SELECTION AND DE.STREAMING IN PHS SECONDARY SCHOOLS by R. Solam.
The most striking thing about Eneland's system of comprehensive Schools is the anpsarent confusion in the winds of local education authorities as to what constitutes a comvrehensive system. There is, however, one profoundly imvortant characteristic that they all have in Common: the fundamentallv hierarchical nature of their structure, This is most obvious in authorities like the 1.C.C. where at present there are, broadly speakine, four tiers in the hierarchy and for a parent whose child has the ability the order of preference is fairly clear: grant-nided, Srammar, comprehensive and finally secondary modern, This kind of situation is almost bound toar’se in anv area with those four kinds of schools coexisting, and of course in such a situation sove kind of selection procedure is equally inevitable. The need for selection is leSs obvious in those areas where the grarmar schools, qua grammar schools, have been abolished, yet although »laces like Manchester, Liverpool and Bristol will certainly have a nore genuinely covunrehensive systen IT have not heard that those authorities intend to abolish selection. The reason is not hard to find. Te hierarchy continues, albeit in a potentially nore flexible form, in the system of streaming. Hence sone form of selection procedure is still required to ascertain the annropriate stream for each child. It matters little whether selection is carried out internally or externally; as lone as streamins remains the need for selection will also remain and it will not matter at sll how the schools are structured in relation to one another,
It is clear therefore that the abolition of selection inevitably involves the abolition of streaming (as well as of crammar and secondary moderns of course) “nd it is imnerative that the arguments for and argainst streaming receive careful consideration by those who advocate the Por of selection. It is fortunate that 1964 has seen so much informed discussion of this very vroblem in the shnpe of three books: Non-Streaming in the J nior School e4.3.Sinon (PS... Pub. 5/-) Tris book is in four sections and consists mainly of articles reprinted from the maragzgine "Forun!. Section? is the evidence subnitted to the Plowden Committee by the marazine'gs editorial board and is enlled ‘The Case for Non-Streaming"; the other three sections are concerned with the attitudes of teachers and children to streaming, the transition from streamed to non strerxred teaching, and with the probdlems of iicthods in schools and treinine colleses Streamine: an ucational System in liinieature ty Bedackson (Routledse, —_ _— Kegan & Paul 21/-.) This book to some extent anticinates the N.F.S., research project which is at present soinz on but of course Jackson': sample wos much sialler thus his study (conducted under the auspices of the Tnetitute of Communi Studies) is of linited value, as he hiiiself noints out. Ho looks in so..o detail at the attitudes of teachers and parents to streaning and also at streamed schools in action.
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The Hse and the School by J.E.i.Dsuglas (liactiphon md Kee 36/-) This is the third main renort on an 13 year study of 5,000 children born in the first week of Merch 1946 and it deals with their vrimary school period up to the 11+. It is by far the most imnortant of the three books Since it backs un all its assertions with very convincing statistics.
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