Among the increasing issues attracting the attention of Anglesey’s LEA and its comprehensive school head teachers during the period 1964-74, several related to the limited size of the island’s secondary schools. It was also during this period that questions were starting to emerge as to the efficiency of the island’s ‘11-18’ comprehensive schools. This period was one of relative organisational continuity on Anglesey as far as official LEA policies were concerned, but significant developments were taking place inside the secondary schools during this time. Even though Anglesey reviewed its system around the time of Circular 10/65, it was decided that the authority would adhere to its scheme of ‘straight through 11-18 comprehensive schools’ and that there was no need to modify the system.14
However, in the wake of the circular, and in the run-up to the LEA’s submission of its proposal to the MoE (to retain its already existing system), some significant scrutiny of the scheme was carried out. The Director made substantial enquiries with a view to ‘review[ing] the working of the system of comprehensive schooling in Anglesey, to identify any weaknesses which may exist and to consider in what ways it could be improved’, and some rather problematic issues were subsequently raised.15
The main concern raised in this review was the feasibility of Sixth Form provision within the existing set-up. So called ‘all-through’ comprehensive schools had come in for a lot of criticism during the late 1950s and early 1960s due to their size. Questions had been asked about the welfare of pupils in schools where the intake was considered too large. However, some concerns had also been raised as to the viability of Sixth Forms in comprehensive schools with a limited entry of six or seven parallel classes,and this was the issue which occupied much of the review in the wake of Circular 10/65.16
14 AEC, ‘Letter from the Director to the Welsh Department’, 26 May 1966, London, TNA: ED 216/26. 15 D[evelopment] C[ommittee], ‘Reports and Minutes’, 5 April 1966, Llangefni, AA: WA 1/63. 16 For more on this, see Chapter Four.
195 Jones-Davies (Directory of Education, 1962-1964) had commented on this already in 1962 when he admitted that ‘[T]he number studying each subject in each year of Sixth Form is of necessity very small’. He also emphasised that the possibility of each school specialising in particular subjects for Sixth Form study had indeed been considered when the original Development Plan had been prepared.17 However, the ultimate decision had been to establish ‘11-18’ schools, and for the Sixth
Form to be an integral part of each individual school. Therefore, even though this issue had been acknowledged earlier on in the comprehensivisation process, alternative arrangements for the Sixth Form were not seriously contemplated during the period of great organisational reforms on the island. It was in the wake of Circular 10/65 that the question was again raised. By this time (1966) the practical problems involved with providing Sixth Form studies in relatively small comprehensive schools was less hypothetical. The system had been implemented for over ten years and difficulties associated with Sixth Form staffing, timetabling and pupils’ choices had by this time become apparent and real. The Director’s report, which was submitted to the Development Committee in 1966, acknowledged the broader and more general opinion at the time that:
It is claimed that a fair selection [of subjects] spread over three years can only be offered when the sixth form is 400 to 500 strong as they are in schools like Dulwich College and Manchester Grammar School…The introduction of 11-18
comprehensive schools has if anything aggravated the problem inasmuch as one would need a comprehensive school of between 2,000 and 3,000 to produce a sixth form of this size.18
These observations had often been made by Pedley and others who favoured a tiered system of comprehensive schooling, and could clearly be applied to all four of Anglesey’s secondary schools since they only accommodated 340 Sixth Formers between them.19 The view that ‘11-18’
comprehensive schools had ‘aggravated the problem’ seemed to suggest that Anglesey’s scheme did have some inherent problems that needed to be addressed. The report proceeded by highlighting some examples to illustrate significant problems stemming from the ‘11-18’ organisation. Firstly, the staffing issue was exemplified by the situation in Llangefni where ten per cent of the school
17 See Jones-Davies, ‘Secondary Organization in Anglesey’, pp. 366-369. 18 DC, ‘Reports and Minutes’, 5 April 1966, Llangefni, AA: WA 1/63.
19 For more on Pedley’s views, see Chapter Four. For information about the numbers in Anglesey’s Sixth Form,
196 population was made up of Sixth Formers, while teachers devoted approximately thirty per cent of their time to Sixth Form instruction. The staffing ratio at the school was roughly one teacher to every 19 pupils, while the ratio in the Sixth Form was the significantly lower figure of 1:5. It was pointed out that this situation was unfair for pupils in the lower school, and also uneconomical due to the high number of specialist teachers needed to cover the teaching of the Sixth Form. Secondly, timetabling was described by the head teacher Davies not merely as a ‘compromise’ and an
‘inconvenience’, but even as a form of ‘exploitation’. Apart from in a few popular subjects, teachers were forced to instruct first and second year A-level pupils together. Furthermore, he believed it to be:
impossible to initiate first year pupils with the more mature ways of the sixth form; they are thrown in at the deep end to sink or swim... A proper division of the sixth form courses into Majority [sic] and Minority [sic] time subjects is impossible and consequently, Anglesey pupils are at a disadvantage compared with those applying for admission to universities, etc. from big sixth forms.20
The limited numbers of Sixth Form pupils in Anglesey’s ‘11-18’ comprehensive schools resulted in restrictions to the curriculum because of staffing issues. Teaching was undertaken in classes
consisting of a combination of pupils from the two year groups within the Sixth Form, but could only really be focused on the education of the most advanced pupils. Davies even suggested that the island’s Sixth Forms were ‘so small that no one is really doing sixth form work. What we are doing is Advanced work under difficulties’.21 The report also conceded that apart from the administrational,
organisational and economic problems associated with Sixth Form instruction, senior pupils’ academic studies consequently suffered, an issue that would become more apparent as the 1960s and 1970s progressed. Problems concerning Sixth Form teaching in all of Anglesey’s schools had in
20 DC, ‘Reports and Minutes’, 5 April 1966, Llangefni, AA: WA 1/63.
21 Ibid. These observations were in stark contrast, however, to Davies’ comments in 1963 when he had
assigned the growing Sixth Forms, and the associated problems, (at least partially) to: ‘the Committee’s organisation of its Secondary education on comprehensive lines…The Anglesey Comprehensive Schools, with the possible exception of Holyhead, were planned for small Sixth Forms, and no account had been taken of the special requirements of the Sixth Forms in the staffing ratio…’ The suggestion was of course that the growth in numbers had resulted in a situation where pupils from the different year groups within the Sixth Form had to be taught together by the same teacher. Unless the teacher/pupil ratio was significantly increased, or Sixth Forms could somehow be concentrated, the ‘11-18’ organisation of the island’s schools meant that Sixth Form instruction would remain ineffective and uneconomical.