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for the discussion of new trends in education Summer 1984 Volume 26 Number 3 £1 The Curriculum Content and Process Editorial Contents Board Michael Armstrong, Harwell County Primary School, Vol.26 No.3 Summer 1984 Oxfordshire. Michael Clarke, Little Hill Junior School, Denis Lawton Curriculum Control 60 Leicestershire. Maurice Plaskow Education and Social Annabelle Dixon, Chalk Dell Infant School, Hertford. Class 63 Lee Enright, West Moors Middle School, Dorset. A.V. Kelly Comprehensive Primary Education 65 Judith Hunt, Rawlett School, Tarn worth. Maurice Holt The Dream and the Roger Seckington, Earl Shilton Community College, Reality 68 Leicestershire. Brian Simon Brian Jackson: an Liz Thomson, Longmoor Teachers' Centre, Hert­ appreciation 69 fordshire. Jean Rudduck and Independence of Mind, Peter Thomson, Judgemeadow Community College, David Hopkins Academic Sixth Form Leicestershire. Study and the Library 71 Roy Waters, ILEA Inspectorate. John Elliott Improving the Quality of Teaching through Action- Harvey Wyatt, The Woodlands School, Coventry. Research 74 American Correspondent Angela Dixon Keith Joseph and the Joan Shapiro, University of Pennsylvania. Science Criteria 78 Editors Lee Enright Soft Focus 80 Brian Simon, Leicester. Reviews Misuse of Testing 82 Critique from the Left 82 Nanette Whitbread, Leicester Polytechnic. A Workshop Atmosphere 83 Reviews Editor Clyde Chitty, Earl Shilton Community College, The Next Forum Leicestershire. The focus of this number is The Democratic Control Of Education. Brian Simon asks 'To ISSN 0046-4708 Whom Do Schools Belong?' Richard Pring writes on parental involvement through school governorships (based on a survey in Devon). Ned Editorial Communications: typescript articles Newett contributes from his experience on the (1500-2000 words) and contributions to discussion (800 whole issue of staff involvement and participation words maximum) should be addressed to The Editor, 11 in the control of schools, while John Bull, Ray Pendene Road, Leicester LE2 3DQ. Tel: 0533-705176. Pinder and David Herd all write on student involvement. Articles on community involvement Business information: correspondence relating to will be contributed by John Watts (on Solihull), subscriptions etc. should be addressed to Anne War­ John Rennie (on Coventry) and Henry Miller and wick, FORUM, 4 Bourton Crescent, Oadby, Leicester Phil Carspecken on the Croxteth school in LE2 4PA. Tel: 0533-716284. Liverpool. In addition we will carry Andrew Fairbairn's moving tribute to Stewart Mason Reductions available on bulk orders of current number, given at a Memorial Meeting in London earlier (e.g. 10 copies for £10.) this year — particularly his contribution to comprehensive education. Forum is published three times a year in September, January and May. £4 a year or £1.35 an issue. A Major Challenge Since our last issue, comprehensive education has faced Walden on TV recently, 'then I emphasise that there a major challenge, and has come through greatly must be differentiation within schools' (TES, 17.2.84; strengthened in its assurance of mass public support. our emphasis added to Sir Joseph's to ensure his point is This episode (not yet over) has left blood on the nose of taken, Eds.). As a correspondent from the Soilhull area many people who should have known better. wrote in January, 'I believe that parental action has Late last autumn a public opinion poll seemed to successfully blocked the Education Committee's indicate popular scepticism about comprehensives and machinations and that the battle will now shift towards to support the grammar/modern set-up. A considerable protection of non-streaming and banding, both of number of Tory MP's then jumped on the bandwaggon which may come under direct edict from the Committee with a Parliamentary motion proposing reversion to if it has its way'. selection. All this seems to have motivated Mr Robert That differentiation within schools is a prime Dunn (and his acolytes) at the DES to make a series of objective of Ministerial policy is abundantly clear from weekend speeches advocating the return to selection, recent actions. Not only is there pressure to increase and, more important, certain local councils actually to streaming and banding, as our correspondent says, but put up plans to implement this supposedly 'popular' the broad outlines of a new tripartitism is now clearly proposition. The best known of these was, of course, emerging. Refusal to modify external examinations in Solihull, but others followed suit, or, in various ways, the form of A and O levels GCE (or at least continued attempted to extend the selective element in local procrastication); the introduction and recent massive systems. expansion of TVEI; Joseph's 'discovery' of the 'bottom Whatever the respondents may have said in reply to 40 per cent' and his plans for these (Sheffield speech) the specific wording of the public opinion poll, when the make it clear that the objective is to enforce the old matter came down to earth in an overt attempt to tripartite division within all comprehensive schools, transform existing comprehensives to grammar schools, with an academic track to A levels for a minority, a as at Solihull, the outcry was enormous. Teachers, technical/vocational track, and a criterion-referenced parents, the local communities — all concerned in the tested track for the 'bottom 40 per cent' — given school system — sprang to their defence. This was the agreement that even the helots must be literate in this case at Solihull, Redbridge and elsewhere. Support for day and age. existing comprehensives was almost total, so that Tory Falling rolls and parental choice are already posing a Councillors, representing these areas, were quickly threat to comprehensive systems, in that the forced to realise that they had backed the wrong horse opportunity is given for enhancing differentiation and rapidly backtracked. In Solihull even the second, between comprehensive schools in a given area without modified scheme, was totally defeated. Much the same actually introducing selection. Differentiation within happened at Richmond earlier, in Wiltshire, in schools compounds the direction — a school system that Berkshire, and at Redbridge where there has been a once more operates as a selective device conveying each massive response to campaigns to reject enhanced group or individual to his or her pre-ordained position selection in favour of comprehensive education. on the labour market (or, for many today, off it). This The Times Educational Supplement has advised the is not an educational system at all; rather the opposite. egregious Bob Dunn (who appears to have succeeded the We should take heart from the recent, and massive, equally egregious Rhodes Boyson) to come off it, and to defeats of the anti-comprehensivists, and realise that we try to play a more constructive role in the nation's are stronger than we think. Differentiation within educational affairs, for which he has some schools can also be defeated, as Forum readers will responsibility, after all. However that may be, the know well. It must be our object to ensure that it is; and concerted attack on comprehensive education has been here the contribution made by the Hargreaves report to beaten back, and this must surely be encouraging to the ILEA needs serious attention. Its objective of a comprehensive supporters in these gloom-laden times. common curriculum (or educational experiences) for all But it would be naive to think the matter will be ended to 16 is one that Forum has consistently supported. This there. Not at all. 'If it be so, as it is, that selection as represents an opposite objective to current Ministerial between schools is largely out', Keith Joseph told Brian policy, so far as it can be understood. 59 Curriculum Control Denis Lawton Now Director of the University of London Institute of Education and, for many years, head of its Curriculum Studies Department, Denis Lawton here assesses the significant moves towards more centralised control of the curriculum, but points to some divisions of view. As recently as ten years' ago, the two features of the By now there had been a change of government, and English educational system likely to surprise overseas the new Thatcher Conservative administration had been educationists were the lack of centralisation and the in office since May, 1979. From now on the story is not high level of teacher autonomy. This is no longer the simply one of the DES centralism, but a mixture of case. At precisely the time when many other countries centralism and the new Tory ideology. Thus in 1981, we have been moving away from central control, the DES had not only another DES document The School have been moving — quite sharply — in the opposite Curriculum (which was essentially a more respectable direction. It would be easy to blame the Conservative version of the 1980 Framework), but also a few hints administration for this trend, but whilst interesting that there would be increasing central influence on the developments have taken place since 1979, the story is curriculum of a party political nature. From 1979 there much more complicated —- starting at least as far back was much talk about improving standards, selection, as 1975 with the lead-up to the notorious Ruskin College back to the basics — all of which had clear curriculum speech by the Labour Party Prime Minister, James implications, but there were also some interventions by Callaghan in 1976. politicians which would have been unthinkable

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