HL Deb 14 May 1969 vol 302 cc139-47

3.43 p.m.

Debate resumed.

LORD ANNAN

My Lords, we arc all grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, for having introduced this topic, and I was particularly delighted by the humane way in which he spoke, in which one could see always in his mind his concern for the individual child. I can tell the noble Lord that there was some lively speculation in the Lobby as to what figure we were going to discuss this afternoon. I was immensely relieved when the noble Lord said that he had in mind a figure of 1 per cent. of the children, and that he was not proposing to re-examine or reopen the whole question of comprehensive schools and grammar schools. I was slightly dismayed when the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, then said that he wanted to talk about 0.1 per cent. of children. May I, however, since the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, opened with a 1 per cent. bid, follow him along that particular figure?

This really means that we are talking about some 8,000 children in an age group cohort. The first point that I want to make is this: supposing we are talking about this 8,000 a year coming into the educational system as specially gifted children, what would this look like administratively if one were going to make special provision for these students? Supposing we had super-selective schools, what would these schools look like? It seems to me that we should have to agree that these would be selective secondary schools set up for children at the age of 11-plus, 12-plus or 13-plus. On a seven-year basis, that would mean a total of some 56,000 children. So that there would be about 50 schools of, roughly, 1,000 each. That is the sort of administrative size of the problem. Of course, if the proportion is to be increased to 2 per cent., then there will have to be 100 such schools. It is on these lines that I hope the debate will proceed, though I suspect that the noble Lord, Lord James of Rusholme, will want to put in a bid for 5 per cent., or even 15 per cent.

These super-selective schools would obviously be sited in large conurbations of 500,000 population, or more. But if this were so, would it not give an unfair advantage to those who live in the large conurbations? Surely it would be a matter of natural justice that if there were super-selective schools they should be open equally to the specially gifted children from small towns or from rural areas. If that is admitted, one must concede that the super-selective schools ought to have boarding provision, so that children from every part of the country could be selected to attend them. Naturally they would not be brand new schools: direct grant schools, or even maintained grammar schools, could be transformed into these super-selective schools. Nevertheless, I think there would have to be some considerable expenditure upon them, particularly in respect of boarding acommodation.

Then the next administrative problem we face is this. How would the children be selected? It should be possible to entrust this to the super-selective schools themselves. They would have to take account of the reports of headmasters and (headmistresses in the primary schools and they would concern themselves with other relevant evidence. I do not conceive that it could be done in any other way, because one could hardly reintroduce the system of a revived 11-plus examination for all primary schools. The age of 11 is not sacrosanct. But whatever age is chosen—11, 12 or 13—it must I think coincide, broadly speaking, with the transition from primary to secondary school. As these schools draw from several areas, with different ages of transfer, they would have to admit children of different ages.

But when we also consider some of the children in whom the noble Lord, Lord Carrington was interested—those who display special talents in music, art or ballet—we come up against quite different problems. In ballet, I understand, it is possible to select children at quite an early age, because selection is based on the size of their feet and the shape of their bones. In music, however, Dr. Ruth Railton (than whom I do not think there can be a greater authority on the selection of specially musically gifted children, since she was the great founder of the National Youth Orchestra) maintains that, with the exception of, for example, such geniuses as Yehudi Menuhin, it is usually impossible to judge how really good a musically gifted child is going to be. There is ample talent among many children. But few of them mature, and one cannot be certain of their ability until about the age of 14 or 15. That is the time when the really musically gifted child shows whether he or she is going to become a great performer.

When it comes to art, I think the situation is even more difficult. Many of us discern genius in our own children at the age of 8 and believe that they are going to be remarkable artists. But by the age of 15 those remarkable primitives which they painted at the age of 8 do not seem to have matured quite as we hoped. I think, therefore, that when it comes to the arts, there is a rather more difficult problem of selection than perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, indicated in his speech.

Then there is the question as to whether these schools would be entirely free, or whether they would receive fee payers. I took it that there might be some support—at any rate on the other side of the House—for the admission of the fee payers to super-selective schools. But this, of course, is a very contentious point, because while, if fee payers are introduced into such schools it will save the Chancellor of the Exchequer some money, it is more questionable whether some children should buy their way into such élite institutions. So on grounds of equity alone it seems to me to be difficult to establish a case for fee payers. It would also be difficult to defend a school such as this having a lower school—that is to say a primary school attached—which would act as a feeder, because this would give a distinctly unfair advantage to those who happened to live in the neighbourhood and who went to the feeder school.

That, as I conceive it, is the administrative pattern. That is what it would look like if these super-selective schools were to be set up. The question is: should they be set up? The advocates of such schools, of course, quote Dr. Johnson's well-known dictum: I am always for getting a boy forward in his learning The argument runs that if a child shows particularly great aptitude and scholastic ability he ought to he liven every chance to push ahead, and should he treated differently not merely from the average child, but also from the child who is very well equipped, for we are talking again about the exceptionally brilliant child. This argument, of course, means that those who want to establish super-selective schools, are going to say: "We have to admit that the 11-plus: was too blunt an instrument for selecting children in all primary schools, but there are some children about whose brilliant capabilities there can be so little question that they really ought to be given preferential treatment."

My Lords, I think we should examine this proposition very carefully indeed. If it were really true that in our present system of maintained education all children, whatever their abilities, were forced to proceed at the same pace, I should be the first to be alarmed; but as we know, this is not so. I dare say that the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, does not go all the way with streaming and setting in our schools, but certainly there is a method in our national education by which the more gifted child is allowed to proceed at a faster pace than his less gifted contemporaries.

I cannot say I am yet convinced that it is necessary to set up super-selective schools for 1 or 2 per cent—still less for a higher percentage of the population. Moreover, every one of the great education Reports which has come out in the last 15 years shows that ability at this age of 11 or 12 is inextricably connected with social advantages. Children from cultured and highly literate homes are bound to show to greater advantage at that age than those in poor families. No doubt the intelligence test remains the most reliable method of identifying the gifted, but as Lord Kennet said, it is a very blunt instrument. A great deal of research has been carried out on this problem in America, and also in this country. Some of it suggests that there is a factor, called the "threshold factor", which is variously put somewhere between an I.O. of 115 or 125, above which the highest achievements are possible. But when you ask whether pupils in fact achieve and maintain their promise at age 11, you inevitably come up against the problem of motivation. Their personality, their family background, their ability to fit in at a school, the influence of their peer group—all these, or any combination of them affect their performance. The truth is, my Lords, that quite a lot of the early buds do not blossom as they might have been expected to do.

A recent study of a highly selective school in this country shows that there is a falling off in performance between "O" level and "A" level. There is nothing odd about this: it is exactly what one would expect. The child who appears to be highly motivated at 11 years of age later, for some reason or other, loses interest in his work, fails to maintain his childhood promise. He may indeed fail to maintain it because, while he could master the kind of work which was demanded from him at 11 years of age, he cannot imagine the kind of work demanded of him at 17 years of age. This can apply to those who show very great promise indeed in the primary school. Some recent research that I have seen on this matter suggests that if highly selective schools recruit children who show high intelligence and attainment at the age of 11, they will probably have high conventional achievements in public examinations. Many will enter the professions; and some of them will become men of eminence. On the other hand, the so-called" threshold effect " suggests that these schools will fail to recruit many children who will develop the drive to perform well at school later in adolescence and, no less than those from the super-selective schools, will succeed in life and become eminent in the world.

There is another argument in favour of super-selective schools which again we ought to examine carefully. It is one which starts from highly pessimistic assumptions, and these assumptions are, in brief, that the whole system of secondary education in this country is going to deteriorate rapidly during the next thirty years. Those who hold this view believe that it will do so simply because of the demand for high-quality, sixth-form teachers—particularly teachers in mathematics—who will simply not be forthcoming. What happens if the teachers cannot be found? People are now beginning to argue that there will have to be programmed instruction, on the lines upon which the Nuffield Foundation is at present doing research, in which the content of lessons proceeds in a logical sequence, or from texts or from teaching machines. The child will then be able to go on at his own pace and the teacher will no longer be expounding in the classroom but will be there to guide and stimulate. If this ever comes to pass, it will be a long time in the future. Therefore, so it is said, it is fair to ask whether, in going over to the comprehensive system, we are in danger of failing to ensure that the extremely brilliant child is not held back and is allowed to advance.

One's opinion on this matter must depend very much on what one believes is going to happen in the next twenty to thirty years. I am as prone as anyone else to moods of pessimism. I am alarmed at the inability of schools to find science teachers. I am alarmed when I think how many children in the sixth forms, let alone other forms, in secondary schools will be taught by those who will not have a university degree. I am alarmed at the lack of good teachers in sixth forms, particularly in that vital field of mathematics which, let us make no mistake about it, will have such immense importance in the world of industry, business and management.

At the same time, I think we should also recognise that the pattern of secondary education is changing very fast indeed; that is to say, the pattern from 16 to 18 years. Until a few years ago one could hardly find a headmaster who was a "taker" for the idea of a sixth form college. To-day I think this idea is beginning to be a much more popular concept. There is the conception that education from 16-plus, whether in schools or in the sector of further education, is going to assume a very different pattern; that there is going to be much more movement between these two sectors. We no longer, I think, envisage the only kind of provision of education at that age as being in the all-through comprehensive.

This again raises the question in my mind as to whether it is really quite so forward-looking, as it might appear at first sight, to go for the concept of the selective school, if in fact our sixth form work pattern—which is really the vital work for the clever child, the brilliant child—is going to change. That child may find himself in a technical college, in a sixth form college, or in the upper tier of a comprehensive school. If this pattern is going to change, I think we need to consider again rather carefully what the super-selective school is really offering against what may be provided —and is almost certainly going to be provided—in the next ten years.

My Lords, this is a matter in which we have to weigh two things. We know that on the one side the whole tendency of the public, as well as the independent, sector of education is almost certain to be regressive; that is to say, it is bound to favour the middle-class child from the cultured home at the expense of those from poorer homes with no tradition of literacy and education with- in them. What should the public sector be doing? Should the public sector be still, as it has been in the past, concentrating upon the grammar school at the expense of the secondary modern? Should it be concentrating, as is being suggested this afternoon, on the super-selective schools as opposed to the comprehensive system?

In our educational system, so it seems to me, the brainy child, the gifted child, the child from comfortable surroundings, has such very great advantages that if one is going to ask, "Where do one's educational priorities lie?" almost inevitably the answer must be that they must lie with the handicapped child rather than with the especially gifted child. That was why I was so interested when the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, brought that paragraph concerning the handicapped child front the Plowden Report to our attention and, as it were, said, "Well, is there not another kind of child who is handicapped—that is, the specially gifted one, who is handicapped simply by the fact that he is so much out of his class?".

I wonder whether that really is so. There are, of course, misfits. There are, of course, children who need special help because of their curious capabilities. But if one is asking, "Where should one's priorities of expenditure lie? I should have thought one's natural reaction would be to say that probably they ought to be concentrated in the public sector on providing better primary schools and indeed in trying to concentrate good sixth form teaching either in groups of schools or in further education colleges.

On the other hand, I fully admit that there is another argument which proceeds from a deep pessimistic analysis of what is going to happen to our schools system in the next twenty or thirty years. This is the argument that time and time again the gifted child is going to have his capabilities wasted because he will find himself in the Philistine atmosphere of a comprehensive school without sufficient encouragement to follow his natural bent. As these children, or some of them, are said to be the future leaders of our society, the argument runs that it is essential that we should try to segregate them and bring them forward.

I have heard variations on this argument. For example, I found in Glasgow, among the poorest section of the community there, the Roman Catholic sector, that people feel passionately that their grant-aided schools should be preserved as grant-aided schools and not turned into comprehensive schools, because they see in these grant-aided schools the one type of school which gives at any rate a few of that particular community in Glasgow the chance to get ahead and to compete (if one may put it that way) with the Protestant population on the other side of the town. I am not necessarily convinced by that argument; I think there are other ways of dealing with that problem. But it is the pessimistic argument in another form.

My Lords, I do not want to pronounce or to give my own opinion on this matter this afternoon. I hope your Lordships will forgive me if I do not. I feel that it would be improper for me to do so, because I am a member of the Donnison Commission which is investigating the whole question of direct-grant schools. The question which we are considering this afternoon to some extent comes under the Commission's purview. But I should like to ask the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, whether he would be good enough to advise his right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education to give the Commission the Record of this debate so that they may study it and may benefit from the very useful contributions which I know noble Lords will make, and from the, if I may say so, very admirable three speeches with which this debate began.