How Being Open About Sec Mod Schooling is a Scary Option

I made my initial post here about my sec mod school experiences in 2014. I said then that I rarely mentioned my secondary schooling in 'company'. This is largely because now nearly all my current friends & contacts of a similar age went to grammar or public school.  Many will mention school experiences. I generally opt to say very little.

Not long ago we were with some friends made in very recent years. They are a very fine couple in many respects and he was (and is still) highly respected and successful in his professional life.
He went to a grammar school and his education there was mentioned. He said how fortunate he had been to go to his school and how very lucky he had been not to attend 'that place up the road'. He would have attended school in the late 1950s-early 60s and is older than me.

I cannot remember the exact wording but he was obviously referring to the local secondary modern school. Somehow, this time, I could not keep quiet and I said, briskly, 'what terrible things did you think would happen to you there?' , followed by 'I went to one of those schools, but I never talk about it'.  His very surprised response was 'why not'? 

Somehow we never finished the conversation, other things took over. 
I guess I was annoyed and pleased in equal amounts that the exchange ended. What I realised, though, was that the group I live within now simply assume that we all attended grammar or private schools. My work and life have caused me to belong to a particular cohort.

My husband remarked later that it was unlikely that this person would have been as successful in his career had he not attended grammar school. This is true.  However, I feel I want to challenge him again about that lost conversation - but I doubt it will happen. The embarrassment and stigma are too deeply embedded.

Julia 

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I often feel I am "looking in"

I have no memories of one specific 11+ exam, but recollections of a variety of 'tests' in that last year of primary school (1965/66). However, I do remember that early on in that that year it was well known who had 'passed' or 'failed'. This suggests that a combination of factors determined who would go to which secondary school; possibly test results and 'decisions' by school staff - who knows.

I remember clearly that two girls went on to the grammar school and one girl to the technical school; just three from a class of probably 25-30 pupils. The rest of us went to the local secondary modern school. Those three girls and I had headed up four reading groups in the class (I only remembered this when I started writing this piece). I enjoyed leading this group but recollect now that I was very reluctant in later school years to take on any 'leadership' roles.

I was an only child and my mother was a refugee from Germany in the 1930s who was never able to fulfil any of her ambitions. I know my 'failure' was a big disappointment to her. When the younger children of near neighbours (& friends of mine) went on to the grammar school a couple of years after my move to secondary school, she told me they 'wouldn't speak to me again'. They didn't. My father was more philosophical about the whole business but I don't remember much discussion about any of it.

I remember the first day at my 'modern'. Everything was huge and overwhelming. We lined up in a netball court in six new tutor groups. Later we were individually 'setted' for each academic subject. There were five sets and also a special needs department (called ‘remedial’) for those who had specific learning issues. We girls spent large amounts of time (two whole mornings a week, I think) in needlework and domestic science classes, whilst the boys did woodwork, metalwork and technical drawing. There were long art and pottery classes too. 

At 13 the French teacher told my parents I should try for the 13 + and transfer to the grammar school. I have a strong memory of not wanting to try for this. By this time, part of me had become somewhat disinterested in academic work. Another part, I think, felt that if I had failed once I wasn't going to chance it again. I was fed up with the whole system. Also, I was particularly enjoying piano lessons (& liked the teacher) and a move would have interfered with that happy stability. I had become used to the school and had some friends. I also remember, particularly, and fondly, the wonderful needlework teacher - a lovely and inspiring woman - and several English teachers. I didn't want to lose that known environment. 

This secondary modern did offer O and A level classes beyond the obligatory CSE exams (which we all took). Many pupils left at 15 so the class sizes reduced considerably. I ended up with a reasonable sprinkling of O levels and completed the first year of two A level courses. I then left school to start a nursing course, changed my mind & direction again over that summer, and went on to a technical college. Here they offered A level courses over two years but also very intense one year A level courses. I took this option and got my two A levels and offers to study Librarianship and Information Science at degree level. 

My depleted confidence after 11+ failure caused me to transfer from a degree to a diploma course early on at university. I hadn't been prepared, I think for that intensity of work. Student life was a success and the diploma gave me a reasonable career over a number

of years. More recently I completed a TEFL course and did a degree with the Open University. The move from degree to diploma course at 19 had always left me feeling annoyed with myself although at the time it was probably the best move.

Until now I have rarely spoken about my 11+ failure. My life has taken me into contact with many people who went to public or grammar school; I often feel I am 'looking in' at their very different school lives when childhood experiences are aired. My husband has encouraged me to move on from this and I am trying to do this, but I believe passionately that selection at 11 is a harmful and damaging process.

Julia

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Half our Future? Secondary Modern Schools and the Newsom Report - fifty years on

Professor Gary McCulloch is Head of Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Institute of Education, University of London. His principle interests are in the history of education, including curriculum history, the history of secondary education, the history of teachers and teaching, the history of educational policy, historical perspectives on current educational issues, historical theory and methodology relating to education, and documentary research methods.

Blackwell Secondary Modern School. c1950. Crown copyright

In an article that Gary McCulloch and Liz Sobell published in 1994, ‘Toward a social history of the secondary modern schools’ (History of Education,1994,Vol 23, no. 3, 275-286), the authors pointed out how little attention had been given to Secondary Modern education. They indicated possible future lines of enquiry, such as how gender figured in these schools, how pupils’ families related to the schools, and called for any analysis to be put within the contexts of social stratification and the ‘tripartite system’ . They pointed out that the 1944 settlement established this system in the institutions which the Act set up - Secondary Modern, Grammar and Technical schools - but that the notion that students aged 11 can (or should) be divided up in this way precedes 1944 and persists today. In relation to social stratification, are explicit and implicit ideas about ‘working-class’ education.

Again, these ideas precede the Secondary Modern era, run throughout it and continue today. Studies in this area range across the psychometrics of eg Cyril Burt et al; the monumental reports of eg Crowther and Newsom; Brian Jackson’s sociological study of one grammar school; the historical accounts of eg Harold Silver; Floud and Halsey’s celebrated studies in inequality; fly on the wall explorations by eg Phil Cohen; the political analyses of eg Brian Simon, Ken Jones. The sociolinguistic work of Basil Bernstein and William Labov arrived at very different conclusions on the part played by the ‘home’ language of young people. Meanwhile, what might be called the ‘Bourdieu tradition’ reversed the whole view by asking what is it about the nature of education that appears to suit some social layers more than others. This analysis has been attacked by the Right, sometimes drawing particularly on the ideas of E.D.Hirsch whilst bringing to an end the era of local control of schooling on the grounds that it ‘failed’.

Did it? And if it sometimes did, as Gary McCulloch’s own work as in ‘Failing the Ordinary Child’ (1998) suggests, was the problem with the local control or with national implementation of ideas about adolescence, intelligence, language, social class and the ‘needs of society’ - a notion often reduced to the ‘needs of employers’?

In all this, the voices of pupils, parents and teachers in Secondary Modern Schools have been mostly absent. So, we return to the opening lines of McCulloch’s and Sobell’s article of 1994:

“Surprisingly little attention has been given to secondary modern schools. It is clear that there has been much greater interest in grammar and public schools than for the secondary modern schools, which catered in their time, only a generation ago, for the large majority of the 11-15 age group.”

Gary McCulloch has very kindly written the following introductory notes for our Sec Mod blog. 

*****

Half our Future?  Secondary modern schools and the Newsom Report – fifty years on

October 2013 marks the 50^th anniversary of the Newsom Report, Half our Future, which examined what it called ‘the education of pupils aged 13 to 16 of average and less than average ability’.  The Report tried hard to keep well clear of the debates about comprehensive reorganisation that we then being rehearsed widely.  Yet it was highly relevant to pupils in the secondary modern schools where the so-called ‘ordinary child’ was usually taught.  According to this Report, the characteristic problems of educating such pupils could not be solved through administrative changes, but needed to more basic change in attitudes about educability.  In this spirit, it supported the raising of the school leaving age to sixteen – still a controversial proposal nearly twenty years after it had been endorsed by the Education Act of 1944.

There is some useful literature about the secondary modern schools and its pupils.  My own contributions have tried to show the links between the secondary modern schools and the changing educational, social and political context.  My book Failing The Ordinary Child? (1998) examined these schools as an example of working class secondary education.  A new book, written by myself with my colleagues Tom Woodin and Steve Cowan, looks at the raising of the school leaving age (Secondary Education and the Raising of the School Leaving Age, 2013).  I have also written articles that are relevant to these issues in History of Education (with Liz Sobell, 1994) and the Journal of Educational Administration and History (2000).  What we still lack, though, is a social history of these schools that brings out the everyday experiences of pupils and teachers. [Our italics]

Again a good starting point for such a history is the Newsom Report of 1963.  For the purposes of the Report a national sample was taken that provided over 6,000 pen-portraits of 14-year-old boys and girls, a cross-section of all pupils in these schools.  There were 3,668 secondary modern schools in England at this time, more than two-thirds of all secondary schools.  This survey gives us some help in beginning to reconstruct the experiences of pupils in these schools.  A collection of oral and written testimonies from teachers and pupils, highlighting memories of these schools from those most closely involved, would be a wonderful resource as a basis for a social history schools which is sorely needed, and a great contribution to a fuller understanding.  I look forward to seeing the results of this new enterprise looking back on the secondary modern schools, fifty years on.

Gary McCulloch

Institute of Education London

This blog

At the heart of this blog will be the memories of people who were part of the Secondary Modern School experience: pupils, teachers, parents, school-workers and any politicians and local authority officials responsible for the Sec Mods.

The blog is being run by Emma-Louise Williams and Michael Rosen.

The aim is to collect and collate a history that has never been written.

People wishing to contribute can of course write what they want but for your convenience, we offer some questions you may like to consider.:

1. What was the last year at primary school like - in particular studying for the 11-plus exam?

2. How did you hear that you had not passed the 11-plus? What did that feel like? How were you treated?

3. What were your first impressions of  your secondary school?

4. What stories do you tell about your time at the school?

5. What expectations do you think the school had of  you? How was that made clear to you?

6. What qualifications did you leave with?

7. Did you enjoy your time at secondary school?

Please note: in order to protect all concerned, we will disguise the name of your school and please use a pseudonym as your name.