Fear of comprehensives holds us back
I WAS at Amherst School in the 1950s. I benefited enormously from some excellent teachers. In particular the deputy-head Mr Rowe, and the superb Miss Daley. In 1957 I took the 11-plus exam and got a place at the Grammar School. Most of my friends went to Vauvert School, then the secondary school for the Town area. What surprised me was that several of them were actually much brighter than me. Worse, a number of pupils who had been perfectly OK at Amherst went off the rails at Vauvert because they felt like second-class citizens. It was the old adage. Label someone a failure and they start to act as a failure.
I was therefore intrigued when I did the review of secondary schools in 2011 that Guernsey still retained the 11-plus exam. This is an exam based on the long discredited and possibly fraudulent work of Cyril Burt. This is an exam that favours those families who can afford to pay for private tuition. This is an exam where all attempts to find the holy grail of a test that is resistant to coaching have failed. There is simply no exam that can reliably predict future performance at the age of 11.
The key reason why Guernsey continues to retain the 11-plus is the fear of the dreaded comprehensive school. For some islanders, the very word 'comprehensive' is toxic. And I can understand why. I spent 40 years in teaching in England, 22 years as a headteacher turning around failing comprehensive schools. The early comprehensives of the 1970s and '80s were mostly disasters. Many were led by headteachers with the right academic qualifications but no common sense. Others were administered by extreme left wing councils of the happy/clappy variety. Comprehensives were a byword for failure.
Today it could not be more different. The emphasis today is that schools are first and foremost centres for learning, and the fundamental basis of a successful school is quality teaching and learning. Coupled with this is a firm commitment to traditional values. As a headteacher I always insisted on high standards and expectations, good discipline and plain old fashioned good manners. If anyone doubts the changes that have happened in comprehensive schools look at the evidence. It is overwhelming. Much of the improvement has come about via Ofsted inspections. Today headteachers know that if they get a poor inspection report, Ofsted will be back again in a few months.
No improvement and the headteacher is out of a job. And of course this is how it should be.
Around 90% of children in England go to comprehensive schools. All the evidence regarding these schools – and there is an awful lot of it – shows that the top 25% of pupils achieve just as well as they would have done in a grammar school, but the rest do considerably better than they would have done in a secondary modern. In Guernsey the downside of the selection system is that it is too easy to create winners and losers. Long term this simply reinforces social exclusion in the island.
Guernsey education has improved hugely over the last five years, both in terms of inspection reports and exam results. The success at LMDC School is a classic example of this.
However, an increasing number of people on the island feel the 11-plus exam has had its day.
The question is will our politicians be brave enough to change the system? Some are clearly not for changing. Some will listen to anecdotal rather than hard evidence. Some will simply look over their shoulder and check where their votes will come at the next election. Some will be brave enough to take the plunge.
In life, change is always threatening. But is education in Guernsey there to serve the needs of pupils at just one school, or all the pupils in the island?
DENIS MULKERRIN CBE,
Retired Headteacher.
