, just mathematics and the sciences (Conference, 1984). Some 81 per cent of HMC schools are members of the centre. This still leaves, however, some 40 HMC schools not in membership, and this is indicative of the patchy response to industry and modern technology throughout the independent sector. While the major schools have been able to find the resources and a welcome response from industry, some of the less prestigious schools have not been so successful or interested. Very well-equipped computer laboratories are now to be seen at all of the major schools, but are sadly missing from many others. Again it must be remembered that, even though there has been considerable interest in technology and industry, this does not necessarily mean that pupils are entering industry in great numbers or doing so with scientific qualifications. Visits to factories and industry may well deter pupils as much as attract them, and the proportional numbers taking university science and engineering courses from private schools are still well below national figures.

32

PRIVATE EDUCATION

Foster bullying and sadism, particularly through corporal punishment and fagging The days of prefects 'roasting' young boys in front of an open fire or bellowing for a fag to do some menial duty have now gone, as have the cane-thrashing masters, long runs and cold showers. But the change has been one of degree rather than of absolute nature. A good proportion of the younger boys in the main research school complained of being bullied and about some of the unofficial personal fagging that the older boys expected them to do. The fate of one boy who had become the 'butt of the year' was also described, showing that bullying and sadism still existed even among boys of the same age. However, the important question here is whether or not private schools still 'foster' bullying and sadism, or whether the degree to which it is found within the schools now is more or less what, unfortunately, would be expected within any large group of boys. Within any school of 600 boys, or girls for that matter, there are bound to be some who delight in tormenting those younger or weaker than themselves. Adolescence is a time of personal insecurity and selfdoubt, which can often be translated into particularly antisocial behaviour. A certain amount of bullying and sadism is thus to be expected: whether or not this is more or less than it would have been had those same boys attended state-maintained schools is a matter for speculation. It is clear that the various studies of boys in somewhat different circumstances reveal a depth of antisocial behaviour that is unmatched in the lives of most private school boys. The racist and sexist 'lads' in the West Midlands reported by Willis (1977), the street boys looking for excitement in Sunderland (Corrigan, 1979) or the gangs of Glasgow (Patrick, 1973) or Liverpool (Parker, 1972) appear to be in a different league of criminal activity to the boys in private school. But, of course, it is possible that they would still have been in a different league if these private school boys had attended their local schools. Fox (1984) has shown that parents are prepared to pay for their sons' education in private school not only because of their belief that the schools will enable their boys to gain better examination results, but because they feel that the school will 'develop character through discipline'. They believe that at private school they will have less chance of being badly influenced by others and thus less chance of becoming antisocial or criminal. There is no way of testing whether they are correct, but it is likely that they are. Two factors, at least, point in favour. First, the freedom allowed in studies, which act as sites for 'study-room culture', allows 'weird ideas' to occur and work themselves through without any real danger or damage. The vast

A REVOLUTION IN CHAINS?

33

array of rules allows the younger boys at least to have a 'risky' and exciting time without getting into any real trouble. Second, the boys were aware that some of their parents were making considerable financial sacrifices on their behalf. Parents made this clear to boys, as they did their expectations as to their behaviour. The risk of expulsion that would be the inevitable result of involvement in gross bullying or sadism would be too great to take. However, it is almost inevitable in an adolescent world that those older and more physically powerful will seek to make their lives more pleasant at the expense of younger boys. When there are mixed-age dormitories, for example, the youngest boys will usually find themselves in the most uncomfortable bed and in the worst position. The older boys will move their more comfortable beds away from the banging door that would otherwise wake them every time anyone goes to the toilet. This might be described as 'systematic bullying', or as just a social norm of the group. Indeed, one of the younger boys, perhaps wisely, argued that fagging was a good thing because the rules and regulations that accompanied it acted as a constraint on what otherwise would be much larger and more unreasonable demands made on him by older boys. Barbaric living conditions The buildings in which pupils live vary widely in age, design and condition. At Charterhouse seven of the houses have been rebuilt, and provide single study bedrooms for each boarder. The boys lucky enough to be members of these houses live in accommodation of a similar standard to that of many undergraduates in the newer universities. The floors are comfortably carpeted, the furniture and fittings are of a high standard and, perhaps most importantly, each boy has a door to close on the rest of the school should he wish to do so. But Charterhouse was lucky enough to be able to sell land to pay for new buildings: the vast majority of schools have either been unwilling or unable to do this, and pupils are still accommodated in buildings dating from the nineteenth century or earlier, which are far from ideally suited to present-day demands. There is little doubt that living conditions for pupils have gradually improved since the Second World War. As schools have become more competitive, they have been forced by parents and pupils to update their accommodation in order to attract the most able. New buildings, however, are usually prohibitively expensive, and schools have had to modify their existing ones as best they can. Brighter and cleaner paintwork is straightforward, as is hardwearing carpet (which can have the additional advantage of actually reducing the labour of

34

PRIVATE EDUCATION

floorcleaning), but many of these older buildings simply cannot be refitted to provide the privacy of single study bedrooms. A common solution has been to provide a new wing of single rooms for the older boys, while the younger ones remain in dormitories, which can be somewhat spartan and cold in winter. A source of some anger and envy in the schools is that, where girls have been admitted into the sixth form, they often have the best accommodation - usually the result of special new buildings for them, rather than conscious sexism. For the boys, to describe living conditions as 'barbaric' may now be inaccurate, but life at school is certainly less comfortable than in their homes. With continual lack of privacy, uncomfortable beds, public washing facilities and sometimes even communal bathrooms, it is small wonder that many of the pupils looked forward to returning home at the end of term for rest and 'a bit of luxury'. An unfairly high staff-pupil ratio The staff-pupil ratio for HMC schools in 1984 was 1:12.0 (ISIS, 1984), while for English state secondary schools the ratio for the same year was 1:16.2 (DES, 1983a). On the surface, the question of whether this is 'unfairly higher' or just 'higher' is a political and ideological issue. However, the raw teacher-pupil ratios do not tell the whole story; because they do not compare like with like. It is generally accepted that the staff-pupil ratio should be better for older children than for younger ones. Thus, in 1984, while the ratio for state secondary schools was 1:16.2, it was 1:22.1 for state primary schools. With the presence of middle schools the dividing age is not as clear as it was, but the majority of pupils reach the secondary stage at 11. Many HMC schools do not start until 13 so thus, by extrapolation, we might expect there to be a slightly better teacher-pupil ratio than in state secondary schools. A greater difficulty is that while the majority of pupils in the state sector do not continue in the sixth form with A-levels, the vast majority of private school pupils do. Again it is generally recognized that a better teacher-pupil ratio is required for sixth-form work than for ordinary secondary school work. One way to deal with this, as is done in the state sector to calculate the nominal staff loading, is to weight sixth-form pupils higher than other pupils in any calculation. Weighting factors are arbitrary constructs, but a common one used is simply to weight sixth-form pupils twice as highly as other pupils. In 1984 there were 225,000 teachers in state secondary schools with 3,646,000 pupils (teacher:pupil =1:16.22). If we count those of 16 and above as all being sixth-form pupils, there were 200,500 in these

A REVOLUTION IN CHAINS?

35

schools. If we count each of these as twice that of other pupils the new weighted ratio becomes 1:17.1. The same calculation for HMC schools, where there are far more sixth-formers, gives a ratio of 1:15.2 for 1984. While it would clearly be possible to argue over the weightings used, it is clear that there is actually very little difference in the overall ratios. In fact, if it is remembered that these same masters at private schools often have house, sporting and social activities to look after as well, it might be more appropriate for parents to question why it is that the teacher-pupil ratio seems to be so bad at HMC schools compared with state-maintained schools. There is, however, considerable variation within the HMC schools and those within the major schools do fare better (though not dramatically so). This myth seems to be untrue, although why the HMC should wish to scotch it is not clear. Promote homosexuality The Hite Report (1981), which questioned over 7,000 American men on their sexuality, found that 43 per cent of men had sex with other boys when they were children or teenagers. This compares with Kinsey et al's (1948) figure of 48 per cent. 43 per cent of those who answered had had some form of sex with another boy: most of these in mutual masturbation (not touching each other), or masturbation by one partner; but almost half (20 per cent) had masturbated each other; about onethird also did fellatio together; and a few had had anal intercourse, being the active and/or receptive partner. Hite goes on to state There was no correlation between whether a boy had had sexual experience with other boys and whether he considers himself 'homosexual' or 'heterosexual' in later life. Many 'homosexual' men had never had relations with other boys in youth, and many 'heterosexual' men had had such relationships. (Hite, 1981:45) Hite makes it very clear that sexual activity of various kinds between boys does not necessarily lead to a homosexual lifestyle or to selfidentification as homosexual. The numerous accounts that she gives show that many of these men had simply found such experiences 'a lot of fun'. On the questionnaire given to the sample of 13 to 15-year-olds at one of the research schools, there were three questions that gave some

36

PRIVATE EDUCATION

limited information on this aspect of life in private schools. Of slight interest was a question that asked respondents to tick which out of 13 attributes was likely to make a boy popular. Being 'reasonably good looking' was rated eleventh, well below practically anything else. A second question was more explicit, asking boys to tick what made a boy unpopular. Being 'too keen on own sex' was only ticked by about a quarter of the boys, less than for being 'unwilling to join in things', 'a hypocrite', 'interested mainly in himself, 'one who greases up to masters' or 'conceited'. Those who did tick this statement, however, often made their feelings clear by multiple ticks and comments on the side. The third question was even more explicit and asked pupils which of 18 attributes they thought being at the school promoted. Homosexuality was ticked by about 18 per cent of the pupils, way below 'the habit of working thoroughly', 'concern for other people', 'self-reliance and independence' and so on. It scored about as well as 'Christian life and values', 'frustration' and 'snobbery'. Of more interest were the not unexpected comments, which ranged from the emphatic 'public schools do not promote homosexuality' to 'not much', 'perhaps for some' and 'only done jokingly I think'. One argued that, 'Due to lack of girls, boys enter upon relationships which start from friendship and then build up and make them into a right load of benders.' In summary, it is clear that sexual activity between boys in private schools does occur. Given that in most schools the boys are together in dormitories for most of the time, it would seem unlikely that those having sexual experience of some kind would be less than the 43 per cent found by Hite (1981). It is also clear that the boys themselves were often able to distinguish between 'fun' and any self-identification as homosexual. In one of the questionnaire sessions, for example, with a group of reasonably able boys, one of them asked genuinely, 'But what do you mean by homosexuality? Do you mean when we're just mucking about or something serious?' showing that he was well able to separate the two, and not label himself as homosexual just because he had some 'fun' with his friends. Older boys confirmed this in conversations. One guessed that perhaps 60 per cent have been involved at one time in sexual activity but they, and he, had given it up as they became older. At least some of the boys at these schools would thus appear to have more balanced attitudes towards their sexuality than many adults. Not all of the boys were so lucky; several masters told me that they had some times to 'counsel a boy who thought he might be homosexual'. Sexuality is not easily understandable in terms of the two usual separate categories - heterosexual and homosexual. In

A REVOLUTION IN CHAINS?

37

adolescence, however, the desire to 'clarify' sexuality and to identify with one or other of the labels (usually the first) is high. The danger in private schools is that the rnyth that they promote homosexuality may make acceptance of a range of youthful sexual activities more difficult. Boys may be more likely to believe that early sexual activity with other boys, or sexual attraction towards other boys, automatically puts them on the 'wrong' side of the divide, and that it is the 'fault' of their private school. Hite (1981) found differently. Of the 9 per cent of American men in her sample who classified themselves as homosexual, the majority had not had sexual experiences with other boys when they were young, and, conversely, of the 43 per cent who had had early sexual experiences with boys, the majority did not grow up to prefer to have sex with men rather than women. Perhaps a more interesting question relates to that 9 per cent of boys at these schools who are likely to eventually prefer their own sex. A school of 600 boys might he expected to have 50 or so such boys. Is the atmosphere of the schools a suitable one for them to grow up in? Conclusion The essence of a myth is that it is a commonly held, but untrue, explanation or description of events. In the 1960s the HMC set out to 'scotch' ten of the myths associated with the private schools. We have seen that, while some are completely unfounded, others still contain some underlying truth. These myths present us with illustrations of an alternative meaning of the term myth - one which emphasizes the aspect of a hidden meaning. Myths are not to be taken at face value, but are to be analysed for their deeper, underlying meanings. That we are forced to look beyond the surface of these myths to their veiled meanings is a measure of the extent of change in private schools. They have gradually adapted and developed to suit changing circumstances. The 'revolution' has not been a rapid one, nor has it been complete: the constraints of geography, history, architecture, politics and tradition, coupled with restricted finance, have meant that there are major areas of continuity as well as change. The historic buildings largely still remain in their ivy-encrusted splendor. There will be changes inside - the toilets will now have doors - but the multiple-bathed bathrooms and lines of open basins may still be retained. Thomas Hughes' description of a Rugby boy's citadel differs only in degree from the way a study might now be described, and the social interaction within these studies is no doubt fairly similar too. For the all-essential distinction that separates the boys in private boarding schools from those elsewhere - that they live away from parents and spend the majority of their time in the company of their

38

PRIVATE EDUCATION

peers - still remains. While private schools are less closed and isolated from the community than they used to be, the social life that develops among peers, with its own joys and trials, norms, regulations and even language, is still heavily influenced by the constraints of history, architecture and tradition. While study-room culture now differs considerably from that of Billy Hunter's peers as described by Orwell (1940), boys still do spend time concerning themselves with the selection of the school soccer team, and also still torment and laugh at the butt of their year. The revolution is a revolution in chains.

CHAPTER 3

The changing professionalism of public school teachers

This chapter is concerned with a small group of teachers and the ways in which their working lives are changing. It draws upon the debate over professionalism and proletarianization as it has been applied to teachers, and traces the discontinuities and similarities of experience between public school masters and the majority of teachers who work in the state system. After a brief review of the literature on professionalism, new empirical data about present-day school masters are presented, and it is argued that the discontinuities between the two types are becoming less sharp. In this chapter I have retained the terminology of 'public' schools, as this is the language that was used by these teachers at the time of the research. The study of professionalism in the literature The junk-room of educational studies is littered with discarded theoretical and empirical works concerned with the professionalization of school teachers. The professions, whatever they may be, have frequently been seen by teachers as being associated with higher status and salary levels, better working conditions, security of tenure and greater autonomy over everyday activities. Professionalization and professional development have thus been used as rallying cries by teachers in their attempts to improve their position by arguing that teaching should have similar status and conditions to the more widely recognized professional occupations. Many early studies of professionalism within the sociology of education thus exploited a trait model of the professions with which teaching could be compared. A limited range of occupations with high status (such as lawyers, doctors and priests) was taken by various sociologists as being indicative of the 'true' and generally accepted From G. Walford (1984) (ed.) British Public Schools: policy and practice. Lewes: Palmer, pp. 111-35.

40

PRIVATE EDUCATION

professions. Their common attributes were then isolated, and used as criteria against which further occupations could be judged, to assess the extent to which they approximated to the 'true' professions. The result is many different, although partly overlapping, lists (for example, Flexner, 1915; Goode, 1969), which range in the number and applicability of the criteria selected according to the polemical or theoretical aims of the study. Leggatt (1970) summarizes the most commonly appearing characteristics: (a) Practice is founded upon a base of theoretical, esoteric knowledge. (b) The acquisition of knowledge requires a long period of education and socialization. (c) Practitioners are motivated by an ideal of altruistic service rather than the pursuit of material and economic gains. (d) Careful control is exercised over recruitment, training, certification and standards of practice. (e) The colleague group is well organized and has disciplinary powers to enforce a code of ethical practice. It can be seen that the nature of the traits selected for inclusion and comparison in these early studies tended to emphasize the rather more positive aspects of professionalism from the point of view of the client. The altruistic nature of the relationship, in particular, received great stress, and has a distinguished parentage. Marshall (1965), for example, believed that altruism was the fundamental distinction between professional and other occupations, and proposed that: 'Service depends on individual qualities and individual judgement supported by individual responsibility. That, I believe, is the essence of professionalism and it is not concerned with self-interest, but with the welfare of the client.' A similar emphasis can be found in the work of Parsons (1954) who also saw the professions as being distinguished by their orientation towards the rest of the community rather than towards self-interest. Such idealism is now, however, generally regarded with some scepticism. This model of professionalism has been strongly questioned for its largely uncritical, ahistorical and conservative bias, and for its failure to question differences in power between client and practitioner (see, for example, Dingwall, 1976; Johnson, 1972; Johnson, 1977; Illich, 1973). Many radical writers would now claim that the major distinguishing characteristic of a profession is the power and control that it maintains for its members against its clients. Professions, it is argued, generate and maintain inequality and privilege, and use the rhetoric of altruistic service as a legitimating mask.

THE CHANGING PROFESSIONALISM OF PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHERS

41

Both views of professionalism are extreme, and it is reasonable to suggest that elements of both self-interest and altruism can be found within teachers and the more widely recognized professions. It is likely that most teachers would hold with a rather more temperate definition. Gosden (1972), in his study of the 'contribution of teachers' associations to the development of school teaching as a professional occupation', states: Any professional occupation is generally held to possess certain attributes including a reasonable level of salaries, pensions, security of tenure, sound training and qualifications and some recognition by the community of the professional's right to influence the way in which the service it offers is administered. (Gosden, 1972: 111) In making this definition Gosden calls attention to a set of rather less publicly admirable traits of professionalism. Clearly he is correct in assuming that they are not just accidental accompaniments of being a doctor or a lawyer, and it would not seem unreasonable to see this second set of traits as additional to, and sometimes in conflict with, the first set. While some authors have argued that all occupations are gradually becoming professionalized (for example, Bucher and Strauss, 1961; Wilensky, 1964), the evidence is against this interpretation, and there remains a stubborn barrier to the general acceptance of teaching as a full profession. Etzioni (1969) has coined the term 'semi-profession' to describe teaching and a family of similar bureaucratically organized occupations. The occupations in this group, which includes teachers, nurses and social workers in particular, have much in common with each other. The size of the occupational group is large, there is a high proportion of female members, the members are predominantly from low social class backgrounds, there is a low level of autonomy as a group, and the membership is segmented. All of these characteristics are clearly in contrast to the characteristics of groups such as doctors and lawyers, and separate them from full equality with these elite professions. In another attempt to clear the fog of confusion, Leggatt (1970) suggested that progress could be made by the accumulation and systematic comparison of further data about individual occupational groups. He suggested that the questions of greatest sociological interest in relation to each professional or semi-professional field were:

42

PRIVATE EDUCATION

What are the characteristics of (a) the particular group, (b) the group's clientele, (c) practitioner-client relations, (d) the organisational context, and (e) the environmental setting? What are the characteristic acts of professional practice? And what are the effects of these upon the quality of professional experience and the status of the occupational group? (Leggatt, 1970: 161) These were indeed new and worthwhile questions but, in practice, the answers to the questions lead directly to further additions to the list of traits of 'true' professions. For if a semi-profession is where the occupational group is large, there is a high proportion of female members, the members are predominantly from low social class backgrounds, there is a low level of autonomy as a group, and the membership is segmented, then a traditional profession is characteristically a small, male, upper-class, highly autonomous elite. In a similar way the more recent work of Ozga and Lawn (1981), while very suggestive of new directions for research, still includes the implication of a basic trait model. They argue (1981: 147): 'Teachers are workers, who have used professionalism strategically and had it used against them, that they have allied with organised labour in the past, and, as a consequence of pressure for proletarianisation, may develop such alliances and strategies again.' While this is clearly true, professionalism can only be used as a strategy if it carries with it the implications of a whole set of characteristics of what constitutes professionalism. The inclusion of specific elements will be argued over, but the use of professionalism as a strategy implies the construction of an ideal type. The 'traditional' public school master In his discussion of the occupational characteristics of teachers, Leggatt (1970) states: The outstanding characteristics of teachers as an occupational group are the large size of the group, its high proportion of female members, its lowly social class composition, its small measure of autonomy as group and its segmentation. These features, although bearing on each other, have independent effects upon the nature of the occupation and its status. Others, such as the high rate of turnover of teachers, their low degree of commitment to their work, and the low prestige and disadvantageous stereotype of the group and its members are more consequences and reinforcements of these primary characteristics than of primary significance in themselves.

THE CHANGING PROFESSIONALISM OF PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHERS

43

Disregarding the questions of the accuracy of these remarks for the majority of teachers and the implications for their professional status, it is clear that for the traditional public school master none of these characteristics applies. The majority of work about teaching as a profession excludes from consideration the very group of teachers who would be regarded by many as having the greatest claim to the use of that title. It can be claimed that public school masters have occupational status and conditions in closer approximation to the acknowledged professionals than any other group of teachers. The aim of this chapter is to examine the limits of this claim, which resides in the many peculiar characteristics of public school masters as compared with the majority of teachers. It will thus be necessary to examine the extent to which the group exhibits the various implicitly and explicitly derived traits that have been discussed. It will be shown later, however, that the situation is changing, so it is necessary to first outline the characteristics of what might be termed 'the traditional public school master' before dealing with the rather more complicated empirical reality. Traditionally, the public school master is part of an all-male, highstatus, academic elite. While in 1980 there were some 500,000 school teachers in Great Britain, there were only about 10,000 school masters in the 200-odd HMC schools. Just as the HMC schools emphasize their superiority, so the use of the term 'school master' emphasizes the differences between staff in these schools and other teachers. The challenge to their elite status that used to come from grammar school teachers has subsided as comprehensivization of the state sector has taken place and these schools have disappeared. As great emphasis is given to the 'formation of character' in the pupils of public schools, it was necessary for masters to be the social equals of the parents, and, characteristically, these masters have high and uniform social class backgrounds. In the tradition of Mr Chips (Hilton, 1934), school masters are themselves public school products, boarding from age 7 in a preparatory school, then at 13 moving to one of the HMC schools. After three years at Oxford or Cambridge for a degree, they return, fairly swiftly, to their haven of intellectual endeavour. Again, traditionally they have a high degree of commitment to their work and there has been a low turnover of masters in the schools. Long service at a particular school is the essence of the system, for housemasters are appointed from within the school, often in strict order of when they were first appointed. If a master wishes to take advantage of the comforts, prestige and power of being a housemaster, he is usually required to wait some 10 to 15 years in the same school before being given the chance, and then holds office for

44

PRIVATE EDUCATION

12 to 15 years. During the long wait he not only has to show himself to be 'suitable' but he also has time to devote himself to furthering his academic subject. Public school masters have been, in fact, very influential in the development of school subjects, working within national and local subject associations, and on examination boards, and writing school textbooks. For example, public school masters had a very important role in promoting and defining the structure of school science through their involvement in both the Association for Science Education and textbook writing. This sort of activity clearly also links with Gosden's (1972) definition of professionalism. Parents of boys in public school have, traditionally, had the attitude that the school master knows his job, and that school masters have the right to specify and implement the services that they wish to offer. The respect they received from parents is accompanied by more solid rewards: salaries are traditionally higher than those for teachers in state schools and there is often the further perk of heavily subsidized housing. Security of tenure is also reasonably strong. The traditional public school master can also make claims to professional status through the traits characteristic of full professionalism that were summarized by Leggatt (1970) into five main points: 1. Practice is founded on a base of theoretical and esoteric knowledge within a specific subject area. School masters do not necessarily claim to be teachers as such; their legitimization lies in their specialized subject knowledge, which is sanctified by an Oxbridge MA rather than a teaching certificate. 2. This subject knowledge requires a long period of education, but the socialization process needed to become the 'right sort of person' to become a school master starts at 7. 3. Contracts between the schools and school masters rarely specify explicitly more than the academic teaching requirements, yet school masters spend perhaps more of their time involved in sports, clubs, organizations, drama, music and pastoral activities. Altruism is a not unreasonable description of much of this work. 4. Traditionally it is the headmaster rather than the school masters who exercises control over recruitment, yet the colleague group is tight enough to ensure that the headmaster does not appoint anyone too at variance with their wishes.

THE CHANGING PROFESSIONALISM OF PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHERS

45

5. And, again, while a code of ethics is not written, an informal code certainly exists, which can be enforced informally by the colleague group. It would seem that the 'ideal type' traditional public school master has numerous claims to professional status. How close are present-day public school masters to this caricature? The modern public school master The empirical data presented in the following sections are based upon research that has been conducted over the last three years in two major British Headmasters' Conference boarding schools. Both of the schools are clearly in the top third of HMC schools, each having about 600 pupils, a teaching staff of roughly 60, and fees of around £4,500 per year in 1982. I spent a four-week period at one school in 1981, and a whole term in the second during 1982. During that time I talked with boys, girls, masters, wives, secretaries, other staff and headmasters. Further information was gained from 80 taped semi-structured interviews with academic staff who were part of a stratified, pseudo-random sample. I only had one outright refusal to be interviewed, but two more 'never had time' on several askings. Eight of the 80 'masters' interviewed were actually women, but to avoid possible identification the masculine pronoun is used throughout (the term 'master' is often used by the schools themselves to include both male and female staff). Table 3.1

Educational background: school

Secondary modern or comprehensive

N= 80 Percentage

Table 3.2

2 3

Old direct State grammar grant

23 29

18 22

Private

Other HMC

5 6

23 29

Educational background: day or boarding Boarding

Day

N= 80

36

44

Percentage

45

55

Same school

9 11

46

PRIVATE EDUCATION

Table 3.3

Educational background: higher education Oxford

N= 80 Percentage

25 31

Cambridge

21 26

NonOxbridge 34 43

Higher degree 10 13

Teaching qualification 44 55

Tables 3.1, 3.2 and 3.3 show the educational backgrounds of the sample of masters. The exact numbers in the tables are, of course, dependent on the particular sample interviewed, but wider study of other sources suggests that they are reasonably representative of not only the two schools involved, but also the full range of major public boarding schools. It can be seen that they no longer are focused on the elite with regard to social background, and that there is considerable diversity of educational histories. There was a small core of 11 per cent who were teaching in the school where they had been pupils themselves. This lack of movement was not something they were usually proud of, and there was often a note of defensiveness in discussion of this aspect. For example: Well in that case, I'm a bad example, because I was educated here, and I suppose I always wanted to teach. I was, in fact, a boy here ... I had no intention of coming here to teach at all. Quite the reverse. I thought that it was a bad thing to come back to your own school. I thought that people were blimps who went back to their own schools. A further 29 per cent had been educated at other HMC schools and, while many of these had an upper-class background and saw public school teaching as a natural progression in their lives, not every HM boy was like this: Well, my own background is not typically public school, let me say that. I came from a sort of ... I suppose it would be called lower middle-class background, certainly not more than that and I went to a village school myself. I never went to a prep school or even knew what a prep school was until much later. So I went to a village school, then I went to a grammar school and from grammar school I was one of the very early people to get the benefit of the 1944 Act, because I took a scholarship to go from grammar school to public school. My parents didn't pay a penny for my education - they couldn't afford it. Strangely, only a minority of the masters in the sample had

THE CHANGING PROFESSIONALISM OF PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHERS

47

experienced boarding themselves as boys. Masters were attracted to public schools as much for academic emphasis as for their desire to be involved in the total boarding community. Practically all of the masters from what used to be Direct Grant schools had been 'scholarship boys' rather than fee-payers, and had been day pupils rather than boarders. One of the early 'scholarship boys' explained: I was asked to take the job from my teaching practice school. I intended to stay for a couple of years, because I . . . because I was curious. I liked what I thought the life might be. As a sort of extension to Oxford in the way of a community and academic/ social/sporting thing. I had a sort of image of the public schools - I suppose based on comics and films - a sort of gilded image. But I didn't think that I really belonged to the public school group. I very definitely wasn't like the rest of the staff - most of the staff then had been at public schools - boarding schools. A common pattern among those from the state sector who had moved into public schools was a desire to be able to teach their subject away from what they saw as a less academic and more trouble-ridden state sector. Some had taught in the state sector for many years before moving into the public school sector. Untypically, one had made an unusual move: I knew nothing about public schools when I went there. It was quite a shock, moving from a secondary modern school to a public school. More usually, people had moved partly as a result of the closure of grammar schools during comprehensive reorganization. Typical of this group were comments concerning their desire to teach able children, for example: Well, I went to a grammar school and I must say that I enjoyed it there and, as a teacher, probably if grammar schools had continued I'd be teaching in one of those. So, by that time, I'd said that I liked the independent sector. I dare say I would have been looking for a grammar school job, and still might be, were there any grammar schools. Because there weren't, the independent sector - public schools - seemed to be the nearest approximation. And that's why I ended up in them - although I'm not in entire agreement with everything about them! A surprising number of masters had tried teaching in public schools

48

PRIVATE EDUCATION

not because they had any great commitment to the idea of private education, but because they felt that the teaching there might be more convivial. The closure of the grammar schools was not the only macro-social pressure. Thirteen per cent of these teachers had a higher degree, and a decade earlier might have expected to gain a lectureship at a university. The stagnation and recent retrenchment within the universities had, especially in the sciences, forced university research workers of many years' standing to take jobs in teaching. These potential academics had little desire to teach in comprehensives. One explained: I suppose I'm guilty of caricaturing some state schools now, when I say that I know so many people who are almost distracted by the difficulties of just keeping discipline. It prevents them from teaching. A further 10 per cent of the masters had chosen to become school masters only after extended periods of quite unconnected work. The range here included international marketing, accountancy, banking, business promotion and restaurantering. For the sample of masters as a whole, the universities attended also often differed from the traditional Oxbridge choice: in total, 43 per cent had no connection with Oxbridge. A fair sprinkling of first-class honours degrees was more than counteracted by thirds and fourths, with the majority achieving second-class degrees. A further challenge to the traditional caricature of an all-male, high-status, academic elite is the fact that eight of the 'masters' I interviewed were actually female. Over the last few years many HMC schools have admitted girls, either at sixth-form level only or throughout the school (Walford, 1983). Some 9 per cent of full-time teaching staff of these schools are now women, and women outnumber men as part-time staff. From the evidence presented so far it can be seen that, in fact, there is now no clear discontinuity between the characteristics of this sample of public school teachers and the majority of teachers in state schools. The two groups overlap rather than being distinct. This does not mean that the 'traditional public school master' never existed, for historically it is clear that the discontinuities were very much greater than they are today. Lists of past members of staff, for example, show that the Oxbridge background was much more important prior to about 1970. Before that time it was only very occasionally that a nonOxbridge degree occurred on the lists, yet now they are common. In a similar way, the introduction of girls and female staff in substantial numbers can be dated to the mid-1970s in many cases.

THE CHANGING PROFESSIONALISM OF PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHERS

49

One of the anomalies with regard to the professional status of public school masters is that teachers in independent schools are not required to have a teaching qualification. The traditional image of the public school master includes the idea of 'natural' teachers. Masters were, after all, gentlemen whose general academic and moral culture was the product of a decade of socialization in prep and public schools. The period of 'training' required to enter public school mastering was thus not a mere year or three of teacher training, but a decade or more of highly structured building of cultural capital. Yet things have changed: in the sample, 55 per cent did in fact possess a teaching qualification, usually a one-year postgraduate teaching certificate. Again, a clear difference could be made between the older and the younger staff, who were much more likely to have undertaken training. At the lowest level this was insurance - 'What else would I do if they closed the public schools?' - but many had thought that it would be a useful year. Again the distinction between public school teachers and other teachers would appear to be declining. Long service is still an important part of public school mastering, but with the shrinking size of the state sector and the lack of career mobility in that system, this is also less distinctive. During the 1960s and early 1970s a popular career path for the public school master who did not wish to become a housemaster was to enter the state sector at a senior level. This might be head of department, deputy headmaster or even headmaster. The movement in this direction has almost completely ceased, and has been replaced by a reverse flow of highly academic teachers from the state sector moving into the public school system. According to the various trait models, professionals ar given great autonomy both as a group and individually to influence the way in which their service is offered. Many of the masters volunteered this sort of information in answer to questions about the advantages of the job from their point of view. One housemaster explained: You're given great freedom. Let me give you an example of the freedom you get. As a housemaster you're given a job to do and you're allowed to get on with it. The headmaster doesn't interfere in any way with the running of the houses and all the houses are different from that point of view. You'll find a different flavour in every house. He likes to know what's going on, but in a way it's like being in charge of a little school yourself. What you do in your own house is your own concern. You could be very idle and get away with it. Another master stated:

50

PRIVATE EDUCATION

I was thinking the other night, in one's teaching and with everything here, you know, you just are yourself and you can take a completely free line. It's not a school where everyone asks permissions of anyone else - you just get on with it. Many of the masters were keen to point out that not only was there a fair degree of autonomy, but that the schools actively and financially encouraged staff to develop their interests. These teachers were encouraged to take an active part in the development of their subject, and finance was usually provided for them to attend relevant conferences and meetings. Several had spent a term's sabbatical as a school master fellow at one of the Oxford or Cambridge colleges, and far more people than would be expected had been involved in the writing of school textbooks and in curriculum development. However, not all of the staff felt quite as independent as this. Several complained about restrictions on their teaching, while others complained about the heavy demands that the school made on their time both in the classroom and out. With reference to out-ofclassroom activities, one of the older masters explained: 'People are tending to be increasingly elbowed into doing things. But, more or less, if you decide that you're fed up with doing something then that's all right.' Quite clearly, if the school organization is to function in a reasonably efficient manner, any degree of autonomy has to be associated with a degree of altruism. It requires that the individual master takes note of the needs and demands of the community and is prepared to do a reasonable share of these tasks. Living in or near a boarding school means that masters are available to pupils for a much greater part of the week than are teachers at day schools. And most of the masters at these schools are prepared to give up their time to help pupils, and do not try to restrict their help to timetabled lessons. Housemasters and assistant housemasters are usually even more altruistic in the use of their time. Pupils' problems, and pupils' joys for that matter, cannot be contained within a regular routine, and masters spend a very great deal of their time involved in schoolrelated activities. Their altruism does not stop there either: many, especially among the younger staff, give up part of their holidays to treck the Scottish mountains, sail round the Isle of Wight, or explore South America. These activities, although obviously enjoyed by the masters concerned, have at least some altruistic element in them. In summary, it has been shown that while the occupation of a public school master has many traits congruent with the professions, it also has many traits in conflict. The image of the traditional public school master is in many ways closer to the ideal of professionalism

THE CHANGING PROFESSIONALISM OF PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHERS

51

than the present-day reality, and, although the process is complex, it would seem that numerous changes are occurring in the occupation. I wish to argue that many of these changes can be seen as elements in a process of proletarianization - a process that is occurring for teachers in the state as well as the public sector of schooling. Before doing this, however, it is necessary to discuss the somewhat different question of the class position of these two groups of teachers. For in some ways here public school teachers are further from the ideal of professionalism than their state school colleagues. The class position of teachers Recently there has been a renewed interest in the relationships between teachers, professionalism and social class (for example, Ozga and Lawn, 1981; Harris, 1982), especially from various neo-Marxist perspectives. The key distinction to be made is between productive and unproductive labour. Productive labour, according to Marx, is labour exchanged with capital to produce surplus value, while unproductive labour is exchanged with revenue. Marx recognized that an increasingly industrialized society would involve more and more people in collective labour, and argued that it was not necessary for labour to be directly adding to use value for it to be productive: The product ceases to be the direct product of the individual, and becomes a social product, produced in common by a collective labourer ... In order to labour productively, it is no longer necessary for you to do manual work yourself; enough, if you are an organ of the collective labourer and perform one of its subordinate functions. (Marx, 1974: 476) In particular, for teachers, Marx argues: a schoolmaster is a productive labourer, when, in addition to belabouring the heads of his scholars, he works like a horse to enrich the school proprietor. That the latter has laid out his capital in a teaching factory, instead of a sausage factory, does not alter the relation. (Marx, 1974: 477) Harris (1982) argues that, while this may have been true at the time Marx was writing, it is now more complicated: Conditions have changed since Marx wrote, and now with the capitalist mode of production the vast majority of teachers ... are no longer employed by individual capitalist proprietors.

52

PRIVATE EDUCATION

They are employed by the state and they are paid out of revenue - they are therefore unproductive labourers. (Harris, 1982: 57) This claim, which is not original to Harris, leads directly to an area of fierce controversy among Marxists, for many would argue that only productive labourers can be included in the working class. Some development of class theory is therefore required to ensure that the majority of teachers are not thus excluded. Strangely enough, there are fewer problems with the social class location of teachers in independent schools. Teachers in HMC boarding schools are not, of course, employed directly by capitalist school proprietors (although some of the less prestigious independent schools are still privately owned), but neither are they employed by the state and paid out of revenue. These schools are now registered as non-profitmaking charities, but charities largely devoted to the education of a select group of children of affluent parents. Teachers are usually employed by the Board of Governors, who delegate day-to-day responsibility to the headmaster, and they are paid, in the main, by the parents or guardians of the pupils through termly fees to the school. The teachers may not 'work like a horse to enrich the school proprietors', but increasingly they do work like a horse to try to ensure that pupils obtain the necessary qualifications to enable them to get well-paid jobs. The discussion is not merely academic. The various pressures on the schools during the 1970s have made masters much more aware of their contractual relationship. In less worried times the ideology of 'the gentleman professional' had obscured this relationship, but now, through the gradual process of proletarianization, it is being revealed. One master analysed the situation as follows: Any transaction involves client, executant and product. In a state school the client may be said to be the child himself, because he is a taxpayer and the state chooses to educate him. The money comes from somewhere - there's no moral problem about where the money comes from. To that extent you are the executant and he is the product, but you collaborate - it's a social interaction which is worthy. But it gets very heavy in a public school. The client is the parent and the tendency is such that a transaction is to turn the teacher into a proletariate. And this school used not to work on this model, but it has worked very much on this model for the last five years.

T

This master then drew comparisons between the situation he was in and E.P. Thompson's description of the changes in the position of university academics in the early 1970s (Thompson, 1980). He continued by giving an example: We were addressed by the treasurer on the matter of money and he offered a model of how he saw the school as working, which was a management structured analysis. The Governing Body were the managers, and we were on the shop floor, and the boys were the products. And therefore, we had no place in the planning of policy and decisions about the directions of the institution. They wanted absolute loyalty. This description, given with little prompting during an interview, emphasizes the changes in the relationship between teachers and employers that are occurring within public schools. It is a description that makes clear that the era of the gentleman professional school master is drawing to a close, and a process of proletarianization has begun. Proletarianization During the last decade or so, the process of proletarianization has begun in very many white-collar occupations. Ozga and Lawn (1981: 124) describe the process: Proletarianization is the process whereby the worker is forced into a closer relationship with capital which removes the skill (the conception and execution of work) and therefore the relative autonomy of the worker. The constant drive towards the accumulation of capital extends the process to more and more workers. As Ozga and Lawn explain, the somewhat analogous job to teaching of an office clerk has changed rapidly with the increase of mechanization, specialization and size. Office work now requires little, if any, discretion or skill and the worker is not expected to understand more than a small part of the whole enterprise. There is a growing lack of autonomy and ability to initiate as tasks become more prescribed, set and standardized. The office worker has increasingly become a manual worker where, according to Braverman, 'The work is still performed in the brain, but the brain is used as the equivalent of the hand of the detail worker in production, grasping and releasing a single piece of "data" over and over again' (Braverman, 1974: 319). Ozga and Lawn summarize the process as follows:

54

PRIVATE EDUCATION

The process of proletarianization is the result of the expansion of capitalist production and the concentration and centralization of capital. This process de-personalizes employer/worker relations, breaks down 'craft' skills, increases technological investment (fixed to valuable capital ratio), automates and de-skills, separates conception from the execution of work and increases management control over workers, their skills and the pace of their work. It continues the division of employees and workers, eliminating contradictory class locations in so doing. (Ozga and Lawn, 1981: 131) They go on to suggest that the process of proletarianization is not confined to the industrial and commercial worker, but can be seen to be occurring to teachers in the state system as well. We have seen that the class position of teachers in public schools is, in some ways, less contradictory than that of teachers in the state system. Their employers have always been, fairly directly, the parents or guardians of the pupils. Yet the nature of this worker/employer relationship has in the past been largely obscured by the ideology of the gentleman professional, and it is only recently that public school masters have begun to experience its full force. What changes have occurred to increase its visibility? Although we do not necessarily wish to give supremacy to the purely economic factors, it is clear that public schools were far from insulated from the recent effects of inflation, recession and unemployment, and that these have been of major importance. The early 1970s, for example, saw a rate of inflation that was unprecedented. Only a few public schools have foundation income, so there was a direct need to either pass on increases in terms of fees to parents or to become more efficient and cost-conscious. One result was that in the year from September 1974 to September 1975, fees at major HMC boarding schools rose by 33 per cent. I have argued elsewhere (Walford, 1983) that cost-consciousness and economic stringency were part of the reason for the introduction of girls into many of these schools, but answers to questions about what changes masters had seen occur revealed that the type of pupil had changed considerably in a number of other ways as well. A very typical response from the elder masters was: I regret that we teach such a narrow range, although that's not quite as simple as it looks. I do regret that it costs so much to send a boy to the school that it limits the field from which we draw. I've seen whole groups of people drop out from the running - school masters no longer send their sons here, GPs

THE CHANGING PROFESSIONALISM OF PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHERS

55

dropped out quite a lot of years ago, army officers, clergymen whole groups of very interesting and worthy people, professional people, can no longer afford to do it. And I've seen the social change and the increase in the number of ex-patriots, sweating away in the Middle East because they think that this is the best way of giving their children a chance ... The 'newly' rich, the contractors and garage owners, and some businessmen who are sending first-generation boys. Again I welcome them because they bring a breath of fresh air and sometimes an awkwardness and questioning of what we're doing - both the parents and the boys. But really what I suppose I'm saying is that I'm sorry we don't get a wider range of intake. This changing clientele has brought with it new demands. Although most of these parents wish to enjoy the kudos of having a son at a public school, they wish their boy to acquire rather more tangible benefits too. The schools are seen as a way by which sons can be given a good chance, in particular with regard to examinations. Time after time masters talked of the increased emphasis on examinations within the schools: I think that we are too examination ridden - it's difficult to get away from it but we're now an 'examination mill'. And parents' expectations when the boy gets accepted by the school are often quite unreasonable. Sometimes, when a new boy arrives in the house you get, 'Now would you suggest Oxford or Cambridge and which college?' And I say, 'I'll tell you when he's done his Olevels and whether we should even be considering it.' But, I think it's quite understandable when the parents are paying our high fees. If the father's a businessman, he regards it as an investment and he wants the dividend in success for his boy. Increasingly, parents are sending their sons to public schools to ensure that they have the best chance of getting vital examination successes and university entry. As the recession continues and unemployment even among graduates increases, so do the pressures on the schools from parents. Parents are no longer prepared to spend £4,500 for their sons to 'run round fields half the time', but want as good teaching and facilities as their money can buy. Almost without exception, masters resent this increased examination pressure. It severely restricts their autonomy by making them neglect wider educational issues and only teach material on examination syllabuses, and this forces them away from the gentle-

56

PRIVATE EDUCATION

men professional ideology. Pressure comes from parents and from boys, and the emphasis on examinations is very much a contested area. For example, at one sixth-form parents' meeting I attended the headmaster was strongly criticized for his policy of forcing every student to take some general studies. 'Why', asked one parent, 'can't they take an extra A-level?' 'Why', asked another, 'can't the school offer a wider choice of A-level?' Pupils, when they complained about masters to me, practically always did so on the basis of their not teaching the syllabus. Even the 13-year-olds, who I watched exploiting one teacher's weaknesses in class, complained to me later that they would prefer someone who could keep them better in order and teach them more work for the examination. Indeed, there was very little indiscipline in classes, and most pupils seemed fully aware of the awesome investment that had been made for them, and their need to succeed. With the changing clientele and increasing academic pressures, the underlying worker/employee relationship has been more clearly revealed to masters. Parents are now less likely to accept that the school always knows best, and to acquiesce to the school masters' demands for treatment as professionals. Part of the change in the backgrounds of masters can also be explained by this increased academic emphasis. Teachers are now much more often appointed for their academic excellence - the 'blue' at Cambridge is less important than the first-class or higher degree. Although there are considerable tensions between the needs of a boarding school as such and the needs of an academic institution, masters are not so expected to be 'all-round' men. Their tasks have become more narrow, more prescribed, set and standardized. Similar changes in the nature of teachers' tasks have been noted in an important article on the form of curriculum by Michael Apple (1982). He argues that, in America at least, teachers are gradually losing control over their work at the level of day-to-day practice. He argues that the growth of pre-packaged, centrally-produced curriculum materials is leading to the de-skilling of the teaching workforce in a similar way as for industrial workers. The construction and details of the curriculum are seen to be the province of experts, who produce not only the physical pre-packaged materials, but also detailed instructions for the teacher as to how to use the materials and to evaluate students' performance. The teacher thus becomes an operative, conforming to standardized instructions and having very little control over day-to-day activity in the classroom. Apple's argument concentrates on curriculum form and, while this element of control is increasing, the main factor for teachers in British

THE CHANGING PROFESSIONALISM OF PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHERS

57

public schools is curriculum content. The ever-increasing pressure from parents forces school masters to concentrate more and more on examination syllabuses. The decreasing choice and control that school masters can exercise in this area forcefully emphasizes the changing worker/employer relationship. Such loss of control over curriculum is only one of a number of changes in these schools which have emphasized the new worker/ employer relationship. Salaries, for example, are now sometimes fiercely fought over. Within public schools there is no standard salary structure, and yearly increases for staff in each school have to be agreed separately. The increasing needs for economy and financial stringency have meant that 'gentlemen's agreements' between headmasters and masters have often been under strain. Most schools advertise salaries which are 'above Burnham', but the scales are not, in fact, easily comparable. For while the Burnham Scale is a series of scales which allow for rank and responsibility as well as age, the scale in most public schools is a single age-related scale, with separate additional payments for special responsibilities. The lack of direct comparability gives schools room to manoeuvre, and several teachers complained to me about the cartel way in which headmasters in these schools had, in the recent past, tried to restrict pay rises. Most masters that I spoke to considered that their pay was not necessarily any greater than they would receive in the state system, although they were expected to work longer hours for it. The 'perk' of rented accommodation provided by the school was also not necessarily seen as an advantage. Younger masters certainly found it convenient to have accommodation provided for them in the early years after university, but as they got older the disadvantages of the 'tied cottage' system became more apparent. Schools are often in areas with little reasonable accommodation available at a price school masters can afford, so they find themselves still living in school-owned accommodation and paying rent at a time when they would prefer to be buying their own homes. A surprising number of older masters actually owned houses in cheaper areas, where they spent their vacations and would eventually retire. The headmaster's role is also one which seems to have changed as a result of economic and parental pressures. Increasingly, it would seem, the headmaster sees himself as part of a 'management team' and uses techniques of management akin to those of corporate industry. Public boarding schools are complex institutions, providing not only teaching for about 600 pupils but also accommodation, food, entertainment and so on. As the scale of the operation has increased and the need for a tight financial grip has hardened, headmasters have

58

PRIVATE EDUCATION

found themselves drawn away from the classroom and teaching concerns and towards the fundraising, marketing and promotional activities that have become vital for the survival of the school as an organization. This change of emphasis shows itself in many ways, one of which is job security. Surprisingly, tenure of appointment now seems to be less secure in these schools than in state schools. In state schools it is very difficult indeed to sack any teacher, but it is not quite so problematic in the private sector. Several of the staff I talked to were genuinely concerned that their contracts might be terminated by the school. In other cases, masters had, over a time, clearly been 'eased out' of their jobs. Very rarely would it come to an outright sacking, because teachers know that, within the tightly restricted world of public schools, a reasonable reference from their current headmaster is vital if they are to secure future employment elsewhere. The pressures on headmasters are now such that any form of inefficiency within the staff cannot be allowed to continue for very long. Unpleasant decisions have to be made. Another key member of the 'management team' is the bursar. It used to be fairly common for a retired army or airforce officer to occupy this post, but as one bursar explained: It's getting a lot less common. It's now very much an accountant-orientated game ... I think most schools are now looking much more for the direct business management/ accountant bloke than they are the retired service man ... In a lot of cases schools are going for straight business management. They're going for the chap out of Marks and Sparks or something like that. Such management control on the financial side influences the more academic decisions too. Masters feel these new pressures on them in their daily working lives. There are many indications therefore, that the process of proletarianization is occurring in these public schools. The working conditions and degree of autonomy that masters have over their work are changing. In this way the masters find themselves in a possibly more visible worker/employer relationship than do state school teachers. Another interesting point is that, again probably to a greater extent than state schools, these public schools are moving into a closer relationship with the needs of capital and industry. In some ways it is possible to date this movement to as long ago as the mid-1950s when an Industrial Fund was set up whereby eventually some £3.25 million

THE CHANGING PROFESSIONALISM OF PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHERS

59

was given by industry to public and Direct Grant schools to enable them to build and equip science laboratories. But at that time the predominant interest was with the pure sciences: it is only more recently that business and industry as such have been brought into the curriculum. As Salter and Tapper (1981) have pointed out, public schools are no longer bastions of classical education, but have swung towards science, design and technology. They have been at the forefront of developments in O- and A-level business studies, economics and business with modern language courses. They have played a major part in Young Enterprise schemes, helped develop Science in Society courses and have invested massively in technology within the schools in the form of computer laboratories and engineering and technology centres. In the days of full employment and 'special relationships' between public schools and Oxbridge, few schools worried about the eventual careers of their pupils. Increasing unemployment and Oxbridge's more open admissions schemes have changed all that, so that now all the major schools are members of ISCO (Independent Schools Careers Organization) and run substantial careers development programmes. Boys now visit industry, and industrialists and businessmen visit schools to give talks. Malvern College is so keen to improve links with industry that one master now has a half-time teaching load and a special three-year fellowship that enables him to spend the rest of his time developing industrial contacts (Jenkins, 1982). Increasingly these public schools see themselves as serving the needs of industry, business, and thus capital. Conclusion It has been shown that the traditional image of public school masters as a distinct all-male elite group is no longer appropriate. Although there are still elements of gentlemanly professionalism, it appears that a process of proletarianization has begun, and the ideology of professionalism is becoming insufficient to mask the objective class position of these school masters through their worker/employee relationship. The pressures of inflation, recession and unemployment have had major influences on the working conditions and nature of the work experience of these masters, and have in many ways brought them closer to state school teachers. For teachers in the state sector Ozga and Lawn (1981: 147) conclude: 'Our position is that teachers are workers, who have used professionalism strategically and had it used against them, that they have allied with organised labour in the past

60

PRIVATE EDUCATION

and in consequence of pressure for proletarianization may develop such alliances and strategies again'. Public school masters in the past have had little to do with organized labour or trade union activity. They have not seen the activities of the teaching unions as having a great deal to do with them, and few public school masters are members. It may well be that a membership drive by these unions could reap large rewards because, in their struggle against proletarianization, these school masters could find that there is much to be gained by a collective strategy.

CHAPTER 4

Classification and framing in English private boarding schools

Introduction In 1990, John Major campaigned for the leadership of the British Conservative Party and the position of Prime Minister on the platform of a classless society. He spoke of his hope of building a society of opportunity in which individual success would depend on talent and application and not on luck or good fortune. John Major's own rise to power might be seen as a reflection of his desire for this classless society, for his family was lower working class and he left school at age 16 with few qualifications to his name. Yet Major's choice of members for his Cabinet showed that the classless society had not yet arrived. Of the 22 members of Major's first Cabinet, 19 had attended private schools - mostly of the status that usually confers the somewhat confusing title of 'public' school. Included within the Cabinet group were former pupils of Marlborough College, Shrewsbury, Loretto, Dulwich, Sedbergh, George Heriot's, Charterhouse and St Paul's. Two schools - Rugby and Eton - had two members each. Most of these men, selected by John Major for the highest political positions in the country, spent their early years as boarders at one of a select group of highly prestigious and elite schools. Moreover, only one of the Cabinet had entrusted the education of his own children entirely to the state-maintained sector. Sixteen members used only the private sector for their children, whereas the rest used a judicious mixture of state-maintained and private schools. Clearly, the government as a whole was not uniformly supportive of the idea of a classless society, for these leading members were prepared From P. Atkinson, B. Davies and S. Delamont (1995) (eds) Discourse and Reproduction. Essays in honor of Basil Bernstein. New Jersey, USA: Hampton Press, pp. 191-207, based on an earlier article in British Educational Research Journal (1986) 12, 2, pp.183-95.

62

PRIVATE EDUCATION

to pay high fees in the belief that private schooling would ensure a better than fair chance of success for their own children. But it is possible that they were wasting their money? That certain private schools have been the traditional nurseries of statesmen and of those with high power, wealth and prestige, does not mean that they still retain that role. This chapter discusses the relationships among school, higher education and work for pupils at these elite English private boarding schools. It uses the concepts of classification and framing developed by Basil Bernstein to illuminate the continuities and contradictions in experience of these pupils as they pass from school to university and into their careers. The aspect of Bernstein's work that is considered here is that relating to the curriculum and pedagogy, and draws particularly on his concepts of classification and framing. These were first introduced in a much quoted article (Bernstein, 1971) in which two educational knowledge codes were discussed, which differed according to the underlying principles that shape curriculum, pedagogy and evaluation. A curriculum of a collection type is characterized by strongly bounded knowledge areas with little linkage between them. The learner is required to collect a group of favoured contents in order to satisfy some criteria of evaluation. On the other hand, an integrated curriculum emphasizes the interdependence of various areas of knowledge, and attempts to transcend traditional boundaries. Bernstein argued that any structure for the transmission of knowledge will symbolically reproduce the distribution of power in society, and introduced the concept Where classification is strong, contents are well insulated from each other by strong boundaries. Where classification is weak, there is reduced insulation between contents, for the boundaries between contents are weak or blurred. Classification thus refers to the degree of boundary maintenance between contents. (Bernstein, 1971: 49; emphasis in original) The concept of frame is also introduced, and refers to the strength of the boundary between what may be transmitted and what may not be transmitted in the pedagogic relationship. It indicates 'the degree of control teacher and pupil possess over the selection, organization, pacing, and timing of knowledge transmitted and received in the pedagogical relationship' (1971: 50). The strength of framing thus refers to the range of options available to the teacher and taught in the control of what is transmitted and received. Thus, 'from the perspective of this analysis, the basic structure of the message system, curriculum, is given by variations in

CLASSIFICATION AND FRAMING IN ENGLISH PRIVATE BOARDING SCHOOLS

63

the strength of classification, and the basic structure of the message system, pedagogy, is given by variations in the strengths of frames' (Bernstein, 1971: 50). Since that first paper, Bernstein has developed these ideas considerably (Bernstein, 1990a), but unfortunately his exposition of these developments is highly complex, such that the original illuminative nature of the concepts has been obscured. The opacity of Bernstein's writing is also partly responsible for the continued criticism to which it has been subjected. In fact, since the original formulation, criticisms appear to have been more plentiful than examples of use. One prominent critic is King (1976, 1981), who argued against the concepts on empirical and theoretical grounds. Another is Pring (1975), who questioned the theoretical structure of Bernstein's dichotomous categories. Gibson (1977, 1984) extended this critique and claimed that it is 'an exercise in mystification' and that the original 'paper actually distorts, and directs attention away from the sociological thesis it sets out to demonstrate' (1984: 118). The attack thus focused particularly on the lack of clarity and the ambiguity of concepts employed, both at the theoretical and operational levels. In spite of Bernstein's (1990b) attempts to deal with this criticism, much of it is undoubtedly justified. However, it must be recognized that Bernstein himself originally saw this part of his work as 'a search for the basic concepts themselves' (1975: 15). In spite of this extensive criticism, several authors have found the general framework useful in attempting to clarify a range of educational problems. Walker (1983), for example, has used Bernstein's concepts of classification and framing within a historical analysis of different social regimes in colleges of education over a century, and Aggleton and Whitty (1985) have applied them to a study of the subcultural practices of a group of new middle-class students in an English college of further education. Examples of broader and more flexible usage include Rodger's (1985) study of a large public inquiry and Walford's (1981) account of problems within postgraduate research. The usefulness of the concepts, however, can perhaps best be seen in Bernstein's own early articles. In 'Class and pedagogies: visible and invisible' (Bernstein, 1973), they are used to uncover the relationship between social class and educational advantage in progressive preschool and infant school classrooms. He showed that the invisible pedagogy that is at the base of progressive methods is inherently advantageous to pupils from new middle-class families, whereas children from working-class homes are at a disadvantage. A more important article in the context of the present discussion is 'Aspects of

64

PRIVATE EDUCATION

the relations between education and production' (1977), which looks at the continuities and discontinuities between education and work. Here, the earlier definitions of classification and framing are broadened; they 'have become more abstract and the link between power and classification and framing and control has become more explicit' (1977: 84). Bernstein argued against a simple correspondence theory of education that assumes that dispositions valued in the school are identical to dispositions required by the workplace, and used these developed concepts to argue that classification and framing in schools does not always mesh with the classification and framing required in the workplace. Bernstein's main example is that of less able working-class pupils, rather like those discussed by Willis (1977) and Corrigan (1979), who (if they are to be employed at all) are likely to occupy unskilled or lowly skilled manual jobs. The most clear example might be production-line assembly work. These jobs are ones where the ability to follow instructions within an organized hierarchy of command is valued and in which initiative, individuality, creativity and criticism are discouraged. In short, they are usually jobs in which both classification and framing are high. There is high insulation between those who control the production process and those who execute production, and between the various tasks and grades of production personnel. Tasks are simple, repetitive and tightly defined. The pacing, organization and timing of the production process is strictly controlled by people other than those actually doing the work. If there was continuity between the educational system and the world of work, then it would be expected that the classification and framing experienced by these pupils in schools would be similarly high. Yet, in practice, this is exactly the group of secondary school pupils for whom the curriculum is most likely to be weakly classified and framed. Although more able students are tackling the collection code of public examinations, this group is most likely to be involved in the integrated code of combined sciences, integrated humanities, project work, social and life skills and so on. At the time Bernstein was writing, the grip of the examination system had yet to become all-pervasive, and weak levels of classification and framing were still occurring where pupils were expected to take few, if any, external examinations. Schools had developed more integrated course structures for this group of pupils in an attempt to maintain interest or just some semblance of control. But the consequence of this was that far from the schools acting smoothly as agents of reproduction of the workforce, instead they performed as interrupters and produced a clear discontinuity in the system.

CLASSIFICATION AND FRAMING IN ENGLISH PRIVATE BOARDING SCHOOLS

65

It is worth noting that this discontinuity in classification and framing, which, at least to some extent, must be seen as the result of resistance and fighting back on the part of liberal teachers and working-class pupils themselves, is currently undergoing rapid change. The introduction of the National Curriculum, with its associated testing and the extension of examinations to pupils of practically all abilities, is leading to much strengthened classification and framing for these pupils. For those lucky enough to find work, movement is towards greater continuity of experience between school and employment. Ironically, of course, such tight classification and framing is totally inadequate for the lengthy periods of unemployment that many such young people now have to suffer. Classification and framing in private schools a first look Although some discontinuities in the social reproduction process have been located in the relationship between working-class schooling and jobs, it would seem likely that the ruling class would ensure that there was a much firmer continuity between the two for its own offspring. It is thus of interest to examine the classification and framing experienced by pupils in the separate private sector and to determine the extent of continuity or discontinuity between schooling and the type of occupations in which those from private school are likely to spend their later years. The data and argument presented in this section are based on a wide range of documentary data, and an ethnographic study conducted in two of the major private boarding schools in England. About a month was spent in one school and a whole term in the second. Interviews were conducted with teaching, administrative and domestic staff as well as pupils, and time was spent observing lessons, meetings, sports, and both formal and informal social occasions. A full report is published elsewhere (Walford, 1984, 1986a). Although the private school sector in England is small, serving only about 8 per cent of the relevant age range, it is highly diverse. The highly prestigious and well-known boarding schools such as Rugby, Eton and Charterhouse are only a small part of a very wide range of schools that, at the lower end, offer anything but advantage to the children who happen to be confined in them by their parents or guardians (Walford, 1991c). It is important to emphasize that the elite schools with which this chapter is concerned are only a small part of the private sector, and that these schools have traditionally been schools for boys only. While there are some 233 schools with headmasters who are

66

PRIVATE EDUCATION

members of the Headmasters' Conference (HMC), in the context of the reproduction of the ruling class, a much smaller group of schools is central. There are, perhaps, some 40 to 50, mainly boarding schools, that have had, in the past, a significant part to play in ruling-class education. This is not to say that all pupils at these schools are necessarily from ruling-class backgrounds. The incidence of scholarships of various kinds, including the government's Assisted Places Scheme, as well as children from families with 'new' money, mean that these schools do not serve pupils with homogeneous class backgrounds. On the other hand, these public boarding schools have been the traditional place at which ruling-class parents educate their sons. Although there has been a shift towards day provision and away from boarding, it is clear that many ruling-class parents still prefer to have their children educated in these public schools rather than trust the state comprehensive system. They expect that these schools will educate their children in such a way that the hierarchical class structure of society can be maintained, and that they will be able to pass on to their own children their high and advantageous positions, legitimized through the academic and personal success of their children (Fox, 1985). In short, they expect there to be considerable continuity between schooling and the leading occupations that they hope their children will eventually occupy. In terms of classification and framing, however, a parent might have cause for concern about the usefulness of his or her investment. Over the last two decades the leading public schools have become fiercely and openly academic (Rae, 1981; Walford, 1986a). The increased competition from pupils at state-maintained schools and colleges for entry to universities and professions has meant that examination success has become the central preoccupation towards which the private schools orientate. Two fistfuls of GCSEs (General Certificate of Secondary Education) and one fistful of A-levels (Advanced levels) have become the mark of a successful 'product' of these schools. The formal curriculum of the schools is thus an almost pure collection code. Classification and framing are uniformly high, with the pressures of the examination syllabus being felt throughout the school. On entry at age 13, boys start a 3, or sometimes 2-year course towards a GCSE. They will usually be taking between 8 and 12 separate GCSE academic subjects. The teaching throughout will be rigidly timetabled, with each different subject being taught by specialist academic staff. There may be no integration whatsoever between subjects. On achieving GCSEs, the expectation is that pupils will then stay two years longer and take at least three A-level subjects. The vast majority do so and have a high rate of success: in 1991,

CLASSIFICATION AND FRAMING IN ENGLISH PRIVATE BOARDING SCHOOLS

67

nearly 90 per cent of the leavers who had taken A-level examinations or similar in the HMC schools went on to higher education. The rather smaller group of highly prestigious private boarding schools has an even better rate of entry to higher education. Yet, although strong classification and framing in private schools does give a high chance of entry to higher education, there is considerable discontinuity between the strength of classification and framing in schooling and how much this strength is required in the higher education institutions and the high-status and ruling-class occupations for which these pupils hope they are destined. The archetypal professional occupation is weakly classified and framed. The professional is expected to be creative and forward-looking, to initiate and control rather than be controlled. The nature and extent of occupational responsibilities are not firmly bounded, but expand as new initiatives are taken. The division between work and play is porous, as professional commitments overlap with family responsibilities, professional colleagues merge with personal friends, and work from the office overflows into the home study. The professional does not work set hours, but works until the particular projects with which he or she is concerned are completed to satisfaction. Organization, pacing and timing of the work are set by the professional rather than any superior. It would be difficult to conceive of anything more different from the strongly classified and framed formal curriculum of private schools. The immediate move to higher education would also appear to mark a distinct discontinuity, for there is rarely a strong system demanding that work be regularly and conscientiously completed. In most universities students could do little work for an entire term without any lecturers noticing. Incidentally, the traditional tutorial system at Oxbridge is better designed to meet the problems that exprivate school pupils may face than the majority of other universities, for undergraduates there have weekly tutorials at which work must be produced. The recent pressures on all universities to increase student numbers will mean that, even at Oxbridge, large-group teaching will probably become the norm, and classification and framing will weaken. At one of the research schools, I attended a meeting of staff at which the 'poor tutorial arrangements' at universities were discussed. Without exception the staff saw the fault as being with the universities for not pushing students as hard as was done in schools. None saw the necessity to allow students to take responsibility for their own work. Their concern, however, was justified in that it sprang from reports of past 'good' students failing, or doing badly, at the end of the first year at university.

68

PRIVATE EDUCATION

The formal extra-curriculum and formal social life The preceding analysis would seem to indicate that the discontinuities between schooling and work are as dramatic with ruling-class pupils as they are with pupils from working-class families. In practice, such a claim is not straightforward for, so far, only the strength of the classification and framing of the formal curriculum have been considered. In private boarding schools the term 'curriculum' has to be widened to include a much broader range of pupil activities, for much that would elsewhere be regarded as outside the province of the school is a necessary part of private school life. In day schools, extra-curricular activities are, by definition, ultimately optional, but in boarding schools these very same activities traditionally become part of the formal expectations. Perhaps the clearest example is sports. Boys are not only expected to take part in the main sport according to the season, but must usually take on other sporting activities on some of the days when the main sport is not played. Thus, rugby or soccer in the winter and cricket or rowing in the summer may occupy three or four afternoons each week and, apart from practice sessions, there are inter-house matches for each age group. Only very few are able to escape playing for their house at some level. The expectations of the school do not stop there, however, for many of the schools set aside a further afternoon each week for socalled 'minor games', which can include those more individual sports such as golf, squash, or swimming, or team games such as basketball, hockey or water polo. Again, competitions are organized at both house and school level, and the pressures of small numbers in each house are so great that even boys who are not particularly keen or able still find themselves involved at a competitive level. The formal extra-curriculum extends further than sport. Cultural and artistic activities are often far from truly optional, so that although no boy would be actually forced to play an instrument, the encouragement to do so is high. Major concerts, in which outside musicians are hired by the school, are occasions at which much of the audience actually might well prefer to be elsewhere. Drama has a tendency to engulf many more pupils than might be expected and, where house plays are the order of the day, each house extends its powers of persuasion so that most of its members are either acting or working in front of house or backstage. Societies and activities in themselves are usually viewed as desirable. Many of the schools have set times when pupils must be engaged in some officially recognized 'activity'. The list of possibilities is usually long and ranges from chess and cycling, to mahjong and mountaineering, and to stamps and scuba. The choice may be wide

CLASSIFICATION AND FRAMING IN ENGLISH PRIVATE BOARDING SCHOOLS

69

and open to negotiation, but the important point to recognize is that each pupil has to choose at least one of these pursuits and become active in it. Most of the private schools were established to further a particular religious viewpoint. Those with medieval parentage still cluster around cathedrals, whereas the Victorian foundations usually have the chapel as the geographical focus of the group of rambling buildings. Undoubtedly chapel now plays a much smaller part in the lives of the schools than formerly, but it is still a clear area in which private boarding schools extend the formal extra-curriculum into areas almost untouched in day schools. Chapel services may now be only two or three mornings each week rather than six, and these services are mercifully short, but many schools still retain compulsory chapel on one occasion each Sunday. In boarding schools, the school curriculum must be thought of as far wider than merely timetabled lessons and even these formal extracurricular activities, for the influence of the school extends deep into areas that elsewhere would be in the private domain and not the business of the school. Day pupils live only part of their lives in schools, and, for many, school-based judgements play only a small part in their own self-conceptions or in the evaluations made of them by others. The influence of parents in the home and, perhaps, friends drawn from a range of extra-school interests will probably have a far greater impact than that of the school. For the boarding school pupil, however, life is lived completely within the school's influence for the whole of the term. Official regulations thus extend to cover all activities, from the time a pupil must be out of bed and into breakfast until the time that lights must be extinguished in the dormitories. There are regulations as to where pupils may or may not be at all times of the day, what they may wear and how they should behave. But, although the rules may be many, this part of the total school curriculum is essentially weakly classified and framed. Individual rules and restrictions are open to negotiation between masters and pupils, and as it is simply not possible to lay down rules for every eventuality, schools rely on a general overarching rule such as 'You are expected to show common sense, good discipline and good manners at all times', with all its possible ambiguity and space for different interpretations. Within the houses pupils have considerable autonomy of action for, as long as they do the required timetabled activities, they are free to spend the rest of the time much as they wish. Masters will generally only interfere in social activities if they are perceived to go beyond the general rule of 'common sense, good discipline, and good manners', which can never be explicitly defined. Yet, although these expecta-

70

PRIVATE EDUCATION

tions are poorly defined and diffuse, pupils recognize that they are of major importance and know that masters expect an 'appropriate' level of keenness, enthusiasm, responsibility, behaviour and so on from them throughout the entire time they are at school. As with childcentred progressivism in the infant classroom, a far wider range of the pupils' attributes and activities are seen as legitimate objects of evaluation and scrutiny: judgements of success or failure are based on a multiplicity of dimensions. Classification and framing in private schools - a second look The universities and other institutions of higher education force both private and state-maintained schools to adopt a highly classified and framed curriculum for academically able pupils. They demand the acquisition of numerous A-level and GCSE passes in a variety of set subjects, and pressure the schools towards collection codes and the visible pedagogy for pupils who wish to enter higher education and hence the professional occupations. Although private schoolboys may still have a slight unfair advantage in terms of Oxbridge admissions (Halsey et al, 1984), the differences are now small, and university entry cannot be gained without the necessary clutch of high grade Alevel passes. The strong classification and framing within the formal curriculum may be seen as a direct result of the increasingly meritocratic pressures on all schools: but the private schools, through the formal extra-curriculum and the formalization of social life, have been able to offer a total school curriculum that has elements of far weaker classification and framing. It has been possible for the private schools to offer a curriculum based on the invisible pedagogy and the integrated code alongside the visible pedagogy and the collection code. The key to understanding this is that, in private boarding schools, work and play become intertwined, whereas for day pupils work and play are essentially separate domains. There may, of course, be some overlap of geographical location of what is regarded as work for all school pupils - homework is taken home - but the day pupil can clearly differentiate what is 'homework' (the work of the school carried into another geographical location) from 'play'. For the boarding school pupil, the work and responsibilities of school are ever present. The day pupil interacts with teachers who for all practical purposes only exist between 9 and 4 for five days a week, but the boarding school pupil has to take account of school authority continuously. Lives are lived in the expectation that all aspects of work and play, be these academic, cultural, behavioural or attitudinal, are open to being evaluated at any time.

CLASSIFICATION AND FRAMING IN ENGLISH PRIVATE BOARDING SCHOOLS

71

Pupils in private boarding schools essentially live under the invisible pedagogy, in which criteria for evaluation are multiple and diffuse. Their activities are constantly open to evaluation (in the formal curriculum of subject teaching, the extra-curriculum of sport and cultural activities, and in the social activities in houses), and that evaluation is conducted by the very same school masters. The master who teaches English may coach cricket and act as an assistant housemaster. Thus he may pervade all aspects of a pupil's life. The expectation is that the best pupils will not only be successful academically, but they will also flourish at sport, art and other cultural pursuits as well. Just as important, pupils are expected to acquire a whole set of behaviour patterns, morals, tastes and attitudes that are the essence of appropriate character training for their anticipated future positions in society. Here the emphasis is on the whole person, who is taught and evaluated through the invisible pedagogy, in which there is much reduced emphasis on the mere transmission and acquisition of specific skills (as in the visible pedagogy). To summarize, boarding school pupils experience a total curriculum in which work and play are intertwined. Within classroom subject work, the classification and framing may well be as strong as found anywhere and, indeed, the organized 'prep' periods, for younger pupils at least, ensures that the direct extension of subject work into 'homework' is far more strongly classified and framed than most day pupils would experience. But, although day pupils live essentially in two separate domains, the unified world of the private boarding school with its much extended curriculum allows there to be a flourishing additional invisible pedagogy in operation. In a similar way to the infant school pupils discussed by Bernstein (1973), pupils here know that they are expected to be constructively 'busy' throughout their time at the school. They know that the quality of their 'busyness' will be evaluated on multiple and diffuse criteria by the same people who evaluate daily their academic work. Having recognized the several elements of the curriculum available in private boarding schools, it is necessary to re-evaluate the degree of continuity that there is between school and work for these pupils. It was shown that, at the surface level, there appeared to be a distinct discontinuity between the strong classification and framing found in the formal curriculum and that required in desirable occupations for this group. The ruling-class and professional-level occupations that are sought by parents and pupils at private schools may be characterized by their weak classification and framing: success in the business world, for example, requires a broad range of abilities,

72

PRIVATE EDUCATION

interests and attitudes. The golf and yachting club provide not only a forum at which business people may meet, but also an informal social setting at which others may be evaluated as being worthy of doing business with. Individuals will be evaluated on a whole range of diffuse criteria, and judgements will be made about whether or not he or she is the 'right sort' of person. Professionals are always 'on call'; work spills over from timetabled limitations into personal life; the boundaries between work and play are low; the pacing, organization and timing of activities in both spheres are largely controlled by the professional. In terms of the formal curriculum of private boarding schools, there is a clear discontinuity here between school and work but, as has just been shown, the extension of the school's evaluation and scrutiny into the 'formal extra-curriculum' and 'formal' social life is such that pupils are well prepared for the needs of professional and ruling-class occupations. The leading private boarding schools have managed to find a way of organizing the entire curriculum so that strong classification and framing are imposed in subject teaching to facilitate high qualifications and entry into higher education. Yet, at the same time, pupils experience elements of weaker classification and framing and the invisible pedagogy that enable them to experience the correct code for their future preferred occupations. A balance seems to have been achieved that will enable private school pupils to acquire both certification and legitimation of their position, and also the necessary personal skills to become successful within their chosen occupations. Speculations Although most schools or parents would not express it in Bernstein's terms, both are clearly aware that private boarding schools attempt to offer a balanced mixture of both weak and strong classification and framing. Schools make elaborate claims to be educating the 'whole person' and not to be concerned just with narrow academic success. The prospectuses of schools make it clear that a whole range of what Lambert (1975) has catalogued as 'expressive goals' are to be seen as an essential part of the school process. With regard to parents, Fox (1984, 1985) has shown that the reasons they choose private schools for their children centre on two general features that the private schools are perceived to be able to offer: the ability to produce better academic results, and to develop the character by instilling discipline. The second of these may be seen as related to educating the 'whole person', and thus to the invisible pedagogy of the wider curriculum of these schools. However, the balanced mixture of both weak and strong classifica-

CLASSIFICATION AND FRAMING IN ENGLISH PRIVATE BOARDING SCHOOLS

73

tion and framing is difficult to maintain, and there are signs that it is beginning to tip too far towards strong classification and framing. This section of the chapter is necessarily speculative, for it attempts to assess potential future possibilities as a result of past and present trends. The direction of change, however, points towards interesting future problems for the schools. The last two decades or so have seen considerable changes in many aspects of life in private schools. John Rae (1981), then Headmaster of Westminster School, went as far as calling it a revolution, whereas the research on which this chapter is based acknowledges both change and continuity (Walford, 1986a). A very significant change has been the move toward co-education. HMC schools have traditionally been for boys only, and have been designed to equip these boys for elite positions within an almost totally male-dominated society. For a variety of reasons (Walford, 1983), more than two-thirds of these HMC schools now accept girls as well as boys - either at all ages, or at A-level only. In itself, this change need not modify classification and framing within the schools: yet, in practice, on average the girls selected have usually been of higher academic ability than the boys, which has reinforced the emphasis on examinations. Even when the schools have declined to become co-educational, the increased competition from state-maintained schools has led to a shift towards the pre-eminence of academic work, with its strong classification and framing. The schools have employed a greater number of specialist, highly academic, subject staff, and invested heavily in science, technology, computing and other expensive teaching facilities. However, along with this increase in the importance of academic certification, there has been a corresponding decrease in other activities. Sporting activities no longer hold a great power over most pupils, and the 'bloods' have seen their power wither. The Combined Cadet Force has faded greatly in importance, as has chapel and religious commitment. Older pupils now seem less inclined to play major parts in the organization of the younger boys in the houses, and the claims of work are more frequently heard to be in conflict with prefectural duties or playing sport for the house or the school. Many would undoubtedly argue that such changes were very necessary and that the present balance is far preferable to the old. However, there are indications that the balance may have tipped too far. Several of the school masters interviewed in the two research boarding schools, for example, expressed concern that their schools had become too much like 'examination mills': certainly producing a high-quality product on that criterion but, they thought, at cost to

74

PRIVATE EDUCATION

other, perhaps more valuable, criteria. The evidence is mixed, of course - some of the new highly academic staff were well pleased by the emphasis given to their examination work. Others, however, felt increasingly that they were being evaluated in terms of the examination marks that their pupils obtained and, correspondingly, that pupils were being evaluated increasingly on this one dimension rather than on the diffuse and varied aspects that combine to form the 'whole person'. Not untypically, one said: I think that we are too examination ridden - it's difficult to get away from it, but we're now an examination mill. And parents' expectations when a boy gets accepted by the school are often quite unrealistic ... But, I think it's quite understandable when parents are paying out high fees. If the father's a businessman, he regards it as an investment and he wants the dividend in success for his son. Another claimed: The pressures on staff from parents have increased tremendously. They want their sons to get to university, and see it as our job to push so hard that they get there. Fox (1985) has shown that this pressure from parents is widespread, but the demands for greater academic success come from pupils as well as parents, as another school master interviewed indicated: I suppose that one of the greatest changes is that the boys generate their own pressure. They now work very hard, right from a young age ... The boys are also interested in a career from very early on. One housemaster stated: I've found recently that boys are more wary of taking up extra commitments. They're less keen to captain the cricket or even be Head of House - although I haven't had one refuse yet! They know that it could eat into their time for work. This information from school masters was supported by the pupils. In a survey of about 200 of the younger boys at one of the schools, over 70 per cent said on an open-ended question that the main reason for their being at the school was to obtain better qualifications, or similar statements. Overall, the indications are that the integrated curriculum and invisible pedagogy that are made possible by a much broader total curriculum, and that give a degree of correspondence between the

CLASSIFICATION AND FRAMING IN ENGLISH PRIVATE BOARDING SCHOOLS

75

strengths of classification and framing at school and at university and work, would seem to be declining in importance. As success and failure have increasingly been seen in terms of examination results, so the broader and more wide-ranging criteria on which evaluation of the person could take place have decreased in importance. Tapper and Salter (1984) have argued that there is a growing convergence of experiences of pupils in private boarding schools and those of the majority of academically able pupils elsewhere. This trend towards neglecting or de-emphasizing those distinctive aspects of the wider curriculum that are more weakly classified and framed is exaggerated by the drift away from boarding itself in the private school sector. In 1974, when the Independent Schools Information Service first surveyed its membership, there were 207 HMC schools, with 46,208 (42 per cent) of the 109,503 boys boarding. In addition, 33 per cent of the 3,525 girls in these schools were boarders. By 1992, there were 233 HMC schools, but only 28 per cent of the 126,886 boys were boarders. The percentage of girls who boarded had also decreased, to 28 per cent of the 29,068 pupils. Thus there has been some increase in the number of boarding girls at these schools as more have become co-educational, but this has been at the expense of the girls' private schools, in which boarding places have dropped dramatically. Overall, boarding has become far less popular than it was, and there are now hardly any HMC schools that only cater to boarding pupils: the vast majority have expanded their total rolls by taking in high numbers of day pupils. This presents a further threat to the school's ability to be able to offer both the visible and invisible pedagogy, for as the proportion of day pupils increases, so too does the 'ethos' of the school change and the formal curriculum dominate. Changes brought about by the 1988 Education Reform Act and more recent Education Acts have led to strong competition between schools. Private schools are now in direct competition for pupils with grant-maintained schools, City Technology Colleges and other statemaintained schools, and many parents who might use the private sector now look carefully at what certain state-maintained schools have to offer. All schools, including private schools, are now required by law to publish a wide range of information for prospective parents, including their examination results. Being easily, if misleadingly, comparable from one school to another, from 1992, private schools have found themselves on 'league tables' of examination results alongside state-maintained schools. Some have found themselves near the bottom rather than the top, and are under great pressure to improve their scores. The result of all these changes is an ever-

76

PRIVATE EDUCATION

increasing predominance of stronger classification and framing of the formal curriculum at the expense of the weaker classification and framing of the wider curriculum. This may have considerable effect. It seems likely that the elite private schools will still be able to ensure that a good proportion of their pupils enter higher education, but after that stage, upon entry into work, ex-private school pupils will no longer have an advantage in having prior experience of the invisible pedagogy. There will be a resulting contradiction between the experiences of school and work in terms of the strengths of classification and framing. If this is so, and if Bernstein's theory has any predictive validity, we should expect that, in the future, once university entry has been gained, the advantages of a private school education will have a smaller part to play in ensuring success in professional ruling-class occupations. The private schools may have helped the members of John Major's Cabinet to their positions of eminence, but those members may be wasting their money in paying for private education for their children.

CHAPTER 5 Girls' private schooling: past and present

This chapter outlines some aspects of the development of private schooling for girls in England. It gives particular attention to the changes that occurred in private schooling for boys as well as girls during the Victorian period, because the growth of girls' schools during this time must be seen as part of a complete restructuring of educational provision to accommodate the demands of the late nineteenth century. The chapter also gives a statistical account of girls' schooling, and examines trends in recruitment and the structure of private education provision.

Education for the poor The development of private education for girls in England must be understood in its historical, social and political context and, in particular, in relation to the changes in provision for working-class children and for boys of the upper and middle classes. For the last 500 years or more, the content and nature of schooling given to children has depended on social class as well as - and perhaps more than gender. In pre-Victorian Britain, the majority of children from what was to become the working class received little or no formal schooling. Education was considered to be the private affair of parents, the majority of whom could ill afford either to pay school fees or to refuse the additional income that a child labourer would bring to the family. If these children received any schooling at all, it was in charity schools linked to the churches or in a variety of Dame schools that, in many cases, were little more than a child-minding service to enable women to continue working. A few poor destitute children and orphans found themselves in charitable hospital schools, where they were trained for manual work and service. Nevertheless, as urbanization From G. Walford (1993) (ed.) The Private Schooling of Girls: past and present. London: Woburn Press, pp. 9-32.

78

PRIVATE EDUCATION

and industrialization proceeded through the eighteenth century, the sometimes contradictory drives of philanthropy, religious conviction, and the practical need for a better educated and disciplined workforce led to the gradual expansion of a network of schools for the poor. In the early nineteenth century there were several unsuccessful attempts to establish a national system of schools for working-class children, and to alleviate the grave deficiencies in general provision, accommodation and teaching found by two Parliamentary Committees. In practice, it was not until 1833 that the government made its first donation to the two main religious providers of the day. Regular government grants soon followed, and the Newcastle Commission of 1861 found that some 95 per cent of children of the 'poorer classes' attended school, even if only for four to six years. The government started to build and maintain its own schools in 1870, and elementary schooling was eventually made compulsory for all children from 1880. It is important to note here that the only schooling available to working-class children before 1870 was private or charitable schooling, and that this was very largely similar for boys and girls. While there were some differences in the curriculum offered to boys and girls, schooling was available to working-class girls and boys on a more-or-less equal basis. In the main, this charitable provision was designed to instil a form of religion and morality deemed appropriate for the working class and to ensure that, as women and men, they took their pre-ordained place in the social hierarchy. For the majority of children, class position rather than gender was the important determinant of life chances and individual opportunity. Victorian schooling for the sons of the upper class In contrast to boys and girls from the working class, who received a fairly similar basic schooling, girls from the upper class and from the expanding middle class of the nineteenth century usually received a very different form of education from their brothers. During the reign of Victoria, new schools were established and a disparate range of existing schools were moulded into a system to educate the upper and middle classes. This restructuring first occurred for boys and was followed, at a rather leisurely pace, by similar new establishments and restructuring for girls. To appreciate the problems faced during the Victorian era by those who wished girls to receive an adequate education, it is necessary to understand the deplorable state into which schooling and universities for boys had fallen. At the centre of discussion of the private schools for upper-class

GIRLS' PRIVATE SCHOOLING: PAST AND PRESENT

79

boys is a small group of so called 'Great Schools', which were investigated by the Clarendon Commission of 1864. By 1820 the seven boarding schools of Eton, Winchester, Westminster, Charterhouse, Harrow, Rugby and Shrewsbury were being linked together as a loose group. These schools were patronized almost exclusively by the ruling-class aristocracy and landed gentry, and some others who were rich enough to adopt the gentry's way of life and manners (Bamford, 1967). For the first 50 years of the nineteenth century, each of these seven schools maintained a relatively static social clientele, preferring to risk the uncertainty of lower numbers rather than admit children of lower social rank. They led a precarious existence where the number of new pupils could fluctuate dramatically year to year, with wild peaks and troughs, and numbers often increasing markedly on the appointment of a new headmaster. However, even though they could have easily taken children from the new middle class of engineers, scientists and managers and from the upper ranks of the civil service, medicine, the Church and the law, these schools largely chose not to do so, for this would have diluted their aristocratic nature. It was not until the 1860s and 1870s, after legislative changes following the Clarendon Commission, that curriculum and financial reforms were made and the Great Schools were continuously full (Shrosbree, 1988). There was considerable variation between these schools, but by the time of the Clarendon Commission all seven drew their pupils from all over Britain but still provided a curriculum based only on Latin and the classics. Although there were close links to Oxford and Cambridge universities, the curriculum offered in these schools was not seen in vocational terms, for the boys who attended these schools were not expected to have to work for their living. The expectation for most of these boys was a life on their estates, financed from income from property and investments. Some of the younger sons might join the navy, army or the Church, or might train for the Bar, but work in business, medicine or engineering was unthinkable. In practice, these upper-class schools were 'relieved of the responsibility of providing the basis for a living' (Bamford, 1967: 8), and made little attempt to provide a relevant or up-to-date education. The content of the curriculum had become of no practical importance, and was only maintained through tradition and unchanged statutes. Further, by the early Victorian era the Wardens and Fellows of Winchester and Eton Colleges, for example, had exploited the endowments for their own use, leaving the boys badly taught, fed and accommodated. The special position of Eton as the training ground for statesmen outweighed these inconveniences, and in 1868 it still had 850 pupils; but the number of boys at Winchester had slumped.

80

PRIVATE EDUCATION

Westminster, Charterhouse and Harrow were also doing badly, in contrast to the re-invigorated Rugby and the new Marlborough. Victorian schooling for boys of the middle classes Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the establishment of a free grammar school for local children was seen as a particularly appropriate way for wealthy merchants or nobility to be remembered, and a large number of endowed grammar schools had been gradually established throughout Britain. The usual pattern was for the foundation to provide a fixed sum for the payment of a school master from property rents, and for the school master to be required to provide free teaching in Latin and Greek in return. While this arrangement had originally worked well, over the years the importance of the classics declined, and the growing, vocal middle classes of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries began to try to divert the endowed schools away from their original purpose. They wanted to exclude the children of the poor and use the endowments to educate their own children and to provide a flow of clerks and office workers for their industries, with the benefit of a wider and more relevant curriculum. In a few cases an Act of Parliament was passed to allow particular schools to change their statutes. In 1774, for example, Macclesfield Grammar School was given the right to teach writing, arithmetic, geography, navigation, mathematics, the modern languages, and other branches of literature and education in addition to its main aim of teaching 'grammar and classical learning' (Simon, 1960). Bolton followed this example in 1784, Haydon Bridge in 1785 and Wigan in 1812. In other schools, the statutes were sometimes ignored entirely or evaded by charging extra fees for teaching in subjects other than the classics. Local dignitaries did not always find change easy, as many of the school masters firmly encamped in these schools had little desire to change. The statutes often allowed the school master to take a few pupils from outside the local area and charge them fees, and they had come to rely on the income from these non-foundation pupils. They saw no good reason to change this system. The governing body of Leeds Grammar School, for example, tried for nearly 20 years to get the school master to broaden the curriculum to include mercantile and commercial subjects. They eventually went to the Court of Chancery with a plan to increase the number of scholars, exclude 'poor' children, and use the endowment to finance teaching of new subjects. In 1805, in what became a key judgment, Lord Eldon declined the application and allowed only minor changes, which gave

GIRLS' PRIVATE SCHOOLING: PAST AND PRESENT

81

incumbent school masters elsewhere greater power to resist change. Unscrupulous school masters in various endowed grammar schools were thus able to continue to exploit their position and live on the income with little work, or to provide a classical education to the expanding number of fee-paying pupils from outside the town. They thus resisted change in the curriculum that might have made the schools more attractive to local people. Even after the Grammar School Act of 1840, which legalized the teaching of modern subjects in the endowed school, change could not be made against the wishes of the school master, and often had to wait until after his death. The result was that the middle class who wanted a more up-to-date schooling for their sons patronized various private schools rather than the grammar schools. Such schools had been plentiful since the sixteenth century, and had expanded after the Test Act of 1665 which excluded dissenters from endowed schools. A further boost to their numbers occurred after 1779, when Protestant non-conformists gained the right to teach and own schools. By the early nineteenth century, many such schools had been established in the larger towns to provide a practical education for the sons of the affluent middleclass merchants and manufacturers. A range of schools thus developed, serving distinct social and religious groups. One popular solution open to those in the major towns was to form a joint stock company and start a new proprietary day school. The Liverpool Institute was one of the first of these in 1825, and it was rapidly followed by many more in London and the provinces, including Bristol, Hull, Leicester, Wakefield and Rochester. Brian Simon (1960: 117) argues that the fact that most of these proprietary schools only lasted for 10 or 20 years does not distract from their educational significance: between 1830 and 1840 these schools met the needs of the middle class. It was only with the coming of the railways and the social changes of the mid-nineteenth century that boarding schools were seen as an appropriate way of educating these children. As the middle class expanded, there grew a demand for boarding education which could not be met through existing provision and that led to the foundation of new schools. Broadly, these new schools provided the curriculum available in the Great Schools, which led to university entry, with the addition of more modern subjects. Many looked to the success that had followed the reforms of Rugby by Thomas Arnold between 1828 and 1842 (Ogilvie, 1957; Honey, 1977) and wished to establish schools run on the same lines. The way was thus paved for a line of new schools, including many that have become major schools. Cheltenham was founded in 1841, to be

82

PRIVATE EDUCATION

followed by such schools as Marlborough (1843), Rossall (1844), Radley (1847), Lancing (1848), Bradfield (1850), Wellington (1853), Haileybury (1862), Clifton (1862) and St Edward's, Oxford (1863). Although these schools are now seen as part of a homogeneous group, they were founded to solve a range of different problems. At Cheltenham, the old grammar school was a typical example of an endowed school that had fallen into disrepute by the first half of the nineteenth century. There were few boys on the foundation, and the growing middle class of the thriving spa town of Cheltenham recognized that, if they wanted a school for their sons, they would have to build one themselves. Cheltenham College was a 'proprietary grammar school for the sons of gentlemen' (Morgan, 1968), financed through share capital. From the start it had two departments: one to teach mainly Latin, Greek and mathematics to those boys destined for universities, and the other offering a wider curriculum for those who might enter the army, Indian civil service or similar occupations. In contrast, at Marlborough in the 1840s, the Royal Free Grammar School had not fallen into decay. It still educated many boys and maintained close links with Oxford and Cambridge colleges. Marlborough College was originally founded to solve the rather different and specific problem of educating clergymen's sons. The number of clergymen had increased dramatically with the rising population, but the pay of clergy in the new churches was often too low to pay for a Great School. Marlborough was established to provide a cheap public school education, and the founders intended that two-thirds of the boys would be sons of clergy on reduced fees (Bradley et al, 1923). While some schools can be seen to have been the product of a group of like-minded people working together, individual vision, verging onto fanaticism, was at the root of others. By 1836 the Revd William Sewell had become White's Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford, and a moderate follower of the Oxford Movement. He was an influential national figure with a passion for the Church that he believed could only be strengthened through education. He saw a need for smaller schools with more privacy, more contact between masters and boys and a wider curriculum to include aesthetic subjects, and believed that boys should be taught to become 'Christian gentlemen and Christian scholars'. His overall plan was that reform should start with the schools for the gentry, but that the profits of the schools for the rich should finance the schools for the poor. In 1847, he and a small number of others founded Radley College near Oxford, which was sympathetic to the ideals of the Oxford Movement (Boyd, 1948). Fears of Popery made Radley's rise to prominence slower and

GIRLS' PRIVATE SCHOOLING: PAST AND PRESENT

83

more controversial than Cheltenham or Marlborough, and Sewell was never able to develop his plan for a network of schools. In contrast, Nathaniel Woodard, who was firmly committed to the Oxford Movement, was able to develop a group of schools which survives to this day. In 1848, while a curate in Shoreham, Woodard published a pamphlet called 'A Plea to the Middle Classes' which set out what he saw as the need for schools for the middle classes at a price they could afford. His plan, which was carried out, was to establish three grades of school, with the upper grade helping to finance the lower. He rapidly established several small schools, and Hurstpierpoint moved to permanent buildings in 1853, Lancing in 1857 and Ardingly in 1870 (Kirk, 1937). The group eventually grew to 19 schools. The Oxford Movement also strongly influenced another founder of schools, Thomas Chamberlain, who was the minister of a poor church in Oxford. His passion to extend High Anglicanism led him to establish parish schools for the poor, a religious community for women and a training college for school mistresses. During the 1850s he also opened a school for boys under the guidance of his curate, which went bankrupt in three years (Hill, 1962). A second attempt to start a boys' school was made in 1863: this, with better financial management, quickly grew into St Edward's School. The expansion of many of the major boarding schools was linked to the growth of the railways, but for Rossall School at Fleetwood Lancashire, the railways had a rather strange influence. The school was the brainchild of Mr Vantini, who had managed the Euston Hotel at one end of the new North-Western Railway, and the North Euston Hotel at Fleetwood (which was then the terminus). His original plan was for a profit-making school for 1,000 pupils, run on the principle of life insurance (Webster, 1937). The scheme eventually adopted was more modest, and led to a school for 200 boys which opened in 1844. The Taunton Commission Although the building of new schools was of considerable importance, the Victorian restructuring of schools to provide a class-delineated system was essentially brought about as a result of the Taunton Commission. Charged in 1864 with the task of examining the state of education for 'those large classes of English society which are between the humblest and the very highest', the Commission reported on nearly 800 endowed grammar schools, and a large number of various private and proprietary schools. While the new proprietary schools were generally found to be praiseworthy, the endowed schools were roundly condemned. Many were unspeakably bad.

84

PRIVATE EDUCATION

The Report and recommendations of the Taunton Commission expressed the desire to secure an efficient educational system for the middle class as a whole: but the middle class was not seen as homogeneous. Echoing the ideas of Woodard and others, the aim was to use the old endowments to create three types of school for the upper, middle and lower middle classes, each type of school charging set fees and having a strictly enforced school leaving age to ensure that the school kept to its segment of the middle class and defined purpose. The new proprietary boarding schools, such as Malvern and Clifton, and some of the endowed boarding schools that were aspiring to become Great Schools, such as Repton and Oundle, were to be First grade schools. These were to aim at university entry. The curriculum was to be classical, but also to include modern studies. Second grade schools were to be day schools with a leaving age of 16. They were to be established in most towns and prepare children for such occupations as the army, medicine, engineering and business. Their curriculum might include Latin but not Greek. Mathematics, English literature, political economy and practically oriented science were to be central. Third grade schools were designed for the children of small tenant farmers, small tradesmen and superior artisans. These were to stop at about 14, and provide a limited education that might include the elements of Latin, but have English, history, elementary mathematics, geography and science. The Commission was clear that what it called 'indiscriminate gratuitous instruction' was a waste of endowments, which meant that the working-class children for whom many of the endowments had been intended were to be removed from their free schools. A limited number of competitive scholarships were to be established instead. The Endowed Schools Act which followed in 1868 led to the appointment of three Commissioners who were given wide powers to rewrite the statutes of schools to fit them into this pattern. Within four years 97 schemes had been passed by Parliament, often in the face of great local antagonism. On a change of government from Liberal to Tory in 1874, the Commission was disbanded and the powers passed to the Charity Commissioners who pursued their task with less vigour. However, hundreds of local endowed schools were restructured so that free places designed for the working class were removed and fee-paying was introduced. Many of the present major private schools had their origins as endowed charity schools or even hospital schools for the poor, and were able to re-position themselves in the market as a result of this legislation.

GIRLS' PRIVATE SCHOOLING: PAST AND PRESENT

85

Pre-Victorian schooling for girls The origins of present private schools for girls are as varied as those for boys, even though most are of newer foundation. A few date back to charitable foundations of the sixteenth century, but most are creations of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Only an outline of the development of girls' private schooling is given here; those who require more detail will find the books by Avery (1991), Borer (1976), Burstyn (1980), Dyhouse (1987), Kamm (1965) and Turner (1974) of further interest. In the Middle Ages, monasteries and nunneries provided an important form of schooling for both boys and girls. Daughters of the gentry would receive a short training in their own homes in religion, reading and writing from a governess or from their own mother. At about age 10 some girls (especially those not expected to marry) would be sent to a nunnery where they might continue with their education, while others would be sent to board with a family of a higher social status than their own until marriage at 14 or 15. For girls from the upper class the nunnery school provided the only type of organized schooling (Kamm, 1965), but the dissolution of the monasteries in the fifteenth century meant that these nunnery schools were also closed. While upper-class boys still had the chance to attend a grammar school, the dissolution of the monasteries meant that their sisters had practically no chance for any organized schooling. Some upper-class parents still wished to pass on the responsibilities of educating their daughters to others, so that during the early seventeenth century many boarding schools for girls were opened. In the major towns such as Manchester, Oxford, Leicester and, in particular, near London in Hackney, Chelsea and Putney, there developed private boarding schools designed to teach girls the 'accomplishments'. Girls were required to learn what was thought to be necessary for 'Ladies of Leisure', and the curriculum thus included reading, writing and religion, but also a great deal of needlework, music, dancing, household management and French. Some of these schools were evidently quite large. For example, the school opened by Mrs Perwick in London in 1643 only lasted for 17 years, but taught about 800 girls during that time (Kamm, 1965: 69). Moreover, at one point it had 16 masters employed to teach singing and music. The restoration of the monarchy meant that upper-class girls had to try to conceal whatever learning they had, for it was thought unladylike to display any interest in academic matters. But boarding schools teaching the accomplishments thrived, so that by the late

86

PRIVATE EDUCATION

seventeenth century they had become numerous and offered an alternative for many girls to either being taught at home or being boarded out with another family. By the 1800s there many small, individually-owned private boarding schools for girls, which complimented the similar range of schools for boys. It remained true, however, that the majority of upper and middle-class girls were taught by governesses or visiting teachers at home. The Victorian private schooling of girls By the first half of the nineteenth century women from the upper and middle classes were expected not to work, and only did so if they were unable or unwilling to marry or became widowed. Although badly paid, teaching was the only respectable occupation open to these women, and many teachers had only taken up the work to survive in a socially acceptable way. Teachers and governesses were often uneducated themselves, and resolved the problem by using rote learning and textbooks composed of questions and answers to be learnt like a catechism. Parents wishing to employ a governess and schools looking for teachers faced the same problem of lack of suitably trained women, which the Victorian reformers gradually tried to deal with. An important development, which linked the need for better educated teachers and governesses with the gradual change in women's position in society, was the formation of Queen's College in 1848. The College developed from regular lectures given by Revd Frederick Maurice (a Professor at King's College) and others who, as Christian socialists, saw education as a means of wider social reform (Burstall, 1938). The main aim of the College was to provide a supply of well-educated women teachers and to give them certification to distinguish them from the untrained. The College had a school attached, which served as a training ground for the women and to prepare future students. A somewhat similar non-conformist Bedford College for women, originally called the 'Ladies College in Bedford Square', opened in 1849. In both cases, these new colleges were not part of the University of London, but the teenage girls and a few more mature women who attended lectures were often taught by men from King's College and University College. They went some way to providing higher academic education to women who were excluded from the all-male universities of the time. One of the problems of looking back at the histories of the schools that still exist is that it gives a biased view of the state of schooling in the past. The very many schools which once thrived, but have since

GIRLS' PRIVATE SCHOOLING: PAST AND PRESENT

87

closed, get no mention. The many ideas for schools that did not come to fruition are forgotten. This is particularly important in a consideration of the development of girls' private schooling in the mid-nineteenth century, for many of those who established boys' schools were also concerned and involved with schools for girls. There are several examples of this within the ranks of the major new schools for boys already discussed. For example, the entrepreneurial hotel manager's original plan for Rossall School was for 500 boys and 500 girls to be educated on either side of the River Wyre. The plans for girls were eventually rejected because his backers felt that a school for boys only was a better financial investment. At Oxford in the 1850s, Chamberlain's desire to spread High Anglicanism led to a school for 'the daughters of gentlemen', who were taught by the sisters from the religious order he founded. While the parallel boys' school quickly closed due to bad management, the girls' school flourished for many years, and was only later eclipsed by the expanding St Edward's School. Even Nathaniel Woodard, who expressed some ambivalence about boarding schools for girls, accepted the gift of a small private school for girls in Hove in 1855. Eventually, and primarily due to the action of the Headmaster of Denstone (one of the Woodard schools), Abbots Bromley opened in 1874. Seven more Woodard girls' schools gradually followed. Finally, while William Sewell started Radley in 1847, his sister Elizabeth Sewell was running a small school for girls on the Isle of Wight. Elizabeth played a part in developing women's education, and was also a novelist of some repute. In her educational writings she explained that education was 'in the air', and that it was the 'grand problem - the grand interest of the nineteenth century' (quoted in Clarke, 1953: 22). The 'grand problem' and 'grand interest' of education can be seen clearly at Cheltenham. The College for boys opened in 1841, and a training school for Masters and Mistresses in 1847. The Charity School moved to far larger premises in 1847, and the endowed Grammar School was resurrected in 1852. The two gaps in the town's provision 'the daughters and young children of Noblemen and Gentlemen' were to be filled by the Cheltenham College for the Education of Young Ladies and Children. Two of the six founders of what quickly became Cheltenham Ladies' College were the Principal and VicePrincipal of Cheltenham College, and the Ladies' College that opened in 1854 was the first to run on a shareholder system in a similar way to several of the new boys' schools. From the beginning the College was to teach religious education, grammar, Latin and arithmetic as main subjects, along with calisthenic exercises, drawing, French, geography, history, music and needlework.

88

PRIVATE EDUCATION

Discussion of the Victorian development of private schools for girls is dominated by the names of Miss Buss and Miss Beale. Dorothea Beale was closely connected to Queen's College from 1848 until 1856, joining the staff of the school in 1854 (Steadman, 1931). After a brief time as Head of the Clergy Daughters' School in Westmorland, she was invited to become the second Head of Cheltenham Ladies' College. Frances Mary Buss also attended evening lectures at Queen's College in 1849, at first six, then four nights per week. She was one of ten children of a poorly paid artist and, to make ends meet, in 1846 her mother, Frances Buss, opened a small private school in Kentish Town, London. Frances Mary took over as first Head of the reorganized North London Collegiate School in 1850 after obtaining her diploma from Queen's. The school became so successful that she founded Camden School in 1871. Queen's College not only trained women to teach, but educated them to expect to change society. The Cheltenham Ladies' College under the guidance of Miss Beale, and the North London Collegiate School under Miss Buss, became in their different ways examples that other schools followed. In essence, Cheltenham became the first of a line of public boarding schools for girls, while North London Collegiate acted as a pattern for girls' day schools. What distinguished these two schools from most other contemporary girls' schools for the upper and middle classes was that the curriculum centred on academic interests and had university entry as the goal. Music and the accomplishments were still taught, and the girls' lives were closely regulated (as was thought appropriate for 'young ladies'), but they were also expected to think and work hard at academic work. As women gained entry to university examinations, and the role of women in society gradually changed, the influence of these two schools spread. St Leonard's School became the first girls' boarding school to be run on the house system of the boys' public schools. Its founding Headmistress was Miss Louisa Lumsden, who had been one of the first six women to attend Emily Davies' new college at Hitchen, which was to become Girton College, Cambridge (Bennett, 1990). The deputy head, Miss Jane Frances Dove, had attended Queen's College before Girton, and both women had taught at Cheltenham under Miss Beale. Miss Dove followed Miss Lumsden as the second Head in 1882, and later founded Wycombe Abbey School in 1896. All of these schools wished to educate women to enter higher education, and modelled themselves on the major boys' public schools. The North London Collegiate School became a model for the growing number of day schools, including those established through the work of Maria Grey and Emily Shirreff, who suggested a 'National

GIRLS' PRIVATE SCHOOLING: PAST AND PRESENT

89

Union for improving the education of women of all classes above elementary'. This led to the formation of the Girls' Public Day School Company (later Trust: GPDST) in 1872, which played a major part in providing schools for girls aiming to go to university. By 1876 schools had been started at Chelsea, Notting Hill, Croydon, Norwich, Clapham, Hackney, Nottingham, Bath and Oxford. Two indications of the changing attitude towards girls are the facts that all of these schools were formed as a result of local demand, and that Princess Louise became the Patroness of the Company's schools. All of these schools were modelled on the North London Collegiate School in all matters accept religious affiliation - they were non-denominational rather than Anglican. They also followed Miss Buss's example in aiming to have a social class range of pupils that was wider than the girls' boarding schools or the boys' public schools (Kamm, 1971): they were not designed to be socially exclusive. By 1971 there were 23 GPDST schools in existence: a further 15 had closed, merged with other GPDST schools or transferred to other ownership. Outside of the GPDST, day schools for girls which had similar aims were gradually developed from existing girls' private schools by a process of change, and through the foundation of other new schools. The establishment of the Taunton Commission in 1864 acted as an important spur to girls' education for the middle classes. It had originally been intended that the Commission would only examine the private and endowed grammar schools for boys, but as the girls' schools were not explicitly excluded, pressure from such activists as Frances Buss and Emily Davies led the Commissioners to include them. Emily Davies conducted her own survey of schools (Bennett, 1990) so that, when she became the first woman to give evidence at a Royal Commission, she was well armed with information. The final report officially recognized the general deficiency in girls' education and pointed to the problems of lack and misuse of school endowments. The Taunton Commission found that in 1868 there were 820 endowed schools for boys, but only about 20 comparable schools for girls (Avery, 1991). In some cases the original benefactions had been given specifically for the education of boys, but in many others the gender of the children who were to benefit was left unstated in the original will or statutes, and it was the governors of the schools who had interpreted the donors' intentions as being for boys only. The Commissioners made it clear that this was an inappropriate interpretation, but most of the schools showed little haste in complying with the new policy. One exception was the very rich Harpur Trust in Bedford, which

90

PRIVATE EDUCATION

already funded Bedford School and Bedford Modern School for boys of different social classes. In 1873 it appointed five women as governors and started planning two corresponding schools for girls. These were opened in 1882. In contrast, the new Manchester High School for girls had to fight to obtain a share of the William Hulme charitable bequest. The Charity Commissioners eventually conceded in 1884, and the school obtained a regular income and a substantial lump sum (Avery, 1991). Even where the original endowment specified that only boys were to benefit from a school, the Taunton Commission often decided that it should be extended to support girls as well. Merchant Taylors' School, Crosby, for example, was founded in the early seventeenth century for 'male children only', but in 1874 it decided that it would spend two-fifths of the income on girls. It took until 1888 before a girls' school was actually opened (in the renovated old buildings of the boys' school), but it was still a significant step forward. Where the foundations were supporting both boys' and girls' schooling prior to the Taunton Commission, the usual pattern was that boys received a far greater share of the foundation income than did the girls. Christ's Hospital, for example, which was established by charter of King Edward VI as a school for destitute children in London, first opened in 1552. Both girls and boys were accepted, but for 250 years the girls were only taught reading of the Bible and needlework, while the boys had a wider curriculum. Girls had a shorter time at the school, had poorer facilities and were also always in the minority. In the decade or more prior to 1870 the number of girls had been kept to just 18 (Avery, 1991). The Taunton Report suggested drastic restructuring, but the governors fought against the proposals and did not finally make changes until as late as 1891. Recent history of private schooling In January 1989 there were 2,270 registered independent or private schools in England, representing just over 8 per cent of the total number of schools. They educated some 532,500 pupils, or 7.3 per cent of the total school population (DES, 1990). This is a considerable rise from 5.8 per cent in 1979. However, the majority of the percentage increase in the private sector is attributable to the decline in the total number of pupils in the maintained sector due to a change in the birth rate, rather than to increases in the private sector. These overall figures conceal large differences in the proportion of children in private schools according to geographical region, age and gender. For example, over half of the pupils in private schools are to be found in London or the South East region. Seventeen per cent of

GIRLS' PRIVATE SCHOOLING: PAST AND PRESENT

91

Table 5.1 Full-time primary and secondary school population, England, 1970-89 Year

Total (thousands: all ages)

Private (thousands)

Percentage private

1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987

7,998 8,188 8,378 8,521 8,864 8,915 8,960 8,955 8,861 8,755 8,593 8,377 8,147 7,905 7,717 7,569 7,441 7,332 7,211 7,144

521 515 516 521 528 530 523 519 510 512 517 516 510 503 501 501 504 515 523 532

6.5 6.3 6.2 6.1 6.0 5.9 5.8 5.8 5.8 5.8 6.0 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.8 7.0 7.3 7.4

1988 1989

Source: DES (1990).

private schools are in Greater London and 34 per cent in the rest of the South East. Table 5.1. gives the overall figures for full-time primary and secondary school pupils in England from 1970 to 1989, and the percentage of these being privately educated. It excludes children in special schools. The overall number of pupils in private schools can be seen to have fluctuated a little over the years, with a dip in the last years of the 1970s and a rapid increase in the last three or four years of the 1980s. The percentage of children in private schools fell to a low of 5.8 per cent in 1977 and has since gradually risen to 7.4 per cent in 1989. Further details are given in Table 5.2 for the years from 1982. In terms of age range, it is immediately evident that secondary private schooling is far more popular than primary private schooling. In 1989, an average primary year group (5-10) was only 60 per cent of an average secondary year group (11-15). This may show a greater level of parent satisfaction with maintained primary schools, but it could also be due to the absence of private primary schools near enough for

92

PRIVATE EDUCATION

parents to use for these younger children. It is worth noting, however, that the percentage of pupils in private primary schools has risen considerably during the last decade, and the primary level is the major growth area for the private school sector as a whole. At the secondary level, if the old Direct Grant schools are counted within the private sector, Halsey et al. (1984) have shown that the absolute number of pupils remained relatively steady over the 30-year period from 1951. There were declines in the proportion of privately educated secondary children caused by the two *baby booms' of 1946 and 1961, but the private sector did not markedly increase the number of places to take account of this larger potential market. Over the last decade there has been a small increase in pupil numbers, even though there has been a large decline in the overall secondary school population. Nationally, the number of 13-year-olds reached a peak in 1978, and declined by over 30 per cent from that year until 1990. That the secondary schools have been able to maintain their pupil numbers and actually increase their market share has been widely argued to indicate a major growth in popularity of private schooling. In practice, however, the decline in the school-age population has been predominantly to parents of social classes III to V (Registrar General's Classification), while the number of children of social classes I and II has remained far more constant (Smithers and Robinson, 1989). Since children from these two social classes dominate the private sector, these schools have not experienced the same decline in potential customers as have state-maintained schools. In fact, the proportion of the population in social classes I and II has risen over the years due to changes in the class structure, so an increase in the number of parents wishing to use the private sector might be expected. A rather different pattern is seen at the post-16 level. The average year group in private schools after compulsory schooling age has been consistently smaller than the rest of secondary, but the difference was far less than the maintained sector, where only about one-third of 16year-olds stay at school. At post-16 level, about 20 per cent of school pupils were in private schools. Table 5.2 also shows the continuing differences between the numbers of boys and girls in private schools. Overall, in 1989, 46.6 per cent of pupils were girls, and this proportion had only slightly increased from the 45.7 per cent in 1982. In each of the age ranges there were more boys than girls in private schools, but with a greater proportion in primary and a lower proportion in post-16. In 1989, after school leaving age, only 44 per cent of private school pupils were girls, but this was up from 41.2 per cent in 1982.

GIRLS' PRIVATE SCHOOLING: PAST AND PRESENT Table 5.2

93

Full-time pupils in independent schools in England

1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 Boys 5-10 90,801 88,619 87,318 87,295 87,773 91,010 93,802 96,487 11-15 132,787 132,207 131,982 132,264 131,385 132,793 129,958 128,386 16-19 39,508 39,136 38,998 38,323 38,299 38,715 40,403 42,270 Girls 5-10 82,286 79,435 77,997 77,821 78,595 82,241 85,638 89,262 11-15 111,181 111,827 111,256 111,417 111,334 113,165 112,022 110,865 16-19 27,722 27,458 27,740 27,761 28,335 29,563 31,605 33,178 Boarders Boys Girls

80,542 42,529

-

-

-

74,863 73,458 71,382 70,552 41,721 42,034 42,199 41,371

There are many possible reasons for this imbalance. The most obvious is simply that parents might still perceive education as being more important for boys than girls, and thus be more willing to pay for private education for their boys. This explanation appears so obvious that it is tempting to look no further, but the reason may not be this simple. That parents may favour boys is only one of a number of possible factors, and may not even be the main one. There is only scant information available on why parents are prepared to pay for private schooling (see, for example, Fox, 1984,1985; Johnson, 1987), but from the little we know about choice of school some alternative explanations can be proposed. For example, it would appear that it is not uncommon for parents to only consider private schooling if the child is having problems with maintained sector schooling Qohnson, 1987). If boys are perceived to have more problems with schooling than girls (which we know is true generally), this would lead to a greater number of boys in private schools than girls. Alternatively, it could also be that parents see boys as problems more often than they do girls, and simply want to get rid of them to boarding school. Table 5.2 shows that there were far fewer girl boarders than boy boarders. In 1989 some 37 per cent of boarders were girls. To make the number of girl boarders match the number of boys, a further 29,181 girls would be needed, which (if they were new to the system) would bring the total percentage of girls up to 49.6 per cent.

94

PRIVATE EDUCATION

A further possibility takes into account the views of the child in choice of school (Walford, 199la). It may be that boys are more willing to go to private schools than girls, both as boarders and day pupils. As many pupils join the private system at 11, it could be that the pulls of friendship between girls are stronger than the pulls between boys, so that girls persuade their parents that they wish to go with most of their friends to the local maintained school, while boys are more prepared to take their chance in a more distant private school with few of their friends making the same transition. The attractions of good sports facilities, in particular, are more likely to persuade boys than girls to leave the safety of what and who they know. Contemporary girls' private schooling One of the characteristics of the private sector of education is its diversity (Walford, 1991d and above). Not only are there boarding schools and day schools, Anglican and Catholic schools, large and small schools, but there is great variation in the size of fees that parents pay. Although there is no direct relationship between size of fee and quality of education received, those at the lower end of the spectrum sometimes offer little more than snob appeal, and have poor facilities and teaching. The majority of the major schools have grouped themselves together into seven organizations which represent their interests. These societies and associations are linked together through the Independent Schools Joint Council and the Independent Schools Information Service, which provides detailed annual census data on the schools (further details in Walford, 1990). At the beginning of the 1970s these associations were firmly divided by gender. For secondary boys the major schools had headmasters who were members of the Headmasters' Conference (HMC). Less prestigious schools for boys had membership of the Society of Headmasters of Independent Schools (SHMIS) or the Governing Bodies Association (GBA). For secondary girls the main schools were in membership of the Girls' Schools Association (GSA) and the Governing Bodies of Girls' Schools Association (GBGSA), while the Independent Schools Association Incorporated (ISAI) included heads of both boys' and girls' schools. The heads of the major preparatory schools were members of the Incorporated Association of Preparatory Schools (IAPS). The schools in these associations currently educate some 80 per cent of the children in private schools. In the 1980s and 1990s, the gender segregation within the associations has become less rigid, and there have been important

GIRLS' PRIVATE SCHOOLING: PAST AND PRESENT

95

changes in the composition of HMC schools and IAPS schools in particular. Until the 1960s all HMC schools were for boys only. Schools that were recognized as having a similar standing, but which were co-educational, were excluded. Girls were first introduced into the senior part of a formerly boys-only HMC school in 1969, when John Dancy admitted girls into the sixth form of Marlborough College. After a slow start, many other schools did the same, and some existing co-educational schools were invited into membership. By 1990 about 75 of the 231 HMC schools were fully co-educational, and a further 85 admitted some girls at sixth-form level. Eight HMC schools had more girls than boys. Unlike some of the HMC schools that followed Marlborough's example, Dancy's motives were not economic, but part of a genuine desire to open the major schools to a wider clientele (Rae, 1981:132). Other schools were less altruistic, and it is clear that many schools saw the introduction of girls as a way civilizing the boys, boosting the academic standing of the school, and keeping their schools full without reducing academic entry standards. Girls have often been particularly welcome in isolated rural boarding schools that have had to face a decline in popularity of boarding. For some schools, girls were a more agreeable and less problematic way of maintaining numbers than expanding into the foreign pupil market (Walford, 1983). In others, the moves to co-education came from the teachers at the schools. Teachers often obtained very greatly reduced fees for their sons at their own schools, but were unable to afford to send their daughters to similar schools elsewhere. By persuading their school to go co-educational, they received this advantage for all their children. Table 5.3 shows that the total proportion of girls in HMC schools has gradually risen from about 5 per cent in 1975 to 16.7 per cent in 1990. This is due to more schools gradually allowing girls into the sixth forms or throughout the school in previously boys-only schools, and to the inclusion within the HMC of co-educational schools that were formerly excluded precisely because they were co-educational. Not all of these girls are in the secondary parts of the schools, however, for some HMC schools have their own preparatory schools that are run as part of the secondary school. In 1975 some 10 per cent of pupils were aged below 11, with about 11 per cent of these being girls. In 1990 this had fallen to 8 per cent, but with 24 per cent girls. Very few of the girls under 11 were boarders. Table 5.3 also shows the proportion of boarders who were girls. It shows that initially there were proportionally fewer girls who boarded than girls in the schools - girls were disproportionately day pupils. But as the numbers of girls has increased, girls are now just slightly

96

PRIVATE EDUCATION

Table 5.3

1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990

Percentage of girls in HMC schools Girls (percentage)

Girl boarders (percentage)

4.82 5.88 6.37 6.82 8.17 9.15 9.98 10.67 11.23 12.24 13.04 14.19 14.54 15.39 16.00 16.67

3.81 4.16 4.69 5.78 6.53 7.31 8.04 8.80 9.57 10.84 12.50 13.43 15.13 15.74 16.90

2.92

Source: data from successive ISIS surveys.

more likely to board than are boys. This is in part related to the proportionately greater number of girls in the sixth forms of these schools. In 1990 there were 9,267 girls in HMC schools aged 16 and over, out of a total of 46,806 sixth-form pupils (19.80 per cent). About half of these sixth-form girls entered the schools at the age of 16. While 39.4 per cent of the sixth-form boys boarded, 44.96 per cent of the girls did so. At age 13 there were only 13.53 per cent girls (12 per cent of whom boarded). Not surprisingly, many of the heads of girls' schools have viewed what they regard as the poaching of their girls by HMC schools with dismay. The decision to transfer is often couched in terms of higher quality of teaching and facilities in the HMC schools, but the heads of girls' schools argue that they are equally well able to provide an academic education for those entering higher education. They see the HMC schools as being highly selective (especially at 16), and merely getting the academic honours that should have gone to their schools. In practice, the motives for attending such a school are complex. One contributing factor is that girls' schools usually start at 11 rather than the 13 of many boys' predominantly boarding schools, which means that girls have already been at the same schools for five years by the time they start A-levels. The wider pressures within society towards

GIRLS' PRIVATE SCHOOLING: PAST AND PRESENT

97

co-education have also meant that some single-sex schools have found themselves fighting a hard battle to survive, with some of them being forced to close. A few of the GSA/GBGSA schools have tried to attract boys and become co-educational but, in 1990, only 24 out of 220 GSA schools had more than 5 per cent boys, and practically all of these were at primary level. Those schools in membership of GBGSA had managed a little better, with 9 of the 21 schools having more than 5 per cent boys. The schools have been more successful in attracting girls from overseas. In 1990 6.2 per cent of the girls in these schools were foreign nationals, and a further 1.2 per cent were children of expatriates. The corresponding figures for HMC schools were 4.8 per cent and 2.2 per cent. The figures in Table 5.4 cannot be compared directly with each other year by year, as the number of schools in membership of GSA/ GBGSA and giving census data has gradually risen. However, the average size of school in membership has remained at about 440 to 450 throughout, while the percentage boarding has fallen from 22.8 per cent in 1982 to 19.1 per cent in 1990. The schools appear to have maintained numbers over the years, but the proportion of girls boarding has decreased. This does not mean that the girls' schools have been without problems, for what the table does not show is that there has been a gradual increase in weekly boarding at the expense of full-boarding (14 per cent in 1990), and that the schools are taking a higher proportion of younger pupils. In 1982, 19 per cent of pupils were under 11 while, by 1990, this number had grown to 25 per cent. Clearly, in order to make up for numbers of girls leaving post-16, the schools were taking in younger girls and boys instead. Where there Table 5.4

1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990

Number of girls in GSA/GBGSA schools Number of schools

Number of pupils

Number of boarders

232 235 243 247 245 248 250 259

104,848 104,797 105,354 108,252 108,364 109,253 112,176 116,418 116,352 120,878

23,912 24,103 24,492 24,526 23,936 24,155 23,981 23,587 23,140

258 263

Source: Annual ISIS Census.

—

98

PRIVATE EDUCATION

were 11,544 girls aged 17 or over in 235 GSA/GBGSA schools in 1982, there were only 9,712 in 263 schools in 1990. During a period when an increasing number of pupils were staying on at school to take Alevels, some GSA/GBGSA schools experienced severe losses at this level. At the primary level, co-education has been always more common than at secondary. There are only slightly more boys than girls in private primary schools (the latter represent 48.1 per cent in 1990, age 5-10), yet figures for the main preparatory schools association, the IAPS, appear to indicate otherwise. Although the IAPS includes coeducational and single-sex schools for boys and girls, the total proportion of girls in these schools was only 29 per cent in 1990. The reason is simply that the major boys schools have traditionally taken boys at 13 rather than 11, while the number of girls schools delaying entry until this age has been much smaller. The preparatory schools for boys thus take 7 to 13-year-olds, while the preparatory schools for girls more usually end at 10. The LAPS was originally founded for headmasters of preparatory schools and, in 1932, women who were heads of preparatory schools were forced to form their own Association of Headmistresses of Preparatory Schools. The number of girls' preparatory schools was smaller than that for boys, because many of the secondary girls' schools had preparatory departments which were not run as separate schools. In 1971, the growing number of co-educational schools in IAPS led to headmistresses being allowed to join, and in 1981 the AHMPS and IAPS merged forming a new association. The retention of the male association's title is an indication of the gender imbalance that now exists in the organization.

PART II Private schools and educational policy

This page intentionally left blank

CHAPTER 6 How dependent is the independent sector?

The private and public schools of Britain have successfully campaigned to change their image to that of 'independent' schools. This chapter examines the extent to which this change of title is justified. It presents data on the introduction of the Assisted Places Scheme, on changes in the tax regulations regarding charities and on the many other ways that the government has increasingly given both financial and ideological support to these schools. It questions the degree to which it is appropriate to consider these schools as being independent. Public, private or independent? Over the last few years the private sector of education in Great Britain has organized, and largely completed, a major campaign to change its image. Wishing to divest itself of the elitism associated with the old term of 'public school', and the restrictiveness indicated by 'private schools', the sector has proclaimed itself 'independent'. Much public discussion about these schools is now framed in terms of 'independent' schools. Nomenclature has been a continued problem, for each term used to designate this sector is ideologically loaded. Those who wish to emphasize the essential market base of these schools prefer the terms 'fee-paying' or 'commercial' (Halsey, 1981), while those more concerned with the locus of accountability opt for 'private'. For many years the schools themselves preferred the somewhat ambiguous 'public schools', and individual schools would compete to have the term applied to themselves. However, the attacks of the 1960s in the form of two Royal Commissions, and the instabilities of the 1970s led the schools to be more concerned with their image. The Independent Schools Information Service was established in 1972 and the term From Oxford Review of Education (1987) 13, 3, pp. 275-96.

102

PRIVATE EDUCATION

'independent' became the new advertising slogan. John Rae, exHeadmaster of Westminster School and one-time Chairman of the Headmasters' Conference, recounts that in the early seventies the heads of independent schools were anxious to bury the term 'public school' as quickly and decently as possible. This was partly because, in the face of political threats, the old-established schools decided to throw in their lot with all recognised independent schools. A more important, if less publicly acknowledged, reason for a change in nomenclature was the desire of the heads to dissociate themselves and their schools from the overtones of snobbery and exclusiveness that to the British ear were immediately audible in the words 'public school'... The 'public schools', which had for so long provoked extremes of loyalty or revulsion, became the 'independent schools', a title that was not only more accurate but which suggested - as it was intended to - liberty and individual enterprise. Few British people could be expected to rally to the defence of the public schools, but independence was a wider and more fundamental issue. The term 'public school' implied privilege: the term 'independent school' seemed to raise a question of principle. (Rae, 1981: 15) By the end of the 1970s this new image of 'liberty and individual enterprise' was being vigorously and effectively promoted by the schools. It meshed well with the developing Conservative Party philosophy of reducing public expenditure and encouraging individual initiative, and support for the independent sector became a key election manifesto issue in 1979. Since then the government has offered considerable support for the independent sector, both ideologically and financially. The result is that the independent sector now appears to be more healthy than it has been for many years. Yet there is a strange clash between the rhetoric and the reality, for the so-called 'independent schools' appear to be increasingly dependent on the various forms of state support that they are receiving. The schools may well still be independent in the sense that there is little accountability to the government, but it is questionable whether they are as truly independent as they were in practically all other ways. This chapter attempts to assess the extent to which the independent schools are supported by government policy and action, paying particular attention to changes that have occurred since the election of a Conservative government in 1979. It recognizes that financial

HOW DEPENDENT IS THE INDEPENDENT SECTOR?

103

support, although important, is not the only way that government has aided these schools: its ideological support has also been of major importance. The first section deals with the establishment and workings of the Assisted Places Scheme. This is followed by a section on some of the other forms of ideological support, and another which discusses financial assistance. The final section briefly considers the degree of support given to private education as a whole.

The Assisted Places Scheme

The most obvious example of the Conservative government's active support for the independent schools, both ideologically and financially, is the Assisted Places Scheme, which was swiftly introduced following the 1979 electoral victory. Peter Gosden (1985) has argued that, 'From the start it has been the Thatcher government's financial policy and its view on political economy which have often done more to colour its educational policies than specific aims in the educational area itself.' Apart from parental choice legislation, the major exception to this claim is the establishment of the Assisted Places Scheme, which was the only aspect of the multi-faceted 1980 Education Act for which new expenditure was allocated. At that point it was envisaged that the total cost would be about £55 million per annum in England and Wales, providing about 12,000 new places each year. That such new finance should be provided at the very time that cuts were being made in support for the maintained sector ensured that the scheme would meet strong hostility - some even from within the ranks of the Conservative Party itself. Pressures o government eventually meant that the size of the scheme had to be reduced so that the financial allocation for 1985/86 was set at £34 million, with a total of 21,400 pupils holding Assisted Places (Tapper and Salter, 1986; Fitz et al, 1986). According to government information leaflets, the scheme in England and Wales was set up to 'give able children a wider range of educational opportunity' by giving 'help with tuition fees at independent schools to parents who could not otherwise afford them' (DES, 1985a: the scheme for Scotland has several major differences, see Walford, 1988a). Parents are thus means tested. Selection criteria are decided by the individual schools, but are usually based on academic promise and performance. A selected child whose parents have an income of under £6,376 (in 1986/87) receives free place. Those parents with an income of £10,000 contribute £615, while those with £15,000 contribute £2,055 per annum. Table 6.1 shows the number of pupils with Assisted Places in October 1985, while Table 6.2 shows the relevant parental income of

104

PRIVATE EDUCATION

Table. 6.1 Comparison of Assisted Places accepted in 1985, including places not previously taken up by pupils formerly at maintained (M)/ independent (I) schools/ 11+ Number of places available 4,068 Number of places accepted I M Girls 1,223 390 Boys 1,648 502 Total

2,871

892

12+ 160 I M 52 34 57 44

109

78

16

13+ 407 I M 81 74 135 180

1,041 M I 182 255 112 252

216

294

254

507

Source: Assisted Places Committee Questionnaire of 234 participating schools.

accepted pupils at the same time. One of the requirements of the scheme is that 60 per cent of the places should be offered to pupils who were previously in state maintained schools, but it can be seen from Table 6.1 that, whether by choice or lack of other candidates, this proportion has only been met for the 11 + intake. At all other levels the number of pupils from the independent sector is higher than 40 per cent. Overall, however, the far greater numbers of entrants at 11 + mean that the total proportion is far less than 40 per cent. Table 6.2 shows clearly that schools have attempted to ensure that pupils with parents with the lowest possible income receive the Assisted Place. This is the obvious thing for a school to do, especially where it has its own means-tested scholarship scheme for some other pupils. It is not the purpose of this chapter to attempt to evaluate the effectiveness of the Assisted Places Scheme in its own terms against the objectives set for it by government. An ESRC-funded study of the scheme has been looking at these aspects (see Edwards et a/., 1984; Whitty and Edwards, 1984) and an initial report has been published (Fitz et al, 1986). In this last report the authors show that, in their Table. 6.2

Relevant parental income of accepted Assisted Place candidates

Parental income Under £6,376

£6,377-£7,995 £7,996-£9,997 £9,998-£1 1,994 £11,995 and over

11 +

12 +

13 +

16 +

1,530

71 43 37 20 16

228 55 80 64 43

326 146 142 108 78

551 758 580 328

Source: Assisted Places Committee Questionnaire of 234 participating schools.

HOW DEPENDENT IS THE INDEPENDENT SECTOR?

105

local case studies, about a third of pupils on the scheme came from single-parent families, and 25 per cent of the siblings of their sample pupils were, or had recently been, at independent schools. While their evidence supported the claim that the majority of places are held by children from families with low or 'modest' incomes, they also point to low participation rates by manual working-class families. The authors suggest that 'a considerable proportion of assisted place holders come from submerged "middle-class" backgrounds already well-endowed with cultural capital' (Fitz et al, 1986: 185). These results are in broad agreement with those from an earlier, small-scale study (Douse, 1985). Although the Assisted Places Scheme is often thought of as a replacement for the Direct Grant Scheme, which was phased out by the Labour government from 1976, Salter and Tapper (1985:183-209) and Fitz et al (1986) make it clear that the idea had a long gestation period and that it originated from within the independent schools themselves. In their case study of the lengthy decision-making process that culminated in the inclusion of the scheme in the 1980 Education Bill, Salter and Tapper show that many of those schools within the old Direct Grant system had been seeking a replacement for it many years before 1976. The Direct Grant schools were often seen as a 'bridge' between the independent and maintained sectors, whereby a small number of pupils from the maintained sector (a minimum of 25 per cent in each school, selected on stringent academic criteria) could find their way into the more prestigious independent sector. But, as Salter and Tapper (1985: 186) recount, some time before the bridge was blown up by the Labour Party's commitment to a comprehensive system of secondary education the rot had already set in. The minutes of the Direct Grant Joint Committee are littered with references to LEAs that declined to take up their quota of places, so forcing the schools to either shop around for alternative LEA clients or to fund all the places at their own cost (DGJC, Minutes, 8 February, 1973). For some direct grant schools the regulations were proving exceedingly burdensome ... Moreover, as many heads themselves recognised, the peculiar distribution of direct grant schools (located disproportionately in various urban conurbations), and the fact that free places were not means tested, made it more difficult to defend them as the political temperature rose. The bridge was not only narrow, it was decidedly rickety. Salter and Tapper (1985) describe the way the Direct Grant Joint Committee set about trying to make their positions safer by trying to

106

PRIVATE EDUCATION

persuade the Conservative government to adopt an Assisted Places Scheme with a means-tested fee element. It had little success, so that when the Labour Party came to power in 1974 the Direct Grant schools remained in the same exposed position as 1968, and the Labour government swiftly redeemed its election pledge to make the individual schools choose between joining the maintained sector or becoming completely independent. With the Direct Grant Scheme gone, it was far easier for the various representatives of the independent sector to negotiate with the Conservative Party a form of assistance that they wished to see established, and the 1979 election manifesto contained a commitment to establish a meanstested Assisted Places Scheme. Salter and Tapper (1985) see the independent sector's commitment to the Assisted Places Scheme as a reflection of its desire to retain some form of association between itself and the maintained sector. In places, the account appears to see the support as altruism towards the less well supported maintained sector. They see it as 'perhaps perplexing' that the independent sector should show this support, in view of the fact that 'those direct grant schools which had decided to go independent rather than join the maintained system had successfully survived the transition in status and by the late 1970s numbers in the private schools as a whole were picking up'. They state that those schools that were to offer Assisted Places were 'responding successfully to market forces'. They also explicitly state that 'the private sector's support for the Assisted Places Scheme was not a product of financial exigency. Although the private sector has always valued its independence, in modern times it has consistently desired to be closely associated with the maintained schools' (Salter and Tapper, 1985: 185). Although there were undoubtedly many within the independent sector whose support was altruistic and who wished to 'be closely associated with the maintained schools', the emphasis given in Salter and Tapper's account fails to recognize some of the weaknesses within the independent sector at that time, and underplays the very real advantages that the government's support for the Assisted Places Scheme has for the independent sector. First, there are the financial aspects. It is very difficult to obtain information on the financial security of independent schools obviously no school is going to precipitate its own downfall by announcing that it has possible financial difficulties. Further, with over 1,000 independent secondary schools, there is considerable variation in financial position. It is also certainly true that the 120 or so ex-Direct Grant schools that opted for full independence (out of

HOW DEPENDENT IS THE INDEPENDENT SECTOR?

107

170) found the transition easier than they thought it might be especially as the change occurred at a time of falling school rolls nationally, and thus potentially increased competition between schools. For a variety of reasons, probably not least the generally accepted perception of underfunding and decay in the statemaintained sector, and the declining number of grammar schools (Fox, 1985), the independent sector has been able to attract an increasing share of the pupil population. However, there is considerable circumstantial evidence to suggest that some of the ex-Direct Grant schools were experiencing difficulties during the phasing-out period of the grant. It is worth remembering that, while Tapper and Salter (1986) say that these schools had 'survived in the marketplace', this judgement cannot really be made, for in 1979 there was still a considerable number of pupils whose fees were provided by the Direct Grant (the last grant was paid in 1984). While the financial states of specific schools is not known, it is known that a large number of schools were anxious to participate in the scheme. Fitz et al. (1986) indicate that, in December 1979, when the DES invited schools to show an interest in offering Assisted Places, 470 schools replied positively. As the scheme laid emphasis on 'academically excellent schools', many of the applications were quickly rejected. A further letter was sent in June 1980 to schools judged to be able and willing to participate, and 291 firm offers to take part were received. Fitz et al. (1986) explain that 'some schools were so enthusiastic that their offers to take assisted places had to be limited to 50 per cent of their annual intakes...'. Not all of these schools were eventually to take part in the scheme and it is highly likely that some of those schools which were rejected had the most pressing financial problems: such enthusiasm for the scheme is difficult to explain if all the schools were financially secure. It must also be remembered that the Labour Party had promised to axe the scheme immediately on its return to power, with no phasingout period. Further, it had written directly to each school explaining this position (Fitz et al., 1986). On the face of it, it is unlikely that any school would wish to have too many Assisted Places pupils, for immediate cessation of the grant would cause major disruption and instability. It seems unlikely that altruism alone would induce a school to run the risk of instantly losing half of its pupils, yet many schools apparently wished to take such a risk. Neither has the situation changed in more recent times. Yet, according to a parliamentary answer written in 1984 (Fairhall, 1984), by 1988, when the scheme was due to be in full operation in 228 schools, there would be 47 schools with 20-30 per cent APS scheme pupils, 51 schools wit

108

PRIVATE EDUCATION

30-40 per cent, and 44 schools with over 40 per cent. When the scheme is operating fully, it was anticipated that about one in seven children in independent schools would be assisted (Hodges, 1985). Further, in the Assisted Places Committee's questionnaire to the 234 participating schools in 1985, 71 (30 per cent) of the schools then in the scheme expressed the wish to increase the number of places available under the scheme in their own schools. In contrast, only 14 of the schools (5 per cent) wished to reduce their number of places in the scheme. Even by 1985, the average number of Assisted Place pupils in each of the 234 schools was 93 - a large number given that many of them would be likely to leave the school rapidly on the return of a Labour government. These figures throw considerable doubt on Salter and Tapper's statement that 'The private sector's support for the Assisted Places Scheme was not a product of financial exigency.' While there can be no conclusive evidence that the scheme is allowing independent schools to remain open by filling places at public expense, it can be seen that there are good reasons for suspecting that this may be true for a few of the schools. (In Scotland, with its different Assisted Places Scheme, the evidence in favour is stronger: see Walford, 1988a.) However, it is clear that the APS make a substantial contribution to the finances of some schools. As a rough guide, in 1986 the HMC had 101,000 day pupils each with average yearly fees of £2,607, while GSA/GBGSA had 85,000 day pupils with average yearly fees of £2,088. Total day pupil fees income for all these schools is thus about £440 million, including fees from pupils too young to participate in the APS. A figure of £55 million is not inconsiderable in comparison. While it may be 'paltry' in terms of the overall national education budget (Salter and Tapper, 1985: 209), it may also be a much needed contribution to the financial security of some of the schools involved. Some support for this assertion is given in a recent article by Richard Wilkinson, Headmaster of King Edward's School, Witley, who writes: It will not therefore surprise the reader if I defend the APS. I believe that it is a good scheme. But I must be honest. It is a good scheme partly because it helps independent schools. I reject the tendentious arguments of Tory politicians that the APS helps children as opposed to schools. It does both. While a very small minority of schools on the scheme - the Winchesters and Sedberghs - may indeed be in no need of state support, the majority will have benefited considerably ... Many schools will

HOW DEPENDENT IS THE INDEPENDENT SECTOR?

109

be 'sick' if the APS is withdrawn - sick financially and in terms of the loss of children of ability. (Wilkinson, 1986: 59) Salter and Tapper also fail to consider the effect of the Assisted Places Scheme on the one aspect of the independent sector widely known to be experiencing problems of recruitment - boarding. Table 6.3 shows that there has been a steady decline in the number of pupils who board at independent schools. This presents particular problems for schools in isolated country areas, but even those boarding schools in large conurbations usually wish to maintain their distinctive 'boarding school ethos'. It is generally recognized that to have too large a proportion of day pupils severely damages the 'full-time', 'total' institutional aspects of the school. The decline in boarding boy numbers was undoubtedly one of the reasons why some of the most prestigious independent boys' boarding schools started either to admit girls in the sixth form or to become completely co-educational (Walford, 1983), and it has been shown in one particular case study of a major boarding school (Walford, 1986a: 188) that the candidate pool for boarding boys was only very slightly larger than the number of places available. Even some of the major schools have experienced difficulties in maintaining their boarding numbers. Table 6.3

Numbers of pupils in independent schools (England and Wales) Total number

1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984

Boarders

Boys

Girls

Boys

Girls

Total

283,144

240,737

84,790

43,988

286,995 286,701 282,360 278,202 276,869

241,839 241,739 240,011 236,634 235,307

84,605

44,636 44,646 43,850 43,099

28,778 29,241

85,300 81,568 81,077 79,243

42,828

29,946 25,418 24,176 22,071

Source: Department of Education and Science.

One of the little appreciated aspects of the Assisted Places Scheme is that, while only tuition fees are paid by the scheme, a number of the places are allocated to pupils who board. Thus, for example, within the Rugby and Eton Group schools, Malvern, Shrewsbury, Clifton, Monkton Combe, Wellington, Winchester, St Paul's and several others are authorised to offer boarding places to assisted pupils. Often the schools' special charities (see ISIS, 1986b), friends, relations or even the parents themselves (from wealth rather than income)

110

PRIVATE EDUCATION

Table 6.4.a Numbers of boarders with Assisted Places 10 + /11 Total numbers of Assisted Place boarders 167

Table 6.4.b

12

13/14/15

173

687

16/17

377

Known assistance to boarders from schools with boarding

fees (n = 927) Parental income

Nil

1-25%

26-50%

51-75%

76-100%

Below £6,376

48 17 32

24 8 26

103 51 103

68 30 62

196 45 114

£6,377-7,995 All others

Source: Department of Education and Science.

provide the boarding part of the fee. In 1985 a total of 1,404 Assisted Place pupils held boarding places, and Table 6.4.b shows that 70 per cent of these pupils were receiving help with the boarding fees from the schools themselves. In all, 78 of the 97 boarding schools involved offered some Assisted Place pupils help with the boarding part of the fee. For schools with limited scholarship funding, the advantage of the Assisted Places Scheme is obvious: it enables the schools to support a greater number of boarding pupils than it would otherwise be able to do, thus helping the schools to maintain their 'boarding school ethos' at a time when they might otherwise be having difficulties in attracting sufficient boarders. The drop in the total number of boarders between 1981 and 1984 of about 8,000 significant, but without the Assisted Places Scheme it might have been over 1,000 more. Salter and Tapper (1985:195) rather myopically prefer to see the provision of boarding costs by the schools as 'a sign of goodwill' or as the independent sector having 'gone a small way to salvaging its conscience by meeting, in part or in full, the boarding costs of some children who receive assistance with their tuition fees' (Tapper and Salter, 1986: 717). It is also worth noting that the scheme has, in general, attracted wide support from the Headmasters' Conference as a whole rather than just those schools which were previously Direct Grant. In 1983 the Chairman of HMC called for an extension of the scheme to include the boarding element in some cases. This plea was reiterated at the 1985 Annual Conference of the HMC where the main demand was for an increase in overall numbers. Peter Brooke, then Parlia-

HOW DEPENDENT IS THE INDEPENDENT SECTOR?

111

mentary Under-Secretary of State at the DES, made it clear to the conference in his address that there was little prospect of the government rinding money to extend the scheme (Hodges, 1985), but the anomaly of the HMC asking that its schools should be designated 'independent' rather than 'public', while at the same conference asking for greater state funding, was sufficient to give rise to a Times editorial on 26 September pointing out that the public schools were not part of the welfare state and that there should be 'no begging bowl here'. It would be foolish to suggest that any of the major independent boarding schools would be forced to close without the Assisted Places Scheme and no doubt there are some purely altruistic reasons for their help, but it would also be reasonable to assume that it has allowed them to remain more like the sort of school they would wish to be. For some schools the alternative would have been a greater number of day pupils, and the Assisted Places Scheme has allowed those schools to retain a higher proportion of boarders than would otherwise have been possible. For other schools, the alternative, without the scheme, would be to take in boarders with lower academic ability than they would wish, or possibly to go co-educational. This suggests that the level of financial support is not a simple indicator of the degree of dependence that schools may have on the Scheme. It is not that removal of the scheme would necessarily cause collapse of the system (although some of the more minor schools might have to close as a result); it is that it allows a school increased flexibility to accept the sort of pupils it wants and remain the type of school that it wishes to be. This effect is clearly seen in the academic quality of the pupils selected on the scheme as both boarders and day pupils. In their report of their local case studies and the workings of the APS, Fitz et al. (1986: 190) state that .

there certainly were independent schools in our sample which were keen to recruit well-motivated assisted place pupils rather than the new market constituency which the less prestigious schools were being forced to appeal to in the absence of LEA place holders in a situation of falling rolls. In a similar vein, Clive Griggs (1985: 91) argues, slightly more colourfully, that the Assisted Places Scheme acted as a lifeline for some of the lesser known independent schools, and states, 'by boosting the intake of highly academic children, one head confessed that it had prevented his small school sliding down the "Gin and Jaguar" belt of the minor public schools'.

112

PRIVATE EDUCATION

The presence of Scheme pupils can be shown to have had the effect of increasing the academic honours that the independent sector can claim. In 1985 55 per cent of the Assisted Place sixth-form leavers (n=770) went on to university, and a total of 74 per cent went on to higher education. For the HMC as a whole, in 1985, 44 per cent of post O/A-level leavers went to university and 61 per cent went on to higher education, while for GSA/GBGSA schools the figures were 26 per cent and 44 per cent. The Assisted Places students thus increase the higher education entry success rates of the schools and therefore artificially further widen the differences in these rates between maintained schools and independent schools. Given that the pupils are strictly selected mainly on academic ability it comes as no surprise that they do well, but every highly academically able child transferred to the independent sector is potentially one more 'success' for the independent sector: thus the scheme gives the illusion that the differences between the two sectors are greater than they would otherwise be. The final, and perhaps most important, way that the independent schools derive support from government through the scheme is the degree of ideological support for independent schools that it exemplifies. According to Mark Carlisle, then Secretary of State at the DES, the aim of the Assisted Places Scheme was '... to give certai children a greater opportunity to pursue a particular form of academic education that was regrettably not otherwise, particularly in cities, available to them' (quoted in Griggs, 1985: 89). The implication of the scheme was clearly that the independent sector was 'better' than the maintained sector and that the maintained sector, especially in cities, was of insufficient quality to ensure academic success. As access to professional and middle-class occupations is now largely dependent on academic credentials, the message was clearly that the government and DES had little confidence that its own schools were the appropriate place for aspiring middle-class parents to send their children. These implications were immediately clear to the Society of Education Officers who questioned the educational basis of the scheme (SEO, 1979), and to John Rae, then headmaster of Westminster School, who opposed the scheme because he felt that The Scheme was based on a false premise: that an independent school was automatically a better place to educate a bright child. But in some parts of the country, the maintained schools were perfectly capable of enabling a bright child to fulfil his potential. To help parents move a child in those circumstances would be a waste of public money and an insult to the maintained sector. (Rae, 1981: 179)

HOW DEPENDENT IS THE INDEPENDENT SECTOR?

113

Technically, Rae is incorrect, for the scheme does not automatically assume that all independent schools are 'better' than maintained ones: about 250 of the schools that initially applied to be part of the scheme were rejected because their academic or other standards were considered inadequate (these schools were thus presumably 'worse' than maintained schools - a judgement that was very unlikely to be given prominence in literature to prospective parents). In practice, however, the introduction of the Assisted Places Scheme has raised the status of all independent sector schools. The message behind the scheme is that the government recommends that parents with children with high academic ability should make every effort to move those children out of the maintained sector into the independent sector, for the government itself believes that the independent sector is superior. This belief is reflected at a personal level by the fact that the vast majority of members of the Conservative Cabinet have chosen to send their children to independent schools rather than state-maintained schools (Rawnsley, 1986). The list of members who have used or are using the independent schools for their children includes Kenneth Baker, Chris Patten, Margaret Thatcher, John Moore, Geoffrey Howe, Douglas Hurd and Norman Tebbit. In conclusion, it has been argued that at the financial level the Assisted Places Scheme has probably been of considerable importance to some schools and a welcome increase in flexibility for others. The ideological backing for the independent sector encapsulated in the establishment of the scheme, however, is likely to have been of far greater importance to the schools. Most parents wish to ensure that their children receive the 'best' education that they can, and when the government itself appears to believe that the independent sector is 'better' than its own maintained sector, what parent is going to take the 'risk' of the maintained sector if the independent sector can be afforded? The nature of the government's ideological support The establishment of the Assisted Places Scheme is merely one example of the ideological support given to the independent sector by the Conservative government. Reducing public expenditure, replacing the 'nanny' welfare state, and the consequent privatization of as much of the economy as possible, are key elements in the overall Conservative government's strategy. Richard Pring (1986) carefully charts the process of the 'privatization by stealth' of the educational system, whereby the provision and the quality of education is increasingly becoming dependent on

114

PRIVATE EDUCATION

private means. He is concerned with two aspects: first, making services that should be free within the maintained sector become more dependent upon parents paying for them and, second, encouraging and enabling people to shift their children from the maintained sector to the independent sector. Although analytically clear and separable, from the point of view of ideological support for the independent sector both aspects boost the relative attractiveness of independent schooling. Pring discusses first the many ways in which parents of pupils in maintained schools now pay for what were previously regarded as essential aspects of schooling. Parents not only pay for pencils, art materials, books and paper, but in some places, through covenants, help pay the wages of laboratory assistants, school secretaries and general running costs of the schools. This increased privatization of the maintained sector has the double effect of increasing the differences between individual state-maintained schools, and also of lessening the psychological difference for parents between paying for education at an independent school and paying for it in the maintained sector. The government's deliberate policy of restricting resources available for the state-maintained sector, at a time of falling school rolls (which necessitates greater finance per pupil), has been a major benefit to the independent sector. Various Her Majesty's Inspectorate reports, with their accounts of schools with leaking roofs, broken windows, and a poor state of repair and decorations, have made it clear that the state-maintained sector is now seriously underfunded (DES, 1986a). It is little wonder that the often excellent facilities available in the major independent schools have become increasingly attractive to parents. During 1985 the 1,328 independent schools in the ISIS survey (ISIS, 1986b) spent £106.7 million on new buildings and equipment - equivalent to £254 per pupil. In the maintained sector in 1986/87 £217 million is to be spent on 7.1 million pupils £30.60 per pupil. But it is well recognized that the most important constituent of a school is not the bricks and mortar but the quality and enthusiasm of the staff who teach in it. In the state-maintained schools there are now many cases where subject areas are being dropped from the curriculum because there is no teacher qualified to teach them or, especially in science, where they are being taught by teachers not qualified in the subject area (DES, 1986a). There are serious shortages of teachers in various areas of the curriculum, and there are doubts about the academic and other qualities of some of the new teachers coming into the profession. Sir Keith Joseph's disastrous handling of

HOW DEPENDENT IS THE INDEPENDENT SECTOR?

115

the long 1985/86 teachers' dispute could hardly have been organized better to assist the independent schools. Throughout his period of office at the Department of Education and Science, Sir Keith appeared to take every opportunity possible to emphasize his perceptions of the poor quality of some teachers in the maintained sector. His emphasis on 'raising standards', 'increased relevance', 'greater accountability' and 'assessment of teachers' all implied that teachers in the maintained sector were at present failing in their tasks. Even before the 1985/86 dispute he had ensured that teacher morale was at a very low level. The dispute itself brought considerable disruption to classes, and practically all extra-curricular activities ceased in many LEAs. It is inevitable that the lack of appreciation shown to teachers for these extra duties will mean that they are unlikely to return to the former levels of activity without major changes. In contrast, in the independent sector, where salaries are not particularly better, but where security of tenure is far weaker (Walford, 1984), no lessons were lost and, in the major schools at least, extra-curricular activities are seen as an integral part of the job (Walford, 1986a: 98-107). The independent schools are able to adjust their salary scales to suit individual circumstances and can negotiate a starting point on their scale that is high enough to attract teachers in shortage subjects. They are often able to offer very good facilities, especially in science, as a further incentive. This does not mean that the independent schools have experienced no difficulties at all in recruitment, but that their difficulties have been generally small compared with those of the maintained sector. It is highly likely that the perceived decline of the maintained sector has been a major influence in increasing the proportion of the age range in independent schools. In her interviews with parents in 1979/90, Irene Fox (1984, 1985) found that 40 per cent of the parents in her sample with sons in independent schools said that one of the reasons that they chose independent schooling was the perceived better teachers and methods of teaching. About a third were influenced by the smaller class sizes and over a half by the better academic results. About one-third expressed direct criticism of the provisions of the maintained sector. It is unlikely that these proportions will have decreased as the underfunding of the maintained sector has continued through the 1980s. The clear preference for the independent sector, and implied criticism of the maintained sector, has been sustained and emphasized by Kenneth Baker since he became Secretary of State for Education and Science. While Sir Keith Joseph vaguely suggested the possibility of Crown Schools for primary age pupils, in October

116

PRIVATE EDUCATION

1986 Kenneth Baker (1986) produced a glossy booklet to launch City Technology Colleges, which are to be registered independent schools for 11 to 19-year-olds, owned and run by private promoters. The colleges will be expected to have a 'charitable character' and industry will be expected to make a substantial contribution to the cost. The promoters' rewards will be 'richer opportunities for good education in the cities and an enhanced contribution to the vigour and prospects of the communities there'. Strangely enough the document (Baker, 1986) fails to make it clear why independent schools are seen as being better able to respond to the perceived demands for schools with 'a strong technical and practical element' than are local authority schools. However, the desire to introduce these colleges, which are 'to admit pupils spanning the full range of ability' yet be selective in terms of pupils' achievement, aptitude, ability to benefit and to their parents' commitment to full-time education or training up to the age of 18, shows that in one aspect this is another attempt to re-introduce selection into secondary schooling where more direct methods have failed (Walford and Jones, 1986). The 1987 White Paper announcing the government's expenditure plans for 1987-88 to 1989-90 gives a further boost to CTCs, with the substantially increased figure of £30 million being set aside for 1989-90. Since the beginning of 1987 the implied attack on local authorities has become clearer, with Kenneth Baker quickly voicing support for the ideas summarized by the Hillgate Group (Cox et al, 1986) that every school should be owned by an individual trust, surviving in the marketplace on its ability to satisfy customers. The proposal for CTCs thus begins to be seen as just the first stage of a process of privatization of the whole of the maintained sector of education. Ideologically, the government continues to make it clear that independent education is believed to be more desirable than the schools over which it itself has control. Government financial support to independent schools The Assisted Places Scheme is now perhaps the most well-known way by which the government gives direct financial support to the independent sector, but it is far from being the only conduit. Clive Griggs (1985: 78) gives a brief account of the curious way in which the majority of the independent sector have come to obtain charitable status on profits. When Brighton College started making a regular profit in the early twentieth century, it fought to receive the same tax advantages as the 'Great Schools'. Griggs relates that Brighton's campaign had brought a series of concessions: exemption on rents and profits of land (Schedule A) in 1917,

HOW DEPENDENT IS THE INDEPENDENT SECTOR?

117

interest and dividends (Schedule C) in 1918, corporation profits tax in 1922 and exemption from tax under Schedule D for all charities in 1927. In 1960 the schools found that they had been given a further concession without any consultation. They were granted a mandatory 50 per cent relief of rates - and local authorities were allowed to grant them even higher relief if they wished to do so. As charities, the schools qualify for a considerable and diverse array of concessions, ranging from relief on rates to exemption of the employers' surcharge. They are exempt from VAT, corporation tax, income tax, and capital gains tax. Moreover, there are tax exemptions for donors to charities. Transfers to charities and to charitable trusts are exempt from capital transfer tax (now called inheritance tax), and there is stamp duty exemption for instruments effecting conveyances, transfers or leases to charities. For donations made under deeds of covenant lasting for more than three years by individuals, basic rate tax can be deducted, which the charity can claim back. Companies can claim relief from corporation tax on the total amount of covenanted payments, sponsorships or gifts. The Conservative government's policy of privatization and 'self help' has meant that there have been several changes since 1979 to try to encourage charitable giving and to allow further concessions to charities themselves. The independent schools have benefited at the same time as Save the Children Fund and Oxfam. Thus the government fairly quickly reduced the period necessary for charitable covenants to attract tax relief from 'over six' to 'over three' years, in order to encourage flow of funds from private sources to the voluntary sector. They further introduced relief for individuals from higher rates of tax for covenanted payments up to a maximum of £3,000 per year. This was increased to £5,000 in 1983 and to £10,000 in 1985. Individual relief from high rates of tax for individuals covenanting payments can be of particular importance to independent schools. Parents are not able to pay the school fees of their own children in this way and obtain tax relief, but relations and even friends may do so. Grandparents, in particular, often wish to support the private education of their grandchildren. There is a gain to be made by covenanting to pay each year up to the limit of each child's personal tax allowance. While this is insufficient to pay the fees of most schools if the fees are required immediately, advanced planning and the use of a life assurance policy enables a greater proportion of the fees to be paid in this way. The raising of the maximum amount for relief from higher rates of tax for covenanted payments enables high-

118

PRIVATE EDUCATION

earning grandparents and others to benefit from a covenant to more of their grandchildren. Early Conservative legislation also introduced exemption from Stamp Duty, Capital Transfer Tax and Development Land Tax (now abolished) on gifts to charities, and gave tax relief for employers on the salary costs of employees seconded to charities. The last concession was only extended to maintained schools in 1986, and is beginning to be used by schools to provide Industrial Fellows and the like, who aim to generate greater links between the schools and industry and commerce. A further change concerns Capital Transfer Tax (re-named Inheritance Tax in 1986). Up until 1983 there was tax exemption on legacies to charities of up to £250,000. In the 1983 budget, however, the limit was removed so that all such gifts were exempt. This might appear to be a fairly unimportant change, for single legacies of over a quarter of a million pounds to any charity are obviously rare. On these rare occasions, however, the effect can be of major significance. For example, in July 1986, Norman Sharpe QBE, a bachelor and old boy of Giggleswick School, died and a left a million pounds to the school (Guardian, 23 December 1986). The exact details are complicated and depend on individual circumstances, but had he died prior to 1983 that million pounds could have been reduced by up to £450,000 in tax. By his living a few more years the school was able to gain the whole of the one million pounds. The 1986 budget brought a further group of concessions to charities, which the schools can exploit (Inland Revenue, 1986). Three new types of tax relief were included. First, companies from April 1986 are able to claim tax relief on one-off gifts to charities, up to a maximum of 3 per cent of the ordinary dividends paid by the company. Second, the limit of £10,000 on the amount of charitable giving through deeds of covenant for which an individual taxpayer can claim higher rate relief was completely removed. Third, a new scheme for relief of donations under 'payroll giving' schemes was introduced. The third of these is unlikely to be of any importance to the schools, for it is unlikely that any organization (apart, perhaps, from the schools themselves) would be able to convince its employees of the benefits of covenanting to an independent school. The first of the changes could, however, have a major effect. Unsolicited gifts, benefactions and highly organized appeals are now an important way by which independent schools finance new buildings and facilities (Griggs, 1985: 66; Walford, 1986a: 212). Individual schools launch appeals for at least half a million pounds some for much more. Such appeals are very carefully organized, and are not primarily aimed at parents of boys or girls presently attending

HOW DEPENDENT IS THE INDEPENDENT SECTOR?

119

the school. Instead, they aim to get a small number of large donations from major companies, institutions and individuals, which can then be supplemented by a host of smaller donations. Contacts with old boys and girls who have risen in their careers to very senior posts are thus vital, for it is the directors of major companies who are able to ensure that their own independent schools can receive a share of the company's regular charitable contributions. These influential former pupils will often act as vice-presidents or as members of the appeal committee to encourage generous giving by others. Further influential people will act as patrons or chairmen. Margaret Thatcher, for example, was Patron of the St Paul's Girls' School Appeal (Wilce, 1983). The importance of these most recent tax changes is that companies are often reluctant to covenant donations for a period of as long as four years, for the instabilities of the present economic climate make prediction of future profit margins very difficult. The introduction of tax relief on single donations by companies is likely to help the schools considerably in attracting financial support from companies for specific one-off appeals. Schools will be able to benefit from endof-tax-year windfall profits, or simply obtain a share of any sudden generosity on the part of companies. These changes in laws for charities once more illustrate the increased degree of support for the independent schools that has resulted from change in government policy. Salter and Tapper (1985:72) draw attention to the fact that the financial benefits to schools of charitable status are not large. They state that 'the opposition to private schooling probably realise that the ending of charitable status may cause the schools little more than irritating financial problems but may not realise how important a symbolic victory it would be. If charitable status goes does anything sacred remain?' An Independent Schools Joint Committee survey in 1983 covering the major schools gave a figure of about £23 million, or 3 per cent of income (quoted in Dennison, 1984: 83); the Labour Party (1980) estimates that about 5 per cent of total income is attributable to charitable status; while Salter and Tapper quote 'somewhere between 5 and 10 per cent fees' (not total income). The important thing here is that the percentage is likely to rise as a result of tax changes, but even with substantial increases it is unlikely that the removal of charity status would cause major problems to more than a few schools (the imposition of VAT, however, would cause more damage). Salter and Tapper are also correct to highlight the symbolic or ideological aspect of charity status - but this should not be over-

120

PRIVATE EDUCATION

emphasized. Of 1,333 schools in membership of ISIS in 1986, 20.6 per cent were not, in fact, registered charities: 11.6 per cent were proprietary schools (including three HMC and two GSA/GBGSA schools), and 9 per cent were limited companies (including four GSA/GBGSA schools). For independent schools as a whole, only about 56 per cent had charitable status in 1982 (Posnett and Chase, 1985). However, it is worth noting that while these schools are not registered charities some of them, for tax purposes, may be treated as if they were: a tax decision on whether an organization's purposes are charitable is not restricted to registered charities. Such schools have the additional advantage of not having to submit statements of account to the Charity Commissioners, and so their sources of income can remain hidden. Thus, while the struggle over charitable status is certainly about more than just the financial well-being of the independent schools, and the status is indicative of the support that the state gives to the sector, it is doubtful if many parents would be dissuaded from their choice of the independent sector just because the majority ceased to be designated as charities. The main purpose of this chapter is not to catalogue the many other ways in which support is channelled to the independent schools. This has been done elsewhere (Griggs, 1985; Labour Party, 1980). Most of those processes have remained unchanged through the lives of successive governments. While, for example, it is true that the vast majority of teachers in the independent sector were educated in universities and colleges at the state's expense, and thus transfer a hidden subsidy to the independent sector, this does not indicate increasing support from the state but merely the status quo. In the same way, teachers from independent schools have for a long time been 'welcome to attend the short courses run by Her Majesty's Inspectorate' (DES, 1983b), although the welcome may have become a little more open since 1979. Table 6.5, however, does indicate some interesting changes in numbers of students receiving assistance with fees. The data are drawn from annual ISIS surveys, and are not strictly comparable year to year owing to slight changes in the numbers of schools involved. However, the general picture is a reliable one. As might be expected, at times when the LEAs are hard pressed for finance, and where the new Assisted Places Scheme is growing, the numbers of pupils supported by LEAs is reducing. However, it is worth noting that the rate of reduction of LEA finance is less than the rate of increase in APS finance. The increase in the number of pupils helped directly by the schools is also probably related to the APS increase. B ensuring that, of those whom the school wishes to help, the pupils with the poorest parents are given Assisted Places, the school is able to

HOW DEPENDENT IS THE INDEPENDENT SECTOR?

Table 6.5

121

Pupils in ISIS schools receiving contributions to fees

Number of pupils receiving contributions From LEAs APS From the school

Other sources

Armed forces

1952 1963 1984 1985 1986

7,529 7,364 6,227 5,585 4,644

10,416 13,705 14,089 15,016 15,064

19,904 16,930 12,873 10,492 9,763

4,679 9,769 14,324 20,023 22,943

30,902 35,544 39,321 40,785 42,989

Source: ISIS Annual Census.

help a larger number of other parents from the same amount of scholarship finance, by giving less to each. The final column of Table 6.5 indicates that the number of pupils with parents in the Forces who attend independent schools has increased dramatically. The government pays boarding school allowances for the boarding education of the children of military personnel irrespective of whether they are stationed overseas or not, on the grounds that continuity of education is important and that military families face frequent and unpredictable moves. The Ministry of Defence pays some two-thirds of the average fees of a representative group of schools. This rapid increase does not seem to be the direct result of a change in government policy towards Forces children and the independent schools, but may be linked to several other changes in government policy. The most important reason for the increase is the decrease in boarding places in the maintained sector. Owing largely to government cuts in local authority, rather than any lack of demand or need, LEAs have been forced to close many of their boarding schools. In 1978 there were 103 state schools offering 10,109 boarding places, but by 1986 there were only 76 with 8,500 places, with a further 240 places due to be lost in 1987 when five more schools close to boarders (O'Connor, 1986). These schools were widely used by military personnel. The effect of the general reduction in maintained boarding also changes the 'image' of the remaining maintained schools, such that a greater proportion of pupils are likely to have clearly defined 'boarding needs'. This may make the remaining schools less desirable for Forces parents and thus add to the increase in independent boarding schools. A second reason is that the rates of pay in the Forces have risen significantly since 1979, such that it is now no longer only officers who can afford to make up the fees - more junior ranks are now taking advantage of the possibility of sending their children to boarding schools. Thus the total number of children

122

PRIVATE EDUCATION

receiving the Boarding Schools Allowance in all schools was 19,540 in 1980 and, by 1985, this had risen to 21,528. However, within that total, the number of children of officers actually fell slightly, while that for 'other ranks' rose from 6,247 to 9,126. Other possible explanations for the increase include the greater number of spouses of Forces personnel who now work, thus making fee-paying easier, and the greater desire to send girls to boarding schools as well as boys. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office also pays a boarding school allowance to members of the Diplomatic Service who wish to send their children to independent schools. The amount payable is the actual cost of the school fees within a ceiling of the average fees charged by HMC schools. In this case, the allowance is only paid to an officer serving a substantial posting overseas and for up to five years after return. In 1986 there were 1,174 pupils being financed in this way, which has reduced gradually from 1,681 in 1979. Only one child at present is in a maintained boarding school and so this decrease represents a lowering of the degree of support for the independent sector (mainly due to a decrease in the number of eligible Forces staff). A separate scheme, the effect of which is not shown in ISIS figures, is the Aided Pupil Scheme which started in 1981 and provides assistance with fees for pupils attending five specialist music and ballet schools in England and one music school in Scotland. These six schools include Chetham's School of Music, the Royal Ballet School and Wells Cathedral School. The assistance provided under the scheme is means tested, but on a far more generous scale than that for the Assisted Places Scheme. Also in contrast, assistance is available for the boarding element as well as tuition, and for children below the age of 11 in some cases. In 1985-86 the total cost of the scheme for the five English schools was £2.9m for 446 pupils, which is equivalent to over £6,400 per pupil. One of the further areas where the independent sector has received increasing help from the state is with educationally related money funded through the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). There have, for example, now been several special schemes concerned with computing, including the Micros in Schools Scheme, Micros in Primary Schools and Micros in Schools Extension Scheme. The initial Micros in Schools Scheme of 1981 had the objective of placing a microcomputer in every secondary school by the end of 1983. Finance was available on a pound-for-pound basis to all maintained and independent secondary schools, but initially applied to schools without any existing microcomputers. In 1983 the Extension Scheme provided similar finance for schools to buy computer ancillaries. The Micros in Primary Schools Scheme was launched in 1982, covering

HOW DEPENDENT IS THE INDEPENDENT SECTOR?

123

both hardware and software, and included a training package for every school involved (Waller, 1984). The most recent scheme from the DTI is Support for Educational Software, instituted in 1985 with a total of £3.5 million available over three years. The amount set aside for the independent sector within this scheme is 6 per cent of the total available, which is roughly in proportion to the number of pupils in the sector. The amounts involved are thus not large, but again may represent a welcome addition for the smaller schools. Support for pre-school, special, further and higher education Most of the debate about state support for the independent sector and growing privatization of education has centred on the compulsory school attendance age pupils, but since 1979 there have also been major changes in provision for other groups, which need at least to be briefly discussed. Table 6.6 shows the change in the number of fulltime pupils in the independent sector since 1979. Two columns show an overall increase: first, 16+, because a greater proportion of pupils are staying on to take examinations; and second, the 2 to 4 age group, which has shown a phenomenal growth in a very short time - and these figures represent only the tip of a major growth industry. As LEAs have been under increasing financial pressure, they have been forced to reduce the number of 'rising 5'-year-olds that they can cater for, and to close nursery provision. When she was Secretary of State for Education Margaret Thatcher championed nursery provision, but now it seems she has decided that this provision should be in the private sector, not the state-maintained. Furthermore, the figures in Table 6.6 give only those full-time pupils in independent schools. They take no account of part-time numbers, or of the increasingly important play-group provision. Table 6.6

Pupils in independent schools (England and Wales) 2-4

1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 Source: DES.

17,496 18,439 17,966 18,457 25,037 26,156

Age range 5-11

216,294 219,687 221,653 217,465 222,051 217,395

12-16

16 +

290,091 290,708 288,821 286,449 267,748 268,625

64,868 66,944 68,533 68,778 68,127 68,314

124

PRIVATE EDUCATION

Independent further education is also of considerable importance, and is growing rapidly. Griggs (1985: 111-14) describes the range, from secretarial colleges to crammers for pre-university students who have failed to obtain sufficiently high A-level grades for their desired course. Oxford alone now has 17 separate tutorial colleges, often taking the 'failures' of the independent schools. A recent guide to independent further education has about 600 entries (Shaw, 1986). Language schools are also an expanding area of operation, and range from the highly proficient and well established to the dubious and temporary. Griggs, however, has little to say about the major expansion of independent further education in the area of Youth Training Schemes. As Pring (1986) notes, the Youth Training Scheme (YTS), in its one-year form, requires at least 13 weeks off-the-job education and training, but the money available for this is in practice hardly sufficient to cover the costs within the normal further education college provision. The two-year YTS involves at least 20 weeks off-the job training. There has thus been a dramatic expansion of private enterprise schemes. One of the leading proponents, John Pardoe, who is now Managing Director of Sight and Sound Education Ltd (Seldon, 1986: 85) has described the £2,000 earmarked grant from the MSC fo each YTS trainee as a Voucher in all but name' (Pardoe, 1985). Hi particular firm has responded to this 'voucher' by providing courses in office skills and technology, but at about a half to a third of the costs of similar courses provided by Colleges of Further Education. It is not the purpose of this chapter to question just how 'similar' the courses can be at half the cost, but merely to note that, once again, the state (this time through the MSC) is increasingly giving support to the independent sector. The whole question is well discussed in the volume by Benn and Fairley (1986), where Finn states that an MSC survey in 1985 of 464 Mode A managing agents found that 14 per cent aimed to make a profit out of YTS training. Of 102,000 locally approved Mode A places covered by 20 Area Manpower Boards, nearly 30 per cent were controlled by private agencies. Similarly Pollert (1986) states that in December 1984 private training agencies accounted for between a quarter and a half of all Mode A schemes, depending on the region. In the same way the government's 69 skill centres, established to provide occupational training for adult unemployed, are to be privatized as soon as possible (Pring, 1986: 76). Within special education the situation is equally complicated. Sir Keith Joseph called for greater privatization of special education at the Annual Conference of 'special impairment' schools (TES, 28 February 1985: 2), and this has certainly occurred in Scotland at least, where

HOW DEPENDENT IS THE INDEPENDENT SECTOR?

125

some of the Scottish Education Department directly funded List D schools have recently become independent. The 1981 Special Education Act has also been used by some parents to force LEAs to pay for private education for their children, where they have claimed that the LEA was not making adequate provision. In one legal case Hampshire LEA was forced to pay for a boy to attend Bedales as result of the workings of the Act. There also appears to be a growth in the number of independent schools advertising their services for dyslexic children. The government's financial and ideological support for the independent sector extends even to higher education where there has been considerable discussion of the possible privatization of some universities, especially the Business Schools (Griffiths and Murray, 1985), and where a Royal Charter has been granted to the University of Buckingham since the Conservative government took office. This last institution has a remarkably short pedigree, being proposed in the pages of The Times in 1967 and formally opened as the University College of Buckingham by Margaret Thatcher in 1976. Margaret Thatcher is also one of the Patrons of the university, and rapidly ensured that home students at the college became eligible for local authority mandatory grants. These grants now cover maintenance and the standard university fee of other universities. A mere seven years after its foundation, on 23 March 1983, a Royal Charter was granted establishing the University of Buckingham. That the college should have been given full independent university status so rapidly and at its embryonic stage of development is a clear indication of the government's desire to support the independent sector. In 1983 the college had only about 500 students, who were studying a limited range of academic subjects. While over £4 million had been raised in donations, and buildings were progressing at a fair rate, few would have considered the facilities up to university standards. Even by 1986, with about 600 students, the entire teaching and research staff (including visiting and honorary staff) only numbered 58, and the library only contained 50,000 volumes. A large proportion of students were from overseas. Conclusion The direct and indirect ways in which the independent schools are subsidized by the state are so numerous that it is difficult to estimate the extent of the support in purely financial terms. Pring (1986) estimates that the minimum cost to the taxpayer of independent schools (and only schools) was about £175 million in 1983, and Griggs (1985) uses these same figures. The Labour Party (1980)

126

PRIVATE EDUCATION

estimated the figure to be £178 million at 1980/81 prices. In contrast, the Conservative Party (Conservative Independent Schools Committee, 1983) calculates a far lower figure of £90 million, but emphasizes that even this should not be regarded as a subsidy, as the state would have to find places in the maintained sector for all those at present in the independent sector if those schools were closed. Their estimate is that independent sector schools save the government over £410 million per annum. The basic point is a good one, even though the final figure is only achieved by the most outrageous assumptions. The truth is that, while the state does financially subsidize the independent schools, parents and others pay a greater proportion of the costs. Further, the extent of the subsidy is almost certainly less than it would cost the government to educate these children if they were transferred to the maintained sector. The inclusion of new capital expenditure, which would be required, would raise the costs substantially. The Labour Party (1980: 30) itself recognizes that there would be additional expenditure if independent schools were abolished, and that this would be true even if only the state subsidies were removed. Mark Blaug (1981) estimates that withdrawal of all subsidies would necessitate the rise of fees by 35-40 per cent, which would mean that independent schools would become too expensive for many and some would close. The result would be a smaller and more elite system with fewer contacts with the maintained schools. The Headmaster of Scarborough College, David S. Hemsall (1986), has recently expressed the possible effects of Labour Party policy in the following terms: Endowed and non-endowed [schools] alike would be adversely affected by measured proposals by the Labour Party. The imposition of VAT on fees for all schools and the removal of charitable status from those which currently enjoy it would be a grievous blow. At the moment, however, the direction of movement is the reverse of that desired by the Labour Party. As the maintained sector has declined, so the independent sector has increased its proportion of the age range. Between January 1985 and January 1986 the number of pupils in ISIS schools rose by 1.2 per cent in spite of the fact that secondary rolls are down 3.7 per cent and primary by 0.3 per cent nationally. Independent schools accounted for 6.5 per cent of the total school population in 1986, as opposed to 6.0 per cent in 1984 (ISIS, 1986b). Lodge (1986) reported that in some areas applications were up on the previous year by as much as one-fifth. In conclusion, it has been shown that the government gives

HOW DEPENDENT IS THE INDEPENDENT SECTOR?

127

considerable support to the independent sector both financially and ideologically. As the result of various changes in policy the degree of financial support has increased substantially since the election of a Conservative government in 1979. The Assisted Places Scheme, various changes in tax provision for charities and several indirect changes have provided welcome additions to the finances of these schools. More important, however, is the ideological support given by the government to the whole area of private education. The degree of support is such as to have made it clear that the government regards independent education almost as axiomatically superior to the educational service for which it has the responsibility itself. It is a strange example of lack of confidence. The result has been that since 1979 the independent sector has become increasingly dependent on the government for its well-being. At a time when the schools have successfully implemented a change of image to that of an 'independent sector', in practice it has become increasingly dependent upon the financial and ideological support of the state. Independence, it would seem, is a relative term. Acknowledgements I am most grateful to the following for providing help and information: Independent Schools Information Service, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Department of Trade and Industry, Scottish Education Department, Department of Education and Science, Service Children's Education Authority, Inland Revenue, Mark Robson and Sally Tomlinson.

CHAPTER 7

Independent schools and tax policy under Mrs Thatcher

The election of the Conservative government in the UK in 1979 brought several major changes in tax policy that sought to encourage private charitable giving, at the same time as tax rates were reduced dramatically. This chapter examines the effect of these changes on independent schools. Although the schools' special exemption from VAT is far more important than their relief from the direct taxes which follows from charitable status, they are likely to have suffered significantly from these tax cuts.

Following the election of Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government in 1979 there were several major changes in tax policy which sought to increase charitable giving. These changes may be seen as stemming from the government's belief that private social and welfare services should be encouraged, and thus reduce, to some extent, the costs falling on the Exchequer. It is often forgotten that changes in taxation that give additional benefits to charities, and to those who donate to charities, apply to most private schools in this country as much as to national and international relief organizations. While most of the public may not readily associate the activities of exclusive and prestigious schools, such as Eton College or Westminster and Rugby Schools, with those of charities, we suggest that the government's ideological commitment to the private sector of education should be seen as one of the contributory factors that led to these taxation changes. When rates are cut, as they have been progressively since 1979, the relative benefits enjoyed by charities are reduced, leading to demand for further special exemptions or reliefs to compensate. In this chapter we argue that, while changes made to the structure of taxation in From Journal of Education Policy (1989) 4, 2, pp. 149-62 (with Mark H. Robson).

INDEPENDENT SCHOOLS AND TAX POLICY UNDER MRS THATCHER

129

favour of charities arise in part from government ideology, additional motivation has been the need to compensate for the loss of relative benefit caused by cuts in tax rates. However, as tax rates have been successively lowered, it has become increasingly difficult to devise further sufficiently large reliefs and exemptions to counteract the consequential reduction in charitable income. Now that the basic rate of income tax has been reduced to the low level of 25 per cent - and the Chancellor has announced an intention to reduce it to just 20 per cent - it is to be expected that further government support for private schools or other groups of charities will be given in directed grants. Such a policy has the additional benefit of giving ministers and their civil servants more discretion over the recipients. The significant extension of the Assisted Places Scheme and the introduction of the City Technology Colleges are the most overt examples of such developments. Private schools and charitable status Many of the taxation privileges that are enjoyed by private schools are derived from their status as charitable institutions. It is important to note, however, that such status was not granted automatically, but was the result of political pressure from the schools over many years at the beginning of this century. Their case rests on a statute over 400 years old. In 1601, when the limited schooling that existed was all privately owned and controlled, the preamble to the Statute of Elizabeth I on Charitable Uses included as charitable activities the provision of goods and money for 'schools of learning, free schools and scholars in universities'. An updated classification of charitable purposes was affirmed in 1891 by Lord Macnaghten, who attempted to establish an overall definition of charitable activities comprising four principal divisions: 'trusts for the relief of poverty; trusts for the advancement of education; trusts for the advancement of religion; and trusts for other purposes beneficial to the community, not falling under any of the preceding heads.' When Income Tax was first introduced in 1799 and reintroduced in 1842, the so-called public schools were specifically given partial exemption, but it was only the Clarendon 'Great' schools that were automatically considered to have this status. The Victorian fee-paying foundations were originally considered to be conducting a trade, but when appeals were brought from 1874, many of these schools attempted to be included under the public schools' umbrella. A particularly important case was that of Brighton College Qones, 1983), which by 1910 made regular profits on which tax was charged. Its ten-

130

PRIVATE EDUCATION

year battle to be recognized as a public school was eventually supported by the Headmasters' Conference (HMC), as it was recognized that the decision would affect many more HMC schools wishing to gain taxation privileges. The fight brought a series of concessions which included the exemption from tax on rents and profits from land in 1917, on interest and dividends in 1918, and on corporate Profits Tax in 1922. When Brighton College took its case to the House of Lords, however, it was ruled that the schools were indeed carrying on a trade from which the profits were taxable. Intensive political lobbying followed until, in the Finance Act of 1927, Winston Churchill rather reluctantly granted exemption from Income Tax to all charities if their profits were derived from the main purpose of the charity. This was a very clear example of how pressure from the private schools lobby led to changes for the whole of the charity sector. Level of government support There have been several attempts to assess the level of financial benefit to private schools derived from their charitable status. All of these estimates are subject to considerable uncertainty, as benefits are obtained through several different mechanisms and no comprehensive data have ever been collected. Glennerster and Wilson (1970) estimated that in 1965/66 private schools (excluding the Direct Grant schools) received a total of about £4.0 million in tax and rates relief. As the total income of the schools at this time was just over £90 million, the relief amounted to only about 4.5 per cent of income. A more recent survey conducted by the Independent Schools Joint Council (1987) put the total value of rates and tax relief for 1985/86 at £30.8 million for the 1,151 schools in membership of the Independent Schools Information Service. Rogers (1980) estimated that by 1979 the figure for all private schools was over £36 million, and a few years later Pring (1986) calculated a value of £50 million. Clearly, there are uncertainties and assumptions involved in all of these calculations, and the choices made are certain to be influenced by political positions. For example, while the Labour Party (1980) calculated a value of £38.5 million in 1980/81, the Conservative Party in 1983 gave a figure of only £15 million (CISC, 1983). If the ideology of Thatcherism becomes even more widely accepted than it is now, we can expect Conservative Party estimates to rise, and the degree of government support for the private sector to become more proudly trumpeted. The low figure of 1983 would appear to indicate that some degree of anxiety about such support still remained at that time.

INDEPENDENT SCHOOLS AND TAX POLICY UNDER MRS THATCHER

131

The precise figures are thus in doubt, but the highest estimate is about 5 per cent of income attributable to charity status, while the average estimate hovers at about 4 per cent. This level of support is unlikely to make a great difference to any of the major schools, but could have an effect at the margins. One of the most useful sources of detailed data comes from a study by Posnett and Chase (1985), derived from a stratified random sample of 429 private schools in England and Wales. Although they are the most accurate available, in several respects the data still have to be treated with caution, as the overall response rate of 59 per cent was a little low, and may have induced bias. An interesting aspect noted by Posnett and Chase is that the distinction of schools with charitable status is skewed. In 1982, 56 per cent of independent schools were registered charities, and those schools accounted for 73 per cent of total income of private schools for that year. Thus, while virtually all of the major schools with high incomes are charitable (i.e. the members of the HMC and Girls' Schools Association/Governing Bodies of Girls' Schools Association), the majority of the prep, pre-prep and non-HMC or GSA/GBGSA schools are not registered charities. However, schools that are not registered as charities may still receive tax benefits. A decision by the Inland Revenue that an organization's purposes are charitable, so as to obtain tax relief, is not restricted to registered charities. Such schools as benefit without registering have the additional advantage of not having to submit statements of account to the Charity Commissioners, so that their sources of income can remain hidden. Indeed, in Scotland and Northern Ireland, since there is no equivalent body to the Charity Commissioners, the Inland Revenue alone makes decisions on charitable status. Therefore although tax policy is uniform throughout the UK, data on charities are only readily available for England and Wales. Changes in benefits from direct taxation Since 1979 there have been numerous changes in tax benefits provided for charitable activities that have affected the various parties involved in private education - schools, fee-payers and donors. The value of benefits has changed over time as the result both of reforms in the structure of taxation and of lower tax rates. The extent of the resulting changes in benefits is striking, and by no means all in one direction. The schools Exemption from the direct taxes (Income, Capital Gains and Corpora-

132

PRIVATE EDUCATION

tion Tax) benefits few schools directly, because if they are nonprofitmaking they will have no profits to tax. However, if a surplus was earned in any year and invested as capital, or simply carried over to meet running costs in the following year, it would attract tax at the Corporation Tax rate (if the school was a company), which in 1988/89 would be between 25 per cent and 35 per cent (depending on the size of the profits). This question of accumulation of income was precisely the point at issue in the Brighton College case. Furthermore, investment income earned on capital, either saved out of surplus income or from capital endowments, is also free of tax, as are all rents and profits derived from land and buildings owned by the schools. Thus the benefits derived from direct tax exemptions are skewed, with the greatest degree of relief going to those schools that have the most wealth and foundation income. Schools such as Winchester, Eton and Rugby therefore benefit extremely disproportionately. Figures presented in Posnett and Chase (1985) suggest that in 1982/ 83 the surplus of income over current and capital expenditure of independent schools in England and Wales was £35 million, and that investment income received amounted to £61 million. If all the schools had suffered tax at the small companies rate (then 38 per cent), then £36 million would have been payable to the Exchequer. But of course if the tax rate falls - and the small companies rate has fallen from 42 per cent in 1978/79 to 25 per cent in 1988/89 - then the tax saving falls too, even though the schools are, in absolute terms, no worse off. The only change is a reduction in the measure of the subsidy. At 42 per cent the tax saving would have been £40 million in 1982/83, but at 25 per cent only £24 million. Charities also enjoy relief from tax on capital gains. The value of this exemption overall is likely to be trivial, but is again of greater importance to those schools with the most wealth, including those whose foundation income is derived from real property that can be sold. Significantly, while tax rates generally have been falling, the rate of tax on capital gains has now been increased, from 30 to 35 per cent for a company, or to 40 per cent for a top-rate income tax payer, so that in this particular case the benefit to charities of exemption has increased too. Income tax for fee-payers and donors Before 1988 there were two distinct ways in which private education could benefit from the use of covenants. The first of these was not related to the schools' charitable status, but exploited the fact that tax relief on regular gifts of money could be obtained by making a binding commitment, through a covenant.

INDEPENDENT SCHOOLS AND TAX POLICY UNDER MRS THATCHER

133

Until 1988, covenants were most commonly used by parents to assist their children while they were in higher or further education. If an unmarried child under 18 received income from a deed made by a parent, the income was treated as that of the parent and not the child: the purpose of the covenant would be defeated. However, no restriction applied to more remote relatives, so that a grandparent or uncle, for example, could successfully covenant to a minor. This device could not be used to pay school fees directly, but as long as the child was old enough to be recognized as financially independent (normally at 14), he or she would have been able to claim their own tax rebate, by using their own personal tax allowance, and then pay their own fees out of covenanted income from generous relatives. As such covenanting was not directly linked to the payment of fees, it is impossible to assess what proportion of pupils benefited from this device. In her study of parents of boys in HMC schools, Fox (1985: 86) found that about one-fifth had received support in the form of an inheritance, a family trust or outright gifts. Johnson (1987) found that 12 per cent of her unrepresentative sample of families had received financial help from family or friends. However, for different reasons, both of these studies are likely to have underestimated the importance of family help. Short (1988) gave a higher estimate of more than 20 per cent receiving help from grandparents or other members of the family. As rates of tax were progressively lowered throughout the 1980s, the advantage to be gained in this way gradually lessened. Then, in a major blow to extended families meeting the cost of private education through covenants, the Chancellor swept away the whole system in his 1988 budget, as part of his desire to simplify the tax system. All new covenants, except to charities, will have no effect for tax purposes, so that no Income Tax relief can be obtained. Existing covenants were not affected. However, school fees now provide only part of the income of many schools. Some of the most prestigious schools, in particular, obtain a substantial part of their income from donations and regular appeals. In 1986, an HMC school of 500 pupils charging average fees would have had a fee income of just over £2 million. In 1985, appeals at Bishop's Stortford College and Berkhamstead School (for example) raised over £400,000 each. While occasionally some schools are able to raise enormous figures (such as £800,000 by Haileybury in 1984 and £4 million by Ampleforth College in 1982), it is reasonable to expect that most HMC schools could raise about £0.5 million, at 1986 prices, in their increasingly frequent appeals to pay for major new buildings or renovations. The glossy appeal prospectuses encourage donors to

134

PRIVATE EDUCATION

use covenants, as annual payments or as a lump sum, deposited as a 'loan' for the minimum period of four years. Since the school is a charity the covenantor may receive tax relief at the 40 per cent higher rate of Income Tax. The value of such arrangements can be substantial. For every £1,000 covenanted gross, tax relief at a basic rate of 25 per cent reduces the effective cost to £750, and relief at the higher Income Tax rate of 40 per cent results in a cost of just £600. However, since the level of benefit depends on the rate of tax, reductions in tax rates lead to a corresponding reduction in tax savings. Further details are given in Robson and Walford (1988). The change in the tax benefit for a top-rate taxpayer has been dramatic. His or her top rate of Income Tax, at which tax relief on covenants to charities is enjoyed, fell from 75 per cent on investment income in 1981/82 to 40 per cent in 1988/89. The true cost of a £1,000 (net of basic-rate tax) covenant has thus increased very substantially. The effect of tax relief is shown in Table 7.1. Table 7.1

Effects of tax relief on covenants

Year

Basic rate

Top rate

Gross value

b

t

£1,000/(1-b)

£1,000 (1-t)/(1-b)

30% 30% 29% 27% 25%

75% 60% 60% 60% 40%

£1,429 £1,429 £1,408 £1,370 £1,333

£357 £572 £563

Cost to payer

1979/80 to 1983/84 1984/85 to 1985/86 1986/87 1987/88 1988/89

£548 £800

The last column indicates that the cost to a top-rate taxpayer of a covenanted donation to a school was only 25 per cent of the amount received by the school in 1980/81, but has increased to 60 per cent of that amount by 1988/89. So while tax cuts might be considered good fortune for taxpayers, to tax-exempt charities they may be a decidedly mixed blessing. Not only does the true cost of a covenant rise with cuts in the higher rates of tax, but if the covenant is expressed in net terms, the amount the school receives falls with cuts in the basic rate of Income Tax too (as shown in the fourth column of Table 7.1). All charities, including schools, may thus see their gross receipts fall when there is a fall in the basic rate of Income Tax. In part to compensate for this effect, and partly for ideological reasons, the

INDEPENDENT SCHOOLS AND TAX POLICY UNDER MRS THATCHER

135

government has faced pressure to make further concessions to charities. Some of the changes since 1979 to the Income Tax regime have reflected this pressure. In 1980 the minimum period for which a covenant to charity must be able to run was reduced from seven to four years, in order to encourage charitable giving without such a long-term commitment. In the case of schools with charitable status, this change made it easier for them to encourage donations in the form of covenants, increased in value by the tax relief. This was the first example of a concession to mitigate the loss in gross income suffered by charities as a result of the taxation changes in 1979. Also in 1980, relief at higher rates of tax was given for charitable covenants for the first time, for 1981/82 onwards. Until 1983 the total amount of payments on which an individual could receive this relief was restricted to £3,000 in any tax year. The limit was increased to £5,000 for 1983/84, then to £10,000 for 1985/86, and finally removed completely in the 1986 budget. In a related but more radical move, in 1986 companies were allowed for the first time to set charitable donations in a single accounting period (rather than through long-term covenants) against their Corporation Tax bills, up to a limit of 3 per cent of their dividends paid in the period. The introduction of tax relief on single donations by companies is likely to help City Technology Colleges as well as schools launching specific appeals. But it must be noted too that, as the main Corporation Tax rate has also been reduced from 52 to 35 per cent, the incentive for companies to donate has fallen. The net cost of a tax-deductible donation of £1,000 per year has increased from £480 to £650: an increase of 35 per cent. It is also worth noting that some schools are far better placed to take advantage of tax privileges on donations. Old boys of the most prestigious of the HMC schools, for example, tend to be wealthy and so able to make larger donations. They also often hold important positions as directors of companies and can influence company charitable giving. Within the hierarchy of schools, the most celebrated and exclusive are likely to benefit most. Such inequality is also structured by gender, with girls' schools nearly always raising less than similar boys' schools. In addition to the company giving scheme, in the 1986 budget individuals were offered tax relief under the Payroll Giving Scheme, or 'Give-As-You-Earn'. Employees may ask their employers to make deductions from their weekly or monthly pay for the charity of their choice, and receive tax relief directly through the PAYE system, just as if they had covenanted to the charity themselves but without a longterm commitment. The limit on annual payments was originally to

136

PRIVATE EDUCATION

have been £100, then increased to £120 for 1987/88 and £240 in 1988/89. Working parents with children at private schools could use this method to make modest donations, rather than covenanting for four years or more. This rather insignificant increase in the limit was the only element of the 1988 budget directly designed to increase charitable giving. It is an indication of the difficulty of finding new means of encouraging donations once general levels of taxation have been greatly reduced, and exemptions and relief exhausted. Inheritance Tax for donors and relatives Since 1979 the government has greatly relieved the burden of Inheritance Tax (IHT) (until 1986 called Capital Transfer Tax CTT). Correspondingly, the relative benefits available to charities or to donors to charities have reduced, before specific concessions are taken into account. The top rate of CTT was cut from 75 to 60 per cent on death and from 50 to 30 per cent on lifetime transfers in the 1984 budget. Under IHT, only transfers within seven years of death are taxable, in addition to the death estate itself. In the 1988 budget, the threshold for liability to the tax was again increased, to £110,000, and a flat rate of only 40 per cent introduced. The most generous exemption from CTT or IHT is that on all property left to a surviving spouse. For 1983/84, the latest year for which detailed figures are available, the Inland Revenue (1987) valued the property within this exemption on estates reported to the Capital Taxes Offices at £1,007 million. But the exemption for donations to charities was the next most significant, at £199 million. The Inland Revenue's (very rough) published estimates of tax foregone in respect of these two exemptions in 1986/87 are £400 million and £100 million respectively, compared to £240 million and £50 million in 1980/81. The incentive to give to charities increased in the 1983 budget, when all gifts to them were made completely exempt from CTT, whether made in life or on death. Prior to March 1983, there was a limit to the exemption of £250,000 on charitable gifts made on or within one year of death. The immediate effect was marked, as the amount of property given to all charities and falling within the exemptions rose from £132 million in 1982/83 to £199 million in 1983/84. Further details are given in Robson and Walford (1988). The true value of the exemptions will be higher than these figures suggest, because estates that would have been chargeable to CTT but for the exemptions are not included. Until 1983, a wealthy donor wishing to give, say, £1 million to a

INDEPENDENT SCHOOLS AND TAX POLICY UNDER MRS THATCHER

137

charity in his or her will or when close to death would, if taxed at the top rates, have needed to provide a gross amount of £3.25 million to meet the CTT liability of £2.25 million. The value of the limited exemption for such a charitable gift was £0.75 million, because without it the tax liability would have been £4 million. For 1983/84, with complete exemption and the top rate of tax remaining at 75 per cent, the value of exemption increased fourfold, to £3 million; but then for 1984/85 onwards it fell to £1.5 million with the cut in the top rate to 60 per cent; and for 1988/89, with a flat rate of 40 per cent, to just £0.67 million. It is not possible to provide a comprehensive measure of the changing incentives because the average tax rate on any individual depends entirely on the sliding scale of tax rates and the particular history of lifetime transfers. But the general point is that the value of the exemption must fall with cuts in the rates of tax, and rise as the exemption ceiling is raised or removed. As indicated elsewhere (Walford, 1987), while single legacies on this scale are obviously rare, the effect of the removal of the exemption limit can be of major significance. In 1986, for example, £2.5 million was given to Haileybury and £1 million to Giggleswick School in the wills of former pupils. Fortuitously, by living beyond 1983, these old boys were probably able to more than double the value of their bequests. The change from CTT to IHT in 1986 also carried some potential disadvantages for charities, including schools. All lifetime transfers, whether to charities or not, became exempt provided the donor survives for seven years afterwards. A wealthy and healthy individual may now think twice about making a substantial donation to a charity when there is no tax incentive to do so, as compared to making a gift to, for example, a son or daughter, or other member of the family. Education and Value Added Tax Unlike other taxes considered in this chapter, Value Added Tax (VAT) is not a tax from which charities in general are exempt. But some goods and services, including education, are specifically exempted. The definition of education for this purpose is tighter than that applied for charity law. The exempt services are the provision of education by a school or university, the provision (otherwise than for profit) of education of a kind provided by a school or university, or training or re-training for any trade, profession or employment. Commercial tutors are not included, except that the provision of private tuition in subjects normally taught at school or university to an individual is within the exemption. Education by a local authority is not regarded as a supply in the course of a business and is therefore

138

PRIVATE EDUCATION

outside the scope of VAT. Companies in the performing arts that are charities qualify for charitable status because their primary object is to educate, in the broad sense approved for charitable purposes. But they do not qualify for exemption from VAT, because the services they supply are not deemed to be education as narrowly defined in the Value Added Tax Act. Understandably, the arts lobby perennially demands this privilege afforded to schools. However, once the basic test for exemption is satisfied, there are curiously even further valuable tax privileges. Customs and Excise have ruled that when the supply of education is exempt, the provision of various other services is exempt too. There are a few exceptions: alcoholic drinks are always taxable, soft drinks and confectionery are taxable unless supplied as part of an exempt meal, and catering for staff and guests is normally excluded (Customs and Excise, 1987). But in practice, of course, fee-payers are not only paying for teaching services but, if the school is boarding, they are also buying accommodation, catering, materials and entertainments on the premises or on school visits. All these facilities are exempted from VAT. It is not clear why this should be so, when the supply of these goods and services would attract VAT at the standard rate if they were not provided by a school, or indeed if they were provided for a school by an independent contractor. An estimate may be made of the value of exemption. Posnett and Chase (1985) suggested that the income of independent schools in England and Wales from fees and charges in 1982/83 was £1,215 million, out of total income of £1,340 million. A very small element of this figure will relate to zero-rated items, such as the sale of drink or cold food when not exempt, but this could account for no more than say £15 million, so that the yield of VAT at 15 per cent on goods and services provided would be of the order of £180 million gross. According to Posnett and Chase's analysis of expenditure in 1982/ 83, out of a total of £1,228 million only some £200 million would apparently bear VAT, the main items being repair, maintenance and other expenditure on property and establishments. In addition, capital expenditure in 1982/83 was estimated at £77 million, some of which (excluding expenditure on land and the construction of new buildings, which was exempt) would have incurred VAT. In total it is likely that no more than around £250 million of expenditure would have borne VAT. So the value to the independent schools of exemption is considerable, because their value added is high: salaries account for more than 60 per cent of current expenditure. If exemption could be removed, the net tax burden of the order of £150 million in 1982/83

INDEPENDENT SCHOOLS AND TAX POLICY UNDER MRS THATCHER

139

would have fallen on the parents of other fee-payers: an additional average cost of £250-£300 per pupil per year. It is worth noting again that such average figures mask the large differences within the system. Parents with children at Eton and Harrow gain a far larger tax benefit simply because their expenditure is greater. The ISIS Annual Census for 1987 indicates that fees have generally risen by 35-40 per cent since 1983. Assuming that costs have risen pro rata, the saving from VAT exemption in 1988/89 will be at least £200 million. However, if the rate of VAT had not been increased to 15 per cent in 1979, but had remained at its level of 8 per cent, this figure would be almost halved. Since it is clear that exemption from VAT is by far the most valuable of the tax concessions available to private education, the very sharp rise in the rate in 1979 affected the total measure of benefit more than any other subsequent change. However, according to a recent published joint legal opinion, it would be unlawful to bring education within the scope of VAT, whether at positive or zero rates (Lester and Pannick, 1987). The Labour Party has recently appeared to concede this point, during the 1987 General Election campaign (Guardian, 24 April 1987: 6). Nevertheless, a narrowing of the definition of what comes within education for the purposes of VAT exemption would result in considerable gains for the Exchequer. In their manifesto for the last general election, the SDP/Liberal Alliance (1987: 16) stated that they would review charity law to ensure that tax relief only went to 'genuinely philanthropic activities'. The Labour Party (1987: 9) stated that they intended to remove public subsidies from private schools. Both might do well to consider the effects of revising VAT legislation before that applicable to charities. Local authority rates All charities enjoy mandatory 50 per cent relief from their liability to pay rates to the local authority on property they occupy wholly or substantially for charitable purposes. Further discretionary relief may be given, up to 100 per cent. In the case of schools with extensive buildings and grounds, this relief is of considerable value. For example, Griggs (1985: 196) lists 41 schools with more than 100 acres of adjacent land. The saving in cash terms depends on the level of rates set by the particular local authority in which the property is situated. However, from the figures provided by Posnett and Chase above, it can be seen that the value of the relief for independent schools in England and Wales must have been of the order of £5 million in 1982/83. After the introduction of the Community Charge or poll tax,

140

PRIVATE EDUCATION

property that is not used for residential occupation will be liable to a uniform national level of rates. Schools will no longer have to pay rates in respect of residential accommodation provided for staff or pupils, but all residents over 18 will be personally liable to pay the Community Charge at the level set by the local authority instead. At the time of writing the details are not yet clear, but it would appear that those schools which have in the past received more than the 50 per cent mandatory rates relief are unlikely to retain the extra privilege. Schools in urban areas are likely to benefit from the uniform business rate, while those in rural areas are likely to find that their rates will rise. Summary of tax changes Table 7.2 summarizes the significant changes in tax rates and structure that have been made since 1979, in chronological order. The table shows clearly how there have been attempts to compensate for the disadvantageous effects of reducing tax rates by introducing concessions in a systematic way. After the various ceilings on amounts eligible for Income Tax and Capital Transfer Tax relief had been removed, tax rates were continuing to be cut. To counter the fall in benefits, more radical concessions were needed, leading to the effective removal of the minimum three-year constraint on covenants by the introduction of the Corporation Tax and Payroll Giving schemes in 1986. Further tax cuts in 1987 and 1988 may well lead to pressure for even more special schemes, but as rates of tax continue to fall, it becomes increasingly difficult to make adequate recompense for losses through specific schemes. The overall picture since 1979 is one of considerable change in the measure and extent of tax benefits as they concern private schools, fee-payers and donors. These changes have affected the various interested parties differentially. This means that the intriguing question, 'Are the schools now receiving more or less benefit through tax exemptions than they were in 1979?' is deceptively simple. Strictly, the answer must be 'more', since the rate of VAT, which is by far the most significant exemption, was nearly doubled in 1979. However, as the schools have never paid this particular tax, the increased degree of relief has no direct impact. On the other hand, the changes in the structure and rates of the direct taxes have certainly had real effects - but on various parties in various ways, and it is not clear how the different elements could be summed. While it is not possible to provide accurate estimates for the effect of these changes, it is at least possible broadly to rank the various Table 7.2 Changes in tax rates and structure since 1979

INDEPENDENT SCHOOLS AND TAX POLICY UNDER MRS THATCHER

Year

Changes in rates

1979

• IT basic rate top rate • VAT standard rate • CTT effective rates cut • CT small companies rate

Changes in structure 33% to 30% 98% to 75% 8% to 15% 42% to 40%

• IT covenants to charities minimum period 6 to 3 years • IT charitable covenants relief at higher rates up to £3,000

1980

1982 1983

• CT small companies rate 40% to 38% • CT small companies rate 38% to 30% 52% to 50% main rate

1984

• IT top rate • CT main rate

to to to to to

1985

• CT main rate

75% 50% 75% 50% 45%

1986

• IT basic rate

30% to

• CTT top rate

1988

• • • •

IT basic rate 29% CT small companies rate 29% IHT effective rates cut IT basic rate 27% top rate 60% • CT small companies rate 27% 60% • IHT top rate

• IT charitable covenants relief at higher rates: ceiling £3,000 per year raised to £5,000 • CT charities exemption ceiling £250,000 removed

to to

60% 45% 60% death 30% life 40% • IT charitable covenants relief at higher rates: ceiling £5,000 per year raised to £10,000 29% • IT charitable covenants relief at higher rates: ceiling £10,000 per year removed 29% 30% • IT relief under payroll giving scheme for employees • CT relief for company donations to charities up to 3% of dividends • CTT replaced by IHT:all lifetime transfers free of tax 27% 27%

to to to to

25% 40% 25% 40%

. CT small companies rate 30% to 40% to main rate

1987

141

• IT payroll giving scheme limit doubled to £240 per year • IT relief for non-charitable covenants abolished

142

PRIVATE EDUCATION

privileges by magnitude. For 1982/83 we should then have, in decreasing order of significance: • VAT exemption on fees and charges: £150 million • IT/CT exemption on profits: £35 million • Rates relief: £5 million This leaves the value of Income and Corporation Tax relief on covenants and CTT/IHT Tax relief on gifts or legacies to be estimated. Posnett (1984) examined the distribution of income of the charity sector by main object group for 1980/81, and found that the income of charities with education as main object constituted 6.1 per cent of total charities' income. However, many charities with other main objectives will be involved in education to some degree, and conversely a number of charities that qualify under education will not be involved in schooling. The Inland Revenue (1983) estimated the value of tax exemption on the income of all charities for 1982/83 at £225 million. This figure must be interpreted with care, but as far as the schools are concerned, their investment income of £61 million is likely to be included (Posnett and Chase's figure for England and Wales), with an element of higher rate relief to covenantors on 'other voluntary income' of £15 million, assuming this is almost all from covenants. In 1982/83 basicrate Income Tax repaid on investment and covenant income would have been £23 million; plus up to £7 million in higher rate tax relief. This estimate suggests that, for the whole of the UK, private schools might enjoy about 15 per cent of the benefit of charities tax relief, as measured in the Inland Revenue's definition. If the figure of £15 million largely represents covenants, then the schools could have reclaimed £5 million in basic-rate tax. Including higher rate relief to covenantors increases the measure of tax relief to up to £12 million, depending on individual incomes and tax positions. The value of tax relief on covenants made directly to children or into trust to pay for school fees may be substantial, but cannot be estimated. An estimate of the value of Capital Transfer Tax exemption is even more difficult. The Inland Revenue (1983) estimated the figure of £70 million for all charities in 1982/83. It is unlikely that more than 10 to 15 per cent of this benefit was on gifts to independent schools in England and Wales, so that £10 million in CTT relief would appear to be a realistic estimate. The most notable effect of updating these figures in 1988/89 would be that the relative value of the exemptions from the direct taxes Income, Corporation and Inheritance Tax - has fallen dramatically as against the value of exemption from VAT and rates.

INDEPENDENT SCHOOLS AND TAX POLICY UNDER MRS THATCHER

143

Related changes in education policy It has been shown that the tax privileges afforded to independent schools, fee-payers and donors are considerable, and that there have been many changes in the magnitude and nature of these concessions since 1979. Many of these changes are a direct and undesired result of the Conservative government's ideological commitment to lowering rates of personal taxation. As this process has developed over the last decade, those who have used tax-advantageous covenants to help pay school fees, or to increase the value of a gift to a school with charitable status, have gradually received reduced financial benefits. That this was an unfortunate side-effect of the reduction in rates of tax can be seen in the way that charity pressure groups, including those representing private schools, were able to influence the government to make further changes that would be to their advantage. Throughout the first two terms in office, the Conservative government appeared to compensate charities for their loss, and encourage further charitable giving, implementing a series of changes in the tax system to encourage larger donations and legacies. It would appear, however, that there has been a change in direction within the government since 1987. Charitable concessions through the tax system are in practice just a way in which the state gives money to charities, but by which it is hoped that greater giving by others will be encouraged. The reduction in the basic and top rates of Income Tax to 25 and 40 per cent has meant that taxation privileges are less of an inducement for individuals to give to charity. Furthermore, one disadvantage of using the tax system as a means to support charities is that it is indiscriminate. Over recent years there has been a considerable expansion in the number of organizations claiming charitable status, and growing evidence of abuse of that status. Sir Philip Woodfield presented a report to the government in 1987 (Woodfield, 1987) which argued that the supervision of charities needed extensive reform, as he found many charities that appeared to have personal gain as their main objective; and the use of charities for tax avoidance on a vast scale in the late 1970s has been documented by Tutt (1985: 225). A White Paper announcing new powers and controls is expected from the Home Office during 1989. For these reasons the government has become reluctant to make further general concessions to charities. We suggest that the re-election of the Conservative government for a third term and the 1988 budget mark the beginning of a new phase of government support for charities - a phase in which we would expect a growth in directed help for specific worthy causes, or even individually selected charities. It has been shown that the 1988 budget had a major influence on

144

PRIVATE EDUCATION

the covenanted income of charities, as Income Tax rates were reduced to just 25 and 40 per cent. The only simultaneous change to compensate was an increase in the limit of the Payroll Giving Scheme from £120 to £240. This is a trivial gesture compared with the amount lost by charities, estimated by the Charities Act Foundation at about £11 million per year. It is also significant that, unlike in previous budgets, there were no additions to the list of charities' traded goods or services, which are zero-rated for VAT. However, while the government seems to have ignored pleas for changes from the charity lobby as a whole, it has responded to requests from specific charities, and the last few years have seen a distinct increase in grants from government to selected bodies. Oxfam, for example, received nearly 10 per cent of its income in 1986/87 directly from the government, and Woodfield (1987: annex K) shows that central government agencies gave grants totalling £1,705 million to charities in 1984/85. As a result of the ideological commitment to private education, independent schools have also benefited in this way and, indeed, recent policy initiatives show a great increase in the degree of financial support that the government intends to provide for the private sector. From 1980 onwards the clearest way in which independent schools have been given funding has been through the Assisted Places Scheme. The scheme for England and Wales was introduced in 1980 to give means-tested support to parents of academically able children who might otherwise be unable to attend independent schools (Fitz et al, 1986). The Scottish scheme is somewhat different, and is cast in terms of widening parental choice (Walford, 1988a). As originally planned, the scheme would have provided a total of just over 33,000 places in England and Wales when fully developed, so that about 12 per cent of pupils aged 12 and over in independent schools would have had an Assisted Place. The scheme is now of major importance to many schools, with a few having over half of their pupils on Assisted Places. Furthermore, the 1987 Conservative election manifesto contained a specific pledge to expand the scheme to 35,000 places, confirmed in February 1988. The 6 per cent increase more than compensates for the direct loss of subsidy that schools will experience due to the latest cuts in tax rates. In practice, a particular government subsidy to independent schools is replacing general subsidies from which schools and other charities would have benefited. The expansion is to be in terms of the number of schools taking part in the scheme as well as actual places offered, and in October 1987 independent schools in England and Wales without Assisted Places were invited to apply to join the scheme.

INDEPENDENT SCHOOLS AND TAX POLICY UNDER MRS THATCHER

145

Although at present the major source of additional finance, the government's direct support of the private sector is not limited to the Assisted Places Scheme. In October 1986 it was announced that a new type of independent school was to be established. The government aimed to set up about 20 City Technology Colleges, which were to be owned and managed by independent trusts, and provide a highly technologically-based education to selected children from the inner cities. They were to have capital funding provided by industry and commerce, while the minimum basic day-to-day recurrent expenditure was to be met by a direct grant from government. It was, of course, open for these running expenses to be supplemented from other sources. In practice, the government has found it difficult to find sponsors for the colleges, perhaps because industry was simply not impressed by the idea, or perhaps because the ever-decreasing tax concession available to industrial sponsors made the real costs too high. Only five colleges had been announced by early 1988, by which time the regulations had been changed such that the government could pay up to 85 per cent of the capital expenditure of the colleges, as well as the basic revenue expenditure. This amounts to a considerable government subsidy to the private sector. The Education Reform Act of 1988 also contains a further major area of support for the private sector of education. It gives local education authority schools the chance to opt out of their present authority control and become independent schools funded directly by central government. This is a major shift in government thinking, and one which strongly emphasizes its desire to support private schooling. It is too early to assess the possible effects of the change, but it could dramatically alter the proportions of independent schools in the country and rapidly increase the government's degree of support for a wider private sector. Conclusions It seems clear that, in future, general subsidies to charities through the tax system are likely to be replaced by more specific, targeted schemes. We have shown how cuts in the rates of direct taxes since 1979 have inadvertently penalized charities, and how various specific exemptions and schemes to encourage private giving have been introduced into the tax system or extended, in order to compensate for this. As far as independent schools are concerned, the generous exemption from Value Added Tax that they enjoy on almost all services they provide is in fact a far more valuable concession than benefits due to charitable status. Nevertheless, the value of their relief from Income and Inheritance Taxes has declined significantly.

146

PRIVATE EDUCATION

Since the 1987 General Election, there appears to us to have been a radical change in policy. Certainly, the government shows no sign of wishing to reduce its support for the private schools. But partly because there is a natural limit to possible tax concessions to charities, and partly because of widespread abuse of charitable status, in future subsidies will probably be channelled through grants or special schemes instead. The Assisted Places Scheme, the City Technology Colleges and the provisions for opting out are three major recent innovations. They enable financial assistance to be more carefully targeted, to support particular policy objectives or even particular institutions, and in the process strengthen central government control over education still further.

CHAPTER 8

City Technology Colleges: a private magnetism?

It is often difficult to trace the origins of particular educational policy initiatives, and the decision to establish a network of 20 City Technology Colleges (CTCs) is no exception. There was a range of somewhat competing ideas and pressures that led to the final proposal. This chapter concentrates on two of the major arguments used to justify CTCs and examines the extent to which the first CTC, at Kingshurst, Solihull, acts in accord with these justifications. The two arguments are, first, the private school status and nature of the colleges and, second, the magnet school concept, which originally developed in the USA.

The CTC announcement was made by Kenneth Baker, then Secretary of State for Education and Science, on 7 October 1986, at the Conservative Party Annual Conference. In front of the enthusiastic audience, the colleges were presented as 'breaking the grip' of leftwing local education authorities (LEAs) and offering new opportunities to children in the inner cities where the LEAs were said to be failing to provide effective education. They were to serve 11 to 18year-olds within specific areas, some of which were already designated as part of the government's Inner City Initiative. In part, the CTCs were also intended to help solve the perceived national shortage of qualified scientists, technicians and engineers, for they were to offer a curriculum rich in science and technology, and students were to pledge to stay in full-time education or training until the age of 18. What was most unusual about the CTC idea was that the colleges were to be independent or private schools, run by educational trusts established specifically for the purpose and heavily supported by From G. Walford (1991) (ed.) Private Schooling: tradition, change and diversity. London: Paul Chapman, pp. 158-76.

148

PRIVATE EDUCATION

industry and commerce. The colleges were to be registered charities and receive regular donations from sponsors. They were to charge no fees but to have some current expenditure provided directly by the Department of Education and Science in line with per capita spending in similar LEAs. However, it was expected that the initial capital expenditure and major contributions to the extra current expenditure required to run a highly technological school would be provided by industry and commerce. The plan thus extended the government's ideology of reducing public expenditure and encouraging charitable giving by sponsors to cover the shortfall (Robson and Walford, 1989). Further details of the plan were given in a glossy brochure published by the government a week after Kenneth Baker's speech (DES, 1986b). It was sent to about 2,000 leading industrial and commercial organizations, asking them to support the new venture. According to the booklet, it was in the cities that the education system was under the most pressure and where the government's aims and parents' aspirations 'often seem furthest from fulfilment': There are many examples of good schooling offered by committed teachers in the cities. But the families living there who seek the best possible education for their children do not have access to the kind of schools which measure up to their ambitions. The government believes that there is, in the business community and elsewhere, a widespread wish to help extend the range of choice for families in urban areas. (DES, 1986b: 3) It was planned that each CTC would serve a substantial catchment area, with the composition of the student body being representative of the community served. These catchment areas were to be defined in such a way that places would be available for about one in every five or six children from within the area. It was made clear that the CTCs would not be academically selective, but that selection would still be an important feature. They were not to be neighbourhood schools taking all-comers, but the head and governing body were to select from applicants on the basis of general aptitude, for example as reflected in their progress and achievements in primary school; on their readiness to take advantage of the type of education offered in CTCs; and on their parents' commitment to full-time education or training up to the age of 18, to the distinctive characteristics of the CTC curriculum, and to the ethos of the CTC. (DES, 1986b: 5)

CITY TECHNOLOGY COLLEGES: A PRIVATE MAGNETISM?

149

It is now well known that industry and commerce has shown itself extremely, reluctant to take on the funding of this part of secondary education. The government's belief that there was a 'widespread wish to help' was misplaced, and sponsors have only gradually come forward, over a four-year period and in response to specific government overtures. Moreover, those who have been persuaded to become sponsors have only been prepared to donate on a scale far smaller than was originally envisaged, leaving the government to provide the major part of the capital and current expenditure. Such lack of support from British industry for new private education ventures could have been easily predicted by considering the fate of the University of Buckingham. Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative government have strongly supported the idea of private higher education and gave a Royal Charter to Buckingham in 1983 so that it could award its own degrees (Walford, 1988b). However, more than 20 years after the plan was first mooted, the University of Buckingham still has only about 600 students, who study a limited range of subjects, on a small campus with facilities few would consider to be of university standard (Shaw and Blaug, 1988). Nevertheless no serious research on industry and commerce's support for the CTC project appears to have been conducted, and the lack of support came as a surprise to the government. It seemed to anticipate that local industrialists would rush to become sponsors for a CTC in their area but, in practice, the government has had to take a more active role. Both sites and sponsors were difficult to find and the government eventually helped to establish the City Technology Colleges Trust to push the policy through. The first CTC to be announced was at Kingshurst, in Solihull, one of the metropolitan boroughs of the West Midlands. The borough sold a long lease on what had previously been Kingshurst Secondary School, and the first intake of about 180 children were admitted in September 1988. This college has been the subject of intensive case study research (Walford and Miller, 1991). Local headteachers, LEA administrators, politicians and others concerned with the college were interviewed between 1988 and 1990, and a mini ethnographic study was conducted within the college itself during the autumn term of 1989. During that term, teaching and other activities were observed, documents collected, a sample of 45 second-year students and some teachers were interviewed, and the majority of other students completed a questionnaire (fuller details of the research methods are given in Walford, 1991e). This chapter will discuss features of the City Technology College, Kingshurst, in relation to the college's private and magnet statuses.

150

PRIVATE EDUCATION

CTCs as private schools It is worth remembering that the British state's involvement in education is relatively recent. Before 1870 all schools were private schools, for it was only then that the government of the day began to establish state owned and maintained elementary schools to fill the gaps in private, voluntary and charitable provision. Over the years the Church schools became increasingly dependent on government funding, and have been largely regarded as part of the maintained sector since the establishment of the equivalent of LEAs in 1902. Since that point, the private sector of education rapidly shrank, reaching a low of 5.8 per cent in England in 1976. This process of gradually increasing government involvement and expenditure on schooling was not without its critics. Throughout the 150 years of growing government concern with education, each new change requiring further expenditure has been subject to severe disapproval from those who felt they would have to foot the bill. More recently, however, there have been growing strictures about government responsibility and control of education as well as funding, and the Conservative governments since 1979 have been ideologically committed to the privatization of all public services wherever possible. Over the last decade or more, the Conservatives have shown strong support for the private sector of education, and have sought to help and extend private schooling in competition with the maintained sector (Walford, 1990). There have been numerous articles, books and pamphlets that have argued for less direct control of education by government, But of particular importance have been those by Stuart Sexton, who was educational advisor to Mark Carlisle and Sir Keith Joseph when they were Secretary of State for Education and Science. Sexton was a firm advocate of the Assisted Places Scheme and a long-standing supporter of selective education, grammar schools, and a fully privatized and differentiated educational system. He was a contributor to the 1977 Black Paper (Cox and Boyson, 1977), where he argued for schools to have specialisms and for devolution of administration to schools such that maintained schools would become 'independent units as in the private sector' (Sexton, 1977). The Assisted Places Scheme that developed was more restricted than he had planned, but Sexton has continued to strive for a fully privatized educational system, possibly supported by vouchers (Sexton, 1987). As the 1980s progressed, the calls from the political right for increased privatization and differentiation between schools became more widely spread. Dennison (1984), for example, called for the establishment of new private schools, and recommended that these

CITY TECHNOLOGY COLLEGES: A PRIVATE MAGNETISM?

151

might be encouraged by handing over the premises of LEA schools due for closure to private trusts. He also considered the possibility of capital grants and further subsidies to private school to cover such items as salaries or capital expenditure. The 'No Turning Back' group of Conservative MPs (Brown et al, 1985,1986) argued for parents and teachers to be able to start their own private schools, funded by central government. Many commentators on the political right see private schools as more responsive to the desires of parents, and less likely to be influenced by left-wing ideas (which they saw as prevalent in many LEAs). They wish to see less emphasis on the social and community aspects of education and more on the education and training of a future workforce. Many on the right believed that private schools would be more efficient and effective in terms of value for money and traditional examination successes. Some critics of the maintained sector also saw the possibility of private schools breaking the power of teacher unions within schools, giving the possibility of payment based on geographical area, on a teacher's competitive position in the labour market and on evaluations of the effectiveness of individual teachers. Others saw private schools as a way by which government might be able to reduce gradually its responsibility for an expenditure on education. CTCs can be seen as one of the results of a long campaign for more private schools, for they are officially registered as independent schools, and DES statistics now include CTC staff and student numbers within the totals for independent schools (DES, 1990). Moreover, there was actually no necessity for CTCs to be included as part of the Education Reform Act 1988. Although the government encouraged sponsors to establish these new private CTCs by promising to pay for their current expenditure at a level broadly comparable to that of schools in similar locations, the Secretary of State was initially only using existing powers in the Education Act 1944 to give grants to private schools. CTCs were included in the Education Reform Act 1988 mainly to ensure that any future government would have to pass legislation (rather than simply change regulations) to cease to fund them. The 1988 Act ensured that the Secretary of State entered into an individual agreement with each of the CTCs to provide payments: Section 105 (4) provided for continued funding according to the terms of that agreement for at least seven years, while Section 105 (6) indemnified the sponsors against any loss caused by the Secretary of State terminating the agreement. The Act also made it clear that any capital expenditure from the government would have to be repaid if the governors decided to discontinue the school or

152

PRIVATE EDUCATION

changed its characteristics away from those that define it as a CTC. It is these agreements that the CTCs sign with the DES that make them different from other private schools, but they enter into these agreements voluntarily The City Technolgy College, Kingshurst, as a private school Each CTC is a separate independent school with its own governing body, charitable trust and trustees. Their official position is very similar to that of any other private school with charitable status, and the principal and governors take many decisions about the college without recourse to any higher body. The DES, HMIs or the City Technology Colleges Trust do not have control over the day-to-day organization of any of the colleges or act to see that the decisions of individual CTCs are co-ordinated. Over time, each college is expected to develop in its own way, and this diversity is seen as an essential part of the experiment. This means that any discussion of the City Technology College, Kingshurst is limited to just that one example. What has occurred there may or may not occur elsewhere, and what is reported in this chapter about Kingshurst is not necessarily generalizable to the other CTCs. At Kingshurst the procedure adopted for establishing the college had much in common with that used by Victorian churchmen, such as Nathaniel Woodard or William Sewell, in founding private boarding schools to support their own particular theological opinions. There were the same small gatherings of supporters, uncertainties about the sufficiency of future funding, and ad hoc arrangements to ensure the school opened on time. Parents had little idea what they were entering their children for, but they took the future schools on faith and signed up just the same. The difference between the foundation of Kingshurst and, for example, Lancing College (Kirk, 1937) or Radley College (Boyd, 1948) was that the government was one of the small hand of backers for the project, and Kenneth Baker's personal reputation was in part tied to its success. The government has shown itself to be a far more generous supporter than any to whom the Victorian founders had access. One of the first tasks supporters of any new private school have is that of appointing a first head. The Principal of the CTC Kingshurst Mrs Valerie Bragg, was appointed by the sponsors before any governing body was in place, or a funding agreement worked out with the DES. In common with other private school heads, she has played a fundamental role in shaping the organizational structure of the college, and has a very high level of personal responsibility for the running of the college. The composition of the governing body was

CITY TECHNOLOGY COLLEGES: A PRIVATE MAGNETISM?

153

decided in consultation between the Principal and the sponsors. In December 1989 there were 13 members, with a number of vacancies. Seven of those so far appointed were representatives of sponsoring industries and commercial organizations. The Chairman of Governors was Divisional Chairman of T & N, the Vice Chairman was Director of Hanson pic. Also represented at director level were Hardy Spicer Ltd, Deloitte Haskins and Sells, Arlington Business Parks Ltd, IMI and Lucas Industries pic. The DES had one representative on the governing body, who was actually the local Education Liaison Officer for Engineering Employers and was previously Project Director for the college. The other governors included Miss S. J. Browne, Principal of Newnham College, Cambridge; Mr John Lewis, formerly Senior Science Master, Malvern College; Dr I. Sharp, Chairman of the Independent Schools Joint Council Inspection Service and formerly Head of Rossall School; Mr G. Verow, Director of Training for the Incorporated Association of Preparatory Schools; and Miss B. A. Simpson, Governor of Hereford Sixth Form College and former head of a state comprehensive school. Being a charity, the college cannot have teachers as members of the governing body, and there are no parent governors. Within this governing body, the bishops, deans and field marshals evident within major private schools such as Radley or Lancing College are omitted (Walford, 1986a: 212), and the industrialists (who are now common within private school governing bodies) are there by virtue of their companies rather than because they are former students of the college. However, there is a similar firm Oxbridge link, and a surprisingly large contingent with links to other private schools. The inclusion of the Chairman of the Independent Schools Joint Council Inspection Service and the Director of Training for IAPS is particularly noteworthy. Again, in most major private schools, there are no parent governors and there can be no teacher governors. The highly prestigious people who compose the governing body act in a way similar to the governing bodies of most leading private schools. In this case the governing body has also given the Principal full powers of appointment of other staff and of day-to-day organization of the college and of the budget. This degree of control is unusual in maintained schools but usual for heads of private schools, and may become more common with the introduction of local management of schools. The governing body meets regularly (about twice each term) and, while it is not simply a rubber-stamping body, is unlikely to overrule the Principal's decisions. Traditionally, private school governing bodies only act against the head if disaster looms.

154

PRIVATE EDUCATION

As the CTC is within the private sector it has developed its own organizational structure salary scales and conditions of service for all staff, rather than having to accept those currently imposed within the maintained sector. The organizational structure is modelled on industry with six area managers supervising large areas of the curriculum. There are no heads of department or deputy principals, and area managers report directly to the Principal. Each member of teaching staff is within one of the six areas, with no further levels in the hierarchy. The details of this organizational structure are unusual for any school, but the short command structure is typical of private schools. Unlike most private schools, the pastoral structure is based upon tutor groups, and tutors retain the same group of children throughout their time at the college. Area managers provide pastoral support to tutors within their own areas, and there is no separate pastoral hierarchy. A further important feature of the organizational structure is that there is a Director of Administration and Finance who is responsible for much of the routine administration of the college as well as having budgetary control. This is a role larger than that of the traditional private school bursar, but holds a similar level of prestige. Secretarial and administrative staff are responsible to the Director of Administration and Finance. Additional funding from sponsors allows the salaries of staff to be slightly higher than they would be in maintained schools, but the major difference is that, instead of incremental scales, there are two broad continuous salary bands - one for area managers and the other for other teaching staff. In practice this simply means that there is a top and bottom point to each band, and a teacher can be paid anything between the two points. Broadly, the bottom of the teachers' band is slightly higher than the minimum for state schools and the band rises to very slightly above the top salary available for a classroom teacher. The crucial decision as to where a teacher is positioned within either band is made by the Principal according to the teacher's experience and previous salary. The other major difference between the Kingshurst salaries and state school salaries is that increments are given on the basis of performance, and no teacher automatically gains an increment just for getting older. All staff automatically receive an inflation-related increase, but any real increase is based on performance as judged by the Principal and/or area managers. This salary structure is based upon salaries in industry, and differs from that in most other private schools. However, it is similar to that used in private schools in the degree of personal discretion given to the Principal in salary negotiations with individual staff. At Kingshurst, teachers can be members of trades unions, and

CITY TECHNOLOGY COLLEGES: A PRIVATE MAGNETISM?

155

some are, but these unions have not yet been involved in salary negotiations. The CTC also has its own appraisal system, in which most teachers are appraised by their area manager each year. This is seen as separate from performance-related payments, which are linked to activities above and beyond a teacher's everyday job. Performance-related payments are made to teachers who take on special responsibilities in areas of the curriculum or in organizing and developing special extracurriculum activities. The private school status of the college means that it can appoint teaching staff without qualified teacher status. One such teacher has been appointed so far, but four of the technicians are also involved in some small-group teaching, and industrialists also occasionally teach some groups of children. Teachers are expected to be flexible. There is no set limit to the number of hours to be worked in the year. The school day for staff starts at 8.10 a.m. and goes on until 4.00 p.m. on most days, although it finishes at 4.30 p.m. on Wednesdays and 3.00 p.m. on Fridays. Staff are often involved in CTC-related activities at the college beyond these hours, and some are still at the college some hours after the official close. This length and flexibility of working hours is a common feature of private schools, both day and boarding, but there is usually a slight compensation in that the term is shorter than in state schools. At the CTC the term is actually longer than in state schools. Language is an important indicator of ideology. The CTC is a school for 11 to 18-year-old children, but is called a college. It is unusual in the state sector for this term to be used for children under 16, but many of the major public schools call themselves colleges rather than schools. Kingshurst also uses the term 'students' rather than pupils, and has a 'lecture theatre' which is a large, flat room. Such language-use is part of making students feel special and more adult, but it is also the language used within the private sector more than the state sector. Perhaps one of the most important ways in which students are made to feel special in any school is for them to be selected for it. In the private sector, 12-year-old students work with a passion to 'pass' the common entrance examination to the public school of their choice (Walford, 1986a: 187). At Kingshurst, selection is not based upon academic ability, as the college accepts a span of abilities roughly representative of the range that apply. However, children are interviewed with their parents (much as in private schools) and are selected on such criteria as progress and achievement in primary school, their parents' commitment to the CTC and the students'

156

PRIVATE EDUCATION

positive qualities, which will help them to succeed (DBS, 1986b: 5). As with entry to other private schools, personal qualities, skills or attributes, such as being a good athlete or playing a musical instrument, can act in the child's favour. One of the greatest similarities between the CTC Kingshurst and most private schools is this feature of selectivity. Parents do not, in this case, pay for their children's schooling, but the students are chosen from among those who apply. Moreover, if the child (or the parents) do not keep their side of the bargain, in terms of keeping up with work for example, the child can be removed. Kingshurst has not yet expelled any child, but this ultimate possibility is an important one. On a more positive note, the atmosphere of trust that pervades the CTC Kingshurst is also a feature it shares with the major private schools. The college is well equipped with televisions, video players and tapes, computers and various forms of software. This expensive equipment is not locked away, but is available for any child to use at lunch and break times. Children are trusted to remain within the college buildings at all times if they wish to do so and to treat the equipment with care and respect. They are free to use the building, with its classrooms, social areas and other specialist rooms in a reasonable way. While there are some restrictions, of course, the degree of trust given to the children is high, and echoes that extended to students in the major private schools (Walford, 1986a). Here, though, the children are predominantly from working-class homes, in contrast to the affluent backgrounds of the children in most other private schools. The influence of the CTC's private school status on the curriculum is fascinating. Private schools do not have to follow the National Curriculum, but the funding agreements with the DES ensure that the CTCs follow 'the substance' of it. Exactly what this means is open to question, but the CTC Kingshurst has decided to follow the National Curriculum as closely as possible. In practice, this is likely to be the same decision that other private schools will make, for most would not wish to be seen to offer less than the National Curriculum, and would present this coverage as the minimum on which they would wish to build. The longer school hours and terms for the CTC enable it to cover the National Curriculum and add various other non-standard extras. These additions include lessons on Business and Economic Awareness for all students, and three sessions given to 'Enrichments', where students chose from a range of cultural, aesthetic and sporting options designed to broaden their interests. While some other private schools may wish to include Business and Economic Awareness as an extra

CITY TECHNOLOGY COLLEGES: A PRIVATE MAGNETISM?

157

course, it is more likely that they will want to continue to offer such subjects as Latin, Greek and extra modern languages. Most private schools also have a range of enriching activities run either as extracurricular or, particularly in boarding schools, as afternoon activities. The CTC also has sufficient time available to suspend the timetable for about seven days each term so that students can work on group projects related to a general theme, such as health, survival or time. These project weeks are an important feature of the CTC, and are not directly echoed in the curriculum of most private schools (although some of the major private schools do suspend the curriculum for an annual week of cultural activities). The CTC Kingshurst branches away from the traditional curriculum of both private and maintained schools in its proposed post-16 provision. The intention is that all students at the CTC will remain in full-time education or training until they are 18, which means that the CTC must offer a range of post-16 courses that will cater for the whole of the ability range. The narrowly specialist and academic curriculum of the A-level has been rejected and replaced by Business and Technicians Education Council (BTEC) First and National Certificates and the International Baccalaureate (IB). The BTEC qualifications have, until recently, only been available through colleges of further education, for they involve extended periods of work experience, close contact with industry and commerce and the availability of extensive teaching equipment and facilities. Some schools have recently been able to offer their own independent courses, but the CTC Kingshurst is the first school to offer such a wide range of BTEC courses, and to make them the main post-16 offering. The IB is designed for above average ability students as a two-year international pre-university curriculum and university entrance examination. It was developed within the private sector international schools, which were established to provide education for children of internationally mobile business people, administrators, diplomats and similar. These schools aim to provide an education overseas for parents who wish their children to return to their own country for higher education. Students follow six subjects (one chosen from each of six groups) such that they must study a social science and a second language, together with the natural sciences and mathematics. Students also follow a Theory of Knowledge course, write an extended essay on a piece of personal research and spend at least one half day in some form of creative aesthetic activity or active social service. The IB course is taken by about 400 schools in 56 countries, both private and state-maintained. Within the UK, however, it is mainly to be found within the private sector, with such well-known schools as

158

PRIVATE EDUCATION

Sevenoaks School and the United World College of the Atlantic being prominent. It is also available in several private sixth-form colleges, but the total number of UK schools and colleges offering IB is less than 20. The CTC's choice of the IB as its main higher-education entry course thus represents a distinct break with the majority of both private and maintained schools. Moreover, the CTC wishes to offer the course to a far wider ability range than is usual in other schools, in an attempt to show that average and above average ability children are able to be successful in the correct environment. The decision not to offer A-levels was not an easy one, with governors and the DES expressing severe doubts about this move away from the traditional curriculum. Parents were not consulted about the decision, and had expected that the CTC would be offering A-level courses rather than IB. In summary, there are many decisions that have been made in the CTC Kingshurst that are related to the college's private status. It has been able to institute its own staff salary and appraisal scheme, conditions of work and organizational structure. It has a governing body closer in the nature of its membership and method of working to that of private schools than to that of the maintained sector. However, this does not necessarily mean that the CTC has consciously tried to follow the example of existing private schools. Decisions have been made on the basis of what was considered best for the students, and that some of these decisions follow those made in other private schools could be simply because those schools are operating on the same basis. Further, since the passing of the Education Reform Act 1988, most schools have been given some of the greater freedom of action that private schools have. Already, the private nature of Kingshurst CTC is less exceptional now than it was when it opened in 1988. Thus, the private status of the CTC is important, but it should not be overstated. There is an obvious ambiguity in status with a school that is predominantly funded by the state, but that is formally independent. Indeed, the CTC's Mission Statement claims that the CTC 'remains within the State education system'. This ambiguity would have been less if business and industry had decided to support the colleges at a higher level, but as the DES has reluctantly become the major sponsor, it has had a larger influence on decision-making than might have at first been envisaged. As the major sponsor, the DES has sought to restrict its expenditure and, for example, tightly defines the maximum number of students that can be admitted each year. The DES also has a representative on the governing body, and HMIs have made regular visits to the college. Equally importantly,

CITY TECHNOLOGY COLLEGES: A PRIVATE MAGNETISM?

159

although some aspects of the atmosphere and culture of the CTC are similar to those within private schools, practically all teachers have had their major experience of teaching within the maintained sector, and only a minute number of children have been to private sector preparatory or primary schools. The social class distribution of the parents of children is also highly unusual for a private school, as it is heavily weighted towards the working class, and is representative of the generally poor neighbourhood the CTC serves. The CTC Kingshurst may be a private school, but it is an unusual one.

The CTCs as magnet schools

The first magnet schools were designated in the USA in the early 1970s, and federal funding of them, designed to reduce racial segregation through voluntary means, started in 1976. The number of magnet schools in the USA has since risen dramatically, such that in 1989 Rolf Blank could claim that at the high school level about 20 per cent of students were in magnet schools in the average urban district. The Federal Magnet Schools Grants Program supported about 40 district programmes in 1989, at a total cost of $114 million (Blank, 1989). A magnet school is one that specializes in a particular academic, aesthetic or cultural subject area and that is designed to attract students who wish to specialize in that particular area. The full curriculum is usually covered in each of these schools, but there is an additional enrichment specialization that may be, for example, science, mathematics, technology, sport, art, drama, dance or music. In the USA some magnet schools even specialize in preparation for military careers, or in highly specific vocational areas such as aeronautical engineering. In Britain, the idea is perhaps most popularly known through the television programme Fame, which was based on the New York High School for the Performing Arts. As with any educational innovation, proponents see a range of different advantages for magnet schools. Cooper (1987) argues that magnet schools raise academic standards by providing increased choice for parents and students, and by promoting competition between schools for students. Magnet schools are seen as a way of opening schools to the free market, and are said to produce a diversity of schools, each of which can then provide a curriculum better suited to the children it serves. Diversity and choice are seen as desirable in themselves. However, the magnet school concept has developed over time. Originally, it referred to little more than a school system with a few elite special schools, rather similar to grammar schools acting as 'academic magnets' within the British selective system. From the mid-

160

PRIVATE EDUCATION

1970s, however, the concept has been closely linked to methods of desegregating American school districts on a voluntary basis, and whole school systems have been magnetized. In practice, the majority of magnet schools have been introduced in order to attract students from a variety of neighbourhoods (and thus from a variety of ethnic groups and social classes) into areas that otherwise would be ethnically and socially segregated. The legal requirement for desegregated schooling can thus be achieved without resorting to assigning students to specific schools according to ethnic group, and the associated bussing of students. At the time of writing Cooper (1987) reported that over 1,800 school systems in the USA had established one or more magnet schools, and that many were attempting to magnetize the entire local system. He gives details of the system adopted in Kansas City, where the US court found the city to be operating a two-tier system, and recommended that the education authorities implement a total system of magnet schools to desegregate the city. At the secondary level, eight magnet high schools were created with a range of specialisms, including Law and Public Service, Business Technology, International Studies and even Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps. Cooper warns that the extra costs of establishing such a system may be very high. In Britain, the idea of having specialisms within different schools is far from new. The tripartite system that developed after the Education Act 1944 might be seen as a peculiar form of the magnet school concept, where selection was based on ability to pass tests rather than the child's interest in what a particular type of school had to offer. As the number of selective schools decreased and comprehensive schools increased, many on the right called for greater diversity between schools. Sexton (1977), for example, argued that parents should be able to seek out schools for their children where particular subject expertise existed. Students and parents should be able to select schools and the schools should also be selective about whom to accept from the children who applied. More recently, Caroline Cox (1986) called explicitly for magnet schools to be introduced into Britain as a way of improving what she perceived to be declining standards in schools. In September 1987, Kenneth Baker visited some magnet schools in Washington and New York, and came back with a new justification for the CTCs. The educational press was filled with pictures of him talking to teachers and students in the specialist New York schools, on which he heaped praise, and claimed that magnet schools were models the CTCs would emulate. So that the message got through to those directly involved, the DES later paid for Valerie Bragg and some

CITY TECHNOLOGY COLLEGES: A PRIVATE MAGNETISM?

161

others to visit similar magnet schools in New York and Washington. The Secretary of State's visit also led to an expansion of an already planned conference, such that in the autumn of 1988 a group of about 50 British educationists, including seven HMIs, spent about three weeks in New York City schools. The New York City system is particularly interesting because it provides for a population that is predominantly poor and from ethnic minorities. The few remaining white and middle-class parents rarely use the state system. In response, New York has created the largest magnet system in the USA. More than 90 of the 116 high schools have at least one magnet programme (Cooper, 1987). In practice, though, the New York system is not all that it seems. Three of the most prominent high schools (some of which Kenneth Baker visited and highly praised) are schools that are more than 40 years old. The Bronx High School of Science, Stuyvesant High and Brooklyn Technical High use their own admission tests as the main basis of admission. They draw their students from all over New York City and are highly selective. This is also true of the High School for the Performing Arts, which holds auditions or reviews a portfolio of past work. Only the most able few per cent gain a place. Admission to the bulk of the magnet schools, which are more recent in origin, is more open to a range of abilities. Selection used to be on the basis of a set percentage from each of three ability levels; however, a strongly critical report on magnet schools, Lost in the Labyrinth (Educational Priorities Panel, 1985), argued that this led to schools selecting the most able students within each category and students being unfairly treated. The entry procedure has since been replaced by randomly chosen admissions from those children who apply to fill 50 per cent of the places, with the remaining places being selected by the schools on their own criteria (which include test scores and attendance and punctuality records). Nevertheless, the costs of travel are still not provided, which must act as a considerable disincentive to children from poor families. While the Secretary of State saw the magnet school concept as worthy of emulation, it was not without its critics on both sides of the Atlantic. For example, in her case study of an unnamed city system, Metz (1986) shows that, in contrast to the rhetoric, magnet schools had only played a small part in desegregating that city's schools. The major change had been achieved by closing inner-city schools and bussing black children to neighbourhood white schools. Few parents had actually made a choice of school on the basis of magnet specialism. Other commentators have argued that selectivity and competition discriminate against less able students and against

162

PRIVATE EDUCATION

children from poor homes (Rowan, 1988). There is also growing concern in the USA that, where magnet schools thrive, this could be to the detriment of nearby neighbourhood schools, and that magnet schools could produce a two-tier education system, with special opportunities for selected students in one set of schools and lower quality education for the remaining students in the non-magnet schools (Moore and Davenport, 1989). The particular concern here is not just about inequality of provision, but about the social class and ethnic groups that might benefit or be disadvantaged by such a system. In their study of four city districts, Moore and Davenport (1989) found that very few 'atrisk' students were enrolled in magnet schools compared with the proportion in non-magnet schools. As proponents such as Cooper (1987: 40) recognize, there is a fundamental conflict between the desire for equitable access and the schools' need to retain their unique magnetic quality. He argues, 'self selection and some admissions criteria are at the very heart of most special schools'. In Britain, Caroline Cox shows herself to be aware of similar problems, but argues that the majority of magnet schools are only 'somewhat moderately selective' (1986: 199). She seems unperturbed that the main type of selection is self-selection, and sees this as an indication of enthusiasm and a contributory factor to strong motivation in school. She quotes the findings of an unnamed research team, which is said to have found that 'the extent of creaming is only minor'. Anthony Green (1988), from the University of London, who retraced the footsteps of Kenneth Baker on his tour of New York, was far more critical of the effect of magnet schools on the schools that remain as neighbourhood schools. He argues that the magnet schools have a broad political role of helping to maintain the interest of the middle class and the aspirant working class in state education, but that they recruit an unfair share of the best students and damage other schools. He could find no evidence that they provided a competitive spur to other schools, but found that they generated much resentment. The delegation of 50 educationalists who visited New York schools at Kenneth Baker's behest did not restrict its inquiries to the magnet schools but watched lessons in a large number of schools covering the full range of children. The resulting report from the HMI (1990: 9) has several critical passages, and reports that 'many educationists and lay people in New York City believe that the high school system has become too diverse, too specialized, and too hierarchical in its structure. Several principals and administrators claim that the selective and optional arrangements favour the more advantaged.'

CITY TECHNOLOGY COLLEGES: A PRIVATE MAGNETISM?

163

They argue further that taking highly able students out of their neighbourhood schools leaves fewer students who can give academic, creative and pastoral leadership, and that the admissions arangements are too complicated for many parents to understand. They report that a daily exodus of students from neighbourhood schools weakens those schools and leaves some schools that now 'serve very deprived areas, largely populated by an "underclass" with few opportunities to get on'. It is strange that, at a time when within the USA there is a significant lobby of opinion that believes that 'excellence has been pursued at the expense of equity and that the challenge now is to restore fair measures of equality of opportunity' (HMI, 1990), Britain is heading in the opposite direction, with the growth of CTCs, grantmaintained schools, and at least one LEA moving towards a complete magnet system. The CTC as a magnet school After his visit to New York and Washington, Kenneth Baker often presented the CTCs in terms of their magnet status; but in practice they differ considerably from the American model. This can be seen through a close study of the CTC Kingshurst. The most important difference is that the catchment area for Kingshurst is comparatively small, and was originally drawn to include a fairly homogeneous working-class area, and explicitly to exclude more middle-class areas (see Walford and Miller, 1991 for further details). It is a roughly circular boundary with a diameter of less than four miles, which includes some of the poorest districts of north Solihull and east Birmingham. This original catchment area was only used for the first intake of students in 1988, and has been modified since that time. During the first year the CTC could act as a magnet for children from within this limited area, but this could only remove well-motivated students from the seven other neighbourhood schools, with little opportunity for any increase in social class or ethnic group mixing. For the second and subsequent entry years the catchment area has been extended to include two adjacent areas where there is a slightly higher proportion of middle-class families, and the admission regulations have been changed such that 5 per cent of the intake (nine students each year) can be taken from outside the enlarged catchment area. This change gives a greater possibility of social mixing. During the last weeks before Christmas 1989, 80 per cent of the first intake to the CTC and 60 per cent of the second intake were either interviewed or completed a questionnaire. One of the questions

164

PRIVATE EDUCATION

gathered information on their parents' occupations. While some children's knowledge about their parents' jobs is limited, and their answers should not be taken too seriously, there are some interesting differences between the social class compositions of the first and second intakes as described by the students. For both years, the percentage of children in social classes IV and V (partly skilled and unskilled - Registrar General's Classification) outweighed the percentage in social classes I and II (professional and intermediate); but the second intake year had a higher proportion of social class I and II parents than did the first intake year. There was also a higher proportion of ethnic minority children in the second intake year than in the first. This is exactly what would be expected as a result of the catchment area changes, and might be seen as the CTC Kingshurst acting more similarly to the American magnet schools in the second year of operation than it did in the first. Of particular importance here are three children in the second year who stated that they would have attended a fee-paying private school had they not been accepted by the CTC. All three appear to have benefited from the catchment area changes, with two being accepted as part of the 5 per cent outside the boundary. There is a fascinating tension here for, while the CTC might now be seen as acting more like a magnet school by having an intake that has a greater social class and ethnic diversity, this also means that some children from more affluent homes are benefiting from a college originally designed to serve inner-city children. The social aspect of the magnet concept was not part of the original CTC proposals and, indeed, the DES (1986b: 5) booklet stated that the CTCs would not be expected to admit children from outside the catchment area. Kingshurst's moves to take on more of the social-engineering characteristics associated with magnet schools are thus in conflict with the original CTC plan to provide education only for specific inner-city children. There are further tensions when the nature of the magnetism is discussed. If the CTC is a magnet school, it is presumably a magnet for technology. Yet, far from all the students saw it in this way. In the interviews and questionnaires, students were asked why they had applied to enter the CTC. The range of replies was wide, but could be classified roughly into four groups of reasons: 1 Those concerned with computing, technology and the facilities of the college. 2 Those linked to the idea of 'good education' or ^better education'.

CITY TECHNOLOGY COLLEGES: A PRIVATE MAGNETISM?

165

3 Those concerned with obtaining a job or a 'better job'. 4 Those where it was important that the college was new or different. There was overlap between these categories and some students gave more than one reason, but an unexpected finding was that less than a quarter of the students mentioned computing, science, technology or related aspects. Nearly half expressed the desire to come to the college in terms of it offering a 'better education' or similar broad terms. While these general expressions might include some aspects of technology and computing, it is of note that so few students discussed their desire to enter the CTC in terms of its supposed magnetic specialism. In the interviews, students were explicitly asked whether the fact that it was a technology college had been important. Less than half claimed that it had been an important reason for their choice of school. While this group were prepared to enthuse about technology and often had their own computers at home, many others stated clearly that they had not felt technology or computing had been what had drawn them to the college. They felt that the fact that it was new and different had been more important, or saw it as a chance to go to a 'better' school than their existing nearby LEA school. Some pupils even said that they originally had no interest in the computing aspects, but that they were enjoying using the technology now. Conclusion It has been shown that the CTC Kingshurst does not readily fit into existing categories of school, or mesh neatly with the various justifications used for its existence. As a private school it has been able to introduce several innovations (such as those concerned with staff salaries and conditions of service) that would be impossible in the state sector and, as a magnet school, it has been able to attract well-motivated students, yet there is a fundamental conflict between its role as a magnet school and its private status. The government's original intention was that industry and commerce would pay for a far greater proportion of expenditure than has actually occurred, and the establishment of CTCs could be seen as part of a wider privatization strategy for education (Walford, 1990). Fundamentally, the CTCs were designed to attract selected students away from LEA schools into a newly developed private sector, and to help establish a hierarchy of differentiated schools. This aim is in direct conflict with the desire for social class and ethnic group integration, which was one of the main reasons for introducing

166

PRIVATE EDUCATION

magnet schools in the USA. There, magnet schools were supported by government in order to attract more white and middle-class students into the state sector and produce a more integrated and egalitarian society. In its changes to the catchment area and admissions policies, the CTC Kinghurst has moved slightly towards becoming more like this original model for a magnet school. It has provided the means for a little more social class and ethnic group integration, and has encouraged a few potential private school users to use a school in a relatively poor neighbourhood. However, it appears to attract many students for reasons other than that of its advertised technological specialism, and is the choice of many simply because it is seen as being at the top of the local hierarchy of schools. A similar development of a hierarchy of schools, with the most highly motivated children being selected for the leading schools, is exactly what has occurred in many US cities where magnet schools have been introduced. In the USA, elitism has occurred as something of a byproduct of many of the magnet schools, while in Britain it was central to the strategy. The CTC is thus in a cleft stick. It cannot be both a magnet school that is part of an egalitarian social-engineering programme, and also a selective private school forming part of the Conservative government's elitist objectives. It will be interesting to follow the course of events to see which of these models eventually predominates; but unfortunately, at present, it seems most likely that the attractiveness of magnetism as a justification for CTCs will fade with time. Acknowledgements My sincere thanks go to Mrs Valerie Bragg and the staff and students of the City Technology College, Kingshurst for allowing me to enter their world and to experience their kindness and hospitality. Although this chapter could not have been completed without their generous help, the responsibility for its content is mine alone. This study was funded by the Social Innovation Research Group at Aston Business School, and through a consultancy to an ESRC-funded research project on City Technology Colleges directed by Professors Tony Edwards and Geoff Whitty (Grant no. C00232462). I am also most grateful to Henry Miller, who worked with me on the wider CTC project.

CHAPTER 9

From City Technology Colleges to sponsored grant-maintained schools

During the 18 years of Conservative government in Britain, only two attempts were made to stimulate the 'supply side' of the quasi-market of schools. These were the introduction of City Technology Colleges (CTCs f a form of private school) and sponsored grant-maintained schools. This chapter draws comparisons between the two initiatives. It is shown that, while the CTCs were largely a 'top-down' policy, and the sponsored grantmaintained schools might be seen as the result of'grass roots'pressure group activity, there were many similarities between the two programmes. In practice, both initiatives stalled at just 15 schools, but it is argued that their significance is far greater than their numerical strength would indicate. Both can be seen as examples of increased privatization and selection, and it is shown that what may develop from them is a greatly changed educational system. Quasi-markets and the supply of schools Within England and Wales, the 1988 Education Reform Act has come to be seen as the crucial legislation that introduced elements of the market into state-maintained schooling. That Act significantly restructured state-maintained schooling by creating more devolved management structures for schools, giving them greater autonomy, allowing families the right to express a preference for any statemaintained school they wish to use, and funding schools largely according to the number of students each attracts. Together, such changes made the state-maintained schooling system more like that of the private sector. A 'quasi-market' was encouraged, where a greater emphasis was given to market forces and private decision-making (Le Grand and Bartlett, 1993). It was a quasi-market rather than a freeFrom Oxford Review of Education (2000) 26, 2, pp. 145-58.

168

PRIVATE EDUCATION

market, because the state retained many powers over schools and gave itself several new ones. Such developments have been common within the educational systems of industrialized countries around the world (Walford, 1996; Whitty et al, 1998). During the 1980s and 1990s, many countries introduced schemes that were supposedly designed to increase choice of school and to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of statemaintained schooling through school-based management. However, in common with the schemes introduced in other countries, the 1988 Education Reform Act did nothing to encourage the supply-side of that market. The Act provided no new ways by which interested charitable or religious bodies could establish new state-maintained schools. That this is true is not immediately obvious, for the 1988 Act included legislation on grant-maintained schools and CTCs. Both of these would appear to be supply-side developments, but the reality is different. While the concept of grant-maintained schools was certainly new, the reality was that existing local education authority schools were simply removed from the control of their local educational authorities (LEAs) and became funded by central government (eventually through the Funding Agency for Schools) instead. Much research has shown that grant-maintained schools generally offered little that was distinctive and have rarely gone beyond cosmetic changes, such as smarter uniforms for students (Fitz et al., 1993; Halpin et al, 1997; Power et al, 1994). Local management of schools (LMS) within the LEA sector has meant that the grantmaintained schools differed only slightly from LEA schools in their degree of autonomy, and hardly at all in the day-to-day experiences of staff or students. On the other hand, the CTCs were certainly an attempt to increase the supply-side of schooling. They were designed to be a significant new way of sponsoring and funding schools. But, as will be discussed further below, the 1988 Act's legislation on CTCs was merely making minor adjustments to a programme that was already under way - and which was already under pressure and liable to fail. The CTC programme had been launched in 1986, and the first CTC was announced in February 1987. So, while the 1988 Act is often seen as being the centrepiece of the Conservative government's quasi-market for schools, it actually included no new methods whereby potential sponsors could start new schools. Although the Conservative Party trumpeted its belief in the superiority of the market, during their long term in government from 1979 to 1997 there were only two separate attempts to

CITY TECHNOLOGY COLLEGES TO GRANT-MAINTAINED SCHOOLS

169

encourage the establishment of new schools: the City Technology Colleges, announced in 1986, and the sponsored grant-maintained schools contained within the 1993 Education Act. This second initiative enabled groups of sponsors or existing private schools to apply for state funding by joining a new category of school sponsored grant-maintained schools. This chapter examines and compares these two initiatives and draws some conclusions about their significance. The City Technology College initiative The initial public announcement of the City Technology Colleges was made during a speech by Kenneth Baker (then a new Secretary of State for Education) on 7 October 1986 at the Conservative Party Annual Conference. He outlined how a pilot network of 20 City Technology Colleges was to be created which would be jointly funded by central government and industrial sponsors. The initiative was explicitly presented as one of a number of new measures that were intended to *break the grip' of left-wing local education authorities, and one designed to offer new hope and opportunity to selected young people and parents. As the name suggests, City Technology Colleges were to provide a curriculum rich in science and technology, but they were also designed for a specific group of 11 to 18-year-olds from the 'inner city'. One major feature was that they were to be private schools, run by independent charitable trusts, with the sponsors having a major influence on the way in which the colleges were managed. These sponsors were also intended to provide substantial financial and material support. While central government would provide recurrent funding on a scale similar to that of local authority schools, additional funding was expected to be provided by the private sponsors. More details of the plan were made available in a brochure published by the Department of Education and Science a week after the speech (DES, 1986b), which was sent to about 2,000 leading industrial and commercial organizations asking them to support the venture. As these details have been discussed in detail elsewhere (e.g. Walford and Miller, 1991; Whitty et al, 1993), only a selective account will be given here. According to that booklet, it was in the cities that the education system was under the most pressure and where the government's aims and parents' aspirations 'often seem furthest from fulfilment': There are many examples of good schooling offered by committed teachers in the cities. But many families living there who seek the best possible education for their children do not

170

PRIVATE EDUCATION

have access to the kind of schools which measure up to their ambitions The government believes that there is, in the business community and elsewhere, a widespread wish to help extend the range of choice for families in urban areas. (DES, 1986b: 3) The CTCs were thus firmly linked to the idea of widening and improving educational provision in urban areas, particularly the disadvantaged inner cities, where the government believed the local authority system was often failing children. The attack on the Labour councils, which controlled practically all of the inner-city local education authorities, was not made explicit in the booklet, but was plain from many political speeches at the time. The reaction to the announcement of CTCs was not as the government would have wished. Apart from the expected negative reactions from the teacher unions, the LEAs and the Labour opposition, there were very few industrialists who showed their 'wish to help extend the range of choice for families in urban areas', and many were openly hostile to the idea. Several directors of major companies already involved with state schooling rejected the idea of sponsoring a single school, and argued for the benefits of wider sponsorship. It took until February 1987 for the first site and sponsor to be announced. The northern part of Solihull (which borders onto Birmingham) was to have a college sponsored by Hanson pic, and Lucas Industries. A little later, just before the General Election, two more sponsorships were made public. All of these sponsors were regular supporters of the Conservative Party, but even they were unprepared to donate anything like the proportion of the funds that had been originally envisioned. Where the intention was that practically all of the capital expenditure would be provided by sponsors, they refused to give more than about 20 per cent, leaving the government with a large, and unexpected, bill. This reluctance to fund the CTCs accounts for their mention in the 1988 Education Reform Act. As the CTCs are officially independent schools they required no new legislation; the government could simply use its existing powers to give funding to private schools as it wished. However, the ease with which funding could be granted had both positive and negative features, for it meant that another government could equally quickly cease to fund the CTCs if it wished. Even after the 1987 re-election of a Conservative government, fears of what a future Labour government might do led to clauses in the 1988 Act that began to protect the investment of sponsors. In

CITY TECHNOLOGY COLLEGES TO GRANT-MAINTAINED SCHOOLS

171

practice, even with this safeguard the scheme rapidly stalled. As is well known, the considerable difficulties in attracting sufficient sponsorship and in rinding appropriate sites for the CTCs continued (Walford and Miller, 1991; Whitty et al, 1993). The programme stalled at 15 CTCs, with about only 20 per cent of capital funding having been provided by sponsors and the bulk of the capital expenditure and practically all of the running expenditure being provided direct by central government. Sponsored grant-maintained schools It was not until the 1993 Education Act that any further changes were made to increase the supply-side of the quasi-market. As a result of that Act it became possible for groups of parents, and charitable, religious or independent sponsors to apply to the Secretary of State for Education in England or the Secretary of State for Wales to establish their own grant-maintained schools. According to the Government White Paper that preceded the Act, the explicit intentions behind such developments were to widen choice and diversity of schools and to allow new grant-maintained schools to be created 'in response to parental demand and on the basis of local proposals' (DFE, 1992: 26). If the Secretary of State approved individual proposals, the way was opened for England and Wales to have state-funded schools that aimed to foster, for example, Muslim, Buddhist or evangelical Christian beliefs, or that wished to promote particular educational philosophies. Groups of sponsors could propose either an entirely new school or that an existing faith-based or other private school for which they were responsible should be re-established as a grantmaintained school. This, then, was a way by which the government could provide funding for existing private schools in return for some degree of control. These sponsored grant-maintained schools differed from existing grant-maintained schools in that sponsors had to pay for at least 15 per cent of costs relating to the provision of school buildings, and some other capital expenditure. In return for this financial contribution, through the school's Trust Deed and Instrument of Governance the sponsors could ensure that the school retained the purpose for which it was established. The composition of the governing body allowed the sponsors to ensure that the religious objectives of the school were maintained and that the religious beliefs and practices of teaching staff were taken into consideration in appointments. Technically, it was already possible for LEAs to support new religiously-based schools through voluntary aided status. But the vast majority of these schools are supported by the Church of England and

172

PRIVATE EDUCATION

the Roman Catholic Church, with a small number of Methodist and Jewish voluntary schools. None is owned by any other religious minorities. Over the years several existing Muslim and evangelical Christian private schools had applied to their LEAs to become voluntary aided, but all such requests had been rejected. Usually this happened at the LEA level, but occasionally the LEA agreed to support a new voluntary aided school and central government refused the request. The fact that many Muslims have particular minority ethnic origins makes such refusals highly politically charged. The 1993 Act removed any barriers to the support of faith-based schools erected by local authorities, and passed the decision directly to the Department for Education. Within England, the process that potential sponsors of grantmaintained schools had to follow was gradually developed over a period of several years by the Funding Agency for Schools (FAS) and the Department for Education (DFE). In respect of new sponsored schools, the FAS provided advice and had to be officially 'consulted' by the sponsors. The FAS was one of several bodies (in fact, the most important body) that gave its opinion about the proposal to the DFE before the Secretary of State makes a decision (Walford, 1997b). Various schools or sponsor groups made some initial contact with the FAS after April 1994 but, by the time of the general election in May 1997, only 20 full proposals in England had been published. Only seven of these proposals had been successful: all but one were from existing private Roman Catholic secondary schools, the exception being an existing private Jewish primary school. Four of the successful secondary schools were part of a group owned and run by the Order of Christian Brothers. At the time of the election, only two applications had been rejected by the Secretary of State for Education, but two had been withdrawn and there were still ten applications outstanding. Some of these had been with the Secretary of State for over a year. At the same time, a further 15 or so promoters were in serious discussion with the FAS. In Wales, the numbers of applications and approvals were even smaller. By May 1997 only one existing private school had become grant-maintained, and this was a small Roman Catholic school in Denbigh, Clwyd which at that point had only 150 pupils. Two other applications had been made to the Secretary of State for Wales. Strangely, these two were separate proposals to establish a new school in Usk, near Cardiff, where a single group of proposers broke into two groups due to disagreements between them and submitted competing bids for a comprehensive secondary school. Both of these proposals were rejected in early 1998.

CITY TECHNOLOGY COLLEGES TO GRANT-MAINTAINED SCHOOLS

173

Since the 1997 election the Labour government has produced its own White Paper, Excellence in Schools (DfEE, 1997), and the School Standards and Framework Act 1998 has introduced a new organizational structure for schools. All grant-maintained schools are to be brought back into a revised LEA system, and the Funding Agency for Schools is to be abolished. However, somewhat incongruously, the new Labour Secretary of State for Education and Employment has made decisions on several proposals that had been with the past Secretary of State for many months. In England, seven schools have been allowed to proceed, including two Jewish primary schools (one entirely new), and a small school for disaffected students. Crucially, two existing private Muslim primary schools and one private secondary Seventh Day Adventist school have also been accepted as grant-maintained schools. Of the remaining four schools, one withdrew its application and three have been rejected (one Jewish primary, one Catholic secondary and one Transcendental Meditation primary school). No new applications from sponsored grant-maintained status were accepted. The result is that in numerical terms the overall policy has not been as successful as the original supporters of the 1993 legislation had hoped. Very few schools or sponsors have managed to meet the demands made on them during the application process. Many have fallen by the wayside before their applications were passed to the Secretary of State for consideration, and only 14 schools in England and one in Wales have successfully become grant maintained under these new regulations. All but one of the sponsored grant-maintained schools have involved the transfer of an existing private school into the state-maintained sector. The one entirely new school opened in September 1999, after grant-maintained status was abolished. Continuities and discontinuities Just six years separate Kenneth Baker's Party Conference speech of 1986 in which he announced the CTCs and the 1992 White Paper by John Pattern (Secretary of State for Education) that included proposals for sponsored grant-maintained schools. In terms of encouraging the supply-side of the quasi-market, both initiatives must be seen as failures. Both the CTCs and the sponsored grant-maintained schools stalled at just 15 schools. Yet, in both cases, the significance of the initiatives is far more important than the numbers of schools would indicate. What are the similarities and differences between these two initiatives? And what is their long-term significance?

174

PRIVATE EDUCATION

Origins As with many policy initiatives, it is impossible to determine exactly which groups and individuals had the most influence on the development of the CTC idea and the main objectives for the programme. The policy was not developed in an ideological vacuum, but in a context where a multitude of pressure groups and social, cultural and economic influences jostled for attention. Personal careers and private prejudices intertwined with local and national priorities, and perceptions as to how these priorities might be met. At first sight, the CTCs appear to be a top-down initiative that went wrong. What seemed to be a 'back-of-the-envelope' idea faltered at the first fence and later stalled completely. There appears to have been little consultation with potential sponsors from industry before the announcement: their support was (incorrectly) assumed. The plan led to a great deal of controversy with local authorities, and an unexpectedly large bill for the government. In practice, of course, although the degree of consultation was certainly inadequate, the CTC idea did not just appear from nowhere. Whitty et al. (1993) trace what they call the 'ideological groundclearing' for the attack on local education authorities and the promotion of the market back to the foundation of the Institute of Economic Affairs in 1957, but it was not until the mid-1970s that pressure began to build for a greater role for market forces in schooling provision. The last two of the infamous 'Black Papers on Education', for example, included papers that called for educational vouchers (Boyson, 1975) and greater choice and diversity within the schooling system (Sexton, 1977). More direct influences on the CTC initiative came from a variety of sources. When Kenneth Baker came to power in May 1986, he found 'very little which could be described as worked up anywhere in the whole range of educational performance ...' (quoted by Whitty et al., 1993: 19). According to Whitty et al (1993), there had been some pressure from Bob Dunn (then Schools Minister) for something resembling magnet schools, and he was credited in late 1985 with a specific proposal to create between 16 and 20 'technical schools in main urban centres', outside LEA control and funded by the taxpayer. These were to select children who would benefit from a special emphasis on 'science, business studies, and computer programming'. Dunn was also co-author of a Department of Education and Science briefing paper in late 1985 that called for the creation of new, directly government-funded schools. The other author was Stuart Sexton, who had been political advisor to the two preceding Secretaries of State for Education (Keith Joseph and Mark Carlisle).

CITY TECHNOLOGY COLLEGES TO GRANT-MAINTAINED SCHOOLS

175

For Stuart Sexton, the technological aspect was of minor importance compared to his desire for per capita funding of new schools outside the LEA system (Sexton, 1987, 1992). But the technological emphasis was matched by those industrialists who attended a Centre for Policy Studies conference in January 1986 organized by Cyril Taylor, who called for the creation of 100 technical secondary schools to be funded by central government on a direct grant basis. Interestingly, again, these were to be initially focused on the 'deprived inner-city areas' and were to act as 'beacons' for other secondary schools (Taylor, 1986: 20). Taylor, a businessman running an educational company and an ex-Greater London Council Councillor, went on to become the Chief Executive of the Technology Colleges Trust that helped establish specialist schools. The challenge to the LEA system echoed Margaret Thatcher's views and also those of Brian Griffiths, who was the head of the Prime Minister's Policy Unit at that time and had considerable influence. He was a firm advocate of education being opened to the rules of supply and demand and of business-school partnerships (Griffiths, 1990). In the end, it seems that it was Kenneth Baker himself who contributed the idea of sponsorship of schools by business and industry. He saw sponsorship as a way to display a unique commitment and to create a 'direct relation between local employers and their schools' (Whitty et al, 1993: 21). Whitty et al. (1993: 27) argue that it is simply wrong to see the American magnet schools as an explanation of the origins of CTCs, and it is certainly correct that Kenneth Baker's visit to magnet schools in New York and Washington in September 1987 followed his announcement rather than preceded it. Baker brought back from that visit a new discourse of justification, and the DES paid for the Principal of the first CTC and others to visit magnet schools (Walford, 1991b). However, it would be wrong to ignore completely the influence of the magnet schools on the CTCs. While they probably had little effect on the direct framing of CTCs, they were part of the ferment of ideas about choice, diversity and specialisation that led to the initiative. In the mid-1980s there were some fierce advocates of magnet schools. For example, Caroline Cox (1986), a strong supporter of selective education, proposed 'specialist comprehensives' based on the magnet schools and, after the announcement of the CTCs, as a prominent member of the informal Conservative Hillgate Group (1986) she advocated that all schools should all be run by independent trusts, that the CTC concept should be expanded to other specialisms, and that schools of proven merit should be singled out to act as magnets.

176

PRIVATE EDUCATION

While the CTCs initially had nobody from business or industry wishing to sponsor them, the sponsored grant-maintained schools had very many potential sponsoring groups and existing private schools who were interested. Whereas the CTC can be seen as a 'topdown' initiative, the sponsored grant-maintained schools initially appear to be a 'bottom-up' initiative from the 'grass roots'. It is certainly true that a long and very specific campaign by a diversity of pressure groups and individuals preceded the announcement of these sponsored grant-maintained schools (Walford, 1995a, 1995b, 1995c), what is of great interest is that many of those involved with CTCs were also highly influential in the campaign for sponsored grantmaintained schools. Of particular importance were Stuart Sexton, Caroline Cox and Brian Griffiths. A full account of the campaign has been given elsewhere (Walford, 1995a), but one of the major pressure groups involved represented several small private evangelical Christian schools. These schools had formed in the 1970s and 1980s due to dissatisfaction with the state sector, and they wished to obtain state funding on the same basis as Church of England and Roman Catholic schools. Several of those involved with the schools had developed links with active Christians within the House of Lords, House of Commons and in other prominent positions. One who had a particularly close relationship with some of the schools was Baroness (Caroline) Cox, who had made several visits to the schools and had even been the official guest at one of the school's prize days in the mid-1980s. As early as 1981 she was arguing for right for religious minorities to establish their own schools funded by the state (Marks and Cox, 1981). The intervention of Brian Griffiths was also crucial. When the Education Reform Bill was published in November 1987, a few of the headteachers arranged to see Brian (now Lord) Griffiths, who was at that time head of the Prime Minister's Policy Unit. Their hope was that the government itself might add an amendment to the Bill or support amendments that were due to be put forward in the Lords. Lord Griffiths is a firm Anglican, who believes that extending choice in education is an essentially Christian activity (Griffiths, 1990). When he met with the heads of these schools, he asked for more information and that a report on the schools be submitted to him. This report was prepared and was later published in a modified form by Ruth Deakin (1989b). More importantly, it would appear that the eventual establishment of a separate pressure group resulted from this meeting with Brian Griffiths, for he accepted that there appeared to be some injustice, but argued that there was a need to generate a campaign before the government could be expected to act. Griffiths

CITY TECHNOLOGY COLLEGES TO GRANT-MAINTAINED SCHOOLS

177

believed that it was too late for anything to be included in the 1988 Education Reform Act, but that the schools should look to the longer term and try to change public opinion. The best way forward, he suggested, would be to launch a campaigning organization that would produce news and information on the schools and work towards the introduction of a further Bill. As a direct result of this suggestion, after the 1988 Education Reform Act had become law, the heads of the new Christian schools acted to set up a campaigning organization. At the beginning of 1989 the Christian Schools Campaign was established, with the long-term goal of obtaining public funding for the schools. When it was formed 47 schools were involved, at least 13 of which had made unsuccessful initial applications to their LEAs for voluntary aided status. The Christian Schools Campaign became the fronting organization for a Private Members Bill that was introduced into the House of Lords by Baroness Cox in November 1990 and debated in March 1991. The Bill sought to amend the 1988 Act such that certain categories of independent school would be eligible to apply for grant-maintained status. It also aimed to amend the 1980 Act in order to make it easier for independent schools to obtain voluntary aided status against the wishes of the relevant LEA. Of considerable importance is the fact that the Bill was written for the Christian Schools Campaign by Stuart Sexton. Over the years Sexton (1987, 1992) has made clear his desire for a fully privatized educational system, preferably financed through vouchers that can be 'topped-up' by parents. In 1987 he set out his 'step-by-step approach to the eventual introduction of a "market system", a system truly based upon the supremacy of parental choice, the supremacy of purchasing power' (Sexton, 1987: 11). Helping the Christian Schools Campaign with the drafting of this Bill thus fitted well with Sexton's long-term aims. His interest was not in supporting Christian schools as such, but in the wider policy of which he saw them as a part. In the end, for complex reasons, the Bill was withdrawn rather than being voted on, but only after a vociferous four-hour debate. This debate received considerable publicity both at the time and in the months following (O'Keeffe, 1992), for it raised many important questions about the nature of schooling and the government's understanding of parental choice of schools. Baroness Cox also played a crucial part in moving amendments to the 1993 Education Act. As the Bill was originally drafted, it was only possible to apply for sponsored grant-maintained status where the Funding Agency for Schools (FAS) already had some control over the supply of school places within the LEA. This meant that it would not

178

PRIVATE EDUCATION

have been possible for new grant-maintained schools to have been established until there were already 10 per cent of primary or secondary pupils in an LEA already in grant-maintained schools. Again, much of the political activity took place in the House of Lords, and amendments were put by Lord Skidelsky and Baroness Cox to change the 10 per cent threshold. There was also considerable behindthe-scenes lobbying such that, on 10 June 1993, Baroness Blatch (the Education Minister who was guiding the Bill through the Lords) announced that she had been persuaded by the arguments that the threshold was an unnecessary impediment and that a government amendment would remove it. In her response to the announcement, Baroness Cox thanked Baroness Blatch for her acceptance of the change and said more about some of the schools that the change might relate to: I know that a number of the new schools already set up by parents making great sacrifices - not the kind of parents who could normally pay independent school fees but those wanting a good education in areas where that was not necessarily available - would have fallen foul of the 10 per cent trip-wire. They will now be able to apply for grant-maintained status. For example, I was speaking today to the head of Oak Hill school in Bristol, which is a new independent Christian school. It is an excellent school. She said that the freeing of the 10 per cent trip-wire will enable that school to go ahead with an application. It would never otherwise have been able to do so. It will potentially save the life of that school if it is able to make a successful application. (Lords Debates, Hansard, 10 June, 1993, cl. 1160) Oak Hill School in Bristol is the school where Ruth Deakin, exDirector of the Christian Schools Campaign, was formerly headteacher. As Avon had no grant-maintained schools at this point, a 10 per cent limit would have prohibited her school from applying. The change allowed Oak Hill to be one of the first schools to submit its application (once the FAS for England had been established in April 1994). That it was also the first application to be rejected does not reduce the significant part that Caroline Cox, Stuart Sexton and Brian Griffiths played in the legislative process. Selection Selection of specific children for specific provision has been a central feature of both the CTC and sponsored grant-maintained schools initiatives. It must be remembered that when the CTCs were

CITY TECHNOLOGY COLLEGES TO GRANT-MAINTAINED SCHOOLS

179

introduced in 1986, most children were still allocated to schools through some form of catchment area system. In contrast, the CTCs were required to select children from a defined catchment area drawn such that about one in five or six of the relevant age population could be accommodated. They were explicitly not to be 'neighbourhood schools taking all comers', but the head and governing body were to select applicants on the basis of general aptitude, for example as reflected in their progress and achievements in primary school; on their readiness to take advantage of the type of education offered in CTCs; and on their parents' commitment to full-time education or training up to the age of 18, to the distinctive characteristics of the CTC curriculum, and to the ethos of the CTC. (DES, 1986b: 5) Academic selectivity and a direct attack on comprehensive schooling, which might have acted as a vote-loser in the soon-expected next General Election, was thus replaced by selection on a broad range of less easily measurable criteria, which would include parents' characteristics as well as those of their children. For a child to be accepted by a CTC, families needed to know about the colleges and be able and prepared to negotiate the entrance procedures (which usually include a test and interview). Further, the children had to agree to work a longer school day, to attend for longer terms and to state that they intended to stay in education until 18. Thus, the CTCs were specifically selective schools, designed to benefit children from 'deserving' working-class families. Thus, those families who can show themselves to be 'deserving' are far more likely to gain a place than others. Those children from families with little interest in education are ignored. This form of selection allowed the 'deserving' to be selected from the 'undeserving' and, just as importantly, helped to justify and 'normalize' the fact that some children should be selected to benefit from special facilities that are not available to those who are not selected (Walford, 1997a). Selection has also played a major part in the sponsored grantmaintained initiative. In this case, the results of the initiative have been to a large extent dependent upon the particular sponsors and schools that have applied. Yet, although the total is only 15 schools, many more schools and sponsors showed an initial interest. Some were encouraged and some not. Of the seven schools that were given sponsored grant-maintained status by the Conservative government, six of these could reasonably be called 'grammar schools' while the other one was a co-educational Jewish primary school. The six were all

180

PRIVATE EDUCATION

Catholic schools and all had existing financial support from the state - either through Assisted Places or through the LEA paying for Catholic 'grammar school' places to match the selective places available for non-Catholic children in the area. The first two successful applications for sponsored grant-maintained status are a good illustration. These two were existing private Catholic grammar schools in Birkenhead, Merseyside. About a third of the population in the area is Catholic, and the key aspect of these two proposals was that for many years the LEA had bought grammar school places within the schools. Following the local authority reorganization of 1974, the Wirral was left with a complex system where most of its schools were comprehensive, but there remained some selective secondary schools in one small area. The policy of the Catholic Diocese was that all Catholic secondary schools should be comprehensive, and all voluntary aided or controlled Catholic schools in the whole area are indeed comprehensive. Thus, in order to have some equity between the non-Catholic and the Catholic provision, the LEA bought places at two private schools - St Anselm's College and Upton Hall Convent School - to provide the selective part of Catholic provision. In 1994 Upton Hall Convent School had an intake of about 90 girls each year. Forty of these had places paid for by the LEA, and a further 30 pupils had help from the Assisted Places Scheme. Only about 20 paid full fees, and these were low. The school would have liked to have become a voluntary aided grammar school, but this was not possible without support from the LEA and the Diocese. Neither would sanction such a move, as both favoured comprehensive education. When the 1993 Act was passed the school rapidly acted to make what eventually became a successful application. The application for grant-maintained status for St Anselm's College was conducted in parallel with that of Upton Hall Convent School. Their situations were very similar, as St Anselm's provided Wirral's Catholic selective provision for boys while Upton Hall did so for girls. The school had once been Direct Grant, but became fully private again from 1976. By 1993 the LEA paid for about 40 places for nominated children, and there were about 30 boys on the Assisted Places Scheme. Thus, in a similar way to Upton Hall, St Anselm's had only a low number of full fee-payers - 25 out of 96 places per year. The fees for St Anselm's were higher than those for Upton Hall, and the staffing ratios and salaries more generous. In order for the school to show itself ready for grant-maintained status and the reduced funding that would be available, the number of staff had to be cut by about seven, and new contracts had to be introduced that reduced some

CITY TECHNOLOGY COLLEGES TO GRANT-MAINTAINED SCHOOLS

181

salaries by about 10 per cent, and enforced a longer working year. In both cases the school buildings were leased to the new school from the religious Order for 99 years on a peppercorn rent, and the Order also won the right to reconsider their position if grant-maintained status were abolished. A similar 'pair' of private Catholic schools to be given sponsored grant-maintained status in Trafford was St Ambrose and Loreto, while St Edward's, Liverpool and St Joseph's, Staffordshire brought the total to six. Of these six, four (St Anselm's, St Joseph's, St Ambrose, and St Edward's) were schools run by the Order of the Christian Brothers, whose central body indicated that all of the schools in its care should carefully consider this option. St Edward's is technically not a grammar school, but is certainly viewed as such in the neighbourhood and is oversubscribed. The direct result, however, is that there has been an expansion in the number of grammar schools in the statemaintained sector. The five schools classified as grammar schools brought the total number of grammar schools to 166, making their addition far from insignificant. Whether they are academically selective or not, religious schools introduce another layer of selection. The admissions process for sponsored grant-maintained schools can give preference to children from families with particular beliefs, in the same way as do existing Catholic or Church of England voluntary schools. While the two Muslim primary schools would not see themselves as selective schools, they may well soon find that they have far more applications than they have places available. These schools are allowed to ensure that the children come from homes where Islam is taken seriously, and are thus able to select on this basis from the families that apply. In the same way, John Loughborough, the private Seventh Day Adventist school in London that has been given sponsored grant-maintained status, is able to select on the basis of adherence to Seventh Day Adventism. At present it is an all-black school, for Seventh Day Adventism has a largely black following in Britain. While the school is unable to charge fees, the church has agreed to give substantial and continuing funding to the school. There are echoes here of funding for places being provided for the 'deserving'. In all cases the schools, parents and community have made substantial financial, work and time donations, and they have now been rewarded. Privatization Privatization was one of the major policy priorities of successive Conservative governments since 1979, and its extension to education has been strongly supported by the New Right (e.g. Sexton, 1987,

182

PRIVATE EDUCATION

1992). It has taken many different forms (Walford, 1997b) but may be seen as supporting the private sector financially and ideologically, while also encouraging private investment in the state-maintained sector to replace government funding (which is gradually withdrawn). Thus, the state-maintained sector has seen, for example, the contracting out of services, increasingly inadequate funding, and a growing need for schools to beg for support from industry, parents and the local community. The CTCs can be clearly seen as a privatization measure within schooling. One of the major aims of the initiative was that sponsors would fund a substantial part of the initial capital costs, and continue to make a contribution to recurrent expenditure. The fact that sponsors actually only contributed about 20 per cent of the initial costs and have only made small further additions does not change the nature of the policy. But the private nature of the CTCs had broader effects than just the directly financial. Their private school status allowed the colleges considerable flexibility in staffing, curriculum and management issues (Walford, 1991b). Staff were not necessarily employed on standard national salaries, nor were unions necessarily recognized. Further, staff who were not teacher-trained could be employed as teachers or as other employees with teaching and managerial responsibilities. CTCs could also have governing bodies that excluded parents and, of course, there was no link with the LEAs. Accountability was imprecise. The sponsored grant-maintained schools can be seen as a further case of privatization. While building new schools with the support of sponsors can easily be seen as a special case of privatization, bringing existing private schools into the state-maintained sector might be seen initially as the very opposite. In practice, however, both processes have elements of privatization and may add to inequities associated with such processes. Upton Hall Convent School's application is a good example, since it can be seen to have elements of privatization. Central to this interpretation is that the LEA already bought many places at the school, and the Assisted Places Scheme paid for many more. The total new expenditure involved in giving grant-maintained status was relatively small. Further, although private, the school was not entirely dependent upon fees or local and government grants. Since 1982 the school had managed to build a sports hall, six additional classrooms and had undertaken major repair work. This had been supported by the local Catholic community, and not come from fee income. The school kept its fees low, and was seen to be efficient. Most significantly, the Sisters were handing over a site and buildings for a

CITY TECHNOLOGY COLLEGES TO GRANT-MAINTAINED SCHOOLS

183

peppercorn rent. This, then, was a new school for the state sector at very low cost to the government. The various attempts by groups of sponsors to start entirely new schools also illustrate the covert 'privatization' aspect of the policy. Sponsors of new schools had to provide substantial financial start-up costs, and to have the energy and enthusiasm to establish the school and make it successful. Moreover, it became clear that the larger the proportion of the capital costs that the sponsors could provide, the more likely they were to be successful. If they could provide continuing financial support, so much the better. In the end only one entirely new school was established through this process - a Jewish school, where the majority of the capital costs were found from an independent trust.

Conclusion and speculation

It is important to recognize that when Kenneth Baker took over from a rather tired Sir Keith Joseph in May 1986 there was little firm planning for the 1988 Education Reform Act. Baker clearly wished to make rapid changes. He also had an interest in technology in schools, as he had been the minister responsible for computers in schools when in the Department of Trade and Industry. In the end, the CTC initiative, as such, must be judged a failure. Even the target of 20 pilot schools was never reached. But, in practice, the CTCs' importance can be seen in what they were precursors to: local management of schools, delegated budgets, per capita funding, decreased roles for LEAs, grant-maintained schools, increased emphasis on selection for inequitable provision, and greater specialization between schools. All these aspects can be seen in embryonic form in the CTC initiative. More directly, the CTCs led briefly to the Technology Schools Initiative (where support was given to certain schools for technology) and then to the Technology Colleges, and Sports, Arts and Modern Languages specialist colleges (where schools have to raise funding from commercial sponsors and are rewarded with additional substantial funding from government). There are now several hundred such colleges. In a similar way, in numerical terms the sponsored grantmaintained schools initiative must be judged a failure. Very few schools or sponsors have managed to meet the demands made on them during the application process. Many have fallen by the wayside before their applications were passed to the Secretary of State for consideration and, coincidentally, this initiative also faltered at just 15 schools. All but one of the sponsored grant-maintained schools have involved the transfer of an existing private school into the state-

184

PRIVATE EDUCATION

maintained sector. The one entirely new school opened in September 1999, after grant-maintained status was abolished. The number of children involved is minute. However, as with the CTCs, the significance of the sponsored grantmaintained schools initiative far outweighs the limited number of schools and children that have been involved. The acceptance for state funding of schools run by Muslim and Seventh Day Adventist sponsors marks a turning point in the way schools are provided within Britain. Private schools for religious minorities are now able to apply for state funding and become aided schools (as did a Sikh school in December 1999). The decision thus marks a crucial change in policy towards the education of religious and ethnic minority children, and may come to be seen as one of the most important educational decisions made during Labour's first five years.

PART III

Private religious schools and diversity of schools

This page intentionally left blank

CHAPTER 10

The fate of the new Christian schools: from growth to decline?

Scattered throughout Britain are 60 or more small private evangelical Christian schools. Following rapid growth in the number of such schools during the 1980s, it was predicted that the expansion would continue into the 1990s and beyond. In practice, since the early 1990s there has been stagnation or retrenchment. This chapter explores some of the possible reasons for this change in fortune. By 2000, the 1,280 schools represented within the Independent Schools Information Service (ISIS) taught about 80 per cent of the pupils in private schools. However, with around 2,400 private schools in the United Kingdom, this only accounts for about 53 per cent of the total number of private schools. Over 1,100 schools are not included, and very little is known about these schools beyond that they are very varied and tend to be considerably smaller than most other private schools. This chapter therefore also charts the growth and possible decline of a particular group of schools within this 'hidden' private sector - the evangelical Christian schools. The new Christian schools in 1992 One of the most interesting groups of private schools not included within the ISIS or the Independent Schools Council is the new or evangelical Christian schools. These schools share an ideology of biblically-based evangelical Christianity that seeks to relate the message of the Bible to all aspects of present-day life whether personal, spiritual or educational. The teachers within these schools have a 'personal relationship with Jesus Christ' and believe that the Holy Spirit is active in their lives and the world. These schools have usually been set up by teachers, parents or a church group to deal with dissatisfaction with what is seen as the secularism of the great From Educational Studies (2001) 27, 4, pp. 465-77.

188

PRIVATE EDUCATION

majority of schools (Walford, 1994a; Deakin, 1989a, 1989b). The schools aim to provide a distinctive Christian approach to every part of school life and the curriculum and, in most cases, parents have a substantial role in their management and organization. As there is no national organization overseeing these schools, it is difficult to trace their emergence, but it would appear that the first school of this type to open in Britain was in Rochester in 1969 (Deakin, 1989a; O'Keeffe, 1992). A few more evangelical Christian schools followed in the 1970s, but it was not until the early 1980s that substantial growth occurred. In 1980 there were about ten such schools; in 1985 there were about 30, and by 1992 there were nearly 90. This growth in popularity was shown by an increase in the number of pupils in each school as well as by the total number of schools: several schools that opened with just a handful of pupils rapidly increased to cater for over 100. According to Deakin (1989a), the main constraint on further expansion for many of these schools was a limitation in the physical space available in the existing premises rather than any lack of potential pupils. This demand for places must be understood in the light of evangelical Christianity being at that time, and still now, one of the fastest growing religious groups in Britain. For several reasons the exact number of such schools has always been difficult to determine. One factor is that the number is continually changing as new schools open and existing ones close, but more important is the lack of any strict definition of what counts as a new Christian school and the absence of any overall organization representing the schools. Some schools are linked to small Christian sects, and have no wish to be associated with any other schools. Others believe their own situation is very different from the majority of new Christian schools, and do not feel there is any benefit to be gained from associating with others. However, many of these schools did see advantages in linking together for mutual support and for sharing knowledge. As the number of schools increased during the 1980s, several of the heads began to meet together regularly and informally for Christian fellowship and to discuss matters of common interest. More formal meetings and some conferences began to be held and other teaching staff became involved such that, by 1988, a decision was made to establish a separate Christian Schools' Trust (CST) 'to promote and assist in the founding of further schools' (CST, 1988). The CST also provides assistance in the development of curriculum materials, helps co-ordinate the dissemination of such materials, provides some inservice training for teachers and organizes conferences.

THE FATE OF THE NEW CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS: FROM GROWTH TO DECLINE?

189

In the early 1990s I conducted research on the schools that had an association with the CST, as part of a wider study of these schools that examined their political significance and policy implications of the development (Walford, 1994b, 1995a, 1995b, 1995c). Although there is variety within the schools involved, the image the CST presents tends to be that of charismatic Christianity in which considerable emphasis is given to the gifts of the Holy Spirit such as speaking in tongues, healing and prophesy. New Christian schools without such an emphasis are thus generally not included. In 1992 there were 65 schools on the address list of schools in contact with the CST (this included the junior and senior parts of tw schools that were listed separately, and had a degree of independence from one another). A survey was conducted where attempts were made to gain information from all of these schools either by interview with the head or by postal questionnaire. Eleven schools were visited, selected for reasons of geographical convenience and to give a range of different types of school. A questionnaire was developed after most of the visits and interviews had been conducted. By combining the interviews and questionnaires, detailed information was received from a total of 53 schools from the 65 on the CST list. The results of this research were published in 1994 (Poyntz and Walford). Although all of the schools in the survey held in common high Christian principles and the belief that their schools could provide a more appropriate Christian education than the local statemaintained schools, there was still great diversity. The size of the schools ranged considerably, from less than 10 to nearly 200 children, with a total of more than 3,000 children in the 53 schools responding to the survey. Most of the schools had less than 60 pupils, but there was another substantial group of 10 schools which had over 100 children. All except two of the schools had primary-aged children. The two that did not were secondary schools linked with a separate primary school. About half of the schools catered for primary-age children only, but the rest usually taught the full compulsory schoolage range up to 16. Class sizes were usually smaller and staff/student ratios better than in state-maintained schools. Schools had a diversity of origins. Some were started by a church, but others developed from ad hoc groups of like-minded parents or teachers. The particular precipitating reasons for starting each school were varied, as were the processes by which they became established. In general, however, there was a mixture of positive reasons based on the belief that parents had responsibility for their children's education, and negative reasons concerned with perceived problems with the schools available locally. Local state-maintained schools were

190

PRIVATE EDUCATION

perceived as lacking in quality both academically and in terms of the level of Christian belief that was manifest. These complaints were lodged against Church of England and Catholic schools as much as (what were then) county schools. Local state-maintained schools were frequently seen either as presenting a human-centred philosophy where God and Christianity had no place, or one where a variety of religious and superstitious beliefs and practices were encouraged. Additionally, some parents had been concerned about the academic aspects of schooling, for example large class size, or ineffective teachers. Others reacted to concerns about lack of discipline and moral standards in the schools. As might be expected, religious education itself was often of particular concern to the parents involved in these schools. It was argued that the secularization of most schools had led to a commitment to a multi-faith approach to religious education, where religions were examined through their observable characteristics rather than in terms of faith, belief and commitment. This approach was seen to encourage a secular and aridly sceptical view of life and to devalue all faiths other than that of secular humanism. Such views were common among all of those interviewed, with the result that they were strongly committed to the new Christian schools. Many had experienced the growth of their own schools and the rapid expansion of the total number of schools. The overall picture in 1992 was one of considerable strength and a general expectation of continued growth. New schools seemed to be regularly opening and existing schools expanding. There was no expectation that growth would falter, and every belief that they were part of a growing movement. The new Christian schools in 2000 I renewed my contact with the new Christian schools in 1998-2001 as part of a comparative study of schooling for religious minorities in the Netherlands and England. For this research I visited just four of the schools, but I spent two weeks in two of these observing and interviewing. Both were leading schools within the CST. I interviewed two of the trustees, attended Heads' Meetings of CST schools and attended a three-day National Conference organized by the CST and thus talked informally to many of the headteachers and teachers of the schools. While the CST is still a strong organization, and the last three-da conference was the largest they had ever had, the overall picture is that there have been considerable changes since 1992. An indication of this can be seen by a simple comparison between the CST's address

THE FATE OF THE NEW CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS: FROM GROWTH TO DECLINE?

191

list of 2000 and that of 1992. In 1992 there were 65 schools on the list. By 1994 this had shrunk to 60, and by 2000 there were only 40. Only 25 schools appearing on the 2000 list had also been on the 1994 list the rest were new schools. Interpreting this change is far from straightforward. As the CST is a loose grouping of schools, the fact that a name is no longer on the list does not necessarily mean that the school has closed, neither does the addition of a new name on the list necessarily mean that the school itself is new. In all years there was an unknown number of Christian schools that existed but did not have membership of the CST. For example, at least five schools on the 1994 list but not on the 2000 list were still on the official Register of Independent Schools in 2000. There had also been some changes to the names of schools, and one amalgamation. Some schools were noteworthy for their absence on the 2000 list. For example, Penial Academy, Brentwood, was on the 1994 list but not that for 2000. It is part of a very large Pentecostal Church about which a newspaper scandal erupted when the local Conservative Association was claimed to have been 'taken over' by members of the Church. Some of those that had closed and some of those no longer on the list but still open were schools which used Accelerated Christian Education, now called 'the School of Tomorrow'. These schools use a US packaged Christian curriculum, and several of them have had highly critical Ofsted reports. Some schools in Wales have also ceased membership of CST but still remain open. The decline in the number of schools on the CST list is thus not direct indicator of the health of the Christian schools overall. Moreover, a study of the official Register of Independent Schools suggests (by the names of the schools) that there may be about 10 more schools that are evangelical Christian. But the total of all evangelical Christian schools is certainly no greater than in 1992, and is most probably considerably less. The spectacular increases of the 1980s have been replaced by gradual contraction or, at the least, stagnation. Moreover, discussions with headteachers and teachers of the CST schools indicated that most individual schools were facing declining numbers or, at best, a plateau in 2000. Those few schools that were expanding all seem to have particular unique reasons for their growth. All private schools are subject to market pressures, but the nature of those pressures is somewhat different in the case of most of the new Christian schools. In the main, these schools are not well funded and do not serve traditional high social class users of the private sector. A very few do charge fees that compare with other private preparatory or secondary schools and are able to provide full salaries to teachers at

192

PRIVATE EDUCATION

the nationally agreed levels. But the vast majority of these schools would not be able to operate if it were not for many teachers who give their time free. Most have low indicative fees or rely on donations from parents that are related to their ability to pay. These schools often live a life of financial uncertainty or, as Baroness (Caroline) Cox once explained it, survive 'on faith and a shoestring'. The financial situation of many of the schools is precarious. More than half of the schools rely partly on a church to fund them, and a few receive support from other trusts or charities. Throughout the period there have been cases where the local church 'lost the vision' and refused to continue to support financially its attached school. In other cases, splits within the church have led to groups of parents taking their children away from the school, or more directly to the school's closure. With such fragile financial situations continued existence is not certain - even where the schools are popular and full - but, inevitably, it is student numbers that have the major say. If fewer parents wish their children to attend such schools, the schools shrink; if this decline continues, the schools close. And this is what seems to have happened over the 1990s. Rather than a continued increase in the number of schools and students, there has been a retrenchment or, at best, a consolidation. Why has the decline happened? Why has this decline occurred? What has led to fewer parents wishing to send their children to new Christian schools or, perhaps, to fewer people wishing to make the necessary sacrifices to start and run a school? It has to be remembered that these schools are part of what I have called the 'reluctant private sector' (Walford, 199Ic). The vast majority of the governors, teachers and parents of these schools have no ideological commitment to the idea of private provision, but are involved in private schools simply because they believe that state provision is inadequate or unsuitable. Ideally, if they could retain their true purpose, most of these schools would wish to obtain funding from the state, and might thus be regarded as 'reluctant private schools'. They were established in reaction to the statemaintained sector as it then existed. Any change in the statemaintained sector would thus be expected to affect the continued existence of the new Christian schools. And there have been many changes. Broadly, these many changes can be discussed under four broad headings: the market, religious education, inspection and parents' influence.

HE FATE OF THE NEW CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS. FROM GROWTH TO DECLINE? 193

The market The 1988 Education Reform Act for England and Wales brought a raft of changes to the state-maintained system, which gradually had their impact throughout the 1990s. One of the major changes was that catchment areas were abolished and families were given the right to express a preference between schools of the same type. Prior to the Education Reform Act there had been a right to express a preference for a particular type of school - thus families were able to choose a Catholic, Church of England or county school - but not to choose which school within each type. And there was considerable variation between schools of the same type: in particular, many Church of England schools were mainly staffed by non-Christian teachers and were largely indistinguishable from non-religious schools. The change in the law meant that parents are now able to visit all the local denominationally-based schools in their area and choose the one with a Christian emphasis most in common with their own faith and practice (Walford, 1996). The 1988 Education Reform Act established a quasi-market of schools in which schools had to make themselves attractive to particular local markets. The voice of the customer (or usually the parents in this case) began to be heard, and schools began to develop their image and reality. Many Church of England and Catholic schools have become more aware of their potential competitive advantage and more prepared to make explicit their Christian emphasis. Interestingly, these moves to become more attractive to active Christian families can broaden the appeal of the school to other groups as well. Instead of downplaying the Christian emphasis in the school to accommodate other religions, some schools have recognized that a firm religious element is what some Muslim parents want. An atmosphere of religious belief, even if it is Christian, is regarded by many Muslim parents as far better than the atheism that they perceive as dominating most schools. Another effect of introducing a quasi-market is that it has made many families more aware of the differences between schools, both in their religious character and in their effectiveness in terms of academic results. Parents are less likely to see a change to the private sector as the only alternative when they are dissatisfied with their state-maintained school. They are more likely to consider a range of options. The introduction of regular testing and 'league tables' of schools has also given more stress to academic results. Parents are now more concerned than before about the academic effectiveness of schools, and some may be looking for longer established schools than most of these new Christian schools. In fact, several of these schools

194

PRIVATE EDUCATION

appear quite high on such league tables. While the number of children taking GCSE is small, the individual attention that the schools are able to give to them appears to be encouraging them to do well. But the facilities are almost universally poor. Compared with state-maintained schools, many of the new Christian schools have limited laboratory or technology equipment and suffer from a general lack of new facilities. Those that do offer GCSE can usually only do so in a limited range of subjects. It would be understandable if parents thought that they would be taking too much of an academic risk in sending their children to these schools. Religious education The 1988 Education Reform Act also made significant changes to the nature of religious education and collective act of worship in all schools. It is worth remembering that the original 1987 Bill only made very brief mention of religious education and included legislation on a collective act of worship only to make it possible for collective worship to be held in small groups. Both had been a part of the 1944 Education Act, which the 1988 Education Reform Act added to rather than superseded, and there was seen to be no need for making changes. The National Curriculum thus did not include religious education. However, many within the Catholic and Anglican Churches feared that this would lead to a downgrading of religious education, and the Churches campaigned such that substantial and significant changes had been made to the Bill by the time it became an Act. There was considerable debate on the nature of religious education, for the 1944 Education Act had inadvertently not stipulated that it should be Christian religious education. One particular contribution to this debate was made by Burn and Hart (1988), whose pamphlet The Crisis in Religious Education had a foreword by Baroness Cox and was widely circulated. All three are evangelical Christians. Baroness Cox (1988:4) claimed that we are in danger of selling our spiritual birthright for a mess of secular pottage. Many of our children are in schools where they are denied the experience of religious worship at all, and where teaching about Christianity has either been diluted to a multifaith relativism or has become little more that a secularised discussion of social and political issues. The development of multi-faith religious education (or a 'multicultural mish-mash' as Cox colourfully described it) was a particular target of many evangelical Christians, who were able to make considerable changes to the Act such that county schools were

THE FATE OF THE NEW CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS: FROM GROWTH TO DECLINE?

195

required to conduct an act of collective worship that was 'wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character' (Section 7(1)) and that agreed syllabuses for religious education should 'reflect the fact that the religious traditions in Great Britain are in the main Christian whilst taking account of the teaching and practices of the other principal religions represented in Great Britain' (Section 8 (3): see Cox and Cairns, 1989). An additional change brought about by the Education Reform Act was that all LEAs were forced to establish a Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education (SACRE), which had the power to review locally-agreed syllabuses. Prior to the Act, each LEA could decide whether or not to constitute a SACRE, and they had fewer powers. These changes meant that all locally-agreed syllabuses would be reviewed in the light of the legislative change that they should 'reflect the fact that the religious traditions in Great Britain are in the main Christian'. One result of these changes was an outflowing of books and pamphlets on the nature of religious education and its position in the curriculum. The Church of England, for example, produced a series of such booklets (e.g. Brown, 1992; Lankshear, 1992; Duncan, 1990). There was also considerable academic writing on the area (e.g. Watson, 1992). Inspection But passing legislation is only the first step to change. Evangelical Christians and, indeed, those campaigning for state support for new Christian schools had a considerable effect on ensuring that the 'checking process' was firmly in place. This was actually done through amendments to the 1992 Education (Schools) Act, which had the main purposes of establishing a new Her Majesty's Inspectorate for England and Wales; providing the necessary legislation for regular inspections of schools by new, privatized teams of inspectors; and giving the Secretary of State more powers to require schools to publish information. It was, of course, a very controversial Bill and many amendments were tabled in both the Lords and Commons. As I have shown elsewhere (Walford, 1995b) evangelical Christians, working through the Christian Schools' Campaign and through contacts in the House of Lords, had a considerable, if unexpected, effect on this legislation. A small, but highly significant, group of amendments were tabled by Lord Northboume. They had three objectives. The first part was to require all schools to 'publish, in such manner as may be prescribed, information on the spiritual, moral and cultural values upon which education is provided in the school and the manner in which the spiritual, moral and cultural development of

196

PRIVATE EDUCATION

pupils is achieved'. This, it was argued, would ensure that parents were able to take this information into consideration when making their choice of school. In a similar way, the second part would require the new inspection teams to report on the 'spiritual, moral and cultural values' of each school; and the third part would require the Chief Inspector to inform the Secretary of State for Education about the spiritual, moral and cultural values of all schools. One of the interesting aspects about the wording of these amendments was that they echoed parts of the 1944 Education Act and the 1988 Education Reform Act (Chapter 40, section 1 (2)) where it is stated that the curriculum would promote 'the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils at the school and of society'. This choice of wording was carefully thought through, and the final drafting of the amendments was made by activists in the Christian Schools' Campaign (the campaigning wing of the CST) in co-operation with a far larger campaigning organization: Christians in Education, a department of CARE (Christian Action Research and Education), which itself had developed from the Nationwide Festival of Light of the 1970s. The amendments were originally opposed by the government, which claimed that they were not necessary. However, in his speech at the Committee Stage Lord Northbourne argued that 'there is a need for a clause in the Bill which clearly and unequivocally directs inspectors to report on the whole school, including the ethos and values in and out of the classroom' (Lords Debates, 24 February, 1992, Hansard, col. 97). Lord Northbourne expressed the need for such a report in the following terms: The Government have opted for diversity. Without doubt, sooner or later, some ideological groups - they may be political, religious or something else - will gain sufficient control of some of our schools to influence the values which are transmitted to the pupils. Some of those values many not be what some parents want for their children. Some could be inimical to a pluralistic and liberal democracy; for example, values in relation to equal opportunities, to the role of women and girls in society and to racial issues. Inspectors visiting such schools could be under considerable pressure not to report on such issues unless they are clearly and unambiguously required to do so by law. (Lords Debates, 24 February, 1992, Hansard, col. 98) If parents were to have the right to choose their child's school, Lord Northbourne argued, they would need as full a picture as possible. This included 'its ethos and values as well as its academic success'.

THE FATE OF THE NEW CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS: FROM GROWTH TO DECLINE?

197

Information provided through school prospectuses and inspectors' reports should reflect this need. In the end, the government put forward their own amendments such that all aspects of school life were to be inspected, not just the subjects taught during lesson time, and included in the reports, and that Lord Northbourne's amendments were to be modified to include the word 'social' as well as 'spiritual, moral and cultural'. These changes were made, and the 1992 Education (Schools) Act (Section 9, 4) subsequently stated that: It shall be the general duty of any registered inspector conducting an inspection under this section to report on (a) the quality of education provided by the school; (b) the educational standards achieved by the school; (c) whether the financial resources made available to the school are managed efficiently; and (d) the spiritual, moral, social and cultural development of pupils at the school. The result was that all church schools became subject to separate and regular denominational inspection. In voluntary aided schools, religious education, worship and the wider social ethos were all inspected by denominational inspectors, while in voluntary controlled schools only worship was mandatory, but the governors could also invite the inspectors to report on the wider school ethos as well. Where parents opted for denominational religious education in voluntary controlled schools, that also became subject to inspection. Francis (2000: 108) argues that the development of denominational inspection has promoted a new interest in and concern for the distinctiveness of voluntary controlled as well as voluntary aided schools. It is widely accepted that denominational inspections have led to greater confidence in exhibiting Christian beliefs and values and in portraying the religious distinctiveness of the church schools. A further interesting twist to the development of Ofsted and the move to greater delegation of budgets to schools is that the number of LEA inspectors and advisors have declined dramatically. It was once possible for religious education teachers to get advice and ideas from their local inspector, but the decline in LEA inspection has meant tha the schools have had to rely more on the Diocese. It is not that the Diocesan staff have become stronger - they have more or less retained their numbers of staff - but that there is nowhere else for teachers to go. This may also have led to an increase in confidence on the Dioceses' part and a greater feeling on the part of some schools that they are part of a wider Church.

198

PRIVATE EDUCATION

Parents' influence A further change that has been more gradual is that parents have gained more influence over how schools are governed and managed. One aspect of this is that the importance and membership of school governing bodies has greatly changed. When once it was simply a matter of attending a few meetings and the annual prize day, being a school governor is now a major commitment. The 1980 Education Act started this change, with new responsibilities for governors and the introduction of teachers and parents onto the governing body. This reduced the power of the foundation governors in voluntary schools and brought the voice of parents into the governance of all schools. Further accountability to parents was part of the 1986 Education (No. 2) Act, which required an annual meeting of the governors with parents. The 1988 Education Reform Act had many features that increased the influence of parents - not least, the ability to express a preference for any school. But it also gave parents the power to decide whether or not to 'opt out' of the control of the LEA and become grant maintained. Such changes greatly altered the relationships between parents and schools. Parents and families are now seen more as customers, who have not only the right to make choices about which schools their children should attend but also, to some extent, the right to question what goes on in the school. Schools are now much more likely to listen to parents who want to have a clearer Christian emphasis in the school or who question some of the books children are asked to read or films they are forced to watch in school. Particularly important to many Christian families have been the changes to sex education, for which, in the 1986 Education Act, the responsibility was taken from the LEAs and given to the governing bodies of schools. During the 1970s and early 1980s some LEAs had developed strong equal opportunities policies that included a focus on sexuality. Some had tried to encourage anti-homophobic policies in the employment of teachers and in teaching about sex education in schools. Such moves were fiercely resisted by many evangelical Christians, who believe that all sexuality outside marriage is sinful and who have a particular fear of any homosexual activity. Interestingly, this means that the infamous Section 28 of the 1988 Local Government Act, which prohibits the promotion of 'the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptance of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship', did not actually apply to sex education in schools, for the LEAs had no responsibility for such teaching by that time. Section 28 had itself been influenced by strong campaigning from evangelical Christian organizations and from

THE FATE OF THE NEW CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS: FROM GROWTH TO DECLINE?

199

Christians in the Lords and Commons. It has never been subject to judicial test and is extremely badly drafted, but as Epstein (2000) argues, its symbolic effect is extremely important. It signalled official and legal disapproval of homosexuality in a new way and most teachers have since felt constrained in what they are able to say about homosexuality in (misplaced) fear of breaking the law. It also gave parents increased power over what was taught. For evangelical Christians the real change of control to the governing bodies and the assumed legislative prohibition on teaching about homosexuality have made state schools 'safer' for their children.

Conclusions

When I conducted research into the new Christian schools in the early 1990s, there was every expectation among the schools that their number would continue to expand, so continuing the trend of the previous ten or more years. In fact, this has not happened and the number of schools and of children in them seem to have declined or, at best, remained stable. The reason for this stagnation or decline is not straightforward but it is probably best explained by looking at the changes that have occurred in the state-maintained system. Since the early 1990s there has been a gradual working through of legislation relating to the market, to religious education, to inspection and to parents' influence. All of these changes have had the potential result of parents being able to find a state-funded church school for their children that is more in line with their own beliefs than before. In short, there is simply less perceived need for parents to start or to pay for private schools for their children when some (at least) of the statefunded Christian schools now present a clearer Christian image and reality. Most of the new Christian schools were started almost in desperation. The churches, teachers and parents involved had little ideological commitment to the private sector as such, and felt forced into starting their own schools because they felt that state-maintained schools were increasingly anti-Christian in their teaching and ethos. Thus, while some evangelical Christians started their own private schools in response to the perceived problems with the state sector, they and others also campaigned for changes in state-maintained schools. This chapter has shown that some of these campaigns have been surprisingly effective. Moreover, there have been significant linked changes at the national level. The Church of England, for example, has recently rethought its role in education through a Review Group chaired by Lord Dearing (National Society, 2000). According to the report, Church of

200

PRIVATE EDUCATION

England schools should become more actively Christian in terms of admissions and the standard of their religious activities. After years of prevarication, the report calls for an expansion of its secondary provision by 100 schools in five years. This desire has been taken up by government which, in its Green Paper Schools. Building on Success (DfEE, 2001) plans to support the expansion of church schools by reducing the contribution made by church schools to capital expenditure from 15 to 10 per cent, and to remove this contribution altogether from revenue items. Church schools are now perceived as adding to the diversity of schooling - an objective that is now seen as desirable by Labour as it was by the Conservatives. In such a situation it becomes more likely that parents will be able to find a school to their liking within the state-maintained sector. Teachers as well may feel that teaching in a church school on full pay is more desirable than teaching in a private evangelical school for much lower financial rewards. The many successful interventions of evangelical Christians in state school legislation will probably lead to a further slow decline in the strength of the new evangelical Christian schools. Success at the national level may therefore lead to failure at the local. Acknowledgements The research reported on here was made possible by a grant from the Spencer Foundation. The data presented, the statements made, and the views expressed are solely the responsibility of the author.

CHAPTER 11

Classification and framing of the curriculum in evangelical Christian and Muslim schools in England and the Netherlands

This chapter examines some of the ways that Muslim and private evangelical Christian schools in England and the Netherlands deal with religious education. Various schools take different views about how aspects of religious belief should be taught, and how Christian or Muslim belief should be related to the wider curriculum of the school. While some of the schools have attempted to integrate, for example, evangelical Christianity throughout the whole of the curriculum, others have been content to have the religious teaching as a separate component of the curriculum. This chapter uses the work of Basil Bernstein to describe and understand the nature of the religious curriculum in these schools. Through a series of case studies of schools and curricula, it examines the nature of the curricula and their possible effects on children. Within both England and the Netherlands there is a growing number of schools specifically designed for children of new religious minority families. Some of these have been the subject of a Spencer Foundation-funded comparative project into faith-based schooling for Muslims and evangelical Christians within both countries (Walford, 2001a, 2001b, ZOOlc, 2001d). In England, there are now more than 50 Muslim schools, as well as schools for Sikhs, Seventh Day Adventists, Hindus, and Greek Orthodox Christians, mainly serving the children of first or second-generation immigrants. There are also some 60 schools for children of evangelical (fundamentalist) Christians who believe that the established Christian schools do not provide a sufficiently Christian ethos for their children. However, in contrast to the long-standing state funding of Church of England, From Educational Studies (2002) 28, 4, pp. 403-19.

202

PRIVATE EDUCATION

Catholic and Jewish schools, most of these newer schools serving religious minorities are fee-paying and private. In particular, only four Muslim schools are state-funded, and there are no new evangelical Christian schools that receive funding from the state. The result is that most of the private schools are poorly funded and survive through (low) fees, gifts, and paying teachers and other staff low salaries. In the Netherlands there has been a similar widening of the diversity of schools, again mainly responding to the needs of children of immigrants. There are now 34 Muslim schools, as well as a smaller number serving Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists. Again, some evangelical Christian groups have felt the need to start their own schools. However, in contrast to England, practically all of these schools are fully funded by the state on a level at least equivalent to that allocated to other Dutch schools. While the main part of the research has been concerned with the wider policy aspects of the development of such schools, I spent time observing classroom activity in several of the schools and interviewed various teachers, headteachers and school governors about how they viewed their task. The nature of the curriculum has been a central aspect of such observations and discussions. As these schools have been established specifically to serve the needs of particular religious minorities, it is to be expected that the religious aspect of the curriculum would be of central interest. However, various schools take different views about how aspects of religious belief should be taught and how Christian or Muslim belief should be related to the wider curriculum of the school. While some of the schools have attempted to integrate, for example, evangelical Christianity throughout the whole of the curriculum, others have been content to have the religious teaching as a separate component of the curriculum. This paper uses the work of Basil Bernstein to describe and understand the nature of the religious curriculum in these schools. Through a series o case studies of schools and curricula it examines the nature of the curricula and their possible effects on children. The concern for curriculum Starting a new school is never an easy option. In both England and the Netherlands, the schools that are discussed here were started because parents and others believed that the nature of schooling available within the existing state-maintained sector was inadequate for their children. While some concern centred on the quality of schooling that was available, a further main feature was that they wished their

CHRISTIAN AND MUSLIM SCHOOLS IN ENGLAND AND THE NETHERLANDS

203

children to experience a greater continuity of teaching between the school and the home and church or mosque. Not only did they believe that existing state-funded schools were largely secular and that there should be more teaching about their particular religious faith, they also thought that some of what was taught in existing schools was contrary to the teaching of their religious faith. Thus there were both positive and negative elements to their concerns that centred on the curriculum. The nature of religious faith (especially when it is strongly held) is that it is not an 'add-on' to the rest of life, but something that has an influence on the way that the whole of life is lived. It was thus inevitable that those starting new schools should see the nature of the curriculum as one of the central features that they wished to control and develop. In particular, some have raised the question of 'what makes a Christian school Christian?' or 'what makes a Muslim school Muslim?', and tried to think through what would be distinctive about a Christian or Muslim curriculum. Was it just a matter of a firm emphasis on religious belief in religious education lessons and a strong religious ethos to the school, or did it entail a re-thinking of the nature of the whole curriculum in the school? If the latter, were simple modifications necessary to exclude secular elements, or was it necessary to re-examine the whole assumptions on which subjects and their contents were based? Not surprisingly, various schools have answered these questions differently. Indeed, their contrasting legal statuses constrain the possible answers. In the Netherlands, where all of the schools are funded by the state, they have to accept an outline national curriculum, inspection and testing of children before they leave the schools. The number of hours in which religious education can be taught in the schools is also officially restricted to just 120 hours per year. In England, those few schools for religious minorities that have been accepted into the state-maintained sector have to follow the fairly tight National Curriculum, inspection and regular testing of children (the overall results of which are made public). Even though it is compulsory to teach religious education, in a crowded curriculum, only a limited amount of time is usually spent on it. In contrast, those schools in England that remain as private schools do not have to follow the National Curriculum. There is still inspection, but far greater flexibility is allowed in what is taught. In general, the English evangelical Christian schools do not wish to have state funding, as those involved feel that this would constrain them too greatly (Walford, 2001e). They believe that they might be forced to teach some things that they would not wish to (chiefly evolution

204

PRIVATE EDUCATION

and aspects of sex education) and that it would restrict any additional teaching that they might want to do. Some Muslim schools have similar concerns. In particular, some secondary schools for boys do not want state funding, as they wish to give a greater proportion of time to Qur'anic teaching than would then be possible. Curriculum in the Muslim schools Writing about Muslim schools in Britain, Hewer (2001: 522) argues that, according to its own self-understanding, Islam is a revealed way of life where the revelation is 'not only contained within revealed scripture, in particular the Qur'an, but also in the "Book of Creation", that is, in every aspect of the created order as interpreted through the lens of the revealed scripture.' He states that: From this it follows that there are no 'secular' subjects within the Muslim worldview. Every aspect of study should be permeated by Islamic values and the divinely ordained harmony should be brought out by the educational process. Underlying this is a distinctive epistemology: ultimate truth, the relation of all created beings and things, is not personally synthetic but is given and immutable. Thus knowledge is something existent and defined, which is transmitted in the educational process. The function of the teacher is to expound what is given and that of the student is to absorb it and make it his/her own. (Hewer, 2001: 522) Hewer argues that there should be a unity and integrity within the whole curriculum based upon what the Qur'an has to say about any particular subject. The study of, for example, geography, history or literature is value-laden with the values being provided by Islam. Further, he declares that 'a Muslim school is not one in which "Islam" is taught as a discrete subject called "Religious Education", but rather one in which the whole of education is seen within a faith-centred integrated system' (Hewer, 2001: 523). This picture is, however, somewhat idealized. While many of those involved with establishing and running Muslim schools in England and the Netherlands might wish the curriculum to have such a unity and integrity, there are several factors that mitigate against this being a practical possibility at the present. First, one of the oddities of both Dutch Muslim schools and English Muslim schools in the state sector is that the low numbers of fully-trained Muslim teachers in both countries means that there are many non-Muslims working as teachers of specific subjects in secondary, or as class teachers in primary schools. In their report of 1999, the school inspectors found

CHRISTIAN AND MUSLIM SCHOOLS IN ENGLAND AND THE NETHERLANDS

205

that only 20 per cent of teachers in Dutch Muslim schools were actually Muslim (Inspectie van het Onderwijs, 1999). The areas from which most of the Muslim minorities originally migrated have had low numbers of people in higher education and few of the migrants were qualified to teach or to train to become teachers. Teaching is still not seen as a desirable occupation by most of the second and third generation, so schools are forced to employ non-Muslim teachers to cover the curriculum. Second, there is little money to develop specifically Muslim materials or to translate and publish materials developed elsewhere into English or Dutch. In England, in particular, nearly all of the existing Muslim schools serve predominantly poor families, many of whom find it hard to pay even the low fees that are required at these private schools. The schools try to keep costs as low as possible and are reluctant to invest in curriculum development. Third, most of these schools are still new. The difficulties of establishing and continuing to run the schools divert the energies of those involved away from curriculum development. Fourth, the existence of separate Muslim schools is itself seen as such a great improvement on the previous situation of not having any, that many of those involved are content to just make minor changes to the established curriculum rather than try to develop a specifically Muslim curriculum. One school I visited was Al-Furqan school in Birmingham, which became grant-maintained in September 1998. At the time I visited (in 1999) it was still in its former buildings and was clearly much as it had been as a private school, with just seven classes. The reception class included some of the Year Ones, the second class had the remainder of the Year Ones and all of the Year Twos, and the other five classes were double age, single-sex groups. There were less than 100 children in all, who spent their time largely in small crowded rooms with poor furniture and facilities. There were seven full-time teachers, four of whom were Christian and only three Muslim. There were also three classroom assistants and the headteacher, all of whom were Muslim. The school recognized that there were few trained Muslim teachers who wished to work in private Muslim schools, and they thus recruited teachers who they felt were good at their job and prepared to recognize the religious character of the school. These Christian teachers all wore headscarves while at work. While Britain still has a low number of trained Muslim teachers, an additional reason for the difficulty in recruitment is that many of these private schools pay less than the national pay scales. The curriculum of the school was based on the National Curriculum with the addition of Qur'anic Arabic Language. Most of

206

PRIVATE EDUCATION

the children did not speak Arabic at home, so had to be taught it if they are to be able to read the Qur'an. This was taught by a separate teacher as, I was told, most second-generation Muslims in Britain are self-taught in Arabic and have very bad pronunciation. The school wanted to teach the standard Saudi Arabian pronunciation. Most of this teaching was aimed at learning and reciting Suras from the Qur'an. The children were involved in this for about half an hour per day. The curriculum followed by these children was basically that followed by any other English children. The same type of massproduced reading schemes and other books were used and the same topics covered. Although the Muslim teachers may have been able to set a good example to the children (and all teachers were expected to behave in an appropriate and modest manner), there was little integration of Islam into the whole curriculum. Instead, the curriculum was modified in several relatively small ways. In English, for example, several books had words cut out or deleted with a felt-tip pen because the content was not deemed appropriate. This included references to 'magic' in the Oxford Reading Tree, and to such things as drugs and sex in a document on 'being healthy'. Books to be read were carefully selected such that they offered good models for the children to follow. In music, stringed and blowing instruments were not allowed, and even drums were somewhat suspect. Physical Education was done in a limited way with the children's bodies fully covered throughout. Art often focused on patterns and the children could not draw images of living things. When I visited, the Year One and Two classroom had a row of named drawings of the children drawn by themselves stuck to the windows. When I asked about them, it was pointed out to me that each drawing was of a person with a red scarf round its neck. The scarf indicated that the head and the body were not actually attached - although the children themselves probably did not realize it, these were thus drawings of themselves dead! But the majority of the time spent in the school would have been familiar to many English children. The formality of the classroom, the literacy hour, the arithmetical examples to plough through, the chatting to friends, mark-grubbing with teachers, the waiting for teachers to sort out problems, and being told-off and shouted at if they did anything wrong - all were present here as in most other schools. In the Netherlands the Muslim schools are fully funded by the state and, because the students tend to come from families with poor education and are from an ethnic minority, the schools benefit from considerable extra funding of up to 1.9 times the base figure per

CHRISTIAN AND MUSLIM SCHOOLS IN ENGLAND AND THE NETHERLANDS

207

student. The schools are thus well funded. They are also more free than English schools to develop their own curricula, as the Dutch national requirements are much looser than those of England. However, I found little evidence of any radical developments of a Muslim curriculum. It seemed that most schools followed a standard list of academic subjects and used the same commercially-produced textbooks as other Dutch schools. As in England, there were simply modifications made to deal with particular issues of concern. Al-Ghazalisschol in Rotterdam is a primary school serving about 300 students that was established in 1988. When I visited in 2001, the principal was a white Dutch Catholic and there were also Buddhist teachers, and staff with varying degrees of Christian belief. Only onethird of the teachers were Muslim. The school followed the same list of subjects as other schools and taught using standard textbooks. The metaphysical aspects of Islam were taught by all teachers as a separate lesson, but the practical (ritual) aspects were only taught by Muslim teachers. The Muslim Chair of Governors told me that there used to be disputes about art, music and so on when the school first started, but that the school had become more liberal and there was now singing and the playing of instruments. Representations of living beings were also allowed - in fact, the school playground had bright paintings of people covering its fencing. The Chair of Governors at El Amien Basisschool in Amsterdam was originally from Surinam and has a rather different view about the importance of teachers being Muslim. He argued that 'religion is not caught through one lesson a week' but permeates all the school's activities. The school had thus made considerable efforts to recruit Muslim teachers - even to the extent of going to Surinam to enlist teachers for the school - and only had two non-Muslim teachers. The actual curriculum, however, used standard curriculum materials and followed the usual list of subjects. I was told that where, for example, a story might have a boy going to a bar and drinking, this was retained but the Muslim view discussed. The school deals with the issue of representations of people in art by allowing the students to paint people as long as it is for practice and learning rather than for display. It must be remembered that the schools that grant access to researchers are likely to be more liberal than those that do not. However, I also interviewed a representative from Islamitische Scholen Besturen Organisatie (ISBO), which is the umbrella organization for the governing bodies of all Dutch Muslim schools (except three primary schools in Rotterdam that are so liberal they are under the Christian umbrella organization). The basic task of ISBO is to support school boards, including in the areas of curriculum and

208

PRIVATE EDUCATION

general school policy. This representative believed that, while it would be best if there were a few more Muslim teachers in the schools, a ratio of 50:50 would be fine. He saw it as perfectly possible to have religious education as a neutral, knowledge-based subject that could be taught by non-Muslims. It was only the specifically Qu'ranic and devotional parts that needed to be taught by Muslims. For this representative, there was thus little need to develop a specifically Muslim curriculum: all that was necessary were appropriate modifications to the standard Dutch curriculum. In order to train more Muslim teachers a special training course has been developed in Amsterdam, but this only covers Muslim religious education teachers and does not attempt to train Muslim teachers for any other subjects. Curriculum in the evangelical Christian schools Evangelical Christianity might also be seen as 'a revealed way of life where the revelation is not only contained within revealed scripture, in particular the [Bible], but also in the "Book of Creation", that is, in every aspect of the created order as interpreted through the lens of the revealed scripture'. But, unlike most of the Muslim schools, some of the evangelical Christian schools have really taken to heart the idea that 'it follows that there are no "secular" subjects in the [Christian] worldview' (modification of Hewer, 2001: 522). While the practical attempts to design a curriculum that rejects humanism and secularism and, instead, reflects Christianity have met with various degrees of success, some of the evangelical Christians have devoted considerable energy to the task. Given the greater degree of autonomy available in the English private sector, and the sheer determination that is necessary to start and maintain a private school often serving far from affluent families, it is perhaps inevitable that the most radical thinking about the curriculum has come from this group of schools. The new Christian schools are the result of a grass-roots movements in education that stems from the belief that education is fundamentally the responsibility of the parent rather than the state. The school is seen as an extension of the values and beliefs taught within the home and church. Deakin (1989a), who in the late 1980s was the Head of Oak Hill School, Bristol, argued that the human-centred philosophy that dominates the majority of schools in England is evident throughout the entire curriculum of those schools, and that it shapes the value systems and philosophical frameworks within which all the disciplines are taught. Further,

CHRISTIAN AND MUSLIM SCHOOLS IN ENGLAND AND THE NETHERLANDS

209

our schools tend to reflect our society, where there is increasing secularisation, a rising materialism and excessive individualism. Alongside this there is unremitting evidence of a profound lack of respect for authority, and chaos in the area of personal values and morality. (Deakin, 1989a: 5) As there is no national organization overseeing these new evangelical Christian schools, it is difficult to trace their emergence, but it would appear that the first school of this type to open in Britain was in Rochester in 1969 - a time when some other parent groups throughout the country were opening libertarian free schools for their children. A few more new Christian schools followed in the early 1970s, but it was not until the early 1980s that substantial growth occurred. In 1980 there were about 10 such schools, but by 1988 there were at least 53. B the mid-1980s Youth With A Mission was involved with running schools, and Christians In Education, which had been formed in 1986, acted to bring together the heads of the schools. In 1988 it was decided to establish the separate Christian Schools' Trust (CST) 'to promote and assist in the founding of further schools' (CST, 1988). However, from the beginning, major objectives of the CST were to provide assistanc with the development of curriculum materials, help co-ordinate the dissemination of such materials, provide in-service training for teachers and organize conferences (Poyntz and Walford, 1994; Walford, 2001e). It was recognized that opening a Christian school might mean more than just having a Christian ethos, and might require specially written curriculum materials that contained the Christian message. For several of the schools the answer to their need for a specially written Christian curriculum was answered by Accelerated Christian Education (ACE), about which I have written elsewhere (Walford, 1995c: 21-26). ACE is a highly standardized system of individualize instruction developed in the United States, where all the information, materials and equipment necessary to set up and run a Christian school are provided. Pupils work at their own pace through a series of Packs of Accelerated Christian Education (PACEs), which are provided for each different subject area. In its purest form students sit in separate cubicles that are designed to limit student interaction by having vertical screens between pupils. Students can gain the attention of their supervisor or monitor by raising one of two or three small flags provided for each pupil. When an exercise is finished, the pupils mark their own work at a 'testing station'. Rose (1988: 117) describes ACE as 'having taken the scientific management of schools to the extreme. Their model more closely approximates to that of the

210

PRIVATE EDUCATION

factory or office: there are "supervisors" and "monitors" rather than "teachers"; student "offices" rather than desks; and "testing stations" that create "quality control".' ACE teaching materials and methods were an important part of the growth of some of these new Christian schools, for the existence of ACE enabled small groups of Christian parents to contemplate providing all-age Christian schooling for their children at low cost and with little or no teaching experience required by those adults in harge. In particular, ACE allows schools to teach the entire age range of children without the need for specialist teachers in each subject area at the secondary level. ACE-type materials are still widely used, especially by parents who need an individualized curriculum to home-school. The contents have gradually developed such that they are no longer so US-based, but they retain their basic structure and are focused on the 'Christian philosophy of education' that takes 'as foundational that the Bible is the infallible, inerrant Word of God' (Dennett, 1988: 55). Most PACEs have Bible quotations at the bottom of each page, but do not fully integrate biblical teaching into the texts. They teach creationism rather than evolution, and there is often a firm moral tone to the readings and questions in the PACEs. The main advantage of ACE materials was that it allowed those with little teaching experience to act as teachers (or technically 'supervisors'), but its highly individualized format found less support from those evangelical Christians who were trained teachers. Various individual schools and the CST itself have thus developed their own materials - some of which radically challenge conventional curricula. One example is that of a group of 17 science teachers of schools within the CST who regularly met together over a period of seven years to produce science curriculum materials that reflect a distinctly Christian worldview. Their book (CSTSCT, 1998) outlines the team's approach to science education and gives some examples of how particular topics might be taught. They argue that science is not neutral and that a distinctively Christian view needs to be put forward in teaching science (Clouser, 1991; Van Brummelen, 1988). Quoting the well-know theologian Lesslie Newbigin, they claim that 'the very idea of treating religion as a subject that can be put in a list alongside physics, history, and literature is itself an assault on the foundations of belief, and that sciences should be affirmed, 'but in a right relationship to all other aspects of human life and discipleship before God' (CSTSCT, 1998: 14). They propose that effective Christian education integrates the three key stories: the great biblical story of the ages, the story of our culture and our own life story. In other

CHRISTIAN AND MUSLIM SCHOOLS IN ENGLAND AND THE NETHERLANDS

211

words, such education should help 'children to find their place in a biblically and personally meaningful world' (CSTSCT, 1998: 57). The team argue that the content of a Christian science syllabus should be taught such that it is integrated into the story of Creation, Fall and Redemption. In outline, Creation focuses on God's loving provision for us, and our God-given task to care for, develop and shape the earthly creation as servants accountable to God. Fall includes the belief that God's judgement and our continuing sin have spoilt God's good creation, that our cultural development has followed some disruptive and destructive paths, and that our true calling and task may now be hindered or blocked. Redemption implies discovering the distortions and abuses that affect the development of God's creation, and our duties and responsibilities in the network of relationships in which we and other created things are embedded, and working for the restoration of true roles, the healing of brokenness, and the reconciliation of all those who are alienated from God, from each other, and from the world (CTCSCT, 1998: 95). These values are put forward in opposition to the 'idols of science, technology and economic growth' that are to be found, they argue, in secular textbooks and syllabuses. Another example of a Christian curriculum comes from The King's School, Witney, which has devised its own curriculum using a different threefold structure. The King's School is a well-established junior and senior school, which uses a considerable amount of individualized instruction based on the ACE model for its younger children, but uses more group teaching for those aged 12 and above. The Trinity Model of curriculum is described in a book written by the Head and one of the teachers of the school (Thomas and Freeman, 2001: 99ff), and is based on the triune God - Father, Son and Holy Spirit. God is seen as the source of all things. God is love and desires his world to know Him. Jesus is the means - the agent who will physically demonstrate God's love in the world. The Holy Spirit leads towards fulfilment. He works patiently and consistently in the hearts of God's people to bring them towards the fulfilment of God's plans for His people (Thomas and Freeman, 2001: 100). They then link Father, Son and Holy Spirit to Source, Means and Fulfilment respectively, and state that they are trying to shape students' and teachers' thinking according to questions such as: 'what is the source or origin in God of my subject/theme?', 'how has God caused it to be demonstrated in the world?' and 'what is the end result/destiny of my subject? Does it serve the purposes of God enhancing his world or not?' Such questions do not lead to a precise curriculum but to a particular way of looking at each subject and topic to be covered.

212

PRIVATE EDUCATION

Thus, for example, English language has the Source concept of the wisdom and knowledge used to promote understanding by skilful and accurate communication; the Means of learning basic structures of language, excellent structures for communication by imitation and practice, a wealth of vocabulary which will become a storehouse and a variety of approaches in the use of language as appropriate for different types of communication, being able to employ different skills for different tasks, learning logic, order and sequence of thought, learning to describe accurately and excellently; and the Fulfilment of being available to communicate for God and to be able to do so with purity and excellence whether in speech or in written form and using this ability relationally in God's kingdom for whatever field of service God ordains (Thomas and Freeman, 2001:144). Such a structure can change dramatically the way in which subjects are taught and also offer a coherence to the whole set of subjects. Another teacher at The King's School offered definitions for subjects that included history - the record of how God is working out his purpose in a fallen world towards the time when everyone will confess the name of Jesus; geography - the study of the surface of the earth that God created (which is fearfully and wonderfully made) and our stewardship of it; mathematics - the study of the amazing order and patterns that God has provided for peace and the ordering of creation; and language - a tool through which we can develop relationships for the glory of God and to communicate with Him and others. Whatever we may think about these definitions, there is no doubt that they offer a coherence to the entire school curriculum that is usually absent (or perhaps, as they would argue, not made explicit but is actually in the form of secularism, individualism and so on). Of course, written documents are not the same as practice, which means that actual lessons may be more similar to those of other schools than this description would suggest. But what is different from the Muslim schools is that these schools will only employ teachers of the faith. All the teachers at these evangelical Christian schools are Christians, and they usually meet together regularly for prayer and praise sessions. In all of the evangelical Christian schools I visited, the teachers discuss their faith and what it might mean in terms of teaching, and many have worked together to develop a method of teaching that tries to embody their beliefs. The results have a variety of degrees of sophistication, and only some have tried to develop new curriculum materials. While the practice may fall short of the written documents, the shared and openly discussed belief system means that questions about what a Christian pedagogy and curriculum might be are often raised.

CHRISTIAN AND MUSLIM SCHOOLS IN ENGLAND AND THE NETHERLANDS

213

The Dutch case is somewhat different. The first of the new evangelical Christian primary schools (de Morgenster) opened in Amsterdam in 1988 (Walford, 2001d) and it was always the intention of the founders that it should act as a model for other schools to emulate. This included the development of new Christian curriculum materials. There had been some initial development done in the early years, but the attempt was abandoned due to the pressures involved in building a new school and dealing with numerous problems. When I interviewed the Director in 1999, he was still not content with the curriculum, but felt that there were other more pressing needs. He argued that the heart of the school was the teachers, and many of them had spent years in a system that was basically humanistic. He saw it as difficult for them to see that they had to live out their Christianity in their daily approach. The need at that time was simply for them to 'stay in contact with God during the day' and for them to look for moments when they could 'share something relating to the Bible or the beauty that God has created'. By early 2002, however, there was renewed enthusiasm for more structured curriculum development. The opening of two further evangelical Christian schools since the first interview and a visit to some Australian Christian schools had revived interest and enthusiasm. Neither of the other two new Dutch evangelical Christian primary schools has made sustained attempts to develop a specifically Christian curriculum. They were too new to have had the space to do so. However, a Christian curriculum was at the heart of the first new evangelical Christian secondary school, which was established in Utrecht in 1999 (de Passie). A small team, which included a Belgian university professor, worked for a year before the school opened to develop a curriculum that related directly to the Bible. This was a very thorough and detailed attempt to integrate biblical Christianity into the entire curriculum and Bible references were incorporated into the syllabus for each subject. Further, care was taken to ensure that every book of the Bible was included, and that students received a 'balanced diet' from the various books. However, this was very much an innovation imposed from the top, with the details still to be worked out and implemented by teachers who had not originally been involved. While the teachers were, again, all Christian, it is obviously unlikely that they would all take to this idea with equal enthusiasm. When I made a second visit to the school in early 2002, the scheme was still running in a modified form in the two lower years, but it had not been extended into the third year. I was given several reasons for this change. While one teacher simply said it had been discontinued because 'it did not work', the Director told me that staff pressures and

214

PRIVATE EDUCATION

losses had led to a temporary cessation of work on the curriculum. Undoubtedly, the work involved in establishing a school is great enough without having to devise a whole new curriculum at the same time. Classification and framing These various attempts to reconstruct the curriculum can be usefully examined using the aspect of Bernstein's work that relates to the form and structure of the curriculum, drawing particularly on his concepts of classification and framing. These concepts were first introduced in a much-quoted article (Bernstein, 1971) in which two educational knowledge codes are discussed, differing according to the underlying principles that shape curriculum, pedagogy and evaluation. A curriculum of a collection type is characterized by strongly bounded knowledge areas with little linkage between them. The learner is required to collect a group of favoured contents in order to satisfy some criteria of evaluation. On the other had, an integrated curriculum emphasizes the interdependence of various areas of knowledge and attempts to transcend traditional boundaries. Bernstein argues that any structure for the transmission of knowledge will symbolically reproduce the distribution of power in society, and introduces the concept of classification to clarify this relationship: Where classification is strong, contents are well insulated from each other by strong boundaries. Where classification is weak, there is reduced insulation between contents, for the boundaries between contents are weak or blurred. Classification thus refers to the degree of boundary maintenance between contents. (Bernstein, 1971:89, original emphasis) The concept of frame was also introduced to refer to the strength of the boundary between what may be transmitted and what may not be transmitted in the pedagogic relationship. It indicates 'the degree of control teacher and pupil possess over the selection, organisation, pacing and timing of knowledge transmitted and received in the pedagogical relationship'. The strength of framing thus refers to the range of options available to teacher and taught in the control of what is transmitted and received. Thus, From the perspective of this analysis, the basic structure of the message system, curriculum is given by variations in the strength of classification, and the basic structure of the message system, pedagogy is given by variations in the strengths of frames. (Bernstein, 1971:89)

CHRISTIAN AND MUSLIM SCHOOLS IN ENGLAND AND THE NETHERLANDS

215

Many researchers have found the general framework useful in attempting to clarify a range of educational problems (see, for example, Atkinson et al, 1995; Sadovnik, 1995; Morais et al, 2001). Walker (1983), for example, has used Bernstein's concepts of classification and framing within a historical analysis of different social regimes in colleges of education over a century, while Aggleton and Whitty (1985) have applied them to a study of the subcultural practices of a group of new middle-class students in an English college of further education. Examples of broader and more flexible usage include Rodger's (1985) study of a large public enquiry and my own (Walford, 1981, 1986b, 1995e) accounts of problems within postgraduate research and the reproductive role of elite British boarding schools. The usefulness of the concepts, however, can still best be seen in Bernstein's own earlier articles. In 'Class and pedagogies: visible and invisible' (Bernstein, 1973) they are used to uncover the relationship between social class and educational advantage in progressive preschool and infant school classrooms. He shows that the invisible pedagogy that is at the base of progressive methods is inherently advantageous to pupils from new middle-class families, while children from working-class homes are at a disadvantage. A more important article in the context of the present discussion is 'Aspects of the relations between education and production' (1977), which looks at the continuities and discontinuities between education and work. Here, the earlier definitions of classifications and framing are broadened; they 'have become more abstract and the link between power and classification and framing and control has become more explicit'. Bernstein argues against a simple correspondence theory of education that assumes that dispositions valued in the school are identical with dispositions required by the workplace, and uses these developed concepts to argue that classification and framing in schools does not always mesh with the classification and framing required in the workplace. How can these concepts from Bernstein be applied to the curricula of these new Muslim and evangelical schools? Without doing too much injustice to the data, a broad difference can be seen between the Muslim and evangelical Christian schools. While it might be expected that both Muslims and Christians would see their religious faith as permeating all the activities of the schools, it is mainly the evangelical Christian schools that so far have attempted to develop curricula that reflect their faith within all subjects. With the exception of the English Muslim schools that are designed to train future Imams, most of the Muslim schools and some evangelical Christian schools in both

216

PRIVATE EDUCATION

countries are, at present, largely prepared to accept minor modifications to existing curricula to exclude particularly adverse aspects. In contrast, some of the evangelical Christian schools have tried to modify the entire curriculum so that Christianity is central throughout. However, in all the cases described, the basic structure of a collection code of separate subjects has not been disrupted. Indeed, the ACE type of individualized learning actually increases the separation of subjects, as PACEs are subject-based and worked through individually with little possibility of any interlinking of topics. At first sight the classification is strong. Again, within ACE, while the pacing of the learning is under the learner's control the selection, organization and timing is still strongly dictated by the teacher. ACE-type curricula appear to be still a collection code of a very pure type and an example of a visible pedagogy. In a similar way the Trinity Model does not disrupt the division of learning into discrete subjects. English language, history, geography, mathematics and so on are still taught. And they are taught by teachers who have strong powers over the selection, organization, pacing and timing of the process. This, again, would appear to be the strong classification and framing of a collection code and visible pedagogy. The only example where the classification of subjects is slightly reduced is that of the science course developed by the CSTSCT (1998). Here, it might be argued that there is some blurring of the boundaries between science and sociology and environmental science, but it is really little more than is to be found in some other non-Christian science curricula. For example, for many years the Association for Science Education has been keen to introduce environmental and social aspects into the science curriculum. At first sight, the curricula of these evangelical Christian schools appears to be of a collection type with strong classification and framing. The pedagogy is visible. Given that many of the students in these schools are from lower middle or working-class families, the use of such a code might be seen as being potentially effective, as such children are likely to experience similar coding in their homes. But the foregoing simple assessment omits from consideration the central fact that these schools have made a definite attempt to introduce integration of a different sort throughout the curriculum. There still may be a collection code of subjects, but there is an attempt to integrate these subjects at a deeper level by relating them back to belief in a particular biblical view of God, creation and the role of human beings in that creation. To the extent that teachers are successful in making each of the subjects and topics examples of God's

CHRISTIAN AND MUSLIM SCHOOLS IN ENGLAND AND THE NETHERLANDS

217

creation, humanity's fall and redemption, they produce an integrated code with an 'overarching weak classification' between contents. It is a way of linking all subjects through the superimposition of one master viewpoint on all. This integrated code is not, however, associated with an invisible pedagogy. It depends upon acceptance of a particular view of the Bible and Christianity, and this is one where the acceptance of hierarchy and authority are central. Thomas and Freeman (2001: 95) argue: 'If we want to "produce" young people of quality, who have a heart for God and his ways and are willing to submit to him for the destiny he has planned for their lives, we will need to sow the right things through our curriculum in order to reap the right harvest.' Students are to be obedient to those with power over them, yet also to be trained to be leaders if required. The authority of the school and parents is deemed to be God-given. For most of the students in the school there will be a very strong correspondence between the 'overarching weak classification' and strong framing of the school and a similar overarching weak classification and strong framing of the home and church. These families are likely to be 'strict' in their demands on the child. The whole school/home/church system is thus likely to be an effective force for teaching and learning (some might say indoctrination). With all of the teachers being Christian and most of the students being from Christian homes, the possible interrupters to the process of reproduction are few: even television is often restricted by these families. One might expect this type of code found in the schools to be very effective for these students. Interestingly, Bernstein (2001: 29) has already noted this association between weak classification and those involved with agencies of symbolic control such as religion. He describes an analysis (conducted by Holland, 1986) where it was found that mothers located in the field of symbolic control employed weaker classification of their modelling of the domestic and economic division of labour. For those readers who are more up-to-date in their understanding of Bernstein's work, a similar argument could be made using the terminology of horizontal and vertical discourses and hierarchical and horizontal knowledge structures within vertical discourses (Bernstein 1996, 2000; Muller, 2001; Vitale, 2001). However, for my purpose here such a revision does not add to the basic argument. Indeed, the simplicity of the classification and framing concepts is what makes them valuable for interrogating data and thinking through the consequences of particular forms of curriculum and pedagogy. One final thought. We can only see the curriculum and pedagogy

218

PRIVATE EDUCATION

in these schools as being both weakly classified and strongly framed by introducing the idea of 'overarching' codes. In most discussions of the curriculum this feature is not considered, and it is as if the 'overarching classification' (or framing for that matter) can be seen as neutral. By omitting from consideration the worldviews and unstated assumptions under which schools operate (whether they be religious, individualistic, democratic, demagogic or whatever), we may be missing much that is important for understanding the reproductive power of schooling. Acknowledgements The research reported here was made possible by a grant from the Spencer Foundation. The data presented, the statements made and the views expressed are solely the responsibility of the author. I wish to thank the schools in England and the Netherlands who so generously gave me access and answered my many questions.

CHAPTER 12

Muslim schools in Britain

Introduction: immigration and education policies England is a land of immigrants. From the invasions of the Romans, Danes and Normans, through to modern-day refugees from Bosnia, Eastern Europe and Afghanistan, England has received a wide diversity of political and economic immigrants. But most educational discussion of immigration forgets this long history and is usually concerned with the black and Asian ethnic minorities who first came to England following the Second World War. The 1950s and 1960s were a time of economic boom coupled with severe labour shortages, such that many employers actively encouraged workers from the socalled New Commonwealth to come to England to fill lowly-paid jobs. London Transport, for example, advertised in Jamaica and the Caribbean for staff for the London Underground and buses, and provided a recruiting office in Kingston itself to speed their passage. A little later, many more immigrants came from Pakistan and India, again destined to take low-paid jobs not wanted by others. Originally those from the New Commonwealth came on British passports, but the Commonwealth Immigration Act of 1962 began a process of limiting the inflow, especially of black immigrants. These policies were racially explicit, as there was growing fear of being 'overrun' by people of other 'races' - England has remained open to all (white) Irish immigrants throughout the twentieth century. Similarly, there are now tight controls that limit the entry of those from India, Pakistan and the Caribbean, but borders are completely open to those from the European Union. During the 1950s and early 1960s, the usual pattern was that men from the New Commonwealth initially came alone, with the intention of returning to their country of origin once sufficient From G. Walford (2004) (ed.) British Private Schools: research on policy and practice. London: Woburn Press, pp. 158-74.

220

PRIVATE EDUCATION

money had been accumulated. While some did return, many others stayed and gradually brought over wives and other dependents. It was during the 1960s that the children of these immigrants first had a significant impact on schools. Government policy at this stage was broadly assimilationist. This is usually taken to mean cultural assimilation rather than physical assimilation, such that blacks should not be seen by themselves or others as a discrete group other than in terms of skin colour (Troyna and Williams, 1986). Schools were thus seen as having the principal goal of transmitting the dominant culture and socializing black children into that culture. The potentially disruptive effects of having culturally and linguistically different children in schools were to be minimized by trying to eradicate both these differences. Different cultures were assumed to be deprived cultures, which needed to be compensated for by additional English language teaching and other special measures. One of the most important 'special measures' of the mid-1960s was the acceptance of bussing of black children from areas of particular concentration, such that black immigrant children were always in a minority in any one school. The pattern of immigration was such that immigrant groups tended to cluster in particular areas of England's large cities. It was argued by government that, for assimilation to take place, it was necessary for black children to be bussed such that they were always in a school that was dominated by the white mainstream culture and the English language. This was intended to help these children lose the 'disadvantages' of their own language and culture, but also to placate those white parents and teachers who feared the effects of large numbers of black children in any one school. Troyna and Williams (1986) have argued that this policy of dispersal was neither a legitimate nor logical response to perceived educational needs, but was a surrender to racism, for it attempted to overrule the rights, identity and culture of a minority within what was a multicultural society. In practice, bussing did not last long and was not widespread. By the end of the 1960s and beginning of the 1970s there was no longer a general acceptance of the idea of assimilation, and policy gradually moved towards integration, and then multiculturalism. The 1970s have been caricatured as the era of 'saris, samosas and steel bands' as teachers sought to find elements of the various immigrants' cultures that could be valorized within a dominant white culture. One particularly important aspect of multiculturalism was the changes made to religious education, such that Christianity (while still dominant) became only one of several religions about which children

MUSLIM SCHOOLS IN BRITAIN

221

were given information. Islam, Sikhism, Hinduism and Buddhism were frequently added to the curriculum - so much so that right-wing apologists decried the 'multi-cultural mish-mash' that they claimed resulted. Multi-faith teaching was partly reversed through the 1988 Education Reform Act, which gave a special place to Christianity within religious education and acts of worship in schools, but children are still expected to have knowledge of at least one other faith in most religious education examinations. During the 1980s and 1990s there were also many who called for a move beyond multiculturalism to anti-racist teaching in schools. Troyna (1993), for example, strongly believed that it was insufficient for children to simply know about other faiths and cultures, and advocated that schools should explicitly teach anti-racism in an attempt to reduce the disadvantage that many black and Asian children experience in schools. Such policies have only been partially implemented, and it is undoubtedly true that perceptions of racism within existing state-maintained schools is one of the reasons why some Muslim parents have opened their own schools. Education system and options for Muslims There is no such thing as a British state educational system. Scotland has an educational system that differs in many ways from that of England and Wales. In the context of Muslim schooling, however, it is reasonable to just discuss England and Wales, as the vast majority of children of Muslim parents are to be found within English and Welsh schools. Within England and Wales in 2000, about 20 per cent of pupils were educated within religiously-based state-maintained schools. This is the result of a long history of schooling being provided by the churches, centuries before the state became involved in what it originally considered to be a 'private matter'. It was as late as 1870 before the state started to provide 'additional' schools to 'fill the gaps' in church provision. By 2000 there were still almost 7,000 statemaintained schools with an explicit religious affiliation: 4,800 Church of England, 2,140 Roman Catholic, 55 Methodist (some in association with the Church of England) and 23 Jewish schools. What is very evident from this list is that it reflects the predominant religious affiliations of the population of 1944 rather than that of the far more religiously and ethnically diverse population of the 1990s. The pattern of religious schools available within the state-maintained sector takes little account of the increased religious diversity within England that resulted from immigration (and subsequent births to second and third generations) since that time

222

PRIVATE EDUCATION

of families from such countries as India, Pakistan, Kenya and the Caribbean. While there are obviously no direct linkages between the country of origin, ethnicity and religious adherence, many of the immigrants from Pakistan and Bangladesh were Muslims, while many from the Punjab were Sikhs and most from the rest of India were Hindu. However, the situation is complex, with Muslims in Britain having significant numbers from eight different countries of origin (Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Kenya, Malaysia, Egypt, Libya and Morocco), as well as many from the various countries of the Middle East (Parker-Jenkins, 1995). There is now a range of Muslim communities based not only on country of origin, but also on the various groups within Islam. People from each of these groups tended to settle in particular urban areas within such cities as Birmingham, Blackburn, Bradford, Coventry, Dewsbury, Leicester, London and Manchester. Such a pattern of local concentration is of obvious benefit to their desire to maintain and practise their religion and build mosques. It also allowed the development of specialist shops and services designed to meet the social and cultural needs of particular ethnic groups. It is estimated that there by the mid-1990s there were around a million Muslims in England, with about 75 per cent having origins in the Indian subcontinent (Peach and Glebe, 1995), and about 400,000 children of Muslim parents of school age in England (Sarwar, 1994). While many of these children's parents are content for them to attend LEA or voluntary aided schools, others would wish them to be in specifically Muslim schools. It is important to recognize the diversity within those who follow Islam. There is no single Muslim voice on issues of schooling, and some groups (for example, Ismaili Muslims) are strongly opposed to separate Muslim schools. Most of the original immigrants to England were financially and educationally poor and either sent their children to secular LEA schools or to the existing Christian voluntary aided schools, according to the pattern of locally available provision: and the vast majority of Muslim children still currently attend LEA or Church o England schools. It might seem particularly anomalous that these children attend Church of England schools, but the Anglicans have long seen their task as one of serving the inhabitants of the entire local parish (Chadwick, 1997). Being the Established Church, the Church of England has provided certain services for atheists as well as believers of various religions, so that it is now possible to find Church of England schools that have a majority of Muslim children in attendance. In the early 1990s it was estimated that there were about 60 schools with a Muslim intake of 90-100 per cent and over 200 with

MUSLIM SCHOOLS IN BRITAIN

223

over 75 per cent (Parker-Jenkins, 1995: 86). Where this has occurred, these schools typically have made significant adaptations to meet many of the particular cultural and religious needs of these children. In contrast, the Catholic Church has usually seen its mission in schooling as being that of providing a Catholic education for Catholic children. While significant numbers of non-Catholic children do attend such schools, few concessions are usually made to their lack of or alternative faith. As the various ethnic minorities became increasingly financially well established, and as second and third-generation children entered school during the 1980s and 1990s, it became more possible for Muslim parents to consider establishing their own private faith-based schools. There has been considerable debate about the desirability of separate Muslim schools (see, for example, Halstead, 1986a, 1986b; Hiskett, 1989; McLaughlin, 1992), but the option has been increasingly taken up. During the late 1980s and 1990s Muslim, Sikh and Seventh Day Adventists established their own schools in what has come to be known as the 'reluctant private sector' (Walford, 1991c). By 2002 there were about 60 full-time private Muslim schools, several of which would ideally wish to become state funded. The growth of private Muslim schools was not only linked to a rising ability of parents to pay for such schools (many existing schools still survive on very low fees and serve poor families), but also a growing dissatisfaction with the state-maintained schools that their children attended. This dissatisfaction had several causes. One aspect was that some parents felt that their children were not achieving academically as well as they might. The inner-city schools that many Muslim children attended did badly on test scores. Here some Muslim parents might have initially drawn on their own experience of schooling in British schools, but as scores became more publicly available during the 1990s, parents became more concerned that these schools might be failing their children. They were also concerned that the standards of discipline and respect for adults found in these schools was often lower than they wished. But the main reasons for the growth in these schools was related directly to religious beliefs. As Muslims became more established and developed a variety of distinct Muslim communities, they became more religious in their outlook. There has been a growth in religious observance and Lewis (1994) describes the Islamic disposition of south-east Asian British Muslims as 'a communal consciousness that is far more religious than secular'. As Mustafa (2001) points out, a significant majority of British Muslims attach special importance to their faith. A Policy Studies Institute survey showed that 73 per cent of

224

PRIVATE EDUCATION

Pakistanis and 76 per cent of Bangladeshis consider Islam to be important in the way they live their lives in Britain (Modood et al, 1997: 308). As they became more religious, their concerns about both the structure and content of the state-maintained system grew. Concern about the content of the curriculum focuses mainly on religious education and sex education. In England and Wales all statemaintained schools are required to teach religious education. During the 1970s and 1980s many schools adopted a multi-faith approach, which involved a very general description of the nature and practice of a wide range of religions. The religions were treated as interesting aspects of the activities of various groups and as a result, it was argued, none of the religions were taken seriously. Many Muslims (and Christians) saw this as a 'multi-cultural mish-mash' that denied the validity of all religions. While most Muslim parents wanted Islam to be given a special place in the teaching provided for their children, others went further than this and wished the entire curriculum to be embedded within an Islamic understanding of the world. While some were content to have a modified curriculum in areas such as art and music (such that children did not make any representations of human beings, or be involved in music or dance), others wished all subjects to reflect an Islamic understanding. Sex education and aspects of sexuality are also areas of concern as, it is argued, the values that lie behind much of the teaching in these areas is anti-Islamic. All schools are required to teach sex education and to follow a syllabus that is the responsibility of the board of governors. In many schools it is taught in a way that emphasizes individual choice and responsibility, and recognizes that many young people will have sexual relationships outside marriage. It covers such areas as contraception, abortion and extra-marital relationships, which are seen by many Muslims as inappropriate topics to discuss with young people. Homosexual relationships and behaviour are also often treated as an individual matter of preference. Halstead (1997: 317) confirms that what lies behind Muslim discontent is 'the conviction that current practice in sex education is in serious conflict with Islamic teaching'. There are concerns about the structure of state schooling both within school and within LEAs. Within schools, some Muslims see the need for special arrangements to be made for regular prayers, for special food, for the acceptance of particular clothing and for an early finish on Fridays. Many LEA schools do, in fact, take account of most of these needs. However, the main problem perceived within LEAs relates to a cultural preference rather than as strictly religious one: many parents do not want co-educational schools for their post-

MUSLIM SCHOOLS IN BRITAIN

225

puberty girls. A survey (Modood et al, 1997: 323) found that 59 per cent of Pakistani respondents and 46 per cent of Bangladeshis preferred single-sex schools for their daughters, yet many LEAs have gradually closed their single-sex schools or refused to re-designate schools to meet the demand. In Britain, much of the demand for separate Muslim schools is linked to a desire for single-sex education. The nature of Muslim schools The private Muslim schools in England exhibit a great diversity. It is estimated that the private Muslim schools provide for a total of about 7,000 children - about 2 per cent of Muslim children in England. They range from one expensive London-based school with nearly 2,000 pupils, which is predominantly attended by children of diplomats, industrialists and professionals from the Far East, to small, one-room schools for five or more children based in domestic houses. Indeed, estimates of the number of private Muslim schools vary, as many are simply parents schooling several children together in their own homes. When the number of children reaches five (not all from the same family), it officially becomes a school. The total number of private Muslim schools can thus change markedly from year to year. While the range in size is thus from 5 pupils to nearly 2,000, the average is about 120. Separate schooling for boys and girls is an important feature of Muslim schools, especially for children beyond puberty. Thus there are more schools serving secondary age children than primary and there are no co-educational secondary schools. There are about 22 girls' secondary schools (3 with some boarding provision), and 16 boys' secondary schools. The majority of these boys' schools are boarding schools that are linked to seminaries whose purpose is to train future religious leaders (Runnymede Trust, 1997: 47). Apart from the very small home-based schools, there are just 12 schools that serve primary age children only (most being co-educational) and the remaining schools serve both primary and secondary children, some being co-educational at primary and for girls only at secondary. Technically, it has always been possible for LEAs to support various religiously-based schools through voluntary aided status. Although the 1944 Education Act was designed to protect the interests of the various Christian denominations, the legislation was such that other religious groups could also benefit. Support for some Jewish schools has been longstanding. During the 1980s and 1990s several existing Muslim private schools applied to their LEAs to become voluntary aided, but all such requests were turned down. Usually this happened at the LEA level, but occasionally the LEA agreed and central

226

PRIVATE EDUCATION

government refused the request. This was the case in the wellpublicized example of Islamia primary school where, following a long campaign, Brent LEA eventually and reluctantly supported the application for voluntary aided status. It is interesting to remember that this Labour-dominated council only finally voted in favour by the Labour councillors abstaining on the issue and the councillors from the other parties voting in favour. However, the proposal was finally turned down by the Conservative government's Department for Education in August 1993. I have written elsewhere about the political campaign which led to a change in legislation such that it became easier for existing private religious schools to enter the state-maintained sector and become fully funded (Walford, 2000a, 2000b). The 1993 Education Act gave the chance for such schools to apply to the Department for Education to become a new type of grant-maintained school (sponsored grantmaintained). In practice, very few schools were allowed to take this route and it was only on a change of government from Conservative to Labour in 1997 that the first decision was made to allow any religious minority schools to become state-maintained schools. The new Labour government made positive decisions on two Muslim primary schools and one Seventh Day Adventist secondary school. Since then the School Standards and Framework Act of 1998 has changed the framework under which schools operate and abolished grant-maintained schools. However, it is still possible for private religious minority schools to enter the state-maintained sector as voluntary schools, and one Sikh and one Greek Orthodox school have made this transition. A further Muslim secondary school converted in September 2001, and another has been given permission to do so. The Labour government elected in 2001 used its election manifesto to argue for an increase in schools supported by all faiths (Labour Party, 2001: 19). It was stated above that there is great diversity in the nature of private Muslim schools. While some simply wish to be 'good' schools that have a clear Islamic foundation, others have more specific tasks in mind. The secondary boys' boarding schools that are linked to seminaries, for example, have the primary purpose of training future religious leaders. While the first group of schools would ideally wish to have state funding and be prepared to accept most of the National Curriculum, the second group would not see the associated control that comes with funding as desirable (Walford, 2001a). Partly as a result of their lack of desire for funding, and perhaps partly as a result of possible suspicions, this second type of school is much less open to researchers than the first. We thus know far more about the Muslim

MUSLIM SCHOOLS IN BRITAIN

227

schools that wish to, or have, become state funded than we do about those that have no such desire. One school I visited is Al-Furqan school in Birmingham, which became grant-maintained in September 1998. At the time I visited in 1999 it was still in its former buildings and was clearly much as it had been as a private school. It can thus be seen as an example of those private schools that are most similar to LEA schools. This Muslim primary school started in 1989 as a drop-in centre for families who were home-schooling their girls rather than sending them to nonMuslim schools. It was thus originally a self-help organization for parents, several of whom had been teachers in state-maintained schools. The group quickly developed, and started to run a small primary school in 1992. For the first year, this school took girls only, as it had been girls who had been most frequently home-schooled. However, parental demand was such that, in the second year of its existence, the school was persuaded to take boys as well as girls. Parents believed that their sons should also be able to benefit from what they perceived to be a high level of general schooling, as well as from the Islamic ethos of the school. The drop-in centre continued, catering mainly for home-schooled senior girls. Al-Furqan is situated in a poor neighbourhood of Birmingham and it serves a largely poor clientele. In 1998, the fees were nominally set at £1,050 per year, but this was hardly ever actually paid. The Muslim community paid the difference to ensure that the school survived. Fairly quickly, the school established a charitable trust to ensure its continued existence, and it looked for ways by which it could be financially supported. Initial discussion with the LEA made it clea that voluntary aided status would not be possible for many years but, by that time, the new legislation on sponsored grant-maintained schools was imminent. In 1995 a meeting of parents and teachers decided that it wished the school to apply to become statemaintained. When I visited the school in 1999 there were seven classes. The reception class included some of the Year Ones; the second class had the remainer of the Year Ones and all of the Year Twos; and the other five classes were double age, single-sex groups. There were less than 100 children in all, who spent their time largely in small crowded rooms with poor furniture and facilities. The boys were dressed in a similar way to other 'uniform schools' with black trousers and socks, white shirt and either a red or blue pullover (with school logo) according to age. The girls, on the other hand, wore a black pinafore with trousers, white shirt and socks, with a red or blue pullover and hijab according to age. The staffing of the school at this time is

228

PRIVATE EDUCATION

indicative of a wider problem that the schools face: there were seven full-time teachers, four of whom were Christian and only three Muslim. Three classroom assistants and the headteacher were also Muslim. The school acknowledges that there are still few trained Muslim teachers who wish to work in private Muslim schools and they thus recruit teachers who they feel are good at their job and are prepared to recognize the religious character of the school. These Christian teachers all wore headscarves when at the school. While Britain still has a low number of trained Muslim teachers, an additional reason for the difficulty in recruitment is that most of these private schools pay less than the national pay scales. The curriculum of the school was based on the National Curriculum with the addition of Qur'anic Arabic language. Most of the children did not speak Arabic at home, so had to be taught it if they are to be able to read the Qur'an. This was taught by a separate teacher as, I was told, most second-generation Muslims in Britain are self-taught in Arabic and have very bad pronunciation. The school wanted to teach the standard Saudi Arabian pronunciation. Most of this teaching appeared to be aimed at learning and reciting Sutras from the Qur'an. The children were involved in this for about half an hour per day. The curriculum was also modified in several other smaller ways. In English, for example, several books had words cut out or deleted with a felt-tip pen because the content was not deemed appropriate. This included references to 'magic' in the Oxford Reading Tree and to such things as drugs and sex in a document on 'being healthy'. (It is worth noting that some evangelical Christian schools that I studied earlier has similar concerns (Walford, 2000b).) In music, stringed and blowing instruments are not allowed, and even drums are somewhat suspect. Physical education is done in a limited way, with the children fully covered throughout. Art often focuses on patterns and the children should not draw images of living things. The Year One and Two class had a row of named drawings of the children drawn by themselves stuck to the windows. When I asked about them, it was pointed out to me that each drawing was of a person with a red scarf round its neck. The scarf indicated that the head and the body were not actually attached. These were thus drawings of themselves dead! But the majority of the time spent in the school would have been familiar to many British children. The formality of the classroom, the literacy hour, the arithmetical examples to plough through, the chatting to friends, mark-grubbing with teachers, the waiting for teachers to sort out problems, and being told off and shouted at if they did anything wrong - all were present here as in many schools. What

MUSLIM SCHOOLS IN BRITAIN

229

might be a little more unusual here was the number of children who took a taxi home at the end of the school day. It was not that they came from affluent families, but simply that so many of the fathers were taxi drivers or had Muslim friends who were taxi drivers, and the school drew its intake from the whole city. The process of applying for grant-maintained status was far from straightforward. The school needed a larger site to expand to 210 pupils. It negotiated with the Funding Agency for Schools, the local planning authority, their own architects and those of the Department for Education and Employment, and was eventually able to publish proposals in late 1996. An important aspect to the application was that the Trust was prepared to pay 50 per cent of the costs of the new buildings and renovations. Although the legislation allowed sponsors to provide as little as 15 per cent of the capital costs, it had become clear by that stage that the higher the percentage of the capital costs the sponsors could provide, the greater the likelihood that the proposal would be successful (Walford, 1997b). Fifty per cent offered good 'value for money'. It was January 1997, following the statutory objection period when only minor objections were lodged, before the case could start to be considered by the Secretary of State for Education and Employment. With a General Election on its way in May, he made no quick decisions, and it was left to the new Labour government to announce in January 1998 that it would support the application. The school was jubilant, as was Islamia School in Brent, which had its acceptance into the state-maintained system announced on the same day. But AlFurqan's problems were not quite over, for they found that another round of further negotiations over the site and buildings was still required. Although the school became grant-maintained in September 1998, it had to remain in its existing building for two years before a new building opened. The case of Islamia School in Brent, north-west London, is well known and documented (e.g. Dwyer and Meyer, 1995), in part, perhaps, because of the close involvement in the school of Yusuf Islam, who was formerly the pop singer Cat Stevens and is now Chairman of the Association of Muslim Schools. But the case is also well known because of its highly controversial nature and the way that the school became a legal test-case. Islamia was established in 1982 under a private foundation, the Islamia Schools Trust, and has tried many times to obtain state funding through voluntary aided status. The first application was made in 1986 and, after eventually being accepted by the LEA, was rejected by the Secretary of State for Education. The basis for rejection

230

PRIVATE EDUCATION

at this point was that the school was too small to be viable. A change of politics to Labour in Brent led to a lack of support for the school on appeal, and the application was again formally rejected in 1990. This time, the reason for rejection was that there were surplus places in other local schools. The school applied for a judicial review and in 1992 the High Court ruled that there was 'manifest unfairness' in the decision (Dwyer and Meyer, 1995: 45). The decision was thus referred back to the Secretary of State, but in August 1993 the application was once again refused on the basis of surplus places. This was a particularly strange decision because the 1993 Education Act, which encouraged 'choice and diversity', had become law in July, and it had been stated that 'denominational need' would be taken into account in making decisions about sponsored grant-maintained schools. The next step was to try to take advantage of this 1993 legislation, and full proposals for a grant-maintained primary school were published in January 1997. Following the 1997 May General Election, the Labour government made a rapid decision to start funding Islamia from April 1998. The third Muslim school to be considered here is Feversham College in Bradford. This is a school for Muslim girls aged 11 to 18 years, and is an example of a school designed for parents who wish their girls to be educated separately from boys. The College started with 26 girls in September 1984. The founding body was the Muslim Association of Bradford, and the school was formerly known as the Bradford Muslim Girls Community School. The school outgrew its original cramped premises, and expanded by leasing a redundant Victorian school building on Feversham Street near the city centre. The school operated on a split site for a year, then completed the move to the Feversham site in 1995. In 2000 it had just over 200 girls and a two-form intake of 60 girls in Years Nine, Ten and Eleven. From September 2000 it also took 30 girls in Years Seven and Eight. It now offers ten GCSE subjects, four A-level subjects and a GNVQ course. The subjects offered at A-level in 2000 were, however, highly limited: English literature, religious studies, sociology and Urdu. At GCSE level, in 2000, the subjects offered were English, mathematics, science, art and design, design and technology, religious studies, Islamic studies, Urdu, Arabic and history, with additional non-examination courses in physical education and personal social education. Religious observation is also an integral part of the timetable, and each day time is given for reading the Qur'an, studying Hadith and learning the Shariah. The College prospectus emphasizes that the school 'aims to provide a caring environment that is secure, stable, consistent and fair'. It

MUSLIM SCHOOLS IN BRITAIN

231

'gives the highest priority to discipline in both moral and general behaviour', which the College hopes will 'help our students to enhance their self-esteem, build their confidence, and motivate them to pursue excellence in all their endeavours'. The school has a compulsory uniform, which includes the shalwarkameez, jilbab, and head-covering. Flat shoes are to be worn with no make-up or jewellery allowed. The aim is for a simple and modest form of dress. The school has a very good relationship with the LEA such that when I visited in late 2000, an ex-deputy (non-Muslim) headteacher was being paid by the LEA (through a special grant) to act as an advisor during the transition to state-maintained status. She was actually acting as the headteacher while the real head was away on maternity leave. The LEA has given some limited support to the school throughout its existence. At first this was simply because, before the school opened, there had been some 400 girls in Bradford not going to school at all as there was no single-sex provision. Parents were illegally keeping these girls at home (or sending them to Pakistan) rather than using co-educational secondary schools. Support from the LEA was initially not of a Muslim school as such, but of school which offered some schooling to girls who would otherwise have had none. (Of course, with such a large Muslim community in Bradford, it is also true that any local politician would be wise to offer some support to the school.) The LEA also gave direct support to th school once it moved to the Feversham site, as this was rented by the school from the LEA at a peppercorn rent. There are also links with the LEA-controlled Bradford College, which some students eventually go on to. Some of the girls at the school are actually registered at Bradford College while at the school. Bradford College has also given furniture and equipment to the school. Such support has helped keep the fees low, but the major contribution here comes from the teachers, who are on salaries far lower than those available in the state sector. One result of this is that the school has several newly qualified teachers who are prepared to accept low salaries, but is lacking in more experienced teachers. Even so, while the school fee in June 2000 was only £930 per year, this is a considerable sum for many of the poor families that the school serves. The desire for state support is thus longstanding. With the support of Bradford LEA the school applied for voluntar aided status, and this was eventually granted as part of a wide-ranging reorganization of schooling in Bradford. The whole LEA moved in 2000 from a scheme with primary, middle and high schools to the more usual English system of just primary and secondary schools,

232

PRIVATE EDUCATION

with a break at age 11. Feversham College expanded to a full secondary school and will move to a new school on a site that is currently owned by the LEA. In many ways the old system had suited this Muslim school well, as parents are generally prepared for their girls to mix with boys until they are mature and were thus able to use the middle schools in most cases. However, the new school takes children from age 11 and there are 90 girls entering Year Seven each year. For the school to become voluntary aided it has to find the legal minimum of 15 per cent of the costs of a new building on the new site. This means that they need to find about £1 million - a sum wa beyond the school's current resources. However, it is hoped that once building started it would become easier to fundraise. Other problems relate to the school's ability to cover the National Curriculum. The interpretation of Islam that is followed by the school prohibits the use of any musical instruments apart from the voice and drums (a feature that also make aerobics difficult). The racist way in which the National Curriculum favours European languages means that the children's Urdu is downgraded. The school will be forced to offer a modern European language as the first choice of second language and then have Urdu as another choice. While it is not technically necessary within the National Curriculum, the school's interpretation of Islam which prohibits any representations of people or animals does make art teaching limited. In addition to Arabic, which is currently taught by a non-trained teacher, students also have Islamic Studies for three periods each week and religious education, where they study one Christian Gospel in addition to Islamic texts (of course, there is nothing odd about Muslims reading the Gospels as Islam accepts most of the Christian story and teaching). Again, some of the teachers are non-Muslims as no Muslim teachers could be found to teach particular subjects. As with all schools, parents have chosen this school for a variety of reasons. Some girls are refugees from the state system, having either actually been failed by the system or because they were being bullied. No doubt some of these problems were racist in nature. Other girls had been playing truant from their state sector schools and parents had moved them to this school because they thought they needed more control. As a result, my impression was very much that some of the parents (and some of the girls) did not so much want a Muslim education, as such, but chose the school to discipline their girls and to ensure that they were separated from boys. Some parents and girls, for example, wanted the uniform changed so that they did not have to wear the shalwar-kameez and hijab.

MUSLIM SCHOOLS IN BRITAIN

233

Conclusion The vast majority of Muslim children attend schools that are fully funded by the state and are provided by LEAs, the Church of England or the Catholic Church. Within this range of schools there is a wide diversity of accommodation to the needs of Muslim students. Where there are many Muslim students, schools often take account of the need for halal food, offer prayer times and a prayer room, allow the wearing of particular clothing, and accommodate prohibitions on certain aspects of art, music, physical education and sex education. As with followers of any other religion, Muslim parents vary in their orthodoxy and in the centrality of their faith in their lives. While some desire no special treatment for their children in schools, it would appear that most are satisfied if schools are prepared to make some degree of accommodation to the needs of their faith (ParkerJenkins, 1991). Others, however, are not. For a variety of reasons, some of which may be related to the failure of some schools to effectively challenge racism (Troyna and Carrington, 1987), a small proportion of parents have become so disillusioned with state schooling that they have started their own private Muslim schools and been prepared to pay fees to ensure that their children receive the Islamic education that they desire. While there will still be variation between the parents who use these private schools, it is inevitable that they will tend to be more orthodox or fundamentalist in their views of the faith than those who continue to use the state sector (Osier and Hussain, 1995). This obvious tendency towards orthodoxy is the main reason why there has been criticism of such schools. Separate secondary schools for girls has been a particular issue, as such schools have been seen by some feminists as a way by which male dominance over women can be reproduced (see Haw, 1994, 1998), and as trying to inculcate a deeply conformist and repressive idea of the role of women. While it is recognized that girls may resist as well as accept such ideas, it is argued that they would have a better chance of breaking away from this repression if they attended a co-educational non-Muslim school (see Basit, 1996, 1997a, 1997b). Similar arguments have been made about the possible detrimental effects on gay teenagers of schools that teach that homosexual practice is an 'abomination' (Halstead and Lewicka, 1998). But the further significant issue is that, in England, the Muslim minority is largely an ethnic minority as well. These separate Muslim schools reduce ethnic mixing of children. The recent riots between Asian and white English youth in Bradford Qune 2001) and other northern English cities emphasize the need for greater knowledge and

234

PRIVATE EDUCATION

understanding between the ethnic groups if we are to have a stable society. Clearly, the best solution is for all state-maintained schools to take account of the religious needs of all of their students, so that all can attend the same schools. Failing that, bringing some existing private Muslim schools into the state sector does at least ensure that all students follow the bulk of the National Curriculum and that issues of equity and equality of opportunity are brought to the fore. Acknowledgements The research reported here was made possible by a grant from the Spencer Foundation for which I am most grateful. The data presented, the statements made, and the views expressed are solely the responsibility of the author.

References

Aggleton, P. J. and Whitty, G. (1985) 'Rebels without a cause? Socialization and subcultural style among the children of the new middle class', Sociology of Education, 58, pp. 60-72. Apple, M. W. (1982) 'Curriculum form and the logic of technical controlbuilding the possessive individual', in M. W. Apple (ed.) Cultural and Economic Reproduction in Education, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Atkinson, P., Davies, B. and Delamont, S. (1995) (eds) Discourse and Reproduction. Essays in honor of Basil Bernstein, New Jersey, USA: Hampton Press. Avery, G. (1991) The Best Type of Girl. A history of the girls' independent schools, London: Andre Deutsch. Baker, K. (1986) City Technology Colleges: a new choice of school, London: DBS. Bamford, T.W. (1967) The Rise of the Public Schools, London: Nelson. Basit, T. N. (1996) ' "I'd hate to be a housewife": career aspirations of British Muslim girls', British Journal of Guidance and Counselling, 24, 2, pp. 27-42. Basit, T. N. (1997a)' "I want more freedom, but not too much": British Muslim girls and the dynamism of family life', Gender and Education, 9, 4, pp. 42539. Basit, T. N. (1997b) Eastern Values; Western Milieu. Identities and aspirations of adolescent British Muslim girls, Aldershot: Ashgate. Benn, C. and Fairley, J. (1986) (eds) Challenging the MSC on fobs, Education and Training, London: Pluto Press. Bennett, D. (1990) Emily Davies and the Liberation of Women, London: Andre Deutsch. Bernstein, B. (1971) 'On the classification and framing of educational knowledge', in M. F. D. Young (ed.) Knowledge and Control, London: Collier-Macmillan. Bernstein, B. (1973) Class and Pedagogies: visible and invisible, Paris: OECD. Reprinted as Chapter 6 of Class, Codes and Control, Volume 3, 2nd edn, London: Routledge Kegan Paul. Bernstein, B. (1975) 'Introduction' to Class, Codes and Control, Volume 3, London: Routledge Kegan Paul. Bernstein, B. (1977) 'Aspects of the relations between education and

236

REFERENCES

production', in Class, Codes and Control, Volume 3, 2nd edn, Chapter 8, London: Routlege Kegan Paul. Bernstein, B. (1990a) The Structuring of Pedagogic Discourse. Class, Codes and Control, Volume 4, London: Routledge. Bernstein, B. (1990b) 'Elaborated and restricted codes: overview and criticisms', in The Structuring of Pedagogic Discourse. Class, Codes and Control, Volume 4, London: Routledge. Bernstein, B. (1996) Pedagogy, Symbolic Control and Identity. Theory, research, critique, London: Taylor & Francis. Bernstein, B. (2000) Pedagogy, Symbolic Control and Identity. Theory, research, critique, revised edition, Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield. Bernstein, B. (2001) 'Symbolic control: issues of empirical description of agencies and agents', International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 4, 1, pp. 21-33. Blank, R. K. (1989) 'Educational effects of magnet schools.' Paper given at the Conference on Choice and Diversity, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Wis., 17-19 May. Blaug, M. (1981) 'Can independent education be suppressed?', Economic Affairs, 21, pp. 30-7. Blunkett, D. (1997) 'Let's work together', 7S/S Magazine, 18, pp. 9-10. Borer, M. C. (1976) Willingly to School. A History of Women's Education, London: Lutterworth Press. Boyd, A. K. (1948) Radley College 1847-1947, Oxford: Blackwell. Boyd, D. (1973) Elites and their Education, Slough: NFER. Boyson, R. (1975) 'The developing case for the educational voucher', in C. B. Cox and R. Boyson (eds) The Fight for Education. Black Paper 1975, London: Dent. Bradley, A. G., Champneys, A. C. and Baines, J. W. (1923) A History of Marlborough College, London: John Murray. Braverman, H. (1974) Labour and Monopoly Capital, London: Monthly Review Press. Brown, A. (1992) Religious Education, London: The National Society. Brown, M., Chope, C., Fallen, M., Forsyth, M., Hamilton, N., Howarth, G., Jones, R., Leigh, E., Lilley, P., Maude, F., Portillo, M., Rumbold, A. and Twinn, I. (1985) No Turning Back, London: Conservative Political Centre. Brown, M., Chope, C., Fallon, M., Forth, E., Forsyth, M., Hamilton, N., Howarth, G.Jones, R., Leigh, E., Lilley, P., Portillo, M. and Twinn, I. (1986) Save Our Schools, London: Conservative Political Centre. Bucher, R. and Strauss, A. (1961) 'Professions in process', American Journal of Sociology, 66, pp. 325-34. Burn, J. and Hart, C. (1988) The Crisis in Religious Education, London: The Educational Research Trust. Burnet, J. F. (1981) (ed.) The Public and Preparatory Schools Year Book 1981, London: Adam and Charles Black. Burstall, S. A. (1938) Francis Mary Buss. An Educational Pioneer, London: SPCK. Burstyn, J. N. (1980) Victorian Education and the Idea of Womanhood, Beckenham: Groom Helm.

REFERENCES

237

Chadwick, P. (1997) Shifting Alliances: church and state in English education, London: Cassell. Christian Schools' Trust (1988) Information sheet, Bristol: GST. Clarke, A. K. (1953) A History of Cheltenham Ladies' College 1853-1953, London: Faber and Faber. Clouser, R. A. (1991) The Myth of Religious Neutrality, London: University of Notre Dame Press. Conference (1979) 'Young Enterprise. Oundle and Clifton', Conference, 16, 1, pp. 13-16. Conference (1984) 'Microelectronics. A feature on microelectronics and computers in education', Conference, 21, I, pp. 9-21. Conservative Independent Schools Committee (1983) Independent Schools. Speakers' Notes, London: CISC. Cooper, B. S. (1987) Magnet Schools, London: Institute of Economic Affairs. Corrigan, P. (1979) Schooling the Smash Street Kids, London: Macmillan. Cox, C. (1986) 'Specialist comprehensives: one answer to curriculum problems', in D. O'Keeffe (ed.) The Wayward Curriculum, London: Social Affairs Unit. Cox, C. (1988) 'Foreword' to J. Burn, and C. Hart The Crisis in Religious Education, London: The Educational Research Trust. Cox, C., Douglas-Home,]., Marks,]., Norcross, L. and Scruton, R. (1986) Whose Schools? A Radical Manifesto, London: The Hillgate Group. Cox, C. B. and Boyson, R. (1977) (eds) Black Paper 1977, London: Temple Smith. Cox, E. and Cairns, J. M. (1989) Reforming Religious Education, London: Kogan Page. Cross,]. (1983) 'Prospects', Guardian, 22 November, 17. CSTSCT (1998) Science in Faith: a Christian perspective on science teaching, Romford: CST. Cullingford, C. (1984) 'The battle for the schools: attitudes of parents and teachers towards education', Educational Studies, 10, 1, pp. 113-19. Customs and Excise (1987) Education, Value Added Tax Leaflet 701 30187, London: HM Customs and Excise. Dancy, J. C. (1963) The Public Schools and the Future, London: Faber and Faber. Deakin, R. (1989a) The New Christian Schools, Bristol: Regius Press. Deakin, R. (1989b) The Case for Public Funding, Bristol: Regius Press. Delamont, S. (1989) Knowledgeable Women. Structuralism and the reproduction of elites, London: Routledge. Delamont, S. and Duffin, L. (1978) (eds) The Nineteenth Century Woman. Her Cultural and Physical World, Beckenham: Groom Helm. Dennett, S. (1988) A Case for Christian Education, Bradford: Harvestime. Dennison, S. R. (1984) Choice in Education, Hobart Paperback 19, London: Institute of Economic Affairs. Department for Education (1992) Choice and Diversity, London: HMSO. Department for Education and Employment (1997) Excellence in Schools, London: The Stationery Office.

238

REFERENCES

Department for Education and Employment (1998) Building Bridges: advisory group on independent/state school partnerships, ftnal report, London: DFEE. Department for Education and Employment (2001) Schools. Building on Success, London: The Stationery Office. Department of Education and Science (1983a) Education Statistics for the United Kingdom, London: HMSO. Department of Education and Science (1983b) HM Inspectors Today: standards in Education, London: DES. Department of Education and Science (1985a) Assisted Places at Independent Schools: a brief guide for parents, London: DES. Department of Education and Science (1985b) Report by HM Inspectors on New Court Christian School, Finsbury Park, London, London: DES. Department of Education and Science (1986a) Report by Her Majesty's Inspector on the Effects of Local Authority by Expenditure Policies on Education Provision in England - 1985, London: DES. Department of Education and Science (1986b) City Technology Colleges: a new choice of school, London: DES. Department of Education and Science (1990) Statistics of Schools in England January 1989, Statistics Bulletin 6/90, London: DES. Dingwall, R. (1976) 'Accomplishing profession', Sociological Review, 24, pp. 331-49. Dod (1982) Dod's Parliamentary Companion 1982, London: Dod's Parliamentary Companion. Dooley, P. and Fuller, M. (2003) 'Use and ornament: girls in former boys' independent schools', in Geoffrey Walford (ed.) British Private Schools: research on policy and practice, London: Woburn Press. Douse, M. (1985) 'The background of Assisted Places Scheme students', Educational Studies, 11, 3, pp. 211-17. Duncan, G. (1990) The Church School, London: The National Society. Dwyer, C. and Meyer, A. (1995) The institutionalisation of Islam in the Netherlands and in the UK: the case of Islamic schools', New Community 21 I, 37-54. Dyhouse, C. (1987) Girls Growing up in Late Victorian and Edwardian Society, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Education Priorities Panel (1985) Lost in the Labyrinth: New York City High School Admissions, New York: EPS. Edwards, T., Fulbrook, M. and Whitty, G. (1984) 'The state and the independent sector: policies, ideologies and theories', in L. Barton and S. Walker (eds) Social Crisis and Educational Research, Beckenham: Groom Helm. Eglin, G. (1984) 'Public schools and choice at 18+', in G. Walford (ed.) British Public Schools: policy and practice, Lewes: Palmer. Epstein, D. (2000) 'Sexualities and education: Catch 28', Sexualities, 3, 4, pp. 387-94. Etzioni, A. (1969) (ed.) The Semi-Professions and Their Organisation, New York: Free Press.

REFERENCES

239

Fairhall, J. (1984) 'Direct grant schools "coming back by stealth"', Guardian, 16 February, p. 3. Finn, D. (1986) 'YTS: the jewel in the MSC's crown?', in C. Benn and J. Fairley (eds) Challenging the MSC, London: Pluto Press. Fitz, J., Edwards, T. and Whitty, G. (1986) 'Beneficiaries, benefits and costs: an investigation of the Assisted Places Scheme', Research Papers in Education, 1, 3, pp. 169-93. Fitz, J., Halpin, D. and Power, S. (1993) Grant Maintained Schools: Education and the marketplace, London: Kogan Page. Flexner, A. (1915) 'Is social work a profession?' in Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities and Corrections, New York: Hildman Publishing. 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: Palmer. Fox, I. (1985) Private Schools and Public Issues, London: Macmillan. Francis, L. J. (2000) The domestic and the general function of Anglican schools in England and Wales', International Journal of Education and Religion, 1, 1, pp. 100-21. Gibson, R. (1977) 'Bernstein's classification and framing: a critique', Higher Education Review, 9, 23-45. Gibson, R. (1984) Structuralism and Education, London: Methuen. Glennerster, H. and Wilson, G. (1970) Paying For Private Schools, London: Allen Lane. Goode, W. J. (1969) 'The theoretical limits of professionalization', in E. Etzioni (ed.) The Semi-Professions and Their Organisation, New York: Free Press. Gosden, P. H. J. H. (1972) The Evolution of a Profession, Oxford, Blackwell. Gosden, P. (1985) 'Education policy 1979-84', in D. S. Bell (ed.) The Conservative Government 1979-84: an interim report, Beckenham: Groom Helm. Green, A. (1988) 'The power of magnets', Times Educational Supplement, 6 May, p. 23. Green, G. (1984) The Old School, Oxford: Oxford University Press (first published by Jonathan Cape, 1934). Griffiths, B. (1990) 'The Conservative quadrilateral', in M. Alison and D. L. Edwards (eds) Christianity and Conservatism, London: Hodder and Stoughton. Griffiths, B. and Murray, H. (1985) Whose Business?, Hobart Paper 102, London: Institute of Economic Affairs. Griggs, C. (1985) Private Education in Britain, Lewes: Palmer. Hagedorn, J. (1986) 'Former DES aide launches hi-tech school', Times Educational Supplement, 6 June, p. 5. Halpin, D., Power, S. and Fitz, J. (1997) 'Opting into the past? Grantmaintained schools and the reinvention of tradition', in R. Clatter, P. A. Woods and C. Bagley (eds) Choice and Diversity in Schooling, London: Routledge. Halsey, A. H. (1981) 'Democracy in education', New Society, 28 May.

240

REFERENCES

Halsey, A. H., Heath, A. F. and Ridge, J. M. (1984) 'The political arithmetic of public schools', in G. Walford (ed.) British Public Schools: policy and practice, Lewes: Palmer. Halstead, J. M. (1986a) 'To what extent is the call for separate Muslim voluntary aided schools in the UK justifiable? Part One: why the call for separate Muslim voluntary schools must be taken seriously', Muslim Education Quarterly, 3, 2, pp. 5-26. Halstead, J. M. (1986b) 'To what extent is the call for separate Muslim voluntary aided schools in the UK justifiable? Part Two: underlying issues in the justification of separate Muslim voluntary schools', Muslim Education Quarterly, 3, 3, pp. 3-40. Halstead, J. M. (1997) 'Muslims and sex education', Journal of Moral Education, 26, pp. 317-30. Halstead, J. M. and Lewicka, K. (1998) 'Should homosexuality be taught as an acceptable lifestyle? A Muslim perspective', Cambridge Journal of Education, 28, 1, pp. 49-64. Harris, K. (1982) Teachers and Classes. A Marxist Analysis, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Haw, K. F. (1994) 'Muslim girls' schools - a conflict of interest?' Gender and Education, 6, 1, pp. 63-76. Haw, K. (1998) Educating Muslim Girls, Buckingham: Open University Press. Hemsall, D. S. (1986) 'The boarding school and total education', in V. A. McClelland (ed.) Private and Independent Education, Aspects of Education No. 35, Hull: University of Hull Institute of Education. Her Majesty's Inspectorate (1990) Teaching and Learning in New York City Schools, London: HMSO. Heward, C. M. (1984) 'Parents, sons and their careers: a case study of a public school, 1930-50', in G. Walford (ed.) British Public Schools: policy and Practice, Lewes: Palmer. Hewer, C. (2001) 'Schools for Muslims', Oxford Review of Education, 27, 4, pp. 515-27. Hill, R. D. (1962) A History of St Edward's School 1863-1963, Oxford: St. Edward's School. Hillgate Group (1986) Whose Schools? A radical manifesto, London: Hillgate Group. Hillman, J. (1994) 'Independent schools', in National Commission on Education, Insights into Education and Training, London: Heinemann. Hilton, J. (1934) Goodbye Mr Chips, London: Hodder and Stoughton. Hiskett, M. (1989) Schooling for British Muslims: integrated, opted-out or denominational?, London: Social Affairs Unit. Kite, S. (1981) The Hite Report on Male Sexuality, London: Macdonald. Hobson, P. (1983) The Wellington College School-Industry Link Scheme, A report on the first five years 1977-82, Berkshire: Wellington College. Hodges, L. (1985) 'Heads disappointed on assisted places', The Times, 27 September, p. 4. Holland, J. (1986) 'Social class differences in adolescents' conceptions of the

REFERENCES

241

domestic and industrial division of labour', Collected Original Resources in Education, 10. 1. Honey, J. R. de S. (1977) Tom Brown's Universe. The Development of the Public School in the Nineteenth Century, London: Millington. Hughes, T. (1857) Tom Brown's Schooldays, London: Macmillan. Illich, I. (1973) "The professions as a form of imperialism', New Society, 13 September, pp. 633-5. Independent Schools Council (2002) Annual Statistics 2002, London: ISC. Independent Schools Information Service (1982) Annual Census 1982, London: ISIS. Independent Schools Information Service (1984) Annual Census 1984, London: ISIS. Independent Schools Information Service (1986a) Annual Census 1986, London: ISIS. Independent Schools Information Service (1986b) 'More use of advice lifeline', 7S/S News, Spring, p. 9. Independent Schools Information Service (1987) Annual Census 1987, London: ISIS. Independent Schools Information Service (2000) Annual Census 2000, London: ISIS. Independent Schools Joint Council (1983) Charity Status Survey 1982, London: ISJC. Independent Schools Joint Council (1987) Charitable Grants Survey 1986, London: ISJC. Inland Revenue (1983, 1987) Inland Revenue Statistics 1983, 1987 Editions, London: HMSO. Inland Revenue (1986) Charities: press release, 18 March, London: Inland Revenue. Inspectie van het Onderwijs (1999) Islamitische basisscholen in Nederland, Zoetermeer: Inspectie van het Onderwijs. Jenkins, E. W. (1979) From Armstrong to Nuffield. Studies in Twentieth Century Science in England and Wales, London: John Murray. Jenkins, J. (1982) 'Industry across the curriculum at Malvern', Education, 19, November, pp. 396-7. Johnson, D. (1987) Private Schools and State Schools. Two Systems or One?, Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Johnson, T. (1972) Professions and Power, London: Macmillan. Johnson, T. (1977) 'The professions in the class structure', in R. Scase (ed.) Industrial Society: class, cleavage and control, London: Tavistock. Jones, M. D. W. (1983) 'Brighton College v. Marriott: schools, charity law and taxation', History of Education, 12, pp. 121-32. Kalton, G. (1966) The Public Schools, London: Longmans. Kamm, J. (1958) How Different From Us: a biography of Miss Buss and Miss Beale, London: Bodley Head. Kamm, J. (1965) Hope Deferred. Girls' Education in English History, London: Methuen.

242

REFERENCES

Kamm, J. (1971) Indicative Past A Hundred Years of the Girls' Public Day Schools Trust, London: George Allan & Unwin. King, R. (1976) 'Bernstein's sociology of the school: some propositions tested', British Journal of Sociology, 27, 430-43. King, R. (1981) 'Bernstein's sociology of the school: A further testing', British Journal of Sociology, 32, 259-65. Kinsey, A. et al. (1948) Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male, Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders. Kirk, K. E. (1937) The Story of the Woodard Schools, Abingdon: Abbey Press. Labour Party (1980) Private Schools: a Labour Party discussion document, London: Labour Party. Labour Party (1987) Britain Will Win, Labour Manifesto, London: Labour Party. Labour Party (2001) Ambitions for Britain. Labour's manifesto 2001, London: Labour Party. Lambert, R. (1975) The Chance of a Lifetime? A study of boarding education, London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson. Lambert, R. and Millham, S. (1968) The Hothouse Society, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Lankshear, D. W. (1992) Looking for Quality in a Church School, London: The National Society. Le Grand, J. and Bartlett, W. (1993) (eds) Quasi-markets and Social Policy, London: Macmillan. Leggatt, T. (1970) Teaching as a profession', in J. A. Jackson (ed.) Professions and Professionalisation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Leicester, M. (1992) 'Values, cultural conflict and education', in M. Leicester and M. Taylor (eds) Ethics, Ethnicity and Education, London: Kogan Page. Leinster-Mackay, D. (1984) The Rise of the English Prep School, Lewes: Palmer. Leinster-Mackay, D. (1987) The Educational World of Edward Thring, Lewes: Palmer. Lester, A. and Pannick, D. (1987) Independent Schools: the Legal Case, London: ISIS. Lewis, P. (1994) Islamic Britain, London: Tauris. Lodge, B. (1986) 'Boom continues for independents', The Times Educational Supplement, 2 May, p. 5. McLaughlin, T. H. (1992) 'The ethics of separate schools', in M. Leicester and M. Taylor (eds) Ethics, Ethnicity and Education, London: Kogan Page. Marks, J. and Cox, C. (1981) 'Education allowances: power to the people?' in A. Flew, J. Marks, C. Cox, J. Honey, D. O'Keeffe, G. Dawson and D. Anderson The Pied Pipers of Education, London: Social Affairs Unit. Marshall, T. H. (1965) Class, Citizenship and Social Development, New York: Doubleday. Marx, K. (1974) Capital, Volume I, London: Lawrence and Wishart (first German edition, 1867). Metz, M. H. (1986) Different by Design. The Context and Character of Three Magnet Schools, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Modood, T. and Berthoud, R. et al. (1997) Ethnic Minorities in Britain, London: Policy Studies Institute.

REFERENCES

243

Moore, D. and Davenport, S. (1989) The New Improved Sorting Machine, Madison, Wisconsin: National Center for Effective Secondary Schools. Morais, A., Neves, I., Davies, B. and Daniels, H. (2001) (eds) Towards a Sociology of Pedagogy: the contribution of Basil Bernstein to research, London: Peter Lang. Morgan, M. C. (1968) Cheltenham College. The First Hundred Years, Chalfont St. Giles: Richard Sadler. Muller, J. (2001) 'Intimations of boundlessness', in A. Morais, I. Neves, B. Davies and H. Daniels (eds) Towards a Sociology of Pedagogy: the contribution of Basil Bernstein to research, London: Peter Lang. Mustafa, B. (2001) 'Public education and Muslim voluntary organisations in Britain', Westminster Studies in Education, 24, 2, pp. 129-36. National Society (2000) Church Schools Review Group Report, London: The National Society. National Statistics (2003) Statistics of Education: schools in England, London: National Statistics. O'Connor, M. (1986) 'No room in the dorm', Guardian, 20 September. Ogilvie, V. (1957) The English Public School, London: Batsford. O'Keeffe, B. (1986) Faith, Culture and the Dual System, London and Washington D.C.: Palmer. O'Keeffe, B. (1992) 'A look at the Christian schools movement', in B. Watson, (ed.) Priorities in Religious Education, London: Palmer. Ollerenshaw, K. (1967) The Girls' Schools, London: Faber & Faber. Orwell, G. (1940) 'Boys' weeklies', Horizon, 3, reprinted in Inside the Whale (1940), Harmondsworth: Penguin. Osier, A. and Hussain, Z. (1995) 'Parental choice and schooling: some factors influencing Muslim mother's decisions about the education of their daughters', Cambridge Journal of Education 25, 3, pp. 327-47. Ozga, J. T. and Lawn, M. A. (1981) Teachers, Professionalism and Class, Lewes: Palmer Press. Palfreyman, D. (2003) 'Independent schools and charitable status: legal meaning, taxation advantages, and potential removal', in G. Walford (ed.) British Private Schools: research on policy and practice, London: Woburn Press. Pardoe, J. (1985) 'Youth training scheme "vouchers"', Economic Affairs, 6, 1, p. viii. Parker, H. (1972) View from the Boys, London: David and Charles. Parker-Jenkins, M. (1991) 'Muslim matters: the educational needs of the Muslim child', New Community, 17, 4, pp. 569-82. Parker-Jenkins, M. (1995) Children of Islam, Stoke-on-Trent: Trentham Books. Parsons, T. (1954) 'The professions and social structure', in T. Parsons (ed.) Essays in Sociological Theory, Glencoe: Free Press. Patrick, J. (1973) A Glasgow Gang Observed, London: Eyre Methuen. Peach, C. and Glebe, G. (1995) 'Muslim minorities in Western Europe', Ethnic and Racial Studies, 18, 1, pp. 26-45. Pollert, A. (1986) The MSC and ethnic minorities', in C. Benn and J. Fairley (eds) Challenging the MSC, London: Pluto Books.

244

REFERENCES

Posnett, J. (1984) 'A profile of the charity sector', in Charity Statistics 1983/84, London: Charities Aid Foundation. Posnett, J. and Chase, J. (1985) 'Independent schools in England and Wales', in Charity Statistics 1984/85, London: Charities Aid Foundation. Power, S., Halpin, D. and Fitz, J. (1994) 'Underpinning choice and diversity? The grant-maintained schools policy in context', in S. Tomlinson, (ed.) Educational Reform and its Consequences, London: IPPR/Rivers Oram. Poyntz, C. and Walford, G. (1994) "The new Christian schools: a survey', Educational Studies, 20, 1, pp. 127-43. Pring, R. (1975). 'Bernstein's classification and framing of knowledge', Scottish Educational Studies, 7, 67-74. Pring, R. (1986) 'Privatization of education', in R. Rogers (ed.) Education and Social Class, Lewes: Palmer. Public Schools Commission (1970) Second Report, Volume 1, London: HMSO. Rae, J. (1981) The Public School Revolution, London: Faber & Faber. Rawnsley, A. (1986) 'Backing the old school tie', Guardian, 27 May, p. 5. Reid, I., Williams, R. and Rayner, M. (1991) 'The education of the elite', in G. Walford (ed.) Private Schooling: tradition, change and diversity, London: Paul Chapman. Robson, M. H. and Walford, G. (1988) 'UK tax policy and private schools', British Tax Review, 2, pp. 38-54. Robson, M. H. and Walford, G. (1989) 'Independent schools and tax policy under Mrs Thatcher', Journal of Education Policy, 4, 2, pp. 149-62. Rodger, J. J. (1985) 'Natural justice and the big public inquiry: a sociological perspective', Sociological Review, 33, pp. 409-29. Rogers, R. (1980) 'How the state props up the private sector', Where?, 154, January, pp. 7-10. Rose, S. D. (1988) Keeping them out of the Hands of Satan. Evangelical Schooling in America, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Rowan, P. (1988) 'The huge gap between reality and rhetoric', Times Educational Supplement, 25 November, p. 13. Runnymede Trust (1997) Islamophobia: a Challenge to Us All. Report of the Runnymede Trust Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia, chaired by Gordon Conway, London: Runnymede Trust. Sadovnik, A. R. (1995) (ed.) Knowledge and Pedagogy: the sociology of Basil Bernstein, Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Salter, B. and Tapper, T. (1981) Education, Politics and the State. The Theory and Practice of Educational Change, London: Grant Mclntyre. Salter, B. and Tapper, T. (1985) Power and Politics in Education: the case of independent schooling, Lewes: Falmer. Sarwar, G. (1994) British Muslims and Schools, London: Muslim Education Trust. Scott, J. (1982) The Upper Classes, London: Macmillan. SDP/Liberal Alliance (1987) Britain United, SDP/Liberal Alliance Programme for Government, London: SDP. Seldon, A. (1986) The Riddle of the Voucher, Hobart Paperback 21, London: Institute of Economic Affairs.

REFERENCES

245

Sexton, S. (1977) 'Evolution by choice', in C. B. Cox and R. Boyson (eds) Black Paper 1977, London: Temple Smith. Sexton, S. (1987) Our Schools - A Radical Policy, Warlingham, Surrey: Institute for Economic Affairs Education Unit. Sexton, S. (1992) Our Schools - Future Policy, Warlingham, Surrey: IPSET Education Unit. Shaw, G. K. and Blaug, M. (1988) 'The University of Buckingham after ten years: a tentative evaluation', Higher Education Quarterly, 41, 2, pp. 72-89. Shaw, L. (1986) (ed.) Gabbitas-Thring Guide to Independent Further Education, London: Harper & Row. Short, E. (1988) 'Barriers set up for parents, but taken down for students', Financial Times, March 1988, p. 23. Shrosbree, C. (1988) Public Schools and Private Education. The Clarendon Commission 1861-64 and the Public Schools Act, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Simon, B. (1960) The Two Nations and the Educational Structure 1780-1870, London: Lawrence & Wishart. Smithers, A. and Robinson, P. (1989) Increasing Participation in Higher Education, London: BP Education Services. Society of Education Officers (1979) 'SEO oppose assisted places scheme', Education, 2 November. Steadman, F. C. (1931) In the Days of Miss Beale, London: Burrow. Sullivan, A. and Heath, A. (2003) 'Intakes and examination results at state and private schools', in G. Walford (ed.) British Private Schools: research on policy and practice, London: Woburn Press. Tapper, T. (1997) Fee-paying Schools and Educational Change in Britain, London: Woburn Press. Tapper, T. and Salter, B. (1984) 'Images of independent schooling: exploring the perceptions of parents and politicians', in G. Walford (ed.) British Public Schools: policy and practice, Lewes: Palmer. Tapper, T and Salter, B. (1986) 'The Assisted Places Scheme: a policy evaluation', Journal of Education Policy, 1, pp. 315-30. Taylor, C. (1986) Employment Examined: the Right approach to more jobs, London: Centre for Policy Studies. Thomas, S. and Freeman, D. (2001) Fighting the Secular Giants, updated edition, first published 1996, Oxford: Oxfordshire Community Churches. Thompson, E. P. (1980) 'The business university', in E. P. Thompson (ed.) Writings by Candlelight, London: Merlin Press (originally published 1971). Troyna, B. (1993) Racism and Education, Buckingham: Open University Press. Troyna , B. and Carrington, B. (1987) 'Anti-sexist and anti-racist education - a false dilemma: a reply to Walkling and Branningan', Journal of Moral Education, 16, 1, pp. 60-5. Troyna, B. and Williams, J. (1986) Racism, Education and the State, London: Groom Helm. Turner, B. (1974) Equality for Some. The Story of Girls' Education, London: Ward Lock.

246

REFERENCES

Tutt, N. (1985) The Tax Raiders: the Rossminster Affair, London: Financial Training Publications. Van Brummelen, H. (1988) Walking with God in the Classroom, Burlington, Ontario: Welch Publishing. Vitale, P. (2001) 'The teaching of sociology: towards a European comparison of curricula', in A. I. Morais, B. Neves, B. Davies and H. Daniels (eds) (2001) Towards a Sociology of Pedagogy: the contribution of Basil Bernstein to research, London: Peter Lang. Wakeford, J. (1969) The Cloistered Elite. A sociological analysis of the English boarding school, London: Macmillan. Walford, G. (1981) 'Classification and framing in higher education', Studies in Higher Education, 6, pp. 147-58. Walford, G. (1983) 'Girls in boys' public schools: a prelude to further research', British Journal of Sociology of Education, 4, 1, pp. 39-54. Walford, G. (1984) 'The changing professionalism of public school teachers', in G. Walford (ed.) British public schools: policy and practice, Lewes: Palmer. Walford, G. (1986a) Life in Public Schools, London: Methuen. Walford, G. (1986b) 'Ruling-class classification and framing', British Educational Research Journal, 12, 2, pp. 183-95. Walford, G. (1987) 'How dependent is the independent sector?', Oxford Review of Education, 13, pp. 275-97. Walford, G. (1988a) 'The Scottish Assisted Places Scheme. A comparative study of the origins, nature and practice of the Assisted Places Scheme in Scotland and in England and Wales', Journal of Education Policy, 3, pp. 137-53. Walford, G. (1988b) 'The privatisation of British higher education', European Journal of Education, 23, 1/2, pp. 47-64. Walford, G. (1989) (ed.) Private Schools in Ten Countries: policy and practice, London: Routledge. Walford, G. (1990) Privatization and Privilege in Education, London: Routledge. Walford, G. (1991a) 'Choice of school at the first City Technology College', Educational Studies, 17, 1, pp. 65-75. Walford, G. (1991b) 'City Technology Colleges: a private magnetism?' in G. Walford (ed.) Private Schooling: tradition, change and diversity, London: Paul Chapman. Walford, G. (1991c) 'The reluctant private sector: of small schools, people and polities', in G. Walford (ed.) Private Schooling: tradition, change and diversity, London: Paul Chapman. Walford, G. (1991d) (ed.) Private Schooling: tradition, change and diversity, London: Paul Chapman. Walford, G. (1991e) 'Researching the City Technology College, Kingshurst', in G. Walford (ed.) Doing Educational Research, London: Routledge. Walford, G. (1993) (ed.) The Private Schooling of Girls: past and present, London: Woburn Press. Walford, G. (1994a) 'Weak choice, strong choice and the new Christian schools', in J. M. Halstead (ed.) Parental Choice and Education: principles, policies and practice, London: Kogan Page.

REFERENCES

247

Walford, G. (1994b) 'The new religious grant-maintained schools', Educational Management and Administration, 22, 2, pp. 123-30. Walford, G. (1995a) 'Faith-based grant-maintained schools: selective international policy borrowing from The Netherlands', Journal of Education Policy, 10, 3, pp. 245-57. Walford, G. (1995b) 'The Northboume amendments: is the House of Lords a garbage can?', Journal of Education Policy, 10, 4, pp. 413-25. Walford, G. (1995c) Educational Politics: pressure groups and faith-based schools, Aldershot: Avebury. Walford, G. (1995d) "The Christian Schools Campaign - a successful educational pressure group?', British Educational Research Journal, 21, 4, pp. 451-64. Walford, G. (1995e) 'Classification and framing in English public boarding schools', in P. Atkinson, B. Davies and S. Delamont (eds) Discourse and Reproduction. Essays in honor of Basil Bernstein, New Jersey: Hampton Press, pp. 191-207 (revised version of Walford, 1986). Walford, G. (1996) 'School choice and the quasi-market in England and Wales', Oxford Studies in Comparative Education, 6, 1, pp. 49-62. Walford, G. (1997a) 'Privatization and selection', in R. Pring and G. Walford (eds) Affirming the Comprehensive Ideal, London: Palmer. Walford, G. (1997b) 'Sponsored grant-maintained schools: extending the franchise?', Oxford Review of Education, 23, 1, pp. 31-44. Walford, G. (2000a) 'A policy adventure: sponsored grant-maintained schools', Educational Studies, 26, 2, pp. 247-62. Walford, G. (2000b) Politics and policy in Education. Sponsored grant-maintained schools and religious diversity, Aldershot: Ashgate. Walford, G. (2001a) 'Funding for religious schools in England and the Netherlands: can the piper call the tune?', Research Papers in Education, 16, 4, pp. 359-80. Walford, G. (200Ib) 'Building identity through communities of practice: evangelical Christian schools in the Netherlands', International Journal of Education and Religion, 2, 2, pp. 126-43. Walford, G. (200 Ic) 'Site selection within comparative case-study and ethnographic research', Compare, 31, 2, pp. 151-64. Walford, G. (2001d) 'Evangelical Christian schools in England and the Netherlands', Oxford Review of Education, 27, 4, pp. 529-41. Walford, G. (2001e) 'The fate of the new Christian schools: from growth to decline?', Educational Studies, 27, 4, pp. 465-77. Walford, G. (2003) 'Muslim schools in Britain', in G. Walford (ed.) British Private Schools: research on policy and practice, London: Woburn Press. Walford, G. (2004) 'Muslims and their educational strategies in England', in H. Daun and G. Walford (eds) Educational Strategies among Muslims in the Context of Globalization. Some National Case Studies, Leiden: Brill. Walford, G. and Jones, S. (1986) 'The Solihull adventure: an attempt to reintroduce selective schooling', Journal of Education Policy, 1, pp. 239-53. Walford, G. and Miller, H. (1991) City Technology College, Buckingham: Open University Press.

248

REFERENCES

Walker, M. (1983) 'Control and consciousness in the college', British Educational Research Journal, 9, pp. 129-40. Waller, P. (1984) 'Managing the micro system', Media in Education and Development, March, pp. 2-4. Waring, M. (1979) Social Pressure and Curriculum Innovation. A study of the Nuffteld Foundation Science Teaching Project, London: Methuen. Watson, B. (1992) (ed.) Priorities in Religious Education, London: Palmer. Webster, F. A. M. (1937) Our Great Public Schools: their treasures, customs and games, London: Ward Lock. Weinberg, I. (1967) The English Public Schools, New York: Atherton. Whitty, G. and Edwards, T. (1984) 'Evaluating policy change: the Assisted Places Scheme', in G. Walford (ed.) British Public Schools: policy and practice, Lewes: Palmer Press. Whitty, G., Edwards, T. and Gewirtz, S. (1993) Specialisation and Choice in Urban Education. The City Technology College experiment, London: Routledge. Whitty, G., Power, S. and Halpin, D. (1998) Devolution and Choice in Education. The school, the state and the market, Buckingham: Open University Press. Wilce, H. (1983) 'Girls' school launches 11.3m appeal for engineering centre', Times Educational Supplement, 25 February. Wilensky, H. J. (1964) 'The professionalisation of everyone?', American Journal of Sociology, 70, pp. 137-58. Wilkinson, R. W. (1986) 'The Assisted Places Scheme', in V. A. McClelland (ed.) Private and Independent Education, Aspects of Education No. 35, Hull: Hull University Institute of Education. Willis, P. (1977) Learning to Labour: how working-class kids get working-class jobs, Farnborough: Saxon House. Wober, M. (1971) English Girls' Boarding Schools, London: Allen Lane. Woodfield, P. (1987) Efficiency Scrutiny of the Supervision of Charities: report to the Home Secretary and the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, London: HMSO.