Bangor University DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Pioneering comprehensive schooling. The politics of education: reform and response on Anglesey circa 1935-1974 Olsson-Rost, Kerstin Award date: 2016 Awarding institution: Bangor University Link to publication General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ? Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 03. Oct. 2021 Pioneering Comprehensive Schooling. The Politics of Education: Reform and response on Anglesey circa 1935-1974 A PhD Thesis submitted to Bangor University 19 January 2016 By Kerstin Anna Sofia Olsson Rost Summary This thesis examines the development of Anglesey’s pioneering scheme of comprehensive education between 1935 and 1974. It scrutinises the contributing factors that permitted Anglesey to become the first local authority to introduce a fully comprehensive system of secondary education in 1953. The political process behind educational developments is analysed, with particular focus on the relationship between local and central government. Due to the island’s prominent role as a pioneer of comprehensive schooling, this local case study is also positioned within the wider educational context of the time. The broadly chronological approach of the study shows the Local Education Authority’s (LEA) early support of multilateralism, and its successful resistance to the desires of the Board of Education (BoE) throughout the 1930s and into the 1940s. The implementation of the pioneering scheme in 1953 demonstrated continuity rather than change. It is emphasised that the exceptional circumstances which existed on Anglesey was the predominant reason why such an experimental scheme was allowed to go ahead. The early introduction of a comprehensive system guaranteed Anglesey a prominent place within the broader educational debate during the 1950s and 1960s. The thesis evaluates the significant interest and scrutiny the education system engendered, and the interrelationship between local developments and the wider educational debate. This work reveals how issues were emerging in Anglesey’s comprehensive schools during the latter half of the 1960s and the early 1970s. It analyses how Anglesey’s comprehensive scheme was becoming a cause for concern locally, at the very time that central government expressed its official support for comprehensive schools. Paradoxically, the LEA’s reservations also coincided with Anglesey’s case being used in the national press to justify and strengthen comprehensive reform, showing the discrepancy between the focus of the national debate and the reality of comprehensive schooling in Britain at this time. Acknowledgements First of all I would like to thank my supervisors Professor Andrew Edwards and Dr Lowri Rees for all their support and advice throughout the writing of this thesis. They have been patient (sorry for all the ‘headmasters’ Andrew!) and understanding when progress was slow, and kept me on track to see this thing through. I am very grateful to the Arts and Humanities Research Council for funding this thesis, and without which I would never have been able to leave my job to pursue further academic studies. I also want to thank all the staff at the National Archives in Kew, the British Library in London, the National Library in Aberystwyth and the Institute of Education (UCL). I would particularly like to thank the staff at the Anglesey Archives for all their help and assistance, and for always being so welcoming – even on my umpteenth visit of the week! I am particularly grateful to all the interviewees who provided insights into the lives of pupils in Anglesey’s schools - without your contributions I would never have been able to understand the life of the schools the way I did. I would also like to thank the local schools who accommodated my visits, showed me around, and helped me locate further interviewees. Thanks to all my PhD friends (historian and non-historians) who brightened up the long days in the PhD-room and beyond. Thanks also to all my ‘regular’ friends and my family for being so positive and encouraging throughout, and for successfully feigning interest in my repetitive tales of yet another day of having ‘read a book’ or ‘done some writing’. I would also like to thank the staff in the History Department for their help, guidance and support during my time at Bangor University. I am particularly grateful to those of you who ploughed through the whole thing - dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s without complaining - you know who you are and you know I owe you big time! Finally, thanks Mark for encouraging me in the first place and for putting up with the working-seven- days-a-week routine for the last six months (it is definitely my turn to do the cooking and the hoovering…) I am very happy that you stuck with me through the poverty days too, so thank you! Contents Abbreviations .......................................................................................................................................... 1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ 2 Chapter One .......................................................................................................................................... 32 Population and depopulation ........................................................................................................... 37 Poverty or Prosperity ........................................................................................................................ 46 Employment and Unemployment ..................................................................................................... 54 Chapter Two .......................................................................................................................................... 74 The LEA’s vision for reorganisation ................................................................................................... 76 Deliberations with the Board of Education....................................................................................... 88 Realities and practicalities ................................................................................................................ 98 Chapter Three ..................................................................................................................................... 110 Exceptional Circumstances ............................................................................................................. 112 Preparing for Implementation ........................................................................................................ 132 Responses and consequences......................................................................................................... 138 Chapter Four ....................................................................................................................................... 146 The Anglesey system – ‘All-through’ comprehensive schools ........................................................ 150 From grammar schools to comprehensive schools ........................................................................ 160 Decisions within the schools ........................................................................................................... 177 External scrutiny – consequences and impact ................................................................................ 183 Chapter Five ........................................................................................................................................ 190 School size – a new problem? ......................................................................................................... 194 Problems in providing for all abilities ............................................................................................. 202 Addressing the issues ...................................................................................................................... 209 Anglesey’s system – the national and the local contexts ............................................................... 220 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................... 233 BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................................................... 247 Appendix 1 .......................................................................................................................................... 262 Abbreviations Anglesey Association of Assistant Teachers in Secondary Schools AAAT Board of Education BoE Certificate of Secondary Education CSE Development Committee DC Diocesan Education