22. Was There a Golden Age?

In every era some educators claim literacy and numeracy standards are slipping. The author of this extract gives good reasons why, in Britain, these claims are without real substance: there has been no golden age in British schools. What reasons does he have in saying so? How does he view British education today?

Many of the critics of modern education in Britain hark back to a Golden Age earlier this century when standards, they feel, were higher; they advocate a return to 'traditional' teaching methods which they claim were proved to be successful. But was there ever a Golden Age in our schools? Certainly not in this century if the following authoritative sources are to be believed:

 ... there are millions of children in this country in this century who from their babyhood up to the age of fourteen are drilled in reading, writing and arithmetic upon a system the result of which is that when they attain the age of thirteen or fourteen and are finally dismissed from school, they can neither read, nor write, nor cipher.

1904 (Sir John Gorst, Secretary to the Board of Education)

 ... it is a fact that the average boy and girl on leaving school is unable to write English with clearness or fluency or any degree of grammatical accuracy.

1912 (Conference of Engineering Associations)

 ... it has been said that accuracy in the manipulation of figures does not reach the same standard which was reached twenty years ago.

1925 (the Board of Education)

 ... we have received strong evidence of the poor quality of the English of secondary school pupils—we are confronted here with a serious failure of the secondary schools.

1943 (Norwood Report)

The same picture emerges if one looks at adult literacy. In 1945 Sir Cyril Burt found that "by the age of twenty-one 1.5-2 percent of the population of this country are illiterate and 15-20 percent semiliterate".

It seems reasonable to assume that every educational survey conducted since the introduction of the public system of education began has found serious defects in the educational standards of its day, and they were probably all correct in what they found. While it is foolish to be complacent about educational standards today it is absurd to pretend that all was well in our schools before the introduction of the comprehensive system and 'modern' methods of teaching. It is worth remembering that it was dissatisfaction with the methods of teaching in the inter-war years that ushered in a different approach to children and to teaching methods and attitudes.

Another reason for change was the widespread condemnation of the 11-plus examination. The faults of the system of selection at eleven have been well-documented elsewhere and it is clear that many children were misallocated. Not surprisingly, pupils tended to live up or down to what was expected of them, so that the examination results became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Moreover, the number of grammar school students varied in different local authorities. For example, about 40 percent of children in Wales went to grammar schools whereas in a number of other authorities' areas the proportion was only 15 percent. Thus children were allocated according to the proportion of grammar and secondary modern school places available rather than according to their aptitude for each type of education.

It is important to remember too that when the opponents of the comprehensive system shout about the absence of parental choice, they overlook the fact that in the old selection system there was no choice either for most parents. Rather less than 20 percent of children were able to go to grammar schools and the remaining 80 percent had no choice but to go to secondary modern schools.

Examination results are certainly not the only proper tests of the quality of schools, but it is worth looking at the changes that have occurred during the period of the major shift towards comprehensive education. In 1966, 22 percent of all school-leavers had attained five or more O levels, grade C or better; in 1976 the figure was 25 percent. In 1966, 16 percent of all school-leavers had gained between one and four O levels, grade C or better; in 1976 the figure was 26 percent.

There is no valid evidence to show that standards overall are falling and certainly none to show that fully developed comprehensive systems lead to any lowering of standards. Rather the reverse is true. But this does not mean that all is well. There is still, for example, far too much variation between one region and another. Far too many children are still denied the opportunities they should have and their attainment is consequently short of what it should be. Moreover, the mere fact that overall standards are not falling and indeed are generally improving is of little comfort if the demands from industry for ever greater standards are not met. It is no encouragement to an average school-leaver to know that he leaves with higher standards than his predecessors did if the standards are not high enough to find him a satisfying job.

We have rising expectations so far as education is concerned—we all expect to see more and better results. The system has not met these expectations, but this does not mean that it is in decline. It means that society is changing faster, that its demands are growing more rapidly and that we need to develop our educational system to meet these demands. It is clear, however, that the only constructive approach is to look to the future, not to return to the methods of the past in search of a Golden Age of education which never existed.

From Britain: Continuity and Change, ed., Roger Bivand, etc.,

Pergamon Press Ltd., 1981.