IN MY DAY IT WAS CALLED streaming ; schools had four
different streams A, B, C, and C+. Now such a practice is called putting pupils
into sets, and only occurs in subjects such as English and Maths. In the old
system streaming began at Junior school from the age of seven, and carried us
through to the 11 plus, where the wheat was separated from the chaff.
I have
often wondered how pupils freshly arriving from infant school, were divided up
once they arrived at Junior level. How were seven-year-old's allotted their
stream? My only conclusion was that it was based upon what we would call today
a post code lottery.
While
the methodology was then unfair, the system of streaming is not. Its
replacement in the mid-1960s was the
Comprehensives system which favoured mixed ability teaching with exceptions in
subjects seen as challenging, and vital to our country's future prosperity -
thus was the system of sets introduced, it allowed the brightest to flourish.
But in
the 1970s and 80s our 'progressive' educationalists believed that any form of separation
from mixed ability teaching was deemed unfair, and would label children as winners and losers.
Now we
have the Chief Inspector of Schools, Michael Wilshaw finally saying that mixed
ability teaching is unfair to the ablest pupils because it drags them down,
they under-perform because they have to wait for the less academically gifted
pupils to catch up; or, are hindered by other pupils who play up and have no
intention to learn - not even the alphabet. We have teachers who cannot control
them, and fear the repercussions that would flow from the merest tap on the
wrist.
THE SYSTEM OF GRAMMAR SCHOOLS once provided a way out for
25% of the brightest and most gifted pupils from all backgrounds including
working class ones. But in the mid 1960's, the Labour Party had other ideas - 'levelling
down'.
Of
course such a phrase would be anathema to someone like Shirley Williams, who, as
Education Secretary, set the comprehensive ball rolling; but this in effect was
what happened. The gifted may have been put into that politically correct
euphemism for streaming, 'sets', under the comprehensive system. But the
grammar schools, like the Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry VIII had
their Henry in Shirley; and sadly it continued with Margaret Thatcher.
Today
teachers moan, with good reason , about the constant ideologically driven
changes politicians make to the education system. But until that hated word
'selection' once more plays the major role in state education, instead of the
bit part given it by the politicians through
'sets' at the expense of the grammar schools; then we will continue to
decline as a country.
AS HUMAN BEINGS we posses different abilities. There are
those more academically inclined who should be encouraged on the academic path,
via the grammar school, into university, and beyond that into the far reaches of ambition that
requires, god forbid, an elitist approach.
When I
was at school, the chaff were never ignored, because they were never written
off. There were technical colleges, colleges of further education, and
polytechnics (soon, would you believe, to become universities). Those who
failed the 11 plus were never written off. There were hundreds of different
well paid skills that could be taught to the practically minded.
If, for
instance, with the growth, in the 1960's, of the North Sea gas and oil
excavation, many skills, in my part of the world, such as welding were in
demand, such a skill paid far better wages than that of, for instance, an
academic.
Today
plumbers, electricians, plasterers, can earn wages in excess of many of those
teaching in our schools who went through university. Unless a university degree
encompasses a scientific or maths related subject; the skilled worker will, in
financial terms out- earn the following: the historian (unless he or she has a
contract with a television channel), poet, writer of prose, art historian, or
any other arty-farty academic who seeks personnel aggrandisement through
academia.
WE MUST RETURN to the past in education; to a period before the
well intentioned 'progressive' liberal middle class politicians, sought to
eviscerate their guilt[1]
and bring equality to every nook and
corner of our culture, which, in terms of education, meant a 'bog standard 'comprehensive
system.
Mixed
ability teaching has been a failure for thousands of pupils in the state
sector. While the lack of discipline has encouraged classroom disruption, and
in many cases, the bullying of teachers impotent to act. Those wishing to learn
within such an environment find it almost impossible to do so; and because of what
the educationalists regard as 'hurt feelings' among those academically less
gifted, mixed ability classrooms are tolerated.
This
sham must end for the sake of all the
pupils. Streaming must return to the classroom and Grammar schools must no
longer be the scapegoats of socialist politicians, or the easy option for cuts
in education by the Tories, as happened under Margaret Thatcher, only to be enthusiastically
pursued under Labour once more.
All
over the world our competitors are not ashamed to separate the academically gifted from those
talented and able pupils, who can go on to get well paid jobs by learning a
vocation requiring skills that the academically gifted would find a strain. By dummying
down the curriculum (as happened under New Labour), and turning what were vocational
polytechnics into universities to make the participants within such institutions
feel equal to the academically inclined, is both patronising and a retrograde
step as far as this nation's prosperity is concerned.
Germany
does not play such silly games with the futures of their young, and are reaping
the benefits; and we must, like them, do what is natural and not ideological.
Until we do, teachers will forever be droning on about political interference.
[1]
Remember, many, if not all of Labour's elite during the 1960s-70s were themselves
middle class, and suffered liberal guilt
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