Education 16 - 19 (1993)

In Transition

Eric Macfarlane

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138481282
• eBook ISBN: 9781351060493
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación general

Published in 1993, this book considers the needs of older teenage students and the various forms of provision made for them. The 16-19 sector of education is a transition stage for students and a system in transition for educators. At a time of rapid change the author assesses the significance of current trends and recent legislation for managers, teachers and lecturers in schools and colleges catering for this age group.

Eric Macfarlane argues that the 16-19 sector provides both a microcosm and intensification of the tensions, divisions and conflicting aims and objectives present throughout the education system as a whole. He explores the differences that exist between the academic and vocational routes to qualification, between the comprehensive, selective and independent systems and between 'traditional' and 'progressive' approaches to the learning process. The ideologies and policies that have produced the present system are traced and the case for reform examined. Different management tasks in 16-19 education are considered, with emphasis on current changes in strategies and structures.

The book highlights the distinctive features of the various types of institution that provide for students aged 16-19 and the ways in which these distinctions are becoming blurred. The final chapters consider the future of 16-19 provision and the particular impact of the 1992 Further and Higher Education Act.

Chapter 1
The sixth form tradition

The Public School Sixth Form

The sixth form originated in that most English of institutions, the public school, a source that can be detected in many modern versions of school-based 16-19 provision today.

The public school system, as we know it, dates back only to the nineteenth century, although some of its best-known examples were founded over 400 years ago. The nineteenth-century public schools were designed to produce an administrative, political and social elite and provided an exclusive way of life for the children of the ruling class. Their present-day successors number 233 with a sixth form population of 48,000.

Public schools are defined, and strengthened in their common purpose, by membership of the Headmasters' Conference (HMC), an association founded in 1869. Eligibility depends first and foremost on the size and academic quality of the sixth form. Members' schools must maintain a sixth form that comprises at least 25 per cent of their total school population and the number of sixth formers gaining two or more A levels each year must not fall below 10 per cent of the number of pupils on roll. These criteria reflect the overriding importance of the sixth form to the public schools and the extent to which the system is geared to the acquisition of academic qualifications that meet university entrance requirements.

The majority of HMC schools have sixth forms well in excess of the minimum size prescribed by the Conference, and the public school sixth form represents a much larger proportion of the school community than in the maintained sector. This is mainly because the sixth form is actually the fourth, not the sixth, year of attendance, pupils normally being admitted to a public school at 13 instead of 11 as in the maintained secondary school. In addition, the highly selective nature of the public schools means that their staying-on rate at 16 is considerably higher than that of most maintained schools. There are also a growing number of admissions to public school sixth forms from other schools.

Ultimately a public school is judged by the academic achievements of its sixth formers and, more specifically, by the number that proceed to university each year. Oxford and Cambridge places are the supreme prizes in this highly competitive academic world and the goal to which the most successful pupils strive. 'League' tables are published for both A level pass rates and Oxbridge places, and schools attach great importance to their annual position.

Academic rigour remains the key feature of the public schools. The following expectations of entrants to the sixth form are not untypical of the most selective schools:

In order to be able to respond to the intellectual demands of an A level course with a realistic possibility of success, a student should generally, in our experience, achieve a grade A in the subject (or subjects) most closely related at GCSE.

(Bolton School, 1991)

A change that is having a profound effect on the ethos of the public school system is the transition to coeducation. In 1968 Marlborough College took the radical step of introducing a small number of girls to its sixth form. This practice has become widespread and 60 per cent of the public schools now admit girls to the sixth. Numbers are increasing and a fifth of the public schools' 48,000 sixth formers are girls. In recent years a significant number of the public schools have taken the decision to become coeducational throughout and 82 of the 233 HMC schools now admit girls at 13.

The public schools are pacesetters for a much larger number of fee-paying schools that are not members of the Headmasters' Conference. The independent sector as a whole contains 952 secondary schools with sixth forms, and their 77,000 sixth formers represent 20 per cent of the country's total sixth form population. These independent schools vary greatly in size, reputation and quality. Some have very small sixth forms that can offer only a limited range of courses. However, they also include a number of famous girls' schools that call themselves public schools and meet the membership qualifications of the HMC in terms of the size and academic standards of their sixth forms. The only obstacle to their membership of the conference is the prejudice that debars women from a traditionally all-male preserve.

During the last decade, the independent sector has increased its share of the school age population from 6 per cent to almost 7.5 per cent. This growth owes much to the government's Assisted Places scheme which permits able boys and girls from low-income families to apply for independent school places with remission of fees according to a scale of parental income. For many years a number of children from the lower socio-economic groups have had a route into the independent sector by winning scholarships paid for from benefactors' endowments and legacies. With society's growing preference for meritocrats to aristocrats, such opportunities have increased. A total of 68,000 pupils in independent schools receive a contribution to their fees from such sources; another 7,500 have their fees paid, wholly or in part, by LEAs, and 30,000 assisted places are currently funded by the government.

The Grammar School Sixth Form

Historically, the main link between the independent system and the government-maintained sector of education is the local authority grammar school. The name 'grammar' was first applied to some very early versions of the public school and is retained by a number of their present-day successors, notably Manchester and Bristol. The maintained grammar schools originated in those independently endowed schools which, following the 1902 Education Act, began to accept funds and a degree of control from the education sub-committee of county, county borough and urban district councils. The proportion of the cost of running these schools that was met from the rates steadily increased. Meanwhile, a number of purpose-built 'county' grammar schools were opened and maintained by councils with the help of fees paid by the parents of the children attending them. Between the two world wars free places became an increasing feature of these county grammar schools and in 1944 all fees were abolished. From then on the county grammar schools became fully state-operated and financed.

The grammar schools provided a seven-year programme of academic work, assuming that pupils would proceed to the sixth form more or less as a matter of course. In providing such an opportunity for working- and middle-class children the government was in effect taking a significant step towards recognising a state obligation to provide further education for all. At the time, though, the intention was to provide only for able children, to select a meritocratic minority whose intelligence gave them the right to enjoy similar opportunities to those whose parents paid for privileged treatment. Selection took place at 11 by means of examination. Like its 13+ public school counterpart, the '11+', as the exam became known, was designed to distinguish those pupils - girls and boys - who would eventually be capable of sixth form work and probably, beyond that, a course in higher education.

In practice the staying-on rate at 16 was much lower in the grammar schools than in the public schools. Some pupils failed the 16+ examinations hurdle; others, although academically successful, could not be persuaded to continue with full-time education. The latter were often first-generation grammar school pupils whose parents saw little point in their undergoing further years of schooling when they could be contributing to the family income. Ten years after the abolition of fee paying in maintained schools, a Ministry of Education report showed that it was unusual for more than one-third of the highly selected pupils of a grammar school - that is, 6 to 7 per cent of the age group - to proceed to the sixth form. During the next ten years, however, sixth form numbers doubled and by the mid-1960s 'staying on' had become the grammar school as well as the public school norm.

The increasing attractiveness of education after the statutory leaving age contributed to a growing dissatisfaction with the grammar schools' exclusiveness and the well-publicised unfairness of the 11+ selection process. Secondary modern schools had been introduced by the 1944 Education Act to provide a four-year general and practical course for those children - the large majority - who failed the 11+. These schools began, however, to develop 'academic streams' whose pupils stayed on beyond the school-leaving age of 15 to take the same examinations at 16 as their grammar school peers. Some of the most successful pupils then sought and gained entry to grammar school sixth forms whilst a number of secondary modern schools began to develop their own small sixth forms.

By the 1950s a number of LEAs had introduced comprehensive schools, in which the primary school practice of educating children of all abilities in the same institution was extended to the secondary sector. In 1965 the Labour government called upon all authorities to submit plans for abolishing 11+ selection and establishing a comprehensive secondary school system. Although some LEAs persistently resisted this move, the majority responded, either immediately or over a period of time, and since 1986 over 92 per cent - 98 per cent in Wales - of secondary school children in the maintained sector have been educated in comprehensive schools.

A hundred and fifty grammar schools survived the widespread secondary reorganisation of the 1970s and 1980s. The lengthy defence of their selective status has sharpened the focus of their central academic function. One of the strongest arguments in favour of selection was that the grammar school was the best means of challenging the public schools' supremacy in the education of the country's potential leaders and rulers. Thus the surviving grammar schools have a strong commitment to the traditional values and academic standards of the best public schools. This is seen particularly in their sixth forms, where there is an intense concentration on advanced level work and preparation for university entrance. Less interest is shown in the alternative forms of provision that were becoming features of grammar school sixth forms before the advent of the comprehensive. A mark of the grammar schools' success in challenging the public schools' academic achievements has been the acceptance of seventeen of their headmasters by the Headmasters' Conference - special membership granted 'in recognition of their schools' outstanding academic achievements'.

The Comprehensive School Sixth Form

The debate on the respective merits of the selective and comprehensive systems of secondary education has been much influenced by the needs of the 16-19 age group. On the one hand, the widely accepted requirement for post-16 education to be made available to a much wider ability range strengthened the case for comprehensive schools. On the other, a major problem for the comprehensive system has been to demonstrate that an all-ability school can offer its ablest pupils the same sixth form opportunities as the grammar schools and so preserve the maintained sector's challenge to the public schools.

A system that brings together all the able pupils from a sizeable area into one institution produces a large and competitive sixth form able to offer advanced level work in many different academic subjects. In the comprehensive system, with the able pupils spread round all the schools in an area, it becomes more difficult to maintain a wide range of viable sixth form courses. With the establishment in 1980 of parents' right to choose their child's school in a non-selective system, wide variations have emerged in the popularity of schools and hence the size of their sixth forms.

Within the same local authority some comprehensive schools may be able to maintain a sixth form of a size comparable with that of the grammar school, whilst others have only a handful of students engaged in advanced level work. In the inner cities, where there are often striking differences between neighbouring residential areas and between the socio-economic groups that inhabit them, the contrast is even more marked. In extreme cases market forces have concentrated almost all the able sixth formers in one or two establishments and completely denuded some schools of an academic sixth form.

Numerous strategies have been employed to enable the comprehensive system to produce viable academic sixth forms. Many of the early LEA comprehensive schemes sought to solve the problem by developing very large 11-18 schools with ten or twelve forms of entry. Even with a staying-on rate of less than 20 per cent, these schools could produce a sixth form of a size approaching that of a medium-sized grammar school. However, the institutions of 2000+ that resulted from this strategy quickly lost favour because of the complex problems of organisation and social control that many of them experienced.

An alternative to the very large 11-18 comprehensive is the upper school - the 14-18 linked with high schools and the 13-18 linked with middle schools. With an age range more akin to that of the public schools, upper schools produce a viable sixth form from a smaller community. Another strategy is the consortium arrangement whereby a group of schools with small sixth forms agree to specialise in different areas of the curriculum: students' sixth form base is then determined by their choice of advanced level studies.

Essential as it has been for comprehensive school sixth forms to establish the credibility of advanced level work, another significant challenge has been to develop a sufficiently diversified programme for a mixed-ability intake. From their inception, comprehensive schools have applied the non-selective principle at 16+ as well as at 11+, rejecting the idea of a sixth form confined to academically-inclined students following a full programme of advanced level work. Many comprehensive school pupils therefore stay on at 16 to take just one or two A level subjects whilst others enter the sixth form to improve their GCSE qualifications or, increasingly, for one-year vocational courses (for example, in business studies/office skills). None of these categories of student was unknown to the grammar school sixth form, but the comprehensive schools have greatly increased their number and extended the range of abilities entering the sixth form. Many comprehensive school sixth forms admit as many students to one-year courses as to two-year advanced level programmes.

The Sixth Form College

One of the options offered to LEAs by the government when the comprehensive system became national policy in 1965 was to separate sixth form education from the secondary school by transferring all sixth formers in a given area to one or more sixth form colleges. Two alternative concepts of such a college were offered, the one making entry 'dependent upon the satisfaction of certain conditions (e.g. five passes at O level or a declared intention of preparing for A level)', the other 'catering for the educational needs of all young people staying on at school beyond the age of 16' (DES, 1965).

This idea was not new. In 1943 the Sheffield Education Committee had considered centralising its sixth form provision in order to protect undersubscribed subjects in its nine grammar schools. In 1954 the Croydon Education Committee received detailed proposals from its Chief Education Officer, Rupert Wearing King, for a similar rationalisation of Croydon's sixth forms. In an accompanying report the CEO drew attention to the extremely uneconomic nature of Croydon's sixth form provision and the lack of stimulus for students being taught in very small groups. As with so much early thinking on the maintained school sixth form, Rupert Wearing King's concern was for the effectiveness of the Croydon grammar schools' challenge to the public schools:

My first interest is in the pupils who are looking forward to a university, or a comparable higher education, chiefly because I am sure that it is here that the state educational system does least well in comparison with the big independent schools.

(Wearing King, 1968:7)

Neither the Sheffield nor the Croydon proposals were accepted and it fell to the independent sector to provide the first examples of academic sixth form colleges in action. In 1953 Welbeck College was opened in Nottinghamshire to provide a two-year A level science education to prepare boys for officer training in the technical corps of the army. In 1962, the United World College of the Atlantic was founded at St Donat's Castle in South Glamorgan, the first of a number of international colleges to be established throughout the world. Atlantic College, as it became known, offered a two-year pre-university course to selected boys and girls of high academic ability and different nationalities.

The other quite different view of the sixth form college - the comprehensive or open-access college concept - stemmed from an awareness that the grammar school sixth form had never been as homogeneous as it usually portrayed itself and from a conviction that the sixth form of the future would have to have a much broader curricular base. It was this vision that produced the first sixth form college in the maintained sector. Mexborough Sixth Form College opened in 1965, the brainchild of Alec (later Sir Alec) Clegg, CEO for the West Riding of Yorkshire, and George Shield, the Head of Mexborough Grammar School. The college was in fact a large sixth form centre on the site of a grammar school. There were 300 students drawn partly from the school's own fifth year but also from a number of secondary modern schools in the area. The curriculum provided different levels of work with considerable choice of levels and subject combinations.

Other colleges were in the pipeline. In 1966 the new County Borough of Luton merged the sixth forms of the boys' and girls' grammar schools to form Luton Sixth Form College. As with the sixth forms of the two grammar schools from which it evolved, admission to the new college was gained by the acquisition of O level passes in four subjects. The following year three sixth form colleges were opened in Southampton on the sites of the city's three grammar schools, all of which had large sixth forms with a well-established pattern of 16+ transfer from other schools. The Southampton Grammar School for Girls, in particular, had in 1964 stopped requiring the usual academic qualifications for entry to the sixth form - in recognition of the changing needs of students wishing to continue with their education beyond the fifth form. The LEA decided therefore that local circumstances favoured a form of secondary reorganisation that concentrated sixth form provision in 'open access' sixth form colleges separated from schools. Subsequent sixth form colleges nearly all followed this pattern and Luton became 'open-access' in 1971.

By 1992 there were 117 sixth form colleges, accommodating 85,000 students - a quarter of the country's total sixth form population....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Original Title
• Original Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• List of figures
• Foreword
• Introduction
• 1 The sixth form tradition
• 2 The further education tradition
• 3 The academic curriculum
• 4 The vocational curriculum
• 5 General education
• 6 The learning experience
• 7 Student freedom and responsibility
• 8 Managing the curriculum
• 9 Student care and guidance
• 10 Corporate colleges
• 11 The future prospect
• Bibliography
• Index