Modelo de interacción recíproca glutamato/dopamina/GABA en la sustancia

education in England and Wales

Having described the evolution of apprenticeships and their role in socialising adolescents into adulthood, this chapter moves on to provide further context for the participants’ evidence. This subsection examines the system of mass

compulsory schooling in England and Wales during the research time period, 1959-1989. Consequently, the discussion centres on the background to the 1944 Education Act and the subsequent impact on the participants’ education of the tripartite system, grammar school selection, and comprehensive schools. In late 1940s Britain, there was a demand for general reform arising from the wartime coalition government’s commitment to peacetime full employment, and from a desire for a range of general improvements to the population’s social and

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economic welfare. This was in part, a reflection of a ‘…war-engendered spirit of egalitarianism’ (Wallace, 1981: 285) and the emergence of the post-war

settlement. A consensus of social democratic opinion prevailed in the country in which the principles of the welfare state, most predominantly full employment and free at the point of delivery healthcare and education, were widely

accepted, along with a popular determination to avoid a repeat of the inter-war experience and economic downturn of the 1920s and 1930s (Hobsbawm, 2013). This, coupled with other social changes, such as the increasing participation of women in a wider range of full-time work (especially that of middle-class and married women) (inter alia, Lehmberg and Heyck, 2002; Grint, 2005; Hobsbawm, 2013), and burgeoning social equality, had transformed society. As a consequence, the country’s population had raised their aspirations in life and education was perceived to be the key factor that would lead to an increase in opportunities to meet this widespread need (Rubenstein and Simon, 1973).

To understand the education policy of the post-war period, it is first necessary to briefly explore its context. The 1944 Education Act was conceived against a background of an existing school system that had consistently failed to provide a sufficiently educated workforce, and that was discriminatory and elitist (inter

alia, Blackman, 1992; Green, 2013). This state of affairs had arisen because of

some peculiarities that can be ascribed to the nature of the British state. Since the 17th _{century, the development of the state had been secondary to the}

development of private interests and private exchange (inter alia, Judge and Dickson, 1991; Green, 2013). Consequently the state had developed along the liberal lines of free trade and the laws of the market to allow for the expansion of commerce, and this stance was also reflected in the state’s fundamental

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relationship to the individual in which the state adopted a non-interventionist role. The educational system had been historically impeded by a voluntary approach which had been fostered by this relationship. Without state

involvement in education, Britain lacked the centralised control that had been successfully developed much earlier by some European countries and in America (Gillard, 2011; Green, 2013).

Aimed overwhelmingly at boys, English education policy followed the liberal political economy ethos of laissez-faire. Following this philosophy, education was heavily dependent on private initiative and independent control. Its

governance was designed to protect the interests of the Anglican Church, who as the Established Church considered education to be their natural prerogative, and of the land-owning aristocracy, who as education’s beneficiaries, were amateur in outlook and promoted an anti-industrial culture (Green, 2013). Schools vigorously resisted any suggestions of educational reform as an assault on their freedom, and as a consequence they remained classicist in their curricula, eschewing scientific and technical training as unsuitable for their needs. Instead, it relied on producing a small academic elite to fill the upper ranks of the civil service and the military (inter alia, Keep and Mayhew, 1991; Green, 2013). Consequently, a system of education was created that imposed class barriers and restricted social mobility (inter alia, Judge and Dickson, 1991; Green, 2013).

During the 19th _{century, and as a consequence of Britain’s Industrial Revolution,}

aristocratic domination of education became increasingly challenged by middle class economic interests, as well as the nation’s industrial needs, which both required specific education to meet them (inter alia, Green, 2013: McCullock, 2016). As part of the middle classeconomic imperative, working class education

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was also needed to ‘…produce a more productive and willing class of workers in their mills, factories and foundries’ (Green, 2013: 241).

The involvement of the state in education was slowly and reluctantly accepted however, but the eventual introduction of mass education for children aged 5 to 13 by the 1870 Elementary Education Act laid the foundations for a national system of education in England and Wales. This Act created local school boards to establish and administer elementary schools where they were needed, but allowed voluntary schools to continue unrestrained (About

Parliament: Living Heritage, 2017). In 1902, a new Education Act, also known as the Balfour Act, created Local Education Authorities (LEAs) based on the existing boroughs and county councils to replace the existing school boards set up by the 1870 statute. It also made provision for secondary and technical education through encouraging councils to support existing grammar schools and to establish new ones, although these mostly remained the preserve of the middle classes.

The Balfour Act provided for a state funded ‘all age’ elementary education from five years of age to the statutory school leaving age of 12, later raised to 14 in 1921. This legislation finally emulated the publicly financed educational systems that provided an educated workforce for the emerging industries, developed previously throughout parts of Europe and the United States (Gillard, 2011; Green, 2013). However, the continental and American systems’ curricula

prioritised science and engineering, whereas the 1902 Act still preferred instead give precedence to the ‘…classical model of education, the one preferred by gentlemen' (Benn and Chitty, 1996: 4).

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period, with secondary education still the preserve of the middle and upper classes who had the ability to pay maintained grammar school fees, or for a small group of working class pupils that passed an entrance examination to gain a Scholarship. The grammar school curriculum heavily favoured academic subjects and prepared its learners for university, whereas the established

elementary, central and trade schools’ curricula prepared their pupils for work or domestic life (Brown and Lauder, 1992). Pupils in grammar schools were able to enter for the School Certificate, which along with the Scholarship it is

claimed, maintained class privilege and forced the elementary schools to act as a mechanism for grading pupils for identifiable occupational destinations

(Blackman, 1992; Ashton, 1992).

The Beveridge Report published in 1942, included plans to transform the education system into a more democratic and egalitarian model, and the in- coming Labour government, elected on a tide of popular support in 1945, introduced these reforms, by passing into law the 1944 Education Act.

Education would now be organised into three stages: primary, secondary and further education. Children would remain in primary education until the age of 11, and then enter a discrete form of secondary education until the newly established leaving age of 15.

The previously established LEAs were given powers to set local policies and to allocate resources to schools, but importantly, the 1944 Act did not stipulate their type. This led most LEAs to create the ‘tripartite system’ recommended by the Spens Report (1938) (inter alia, Rubenstein and Simon, 1973; McCulloch, 1998; 2016), which organised secondary schools into three types; grammar, technical and modern. Pupils were allocated to each type of secondary school

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through a selective examination commonly known as the 11 plus 9_{. Other}

models such as multilateral and bipartite school systems were adopted by some LEAs, mostly in metropolitan areas. It was anticipated that a ‘…parity of esteem’ (McCulloch, 1998: 44) would exist between these different types of schools, but problems were quickly identified that would prove difficult to resolve. In

particular was the problem of convincing parents that the technical and modern schools, with their vocational focus, were of equal value to grammar schools and their academic curricula (Blackman, 1992).

Opposition to the tripartite system came from many quarters, and was quite robust at local level. It was argued that as selection through the 11 plus examination was an entry criterion to grammar schools, this contradicted the socialist principles of the government (McCulloch, 1998; 2016; Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, 1982). In reply to this allegation, it was claimed that by abolishing maintained grammar schools, tripartism ensured selection on merit only (Rubenstein and Simon, 1973) and so did not present an ideological paradox. However, it was claimed that the tripartite system continued to

influence destinations, with Banks (1963: 240) noting that ‘The choice of school at eleven plus may well imply the choice of occupation’.

The deliberations over the tripartite system however, were eventually resolved by public opinion. As some critics had predicted, the problem of ‘parity of esteem’ proved insurmountable and some types of schools failed. This was clearly evident when it was found that Secondary Technical schools were being

9 _{The 11 plus examination was introduced by the 1944 Education Act, and was enthusiastically}

maintained by the incoming Conservative government after the 1951 general election. It is so called because it is taken by pupils aged 11. It was officially abolished in 1976 when the comprehensive system was introduced, but still remains in use as an entrance examination for the remaining grammar schools in some parts of the country.

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avoided by parents of high ability children as a destination (Banks, 1963). Originally expected to accommodate 10-15 per cent of the school population, they eventually provided less than four per cent of school places (McCulloch, 1998). Consequently, LEAs were modifying their mix of schools, with some adopting a bipartite system due to this low demand. Some areas, most notably the London County Council, had previously preferred to develop multilateral, or comprehensive schools which provided education to children of all aptitudes, but retained the existing grammar schools and their selection processes. Ostensibly, selection’s purpose was to provide desirable grammar school places for academically bright children, but Simon (1953) suggests that its purpose was instead to regulate the intake of children to these schools, as they only had the resources to provide for a fifth of the school population. Simon (1953; 1991) further argues that selection’s purpose was really a form social control which provided support for the existing social and economic order. But by the 1950s, a growing body of opinion considered the selection process to not only be inefficient but unfair, due to inherent cultural, racial and gender biases (Brown and Lauder, 1992), and perceived it to be invalid as a method of

evaluating intelligence (Simon, 1953; 1991; Rubenstein & Simon, 1973; Thom, 2004). Later research in the 1960s, found that testing had more use as an administrative tool because intelligence was ‘…immensely useful’ for

bureaucracy, but ‘…vastly simplified’ human circumstances (Jones, K., 2003: 60).

Statistically, selective testing was failing also, with a growing disparity of

success rates between schools and pupils (Blackman, 1992). Some secondary modern schools were found to be out-performing grammar schools, an

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some of their pupils had been coached for the 11 plus exam (Thom, 2004). It was contended that if coaching could improve performance in these

examinations, by as much as 16 points as was claimed, then this brought into question the validity of the innate intelligence argument used to support the continuation of grammar schools. Thom (2004: 517) maintains that if such improvements were possible, then ‘…serious injustices were being perpetuated in the guise of extreme fairness’.

The Labour Party campaigned in the 1959 general election with the slogan ‘…a grammar school education for all’, a phrase reputedly coined by its leader Hugh Gaitskell (McCulloch, 2016: 241), in which it claimed that a grammar school standard education would be provided in the form of higher quality education for all children. Despite losing this election, a new Labour government was returned to power in 1964 under Harold Wilson, and a year after election introduced Circular 10/65 to LEAs requiring that they all make plans to introduce

comprehensive education (ibid., 2016). By 1966, 77 London comprehensives existed, offering General Certificate of Education (GCE) examinations for their pupils at both ‘O’ and ‘A’ levels, along with the Certificate of Secondary

Education (CSE)10_{, with encouraging levels of success, which was partly due to}

the growing tendency for pupils to remain beyond the minimum school leaving age (Maclure, 1990). By 1976 comprehensives accounted for 76% of all schools in England and Wales (Halsey, et al., 1980).

Eventually, the comprehensive system became accepted, even if grudgingly, by

10 _{These were subject specific qualifications used in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. GCEs were}

examination based school leaving qualifications introduced in 1951 to replace the School Certificate, and were awarded at ‘O’ (Ordinary) level and ‘A’ (Advanced) level, and were intended for more academically able pupils. The CSEs introduced in 1965, used both examination and a controlled assessment of course work and so were suitable for a broader range of students. Both were replaced in 1988 by the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE).

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successive governments. Subsequent Conservative governments were apprehensive about continuing with the comprehensive experiment as a consequence of growing media criticism of standards (Rubenstein and Simon, 1973; Brown and Lauder, 1992). However, during the period of this research, they tolerated the development of comprehensives, providing they did not interfere with existing grammar schools, or attract the middle-class pupils that would normally attend those schools.

This section has explained how the school system in England and Wales

changed since its modern foundations were first laid in 1870. It is in this context that the participants in this research progressed through education, with the majority attending comprehensives either as a consequence of failing their 11 plus examinations or due to educational restructuring and the introduction of comprehensive schooling. The literature has indicated that the type of schools attended had an influence on the future employment destinations of their pupils through streaming and choice of curricula (inter alia, Banks, 1963; Rubenstein and Simon, 1973; Simon, 1991). The next section examines the prevailing economic conditions during the research timeframe, and considers their impact on the youth labour market and apprenticeships.