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Local authorities and comprehensivization in England and Wales, 1944-1974

Submission to Oxford Review of Education (2002)

Theme: ‘A century of local education authorities’

Guest Editor: Roy Lowe, University of Wales, Swansea

David Crook

History & Philosophy Group

Institute of Education, University of London
20 Bedford Way
London WC1H 0AL

Telephone 020 7612 6546

Fax 020 7612 6555
e-mail d.crook@ioe.ac.uk

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INTRODUCTION
During the 1960s and 1970s the Times Educational Supplement (TES) and Education
carried detailed reports on a weekly basis about local policy plans, decisions and
reactions to comprehensive education proposals. In one important sense the social,
economic, demographic and school-specific variables in any given local education
authority (LEA) were unique, but at a general level the arguments became familiar.
Quotes from those involved in the recent parental campaign to decide the future of
Ripon Grammar School reveal the endurance of these arguments, even if Web sites
have replaced placards and marches. Supporters of comprehensive education continue
to argue that eleven-plus selection procedures are unreliable, take no account of late
developers and condemn the majority of children to schools which are, in comparison
to the grammars, unsatisfactory. But any future decisions to be taken about England’s
164 remaining grammar schools rest exclusively with parents, while secondary
schools themselves now have opportunities, if they wish to pursue them, of
developing a specialist (and selective) character. Having entered the twenty-first
century only after re-inventing themselves as competitive service-providers, LEAs
have lost many of their former powers and much of their influence over secondary
education. This article recalls (mostly) happier times for LEAs, focusing upon the
drive for comprehensive education in the years 1944 to 1974.

The term ‘comprehensive’ evolved during the Second World War as a replacement
for the ‘multilateral’ school, an ‘all through’ institution for children aged 11 to 18,
ideally purpose built on a single site. More specific early definitions were uncommon,
although most commentators agreed that comprehensive schools needed to be large in
order to sustain viable sixth forms. A 1947 circular from the Ministry of Education
recommended, for example, that the minimum size of a comprehensive school should
be 10- or 11-form entry so that it would accommodate in excess of 1,500 children
(Kerckhoff et al, 1996, p. 61). This understanding of comprehensive education was to
be substantially revised over the next 30 years, mostly as a direct consequence of
LEA, rather than central government, initiatives.

The remainder of this paper, which draws upon research sponsored by the Spencer
Foundation [1], is divided into five sections. The next two sections are chronological
and survey non-selective developments at the local level over the full 30-year period.

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Attention is then drawn to key personnel involved in LEA reorganizations, including
the Chief Education Officer (CEO) and chair of the Education Committee. This is
followed by a brief discussion of local consultation and reorganization issues and,
finally, a concluding section.

ALTERNATIVES TO BIPARTISM, TRIPARTISM AND THE ELEVEN-PLUS,

1944-62
One common misconception, even among some historians, is that the 1944 Education
Act endorsed tripartite secondary schooling. In fact, the Act itself had nothing to say
about how secondary schools should be organized. This was a matter that was left for
the LEAs to decide and report to the Ministry of Education in a development plan.
But subsequent Ministry guidance to LEAs barely acknowledged the possibility that
an LEA might wish to establish comprehensive schools throughout its administrative
area. Such schools were thought to be possibly appropriate in sparsely-populated
areas or as ‘judicious experiments’ (Ministry of Education, 1945; Ministry of
Education, 1947), but they were not encouraged.

When the development plans started rolling in, the Ministry had reason to be
surprised. A 1947 survey of 54 LEA plans revealed that more than half were seeking
to establish at least one non-selective school (Simon, 1991, p. 75). The Labour-
controlled London County Council (LCC) submitted the most ambitious and detailed
scheme. The London School Plan envisaged a total of 103 ‘comprehensive school
units’, comprising 67 comprehensive schools and a further 36 ‘county complements’
linked to existing grammar schools (LCC, 1947). Early support for comprehensives
was not purely an urban, socialist phenomenon. In a predominantly rural area of
Yorkshire, for example, the Conservative-controlled West Riding LEA also initially
favoured a fully comprehensive secondary school system (Clegg, 1965, p. 75).

Guided by the schools inspectorate, Ellen Wilkinson (1945-47) and George

Tomlinson (1947-51), the Education ministers in Attlee’s Labour government,
proceeded very cautiously. In rural areas the Ministry accepted the arguments for
comprehensive schools, albeit for reasons that had more to do with economics than
with education. This policy permitted the West Riding to open two 11-18
comprehensive schools during the early 1950s, while Anglesey was permitted to go

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fully comprehensive as a special case. Elsewhere, the Ministry sanctioned limited
experiments in urban LEAs where wartime bomb damage had spawned new housing
developments, including Bristol, Coventry, Leeds and London. Plans for
comprehensive schools advanced by Middlesex and the North Riding of Yorkshire
were rejected, however (Simon, 1991, pp. 104-9).

Eight ‘interim’ split-site London comprehensive schools, housed in the premises of

former senior and central school buildings had been established by the end of 1949.
Important as these schools proved to be as trail-blazers (see LCC, 1961, p. 14), they
offered little prospect of tempting middle-class parents to abandon existing grammar
schools. The authority’s ambitions, which continued to be invested in the creation of
new schools to replace selective schools, received a boost in the autumn of 1949.
Tomlinson’s approval of a proposal to close five schools, including Eltham Grammar
School for Girls, permitted the LCC to build its first purpose-built comprehensive,
Kidbrooke School, designed to accommodate 2,000 girls aged 11-18. The
Conservative general election victory of 1951 did not immediately seem to threaten
these plans, but in October 1953 Florence Horsbrugh, Churchill’s Minister of
Education, took the extraordinary step of urging a London Conservative Women’s
Conference to organize protests against the closure of existing schools (Simon, 1991,
pp. 171-72). The TES, edited by the fiercely anti-comprehensive Walter James,
offered immediate support for the preservation of Eltham Grammar School and in
March 1954, just six months before Kidbrooke was due to enrol its first pupils,
Horsbrugh announced that it would stay open. Though not at this time a supporter of
comprehensive education, the Secretary of the Association of Education Committees
(AEC), Sir William Alexander, was outraged by the Minister’s actions. He feared that
the decision might establish a precedent for ‘destroying the autonomy of Local
Education Authorities in determining the appropriate use of school accommodation in
their area and the best plan for the organisation of secondary education’ (Education
editorial, 12 March 1954).

Sir David Eccles, Horsbrugh’s successor, pursued a more even-handed policy,

allowing the establishment of new comprehensives and county complements in both
purpose-built accommodation and amalgamated premises. Holloway, Mayfield,
Parliament Hill, Sydenham and Wandsworth, all former grammar schools, became

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showpiece LCC comprehensives during the mid-fifties. While the eleven-plus
continued to operate in London, however, middle-class parents were able to deny
these schools a fully comprehensive intake. It was the same story in two other cities
where wartime bomb damage facilitated progress. Bristol LEA established some 14
non-selective secondary schools between 1954 and 1963, but they served working-
class housing estates and, even in the locality, they were rarely described as
‘comprehensives’ (Keen, 1965, p. 23). Coventry’s first eight comprehensives were
also established without closing any city grammar schools and, as in Bristol, the LEA
continued to purchase places in local direct grant schools throughout this period
(Chinn, 1965, p. 27). A number of other LEAs managed to establish one or more
comprehensive schools in the 1950s, but some held out against this strategy of
tokenism. In 1965 Stoke-on-Trent’s CEO, Henry Dibden, recalled that

. . . the clamour to build one comprehensive school as an experiment had

to be countered by the argument that if you are going comprehensive you
should go completely or not at all; that by its very nature the
comprehensive will not harmonize with other forms. That if you had one,
then throughout the City the 11 plus would continue to operate and you
could not exclude children in the comprehensive neighbourhood. Some of
the grammar type parents would opt for grammar school places. If they
were refused and told they must all go to the comprehensive, the Minister
of Education would over-rule the Committee as interfering with parents’
choice.
(Dibden, 1965, pp. 67-68)

The West Riding of Yorkshire pursued a very pragmatic approach after the Second
World War. With too few suitable sites available to implement an authority-wide
system of comprehensives the authority settled for a policy of bipartism, rather than
tripartism (except in the districts served by the two comprehensives). But continuing
unhappiness with the eleven-plus saw the West Riding introduce what became known
as the ‘Thorne scheme’ from the mid-1950s. This was a means of allocating grammar
school places to the ablest primary school children on the basis of teachers’
recommendations. This scheme, which was judged to be no less reliable than a formal

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examination, was operational in two-thirds of the county by 1964 and was copied by a
number of like-minded LEAs (Gosden and Sharp, 1978, pp. 178-79).

With mounting evidence that both the rationale for and methods of psychometric
testing were flawed (for example Vernon, 1957; Yates and Pidgeon, 1957) interest
developed ‘in the possibility of beating, at one stroke, both of the bogys which had
hitherto seemed to create an “either/or” situation: selection at 11 and giant
comprehensives’ (Pedley, 1980, p. 458). One proposal, first advanced unsuccessfully
by Croydon LEA officials in 1954, was a two-tier system involving 11-15
comprehensive schools followed by the possibility - for those pupils who successfully
sat GCE ‘O’ levels at age 16 - of transferring to a ‘junior college’ or sixth form
college. Leicestershire’s Director of Education, Stewart Mason, advanced an
alternative two-tier solution, the result, he later claimed, of a ‘blinding explosion’ of
inspiration that came to him whilst shaving one morning early in 1957 (Guardian, 12
September 1978; Jones, 1988, p. 57). This proposal was that the county’s secondary
modern schools, re-named ‘junior high schools’, should recruit all the pupils from the
primary schools within their catchment area. Pupils would remain at the junior high
school for a minimum of three years before either transferring to a grammar school
(or ‘senior high’) or continuing for a further year at their present school. Mason’s
‘blinding explosion’ was hardly an original thought, however. Robin Pedley, at that
time a Leicester University lecturer, had articulated the same idea in student seminars
and at a meeting with Eccles at least one year earlier. Pedley, rather than Mason, was
the true architect of the Leicestershire ‘experiment’ and ‘plan’ (Crook, 1992).

The preservation, albeit with some re-orientation, of the grammar schools was a
feature of the Leicestershire plan that appealed to a succession of Conservative
Education ministers. The county’s ‘experiment’, which had been launched with
amazing speed in two districts in September 1957, was immediately declared a
success, both within the county and the country. The initiative was welcomed in a
1958 White Paper on secondary education, but proposals ‘to bring to an end an
existing grammar school’ were said to be ‘quite another matter’. ‘It cannot be right’,
the White Paper asserted, ‘that good existing schools should be forcibly brought to an
end, or that parents’ freedom of choice should be so completely abolished’ (Ministry
of Education, 1958, pp. 5-6). Thereafter, the Ministry continued to permit

6
comprehensive experiments, but looked still more favourably upon the extension of
opportunities for secondary modern pupils to take public examinations. This policy
was hardly a ringing endorsement of eleven-plus selection and, in all probability, it
encouraged more LEAs to contemplate the possibilities of comprehensive schools. As
the curriculum of the secondary modern school began to imitate that of the grammar
school the rationale for segregation became less clear and calls for a fully
comprehensive system grew louder.

LEA COMPREHENSIVE SCHEMES, 1963-74

As Brian Simon has argued, the experiments of the 1950s provided the background to
the ‘breakout’ of the following decade (Simon, 1991, pp. 203-11). The local elections
of May 1963 brought sweeping victories for Labour and provided a vital catalyst for
the comprehensive movement. Bristol, Liverpool and Manchester LEAs quickly
produced city-wide schemes for comprehensive reorganization, while the LCC finally
abandoned the eleven-plus, replacing it in those districts where grammar schools
continued to operate by a combination of teacher assessment and parental choice
(TES, 28 February 1964). A number of rural counties, including Devon, Dorset and
Shropshire, none of them Labour-controlled, also declared themselves in favour of
comprehensives (Miles, 1964). A grass-roots movement was underway that demanded
some revisionist thinking from a Conservative government that seemed destined for
defeat at the next general election. Macmillan’s Minister of Education, Edward Boyle,
had quietly been encouraging LEAs to look at possibilities for softening selection
procedures and was much more open-minded about comprehensive education than the
majority of his parliamentary colleagues. In a private briefing paper of July 1963,
headed ‘Prime Minister’, he recommended that the Conservative Party should go
beyond the doctrine of the 1958 White Paper and ‘make an end of the strict neutrality
which my Department has maintained in public towards local selection methods’[2].

The following month saw Boyle appoint a committee chaired by Lady Bridget
Plowden ‘to consider primary education in all its aspects, and the transition to
secondary education’ (DES, 1967, p. iii, author’s emphasis). A widespread
expectation that the Plowden committee would contest whether eleven, the age
stipulated by the 1944 Education Act, was the best age of transfer to secondary
education produced new thinking in the localities about the possibilities of tiered

7
secondary systems that would either delay selection or abolish it altogether. In the
West Riding, Alec Clegg, the CEO, concluded that a three-tier secondary system,
using existing school premises, offered the only realistic prospect of satisfying
demands for comprehensive education from several divisional executives. A
preliminary meeting with Ministry of Education officials did not raise expectations
that the age of transfer could be waived, but the authority pressed ahead with a
proposal to create 5-9, 9-13 and 13-18 schools in several of its districts (TES, 11
October 1963). The scheme fitted well with Boyle’s interest in developing
comprehensive education without closing grammar schools and an Education Bill was
quickly enacted so that the West Riding could reorganize along these lines. Other
LEAs watched with interest. In West Sussex, for example, County Hall officials
quickly noted that three-tier schooling would provide one solution to a logistical
school buildings problem in a rural district. The prospect of introducing
comprehensive education without the perceived disadvantages of huge 11-18 schools
was an important, but secondary consideration (Kerckhoff et al, 1996, p. 141).

Labour’s 1964 general election victory saw Michael Stewart become Secretary of
State for Education in Harold Wilson’s cabinet. He quickly produced a briefing
document in which he argued that the transition to a predominantly comprehensive
system could be achieved within five years, a vision that was certainly neither shared
by Chief Inspector Percy Wilson nor by a number of senior Civil Servants at the DES
(Dean, 1998, p. 71; Lawrence, 1993, p. 46). Stewart’s suggestion that a circular
should be sent to each of the English and Welsh LEAs was accepted, but the cabinet
stopped short of sanctioning legislation at this point (Stewart, 1980, p. 132). Circular
10/65, published on 14 July 1965 by Stewart’s successor, Anthony Crosland,
requested, but did not require LEAs to submit plans to the Ministry (DES, 1965).

Six alternative methods of ‘going comprehensive’ were set out in Circular 10/65.
LEAs were free to decide, on the basis of educational preference and existing building
stock, whether an all-through solution – the favoured option of Crosland – was
appropriate, or whether they wished to introduce a tiered system. Of the two-tier
alternatives, each contemplated secondary education beginning at 11 but with transfer
to another school (or sixth form college) at the ages of 13, 14 or 16. Three-tier
comprehensive options, to include middle schools for children aged 8-12 –

8
prefiguring the Plowden preference - and 9-13 were also outlined, signalling the
satisfaction of the DES with the West Riding pilot.

Most of the large, Labour-controlled urban authorities, including Leeds and

Birmingham, shared the preference of Bristol, Liverpool, London and Manchester for
all-through comprehensives. But in each of these cities rapid progress was hampered
by inadequate building stock, the need to consult with church authorities and
uncertainties about future LEA relations with local direct grant schools. Long-term
plans were often explicit, but the absence of additional DES funding to implement
reorganization meant that ideals had to be temporarily sacrificed. Compromises
invariably took the form of ‘interim’ arrangements, the phased abolition of the eleven-
plus and school amalgamations that created comprehensive schools on two or more
sites.

The Leicestershire experiment and plan provided a concrete example of the two-tier
model involving pupil transfer at 14. The similar proposal for transfer at 13 was
widely referred to as the ‘Doncaster’ plan, a reference to a scheme that had –
somewhat surprisingly – been accepted by the DES two months before Crosland’s
circular was issued (TES, 21 May 1965). Both schemes, in their original form, were
only semi-comprehensive, delaying selection and permitting upper-tier secondary
schools to retain the name ‘grammar school’ if it was so desired. They involved
guided parental choice at the age of transfer, prompting objections that the grammar
schools (or ‘senior highs’) would continue to be populated by middle-class pupils and
that girls would suffer a relative disadvantage. The most enthusiastic pro-
comprehensive authorities tended to shun these options, except as interim solutions.
Middle school possibilities, meanwhile, aroused interest, but uncertainty about the
ideal age of transfer from the lower and middle tiers strengthened the view that LEAs
should ‘wait for Plowden’.

A small number of Conservative LEAs indicated from the beginning that they would
defy the circular (Crook, 1993, pp. 53-54), but rather more took the view that paying
half-hearted attention to the Doncaster or Leicestershire model might enable them to
meet Crosland’s demands in a fashion that involved minimal change. For example,
Buckinghamshire County Council pledged its support for comprehensives ‘provided

9
that any comprehensive school does not prejudice the continuance of any existing
selective secondary school’ [3]. Richmond-upon-Thames, meanwhile, produced a
draft plan that merely involved the enlargement and improvement of its secondary
modern schools which were to be re-named ‘comprehensives’, while gradually
reducing grammar school intakes to 20 per cent [4]. The Campaign for the
Advancement of State Education (CASE) took it upon itself to expose LEAs that were
‘finding ways of defeating the intention of reorganisation by continuing selection in
various forms or by schemes which they know cannot be implemented for many
years’ [5].

As Shadow Secretary of State for Education between 1964 and 1969 Edward Boyle
found himself in an increasingly uncomfortable position. He personally hoped to see
‘many more comprehensive schools’ replacing ‘market town’ grammars (quoted in
The Times, 8 April 1965), but such statements served only to antagonize local
grammar school preservation groups and Conservative backbenchers. Comprehensive
education, Boyle argued, was an issue to be resolved at the local, rather than national,
level and he pointed out that, in many localities, Conservative enthusiasm for
comprehensives surpassed that of their political opponents (Crook, 1993, p. 54).
Boyle had been initially attracted to tiered secondary reorganization solutions by
following the Leicestershire experiment and reading the arguments of Robin Pedley
(Kerckhoff et al, 1996, p. 21). The West Riding pilot subsequently persuaded him that
middle school schemes were preferable, though he endorsed the view that LEAs
should await Lady Plowden’s report before finalising their plans for the three tiers
(The Teacher, 4 June 1965).

As anticipated, the Plowden Report (DES, 1967) did endorse middle schools and
further recommended that children should transfer at the ages of eight and 12. Middle
school comprehensive schemes had a particular appeal to Conservative-controlled
authorities seeking to abolish the eleven-plus without creating ‘monster’
comprehensive schools. By mid-1967 Merton, Oxford and Wallasey LEAs had
announced plans to abandon the eleven-plus and to introduce three-tier schemes
(Crook, 1993, p. 56). Southampton followed soon afterwards (TES, 31 May 1968) and
in June 1968 the TES listed some further 21 comprehensive schemes that had been
approved by the DES (TES, 7 June 1968). The Labour government had real grounds

10
for satisfaction with its ‘softly softly’ approach of persuasion rather than legislation.
Instead of focusing on its success, however, Ted Short, the-then Secretary of State for
Education, was targeting those LEAs – around 20 out of 146 - that had not responded
to Circular 10/65. A parliamentary bill was prepared during the final months of 1969,
only to be withdrawn when Harold Wilson objected to its wording (diary entry, 9
December 1969 in Benn, 1988, p. 218).

Since the Second World War the education system for England and Wales was widely
referred to as ‘a central service locally administered’. But Short’s determination to
legislate marked a watershed for central and local government relations in education
and ended the DES’s cordial relationship with the AEC (Cooke and Gosden, 1986, p.
80). In March 1969 Keith Robinson, CEO for Southport, a Tory-controlled ‘laggard’
LEA that had formulated only an interim plan, complained to the AEC Secretary, Sir
William Alexander, that his Education Committee was prepared to challenge the
Secretary of State, explaining

My Authority maintained its reluctance to define an ultimate, fully

comprehensive scheme. They did not declare themselves against
comprehensive education in principle but took the view that they wanted
further opportunity to evaluate various schemes and keep their options
open. . . . It seems clear from informal discussions with the Department of
Education and Science that they are now taking the line that they require
the Authority to commit itself to a specific fully comprehensive scheme
before my secondary school building projects can be considered. . . . I fear
. . . that my Authority is going to take a dim view of the present
Department of Education and Science attitude. The word ‘blackmail’ will
spring readily to the lips of my elected members who will want to fight.
[6]

Alexander urged Short to reconsider, contending that legislation was unnecessary and
likely to harm, rather than accelerate the drive for comprehensive education. It was an
argument that fell upon deaf ears. Short’s reply indicated that while he valued LEA
freedoms, these ‘can scarcely include the possibility of frustrating national policy’ [7].

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But again the bill did not proceed into law at this point, becoming a casualty of
Wilson’s decision to call a general election.

One of the first decisions of Short’s Conservative successor, Margaret Thatcher, was
to publish Circular 10/70, effectively withdrawing Labour’s circular of five years
earlier. The Circular stated that ‘Authorities will now be freer to determine the shape
of secondary provision in their areas’ (DES, 1970). The immediate effect was that a
number of Conservative councils halted their reorganization plans and referred the
question back to their education committees. Most decided subsequently to proceed,
however. Indeed, Richmond-on-Thames, which had held out against
comprehensivization in the late 1960s surprisingly reversed its policy during
Thatcher’s period (1970-74) at the DES (Kerckhoff et al, 1996, p. 36), while
Conservative-controlled Leeds pressed ahead with its three-tier, fully comprehensive
scheme (Fenwick and Woodthorpe, 1980). The DES now discontinued its earlier
practice of giving administrative approval to non-statutory plans. Instead, the
Secretary of State used the powers invested in her under Section 13 of the 1944 Act to
judge the merits of closure or re-designation proposals affecting individual schools.
Contrary to the wording of Circular 10/70 Thatcher actually demonstrated rather more
inclination to interfere with LEA proposals than any of her predecessors by ‘saving’
some 94 grammar schools that had been identified for re-designation and by rejecting
the views of the majority of petitioners in Kidderminster and Barnet. Even so, she was
unable to halt what she later called the ‘universal comprehensive thing’ (interview in
the Daily Mail, 13 May 1987, quoted in Chitty, 1989, pp. 54-55). More than 1,400
comprehensive (including middle) schools were established between 1970 and 1974,
many of which were located in Conservative LEAs. Thus, Margaret Thatcher presided
over the creation of more comprehensives than any other Secretary of State for
Education.

POLITICAL AND PERSONNEL FACTORS

The type of secondary reorganization scheme that a particular LEA sought to adopt or
implement depended greatly upon the ideas and actions of individuals and groups. A
change of local council control naturally precipitated a change of personnel on the
Education Committee and sometimes introduced new thinking about secondary
reorganization. Early political support for comprehensive education was to be found

12
in some of the large cities, notably Bristol, London and Manchester. In May 1952,
after victory at the polls, Bristol’s Labour group declared that its policy to develop
comprehensive schools across the city would eventually ‘transform the educational
system of Bristol from an instrument perpetuating class distinctions into an instrument
for promoting social unity’ [8]. But not all local Labour groups were enthusiastic
about comprehensive education in the immediate post-war years. Many Socialist
politicians, often themselves the beneficiaries of a grammar-school education,
continued to express confidence in bipartism well into the 1960s (Kerckhoff et al,
1996, p. 164).

It is far from clear whether strong political enthusiasm for comprehensive education
quickened the pace of reorganization. Some ‘progressive’ LEAs, such as
Leicestershire and the West Riding, were constrained by demography and the
suitability of buildings, while issues relating to voluntary and direct grant schools
hampered the pace of change in larger cities like Birmingham, Bristol and London.
LEA case studies reveal the significance of individual politicians involved in
reorganization at the local level. In Stoke-on-Trent, for example, Bob Cant, Labour
Chairman of the Education Committee and subsequently a city MP, drove the process
of comprehensivization, while the energy and influence over many years of Lady
Shena Simon (Manchester) and the Reverend Frederick Vyvyan-Jones (Bristol) was
equally notable. In Leeds the Conservative Councillor Patrick Crotty demonstrated a
degree of interest in education untypical of his party colleagues. He played a key role
in marketing the three-tier scheme to Leeds Conservatives as a means of re-
orientating the grammar schools without destroying them (Fenwick and Woodthorpe,
1980, p. 24). When strong political direction was absent, the checks and balances of
local democracy often preserved the status quo. Instructed by their borough, city or
county council to draw up proposals for the abolition of the eleven-plus, education
committees sometimes sent the answer that they were satisfied with existing selection
measures. But when proposals were drawn up, the full council sometimes rejected
these. Even when there was agreement that comprehensives should be introduced
disagreements could break out over the best means of reorganizing.

The role of CEOs - and sometimes, as in West Sussex and Northumberland, their
deputies (Kerckhoff et al, 1996, p.168) - was in many instances crucial in challenging

13
old orthodoxies. Nowhere is this clearer than in the capital. For almost 30 years
London’s dynasty of Education Officers – Sir Graham Savage, John Brown, Sir
William Houghton and Dr Eric Briault – reaffirmed the basic principles of the London
School Plan and of 11-18 schools. The arrival of Peter Newsam, initially as Briault’s
deputy and then his successor encouraged more lateral thinking during the 1970s and
early 1980s. Newsam’s enthusiasm for the three-tier system that he had helped to
implement in the West Riding, where he had worked under Clegg, won over
influential Inner London Education Authority (ILEA) members. Without Newsam’s
vision the reorganization of London secondary schools would probably have halted in
the mid-1970s (Kerckhoff et al, 1996, pp. 79-80).

The relationship between CEOs and local politicians could be tense. During the early
1950s Lady Shena Simon became frustrated by Manchester CEO Norman Fisher’s
disinclination to support tripartism. When Fisher left the LEA to take up another post
in 1955 she set out her expectations of the new post-holder to a colleague:

The Chief official ought to be prepared to carry out whatever policy the
committee decided upon, but we have had recent experience of how,
without apparent opposition – the official can obstruct.
(Lady Simon to Alderman Sir Maurice Pariser, 7 March 1955, quoted in
Kerckhoff et al, 1996, p. 86)

These hopes were to be frustrated. Relations between Manchester’s Labour politicians

and Fisher’s successor, John Elliot, were strained at the best of times and when the
reorganization plans were finalized, shortly before the publication of Circular 10/65, it
was reported that Elliot was ‘merely informed’ of them (TES, 28 May 1965).
Birmingham’s CEO, Sir Lionel Russell, found it impossible to satisfy his political
masters from both major parties. Despite producing plan after plan, objections were
persistently raised concerning the future of the King Edward foundation grammar
schools and the absence of suitable sites for all-through comprehensives. Even Alec
Clegg, arguably the most dynamic and influential CEO of his generation, did not
escape political censure in the West Riding. Here, the peculiarities of semi-
autonomous excepted districts militated against the kind of comprehensive uniformity
that he wished to see (Gosden and Sharp, 1978, pp. 181, 184-85, 190).

14
By contrast, many county CEOs enjoyed considerable freedoms. In Conservative-
controlled Leicestershire there was an acceptance, which was only displaced during
the 1970s, that Stewart Mason and his County Hall colleagues were best placed to
make decisions about the form and structure of secondary education. Every decision
relating to the Leicestershire experiment and plan came before the county’s School
Organization and Staffing Committee whose agendas and operations were controlled
by Mason himself. Leicestershire Education Committee and the County Council
subsequently endorsed the recommendations of this committee without debate or
question.

CONSULTATION AND REORGANIZATION

The consultation practices of LEAs varied greatly, sometimes providing grounds for
bitter complaint. Different perspectives about the adequacy or otherwise of
consultation characterized the comprehensive debate from its earliest days. Stewart
Mason maintained, for example, that the Leicestershire experiment was launched in
1957 with the full co-operation of primary, secondary modern and grammar school
heads (Mason, 1965, p. 53). But this does not accord with the recollections of the two
grammar school heads. In 1981 one remembered that ‘It was just sprung upon us’,
while the other explained that, upon hearing of the Director’s plans on a Friday
evening, he personally visited each member of his staff on the following day to ensure
that they did not hear the news first from the local press (Jones, 1988, pp. 61-62).

In respect of its consultation arrangements Bristol LEA achieved the greatest notoriety
during the mid-1960s. The city’s 1964 plan controversially sought to establish
‘neighbourhood’ comprehensive schools by means of a ‘zoning’ process. The LEA
also announced that it would discontinue the practice of purchasing free places in the
city’s seven direct grant schools so as to ensure that the comprehensives would recruit
their fair share of high-achieving secondary-age children. A strong attack on the
Bristol proposals was mounted by the Secondary Education Defence Association,
which also developed as a national organization on the right wing of the Conservative
Party (Crook, 1993, p. 55), and by the Bristol Evening Post. In June 1965 the
newspaper published a highly-critical report by Professor Boris Ford. Having studied
the evidence, Ford concluded that neighbourhood comprehensives were more likely to

15
prevent, rather than enhance a diversity of intake. He also asserted that the LEA ‘has
gone forward with astonishingly little detailed study, research experiment, testing,
redesigning which would have seemed essential in so large a project’ (Bristol Evening
Post, 23 June 1965). In general, it seems that lessons were learnt from the Bristol
controversy. The ILEA, which assumed the LCC’s education powers in April 1965,
was particularly anxious that public discussion should precede its formal response to
Circular 10/65. Thus, between December 1966 and February of the following year
some 42 public meetings were held, attended by more than 19,000 parents (Kerckhoff
et al, 1996, p. 71). Most LEAs, meanwhile, routinely co-opted head teachers and/or
teachers to reorganization working parties, a practice that Edward Short sought to
formalise in a 1968 circular (TES, 23 August 1968).

A close eye was kept on LEAs’ consultation arrangements by the various teacher
unions and associations, although they were interested principally in their members’
conditions of service and career prospects. Where mergers were proposed there were
understandable concerns that women teachers might lose out to men and that non-
graduates would be disadvantaged. Associations with large memberships working in
grammar schools tended to be the most outspoken. Immediately after Labour’s 1964
general election victory, for example, E.C. Axford, Headmaster of Ossett Grammar
School, drafted a confidential memorandum for his fellow members on the
Incorporated Association of Head Masters (IAHM) executive, entitled ‘Now Labour
Is In’. He urged the IAHM to adopt a policy of vigilance and resistance to
unsatisfactory LEA schemes, pointing to their recent success in forcing the
abandonment of a reorganization proposal from Flintshire LEA [9].

Gauging the strength of community feeling towards comprehensive education was

difficult, because those parents who joined such organizations as the non-political
CASE or the left-of-centre Comprehensive Schools Committee (CSC) were no more
typical than those who marched against grammar school closures. But Tyrrell
Burgess, a journalist, academic and member of the ILEA could find little fault with
local democratic processes when he wrote to Boyle, the opposition front bench
Education spokesman in June 1967:

16
 I’ve now had the chance to look at innumerable plans, and I honestly
cannot say that there is much evidence of haste and muddle. They have
been pondering it, most of them, for two years or more! And it will
scarcely help to retain public confidence and interest in local government
if leading politicians keep making sweeping accusations of incompetence,
especially since these are not justified.
In the second place, it ignores the astonishing ability and common
sense in the Department of Education and Science now devoted to this
issue. I suppose it can be argued that this particular social revolution is
almost wholly due to political and administrative intelligence in the
schools branch.
In the third place, complaints about haste in this simply feed the
national neurosis that no change should ever be made in less than half a
century. The debate on comprehensive schools has been going on for two
decades, such schools have been running all over the country for nearly as
long, plans have taken two years and exhaustive consultations to prepare,
they will take until the 1970s to put into effect. Scarcely evidence of
headlong and impulsive speed! [10]

Many of the anxieties about LEA proposals were pragmatic, rather than ideological.
How would catchment areas be defined? Did middle school arrangements mean that
eight- or nine-year-old pupils have long journeys or busy roads to cross? Were
schools adequately equipped with such facilities as laboratories and libraries? Were
school canteens and dining rooms geared up to serve more than 1,000 lunchtime
meals? Did former grammar school staff need further training to teach comprehensive
school pupils?

CONCLUSIONS
The drive for comprehensive education in England and Wales was a ‘bottom up’,
rather than ‘top down’ initiative. During the late 1940s the same Labour government
that oversaw the creation of the National Health Service and the establishment of the
Welfare State pursued a far from radical secondary education policy. Indeed, it has
been suggested that the conservatism of Ellen Wilkinson and George Tomlinson
stunted the growth of the comprehensive school movement by 20 years (Rubinstein,

17
1979, p. 161). A growing number of LEAs felt uncomfortable with eleven-plus
selection during the 1950s, particularly because of the effects of what Stewart Mason
termed the ‘deadening backwash’ upon primary schools (Mason, 1965, p. 52). LEAs
controlled by both of the major political parties experimented with different selection
procedures, sometimes as a first step towards the objective of establishing
comprehensive education throughout the administrative area.

The London School Plan influenced early conceptions of the comprehensive school,
but the vision it set out was essentially urban in character. It had an appeal to LEAs
like Bristol, Liverpool and Manchester, which were in the vanguard of what Simon
terms the ‘breakout’. But other local initiatives were of still greater importance,
because they suggested that selection could be ended without the construction of
large, all-through institutions. In advance of Circular 10/65 Croydon, Doncaster and
Leicestershire LEAs each gave their names to two-tier patterns that delayed selection,
while the 1964 Education Act ushered in fully comprehensive arrangements in parts
of the West Riding. With LEAs taking the lead, there was no strong case for the
Labour government to legislate in favour of comprehensive education in 1965. The
rationale for abandoning the approach of persuasion in favour of compulsion was
scarcely stronger four years later when Ted Short persuaded the Wilson cabinet to
support his ‘zero tolerance’ approach. The Plowden report had, by this time,
stimulated an interest in secondary reorganization from LEAs that had initially
resisted Circular 10/65 and DES officials were so overwhelmed with paperwork from
compliant authorities that they were seeking summary updates from the CSC
(Kerckhoff et al, 1996, p. 29).

The winter and early spring of 1969-70 marked the beginning of the end of the post-
war partnership in education between central and local government. Short’s
misjudgement contributed to this, but he was not wholly responsible. Edward Boyle’s
departure from politics in 1969 symbolized the end of an old order of politicians who
had unsuccessfully sought to prevent education from becoming a political football.
His successor as Shadow Education Secretary, Margaret Thatcher, was more in tune
with the ‘Black Paper’ thinking that was to significantly influence future Conservative
Party policy. DES relations with CEOs and Education Committee chairs cooled after
1970, while Thatcher became the patron of grammar school preservation groups.

18
The project of comprehensive education, which LEAs had begun, was never
completed, nor did it advance sufficiently to be fairly judged (Crook, Power and
Whitty, 1999). When Labour re-introduced its request for comprehensive plans from
selective LEAs in 1974 Secretary of State Fred Mulley faced defiance from seven
Conservative authorities while another, Tameside, decided to withdraw the
comprehensive plan submitted by its Labour predecessors. The Tameside dispute
ended in a 1975 High Court adjudication against Mulley, who retaliated with an
Education Act – subsequently repealed by Margaret Thatcher’s government –
requiring the submission of reorganization proposals from still-selective LEAs
(Crook, Power and Whitty, 1999, pp. 15-16). By this time, however, the national
education landscape was changing. The ‘Great Debate’ of the late 1970s shifted the
focus away from structures and towards the issues of standards, curriculum and
teacher training. Subsequently, in the name of ‘choice’ and ‘diversity’ LEAs lost their
monopoly of control over schools and school systems. Indeed, under New Labour’s
strict grammar school ballot regulations they have even lost their right to participate in
the kind of debates that gave comprehensive reorganization a democratic flavour.

Correspondence: David Crook, History and Philosophy Group, University of London

Institute of Education, 20 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AL, UK.

NOTES

[1] The joint Leicester University- Duke University (North Carolina) project was
entitled ‘When a society changes its school system: the introduction of
comprehensive schools in Great Britain’ between 1991 and 1993 and produced
a major book (Kerckhoff et al, 1996). Thanks are due to the Spencer
Foundation and to the custodians of the primary source materials listed below.
[2] University of Leeds, Boyle Papers, MS 660/25217, briefing paper headed
‘Prime Minister’, 3 July 1963.
[3] University of Warwick Modern Records Centre, CASE archives, MSS 236/3
South Bucks file, memorandum of 24 November 1966.

19
[4] University of Warwick Modern Records Centre, CASE archives, MSS 236/3,
Richmond file, ‘An account of the campaign against selection at 11+ in
Richmond-upon-Thames’ by Joan Sallis (1970).
[5] University of Warwick Modern Records Centre, CASE archives, MSS 236/3,
‘Report of the Committee for the Year ended 31st July 1966’.
[6] University of Leeds, AEC papers, A1113, Robinson to Alexander, 17 March
1969.
[7] University of Leeds, AEC papers, A1113, Short to Alexander, 26 March 1970.
[8] Bristol Records Office, Education Committee Labour Group minutes, 21 May
1952.
[9] University of Warwick Modern Records Centre, IAHM archives, MSS 58/3/1,
Liverpool file 2, draft memorandum sent to the IAHM President, E.H.
Goddard with a note, 16 October 1964.
[10] University of Leeds, Boyle Papers MS 660/2582, Burgess to Boyle, 21 June
1967.

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23