Fee-paying Schools and Educational Change in Britain

Between the State and the Marketplace

Ted Tapper

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000144024
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Education
• Categoría: Education General

Examining the history of access to private education this work sheds light on the interaction of state, society and schooling. Organized historically, much of the analysis concentrates on contemporary political struggles, and evaluates the possibility of a unified educational system.

1
Understanding Educational Change in the Fee-paying Sector

In recent years there has been considerable interest in the extent to which the character of private schooling, and in particular of the public schools, has changed. In his perceptive The Public School Revolution, John Rae argued that between 1964 and 1979 the schools responded successfully to a number of challenges which enabled them to rebut ten popular, but negative, myths (Rae, 1981). Rae recognised that, by concentrating upon a limited historical period, it was possible to make changes that were essentially evolutionary in nature appear revolutionary. However, it was the pace of change between 1964 and 1979, and his contention that ‘existing attitudes and practice’ had been overturned, which he believed justified describing the changes as revolutionary, or rather as ‘to a greater or lesser degree revolutionary’ (1981, 177).

Walford has described the changes in somewhat more cautious terms, arguing that they amounted to ‘a revolution in chains’ (1986). Along with Heward (1988), he has advanced the argument that the schools have adapted steadily to changing circumstances. Moreover, there are constraints which make it difficult for the schools to be unduly innovative: the problem of converting for different purposes what are in some cases ancient monuments, the conservatism of old boys and governors (although Walford found many of the latter surprisingly progressive), and the inevitable difficulty of restructuring the traditional allocation of resources.

To decide between the two evaluations would be to take on a difficult and not especially fruitful task. What is required is a careful consideration of both what has changed and the pace of that change. An examination of the pace of change gives rise to problems of measurement and evaluation, while any consideration of what has changed has to take into account both the purposes of the schools as well as how they are structured to perform those purposes. It is possible that the fee-paying schools have retained the same social purposes while revolutionising their means of fulfilling those purposes. In my previous work I have suggested that we need, first, to understand what has changed within the schools, and then to evaluate the impact of those changes upon the social role of the schools (Salter and Tapper, 1981, 157–88; 1985, 127–54). This, I believe, is a more constructive approach than becoming mired in a semantic debate about the pace of change.

The two most significant developments in recent years within the fee-paying schools have been an intensification of the stress upon examination success (which would suggest a more demanding school environment), coupled with a marked relaxation and widening of the schools’ broader socialising practices (which would suggest a more liberal environment). Most commentators have reflected upon these trends, but there has been little analysis of their impact upon the social functions of the fee-paying schools. This is a complex question because of the wide variety of such schools, the problem of defining their traditional goals, and the probability that different kinds of observers will establish their own particular yardsticks. Much of the sociological literature has centred upon the schools’ socially selective recruitment patterns, and the special learning environments that have evolved within them. For many sociologists the schools perform the crucial functions of the selective recruitment and socialisation of an elite or ruling class. However, those engaged in the running of the fee-paying sector would be more likely to argue that what their schools have to offer is a worthwhile educational experience which has to be judged on its own merits. While the schools may have broader social consequences, their primary purpose is to sustain a high-class education within the context of a sympathetic environment.

If schooling is an end in itself, then the ‘public school revolution’, or ‘revolution in chains’, would represent an attempt to offer an improved educational experience. However, even those who are keenest to stress the pedagogical claims of the fee-paying sector could scarcely deny that it also has social consequences, although precisely what these are may be disputed. The new public school model may, in sociological terms, simply reflect the fact that elite recruitment and socialisation need to be accomplished in a different manner, one that is more in tune with the demands of the contemporary social order. In effect we have new wine in an old bottle. Sociologists, therefore, will stress the purposeful interaction of educational means and social ends; while a more narrow perspective would claim that pedagogy is the purpose of schooling and its social ramifications are not the responsibility of the schools.

As this book is written by a political sociologist, inevitably it will adopt a sociological perspective. The intention is to construct a theoretical position centred upon the interaction of the institutional needs of the schools and their social role. The theory is designed to account for the process of educational change, which is yet another concern that has been buried by the mountain of descriptive detail enveloping previous interpretations of the public school revolution. While there has been much reflection upon the admission of girls to the former boys’ public schools, the broader social composition of the fee-paying sector as a whole has not changed substantially in recent years. In concrete terms fee-paying schools are still the preserve of the middle classes: this persists as the major constraint upon the idea of a ‘public school revolution’ (a point strangely overlooked by Walford).

The important issue is what kind of public school revolution could possibly occur without such a change? At first glance, the answer would seem to depend upon the changing needs, perceived or real, of the British middle classes, and the ability of the schools to respond to those needs. Looked at in this way, if there has been a revolution it has been a bourgeois revolution in which the private schools have changed in order to maintain their established role in the process of social reproduction.

In a passage worthy of considerable elaboration, Rae has written:

Independent education is a service industry; if a school cannot attract customers it will go out of business. The aim of those who manage the schools’ affairs is to provide an educational service that parents will want to buy at a cost that they can afford (1981, 163).

The central premise of this book is that educational change in the fee-paying sector is driven by those institutional forces which seek self-preservation. For private schools the key to institutional survival is the ability to attract a continuous and sufficiently large supply of fee-payers to cover their costs. If it seems that the schools are unable to survive by their appeal in the marketplace, then they will turn to the state for help. In effect this has meant persuading the state that it should be responsible for paying the fees of pupils who, without such support, might be less inclined to purchase an education in the fee-paying sector. Thus, educational change, institutional self-preservation and marketplace/state pressures form an intimate bond.

Having set the scene for this chapter, my first substantive task is to examine the most important theories of educational change. As others have done this in some depth, my goal is more narrowly defined: how do these broad theories of educational change help us to understand the more refined problem of change in the fee-paying schools? What can be adapted from them to support the idea that the key to understanding change in this sector is the struggle for institutional survival? Although the schools need fee-paying pupils if they are to survive, it is important to realise that parents and the state will be persuaded to pay fees for particular reasons. Therefore, the interpretation of change must also be sensitive to the pressures upon those who purchase private schooling. In the case of the state these pressures are essentially political in nature, whereas parents are persuaded by a combination of economic and social forces. Change, therefore, is an interactive process among the schools, the purchasers of their product and the evolving character of state and society.

THREE THEORIES OF EDUCATIONAL CHANGE

The major theories of educational change have had very ambitious concerns: to determine the origins of state systems of education and to account for uneven patterns of national development. Two of the theories, functionalism and Marxism, have been built upon the premise that schooling performs core social functions: as society changes so schooling comes under pressure to assume new functions or to perform the traditional functions in a different manner. The third theoretical stream, which owes its intellectual origins to Max Weber and has been most fully developed by Margaret Scotford Archer, is more concerned to understand the process of change rather than posit a shifting relationship between schooling and society in which the former responds to the changing needs of the latter. In other words, the focus in the Weberian tradition is more upon how change occurs, that is the process of change, rather than upon the pressures for change.

While the Weberian perspective does not deny the possibility of a central dynamic for change (Archer (1979, 3) recognises the constraints of what she terms cultural and structural factors), its focus is upon the stages of educational development and the interplay of the various actors and groups within those stages. Moreover, Archer is keen to highlight the important role of individuals, and so stresses their ability to generate and transmit educational ideas, as well as their skills in the manipulation of political power. For Archer, ‘education has the characteristics it does because of the goals pursued by those who control it’ and ‘change occurs because new educational goals are pursued by those who have the power to modify previous practices’ (1979, 2).

In view of the fact that the focus of this book is upon the fee-paying sector of schooling, the theory of educational change developed in this chapter has a more restricted scope than those of the macro-sociologists. While, as a political sociologist, I cannot fail to concur with Archer’s recognition that political struggle is at the centre of the change process, the stress is upon the institutionalisation of power rather than the role of individual actors, important as their input may be. Just as we do not make history in circumstances of our own choosing, neither do institutions. Central to the idea that institutional self-preservation is the key to understanding the process of educational change is the further proposition that change is negotiated within, and between, layers of institutions, of which the institutions of the state increasingly form the key layer. While all this may be true, there is a danger of replicating the major weakness of the Weberian position, at least as developed by Archer: that is, of constructing a theory of educational change which results in sophisticated descriptions of a process but leaves us wondering what sets the process in motion or brings it to a halt (assuming, of course, that it is ever brought to a halt).

The pressures for survival, reflected concretely in the fee-paying sector by the demand for places and school budgets, suggest a structural context (to use Archer’s phrase) within which change will occur. But the school is reacting — or not reacting — to declining or increasing demand for its services. While this may stimulate the schools into action, the obvious further question is how the increased/decreased demand is to be explained. If the structural context is confined simply to the institutional needs of the school we are in danger of merely stating the obvious. In order, therefore, to broaden the book’s central theoretical premise, the macro-sociological review will attempt to discern those wider structural variables — that is, those economic, social and political pressures — which influence the demand for places in the fee-paying schools.

Responding to Societal Needs: Some Functionalist Themes

Although Giddens has attempted to correct Parsons’s ‘sympathetic misinterpretations’ of Durkheim by claiming that the great French sociologist was as much concerned with change and conflict in society as with consensus (Giddens, 1972, 39), it none the less remains true that Durkheim did think in terms of the functional needs of society of which the maintenance of a dominant moral order was paramount. Moreover, the primary social purpose of schooling was the inculcation of this moral order:

There is no people among whom there is not a certain number of ideas, sentiments and practices which education must inculcate in all children indiscriminately, to whatever social category they belong (Durkheim, 1956, 69; stress added).

and

Education is, then, only the means by which society prepares, within the children, the essential conditions of its very existence … (and) education consists of a methodical socialisation of the young generation (1956, 71).

While Durkheim is clearly espousing a general sociological principle, that social harmony is underwritten by a dominant moral order, the demands he made of the French educational system resulted from particular historical circumstances. The old moral order was crumbling as the pace of industrialisation and urbanisation intensified in France. The influence of the Catholic Church, which formed the traditional moral backbone of the nation, was in decline. The nation needed a new moral code as the basis for social order in a rapidly changing society, and it was the responsibility of the centralised state system of schooling to ensure that this was successfully transmitted to future generations of Frenchmen and women.

Of course Durkheim was conscious of the fact that demands would be made of the individual ‘… by both the political society as a whole, and by the particular milieu for which he is specifically destined’ (Giddens, 1972, 204; stress added). The histories of the public schools, as well as the more contemporary sociological studies of ‘life in public schools’, have made much play of the development of a well-defined value system, and the evolution of internal school codes for the transmission of those values. These are the elite/ruling class recruitment and socialisation themes which have abounded in the sociological literature, and, in theoretical terms, have been most interestingly analysed by that other prominent European theorist, Gaetano Mosca.

Mosca argued that elites were defined by their group consciousness, coherence and sense of conspiracy (Meisel, 1958, 4). It has been widely argued that one of the key functions of the public school in the nineteenth century was to provide an institutional setting in which the interests of the landed aristocracy and the emerging bourgeoisie could be reconciled. There is a body of opinion that the reconciliation of interests was concluded in a manner which ensured that aristocratic values pervaded the ensuing class compromises (Coleman, 1973), and that this has been to the long-term detriment of Britain’s economic performance (Wiener, 1981, 11–21; Barnett, 1986, 214–21). Be that as it may, the central point is that potential conflicts generated by fundamental changes to the class structure were allegedly defused by the class accommodation that occurred within the public schools.

In Mosca’s terms the public school performed the function of securing a significant measure of group consciousness, coherence and sense of conspiracy between two classes that in several other European nations were set on a collison course. If Barnett and Wiener are correct, perhaps the nation ensured social stability while forsaking the entrepreneurial spirit. And, unlike Barnett and Wiener, there are many who would say that a good bargain was struck.

The changes, therefore, that occurred within the nineteenth-century public schools were dependent upon their need to recruit a new clientele, one with its roots firmly planted in the bourgeoisie. In the long run the public schools could not hope to survive, or at least to remain centres of great influence, without allying themselves to those class interests that were expanding their influence both economically and politically. While Bamford has provided evidence that the schools founded in the early years of the Victorian era catered to a different clientele from the older foundations, by the latter half of the century the newer foundations were attracting the sons of the gentry, while elements of the bourgeoisie were filtering into the ancient public schools (1961; 1967, 17–38). The interpenetration of the two great classes had begun in earnest: the schools as a socialising force were intimately involved in the building of the class consciousness, group coherence and what must have appeared to many outsiders as the closed conspiracy of the world of public schoolboys.

While the schools, new and old, may have needed an expanding social base in order to survive, the memoirs of headmasters suggest that they were circumspect in their choice of pupils. Headmasters had to be sensitive to the interests of their traditional clientele; to have opened the floodgates to emerging social groups could have destroyed a school’s prestige, weakened its important connections, and undermined the recruitment of pupils from the ranks of the gentry and aristocracy. As the work of Bamford demonstrates, an evolutionary process of change was set in motion. Moreover, it has always been impossible to understand the internal hierarchy of the fee-paying schools without an appreciation of their differential class base. Class accommodation may be integral to the history of the fee-paying schools, but no more so than an internal hierarchy following in part the lines of social class.

While it is easy to draw upon a functionalist perspective to explain the general line of development within the nineteenth-century world of the fee-paying schools, it is much more difficult to pursue the same line of analysis in terms of the contemporary public school revolution. Although the class base of the fee-paying schools is undoubtedly broader than many of their critics are prepared to admit, there is no analysis that suggests we are experiencing the unfolding of another period in which the class composition of the schools is undergoing a steady transformation. Indeed, such an analysis is conspicuous by its absence from the work of both Rae and Walford. The argument is that faced with a series of challenges — Labour Party policy, inflation and youth culture — the fee-paying sector has responded pragmatically in order to sustain its market share of pupils.

If the essence of the functionalist case is that schooling responds to the changing needs of society, then we have to discern those needs and, in the tradition of Archer, understand how the fee-paying schools responded to meet them. In this respect the only significant change appears to have been the almost universal decline in the position of the classics within the school curriculum, accompanied by a widespread expansion of the sciences — natural, applied and social. This shift in the balance of the curriculum has been accompanied by a much more pronounced emphasis upon the academic accomplishments of the schools. While these developments can be analysed in relation to changing societal pressures, many of the other changes can best be understood in terms of more narrowly defined institutional requirements (such as the admission of girls to the boys’ public schools) or simply as responses to new social mores (the growing unease about corporal punishment or the possible negative effects of a boarding education upon family life and the welfare of the child). Clearly these are concerns of a different order from the nineteenth century’s need to reconcile the conflict of interests between an expanding bourgeoisie and a declining aristocracy.

Durkheim’s functionalism is centred upon the relationship between schooling and the necessity for society to be infused with a shared moral code if social order is to prevail. However, other functionalists have drawn the link beween the development of an industrialised economy and the emergence of national systems of schooling: as the needs of the economy change, in particular as there is a demand for differing kinds of skills, so the educational system is reshaped accordingly to supply them. This is what Collins has called ‘the technical-function of educat...