The Tragedy of middle England
Hailed as the ideal solution 30 years ago, middle schools now seem doomed, says
Maureen O'Connor. Yet they have enduring support.
If you are a parent of a child in a middle school, then your child is studying
in a doomed species of an educational establishment. With numbers down from more
that 1,500 to around 760 over the last few years, the chance of your child going
to one in future is getting slimmer. Yet 30 years ago the system of which they
are a part was thought to be the ideal way to meet the needs of the different
development phases of children. Their supporters regard their apparently inexorable
decline as a tragedy.
For those who do not know them, which included the
Scots, the Welsh , most Londoners and the inhabitants of many other cities,
middle schools are hybrid that cross
the traditional primary/secondary divide by taking children usually from
the age of eight or nine to 12 or 13.
They came about with a typically English mix of pragmatism and idealism when
local education authorities wished to go comprehensive but did not really
have the money to do it. With the authority of the Plowden committee, which
reported
30 years ago this month, administrators, trying to juggle school buildings
into new patterns, jumped at the notion that the traditional transfer age
of 11 did
not fit the children's educational development.
The Plowden report suggested that once children had
acquired the basics in infants' school there was a distinct "middle" period of learning
before they were ready to move on to the more formal and specialist disciplines
of secondary
education. Transfer to the top tier, it suggested, might be better made at
12 or even 13. It did not take local authorities long to realised that a three-tier
comprehensive system would fit into their existing school buildings much more
easily and cheaply than a two-tier one which required massive building work
to
expand existing secondary schools into 11 to 18 comprehensives.
"
Plowden was the only official report ever to look at an appropriate curriculum
and teaching style for those middle years" says Martin Thomas, chair of
the Middle Schools' Forum and head of a middle school in the city of Oxford,
one of the latest enclaves to find its three-tier school system "under review".
"
Now we all know that there are problems at the top end of the primary schools,
where children are not being challenged. Only the middle schools have consistently
looked at what's right for this age group, and in my view they have got it right".
Before even more middle schools close, the forum is
determined to back its feeling that they work with hard research evidence.
The schools
have raised £12,000
between them and commissioned the Centre for Successful Schools at
Keele University to look at existing ones.
We've already been told that middle schools come out
way ahead in inspections on school 'ethos', Mr. Thomas says. "We believe
we cope better in every way with children who are beginning to need
the subject specialisms that the primary schools can't provide, yet who tend to be neglected
in secondary schools which inevitably concentrate most of their efforts
on
examination
classes".
Fighting words, but the struggle looks like being a biter one.
For every Northumberland, which reviewed its three-tier system
last year and decided to keep it, there
are two Warwickshires, which decided to phase out its middle schools.
Northumberland's director of education, Chris Tipple,
says that his county's review concluded that he disruption of a reorganisation
was not worth
the candle. There would have to be a massive capital spending
to
accommodate 11 and 12 year
olds in existing secondary schools, he says, and revenue savings
would not be large in a rural county where the school transport
bill
is already
enormous.
Margaret Maden, now a professor at Keele, who was
Warwickshire's director of education when it cam to the opposition conclusion,
reckons that
in her county's
case the sums more than made sense. "Anywhere that has surplus school places
is under enormous pressure to phase them out, and there are financial penalties
if you don't", she says. Research in Warwickshire concluded
that parents and governors on the whole favoured the traditional
transfer age of 11, especially
now that it comes at the end of the national curriculum's key
stage two. They also felt that children were ready to face
the rigours of large secondary schools
at that age.
So Warwickshire's middle schools went, and more look
likely to follow. The main problem is not that anyone can come up
with
cast-iron evidence
that
middle schools
are an educational disaster. It is that the same pressures
- finance and buildings - which more often than not brought
middle
schools
into existence
are now closing
them down.
The plight of Buckinghamshire is a case in point.
The county has remained determinedly selective at secondary level but
decided, in line with
the Plowden Report, that
transfer to grammar or secondary modern school at 12-plus
was preferable
to 11-plus. Accordingly it reorganised its younger age
groups into either middle schools
serving either-to-12 year olds, or combined schools taking
them right through from five to 12.
Ironically, in view of its dedication to grammar schools,
the county has been undone by Conservative government
policy. Recently
I the
area around
Slough,
which was previously part of Buckinghamshire and retained
12-plus transfer when it became part of Berkshire, several
grant maintained
grammar
schools have decided
unilaterally to change their admission age to 11. A grant
maintained girls' grammar in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire,
has sought
to do the same. In
the "money
follows the pupils" market, an extra year group, of course, brings extra
funds. Officials at Buckinghamshire's county hall therefore found themselves
in the unenviable position of seeing their middle and combined schools which
feed into these grammar schools likely to lose a large proportion of their top
year children a year early. Those left behind would be the "rejects" who
had been unable to get into a grant maintained grammar
school.
As if that was not bad enough, officials believe
they
risk a challenge on equal opportunities grounds if
the Beaconsfield
girls' school
admits at 11
but there
is not grammar school provision in the town for boys
at that age. If the Department for Education and Employment
approves,
Buckinghamshire's middle schools will revert to junior school status,
serving 7 to 11 year olds, in autumn 1998, and the
first schools
will take
children
aged four
to seven.
It is the sort of expedient solution which makes the
middle school enthusiasts see red. But they also face
some critics
who doubt
their claims to be
able to satisfy the need of 12 and 13 year olds as
effectively as traditional
secondary schools do. John Howson, educationist and
a former co-opted member
of Oxfordshire's
education committee, reckons that as middle schools
decline in number it is becoming
harder to find experienced staff and heads to run them. "There used to be
courses for junior/secondary teachers but these were phased out so now there
is no coherent training for this age group. It is also very difficult to attract
applicants for headships as the career options become more and more restricted".
Mr. Howson also has reservations about a break at
13, in spite of the fact that private schools for boys
have operated
on
that basis
for
many years. "Adolescence
is getting earlier", he says. "I do wonder if transferring pupils
at that moment doesn't make life very difficult for the upper schools."
Chris Tipple, very much the hero of the middle school
movement since saving Northumberland's has few
reservations on educational
grounds. “I am not
convinced by the argument that children should move at the end of a key stage.
There is a lot
to be said for leaving them with the teachers who know them and can put right
any weaknesses which have been found by the tests. There is no evidence that
our middle school children are losing out. They get access to specialist teachers
earlier than they would in primary schools, liaison between the tiers is excellent,
because it has to be, and I think both age groups benefit.”
The Independent – 30/01/1997
posted 03/01/1997 top
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