High Time for a Change! - continued. ability of the children formed by the junior school teachers now carry greater waight. But it _is inaccurate t to say uy tt rat eleven-plus selection for the grammar school 4 has las been “abolished. . ‘The best that can be said “is
moe A Hen ameter Heth, that the torture of the old examination has been modified. What about the "failures" ? Thourh in svite of the great competition for gratuiar school vlaces, some »urists want us to ban the word "feilures!!. First, if they and their parents are oatisfied by this "lack of s wy cad Lf the’ »sarents do fot want the child to stey at cchool until he is 16, the child goes autorintically to his” Loeal secondary modern school, Ine cidentally, accordin® to where he lives, this nay be the "nodern" strean of-a bielaternl school, sO
Sther children, vith varcnts! suwrort, vay still wish to try to cone with a sramiar-type, GCE course up to the age of 16. If recommended by his junior sthool teachers, he may then be allowed to eo to the nearest bi-lateral school - into the grammar stream.
Now the first result of this scheme was to raise the number of children taking grammar school courses dramatically - to 32 per cent today. A progressive step to take.
The bi-lateral system has, however, seversl negative features, First, Since there is no sixth form work in the bi-lateral schools, successful GCE candidates have to transfer at 16 to grammar schools if they wish to go on with their studies. Ald.Green, Chairman of the Education Committee, recently stated in a letter that 25 ner cent of gramnar school sixth form punils had come from bi-lateral schools. That thev are permitted and even encouraged to do this is good; but the fact that the percentace is as high as this wrives that the original selection procedure at eleven was very inaccurate. You dontt congratulate a thief for not doins a murder and you should not congratulate an education system for righting wrongs comaitted against children at 11 by promotines then at 15.
More then that, the presence of sixth form work in the grammar school has tremendous educational repercussions throuzhout the rest of the grammar school, The staff, attracted by sixth form vork, is more hichly qualified. Scientific apvaratus available for fifth form work, for exammle, is undoubtedly better in the scrawmar than in the bi-lateral school and evidence is accumulating that, in the secondary modern schools, children with excellent potentialities are to be found in considerable nuiubers.
The effects too of this two-stage "creaming’” on the remaining secondary modern schools prover cannot be over-estimated, Some teachers annarently refer to them as "dust-bin'' schools and in Britein today we have bo room for dust-bin schools.
Therefore the City Party was wise (even before the election of Labour Government) to susvest that the tive is now rine for a move towards full comprehsnsive educationessr.ceoe
Let our City Fathers Lead,