Education and its victims

In 1944 the world of the child changed forever. This was the year that an enlightened Tory MP, R A Butler introduced the 1944 Education Act. The Act sharply distinguished between primary and secondary education at age 11 and ended the traditional all-age (5-14) elementary sector, enforcing the division between primary (5–11 years old) and secondary (11–15 years old) education that many local authorities had already introduced. Note the school leaving age rose to 15.
That was, potentially, the good bit. But the eleven-plus was also created by the 1944 Butler Education Act. This established a Tripartite System of education, with an academic, a technical and a functional strand. Prevailing educational thought at the time was that testing was an effective way to discover to which strand a child was most suited. The results of the exam would be used to match children's secondary schools to their abilities and future career needs.
Now please read on....
In 1938 a girl child was born in Holloway, north London. And in due course in 1943 she started school under the old elementary system. By then the family was living in a house acquired as a result of war conditions in Muswell Hill. It was large, imposing but in a frankly ordinary part of London. Then. Today it is imposing, in a highly desirable postcode (N 10) and fetches £1.25 Million.
In 1943 our young girl starts school at what was known, right into the 60s, as the Tin Pot school, in St James Lane (today it is a Performing Arts centre in plush new buildings). Clad in corrugated iron it is said (cf Hornsey Journal) that on rainy days teachers gave up the unequal struggle with the noise.
But in that same year of 1943 a sister arrived in this household. In that year one went off to school while another arrived to take up residence and, inevitably, domination of the family world. (I know this as in 1948,in a different part of the forest, the same thing happened to me and my new brother.)
Whatever trauma this conflict may or may not have produced (for me it was significant) was to be emphasised five years later when the second sibling started school . By then the option was to attend the posh, leafy Tetherdown Primary School. So, clad in uniform, the child of 5 (child B) went off to school while the child of 10 (child A) finished her years at the despised Tin Pot school. (Muswell Hill Primary and Infants).
In the following year and entirely unprepared by the elementary system the 1938 child (child A) took the 11-plus. And predictably, failed. Thus she went to the Muswell Hill Secondary School. (That may not have been its actual name but it suffices for this.) She begins the progress towards her Secondary Education Certificate. School leaving age is 15.
In 1953, when child A had already reached the end of her CSE education at age 15, child B takes and passes the 11-plus, for which Tetherdown had been aiming for five years.
Thus in 1954 child B sets off, in full; uniform for Hornsey High School for Girls – a grammar school.
But in 1953 child A had already made her career choice and gone to the Prince of Wales Hospital, Tottenham to train as a nurse. A great career, fully exploited by a capable and competent person. But she left home and child B remained in sole possession of the capitol. Child A returned briefly and rarely and used the smallest room in the family home, by this time in Friern Barnet, north London.
Now child A does brilliantly well and qualifies at the highest available level and continues to build a highly creditable career as a nurse, rising 40-plus years on, to clinical specialist – the very top of the tree.
And child B chooses a very different career, declining the potential of university and while still living at home develops a good and successful career in journalism and much later in public relations.
Does any of this matter? Well, in the outcomes for these two not at all since they did well, married well enough and had lovely and much loved children.
But how can we judge the internal turmoil that the very obvious differences convey and may have generated. The one is given by circumstance and chronology the opportunity to remain at home with her parents. The other, already disadvantaged in this way by her age, finds herself out of the family environment for a lot of her young life and fending for herself.
It is not for us the observers to make judgments here. But we do have a right to wonder if there is not some internal process that may have later outcomes.
Some of this I did discuss at length with one and I have lived with the effects for the other. It is my humble opinion that child A resented her estrangement and was antipathetic to her parents. Child B suffered no such doubts. And has been less than appreciative of her siblings conflicts.
And later child A found herself enthusiastically adopted into the world of another family through marriage. This was a family that carried no such traumas for her. Carried no baggage from her past. No surprise she naturally adopted the one and effectively became disenchanted with the other.
Yet of course child B was at the opposite end of this process and found child A's entirely explicable attitudes unacceptable.
Is anyone wrong? Well I would say that ill-considered schism in an education system may have much to answer for and that we look today upon a range of similar interferences which may yet, if not already, bear unripe fruit. And some of those stem not from the intense focus on fairness that drove Butler 70-ish years ago – and he still may have got it wrong.
That was, potentially, the good bit. But the eleven-plus was also created by the 1944 Butler Education Act. This established a Tripartite System of education, with an academic, a technical and a functional strand. Prevailing educational thought at the time was that testing was an effective way to discover to which strand a child was most suited. The results of the exam would be used to match children's secondary schools to their abilities and future career needs.
Now please read on....
In 1938 a girl child was born in Holloway, north London. And in due course in 1943 she started school under the old elementary system. By then the family was living in a house acquired as a result of war conditions in Muswell Hill. It was large, imposing but in a frankly ordinary part of London. Then. Today it is imposing, in a highly desirable postcode (N 10) and fetches £1.25 Million.
In 1943 our young girl starts school at what was known, right into the 60s, as the Tin Pot school, in St James Lane (today it is a Performing Arts centre in plush new buildings). Clad in corrugated iron it is said (cf Hornsey Journal) that on rainy days teachers gave up the unequal struggle with the noise.
But in that same year of 1943 a sister arrived in this household. In that year one went off to school while another arrived to take up residence and, inevitably, domination of the family world. (I know this as in 1948,in a different part of the forest, the same thing happened to me and my new brother.)
Whatever trauma this conflict may or may not have produced (for me it was significant) was to be emphasised five years later when the second sibling started school . By then the option was to attend the posh, leafy Tetherdown Primary School. So, clad in uniform, the child of 5 (child B) went off to school while the child of 10 (child A) finished her years at the despised Tin Pot school. (Muswell Hill Primary and Infants).
In the following year and entirely unprepared by the elementary system the 1938 child (child A) took the 11-plus. And predictably, failed. Thus she went to the Muswell Hill Secondary School. (That may not have been its actual name but it suffices for this.) She begins the progress towards her Secondary Education Certificate. School leaving age is 15.
In 1953, when child A had already reached the end of her CSE education at age 15, child B takes and passes the 11-plus, for which Tetherdown had been aiming for five years.
Thus in 1954 child B sets off, in full; uniform for Hornsey High School for Girls – a grammar school.
But in 1953 child A had already made her career choice and gone to the Prince of Wales Hospital, Tottenham to train as a nurse. A great career, fully exploited by a capable and competent person. But she left home and child B remained in sole possession of the capitol. Child A returned briefly and rarely and used the smallest room in the family home, by this time in Friern Barnet, north London.
Now child A does brilliantly well and qualifies at the highest available level and continues to build a highly creditable career as a nurse, rising 40-plus years on, to clinical specialist – the very top of the tree.
And child B chooses a very different career, declining the potential of university and while still living at home develops a good and successful career in journalism and much later in public relations.
Does any of this matter? Well, in the outcomes for these two not at all since they did well, married well enough and had lovely and much loved children.
But how can we judge the internal turmoil that the very obvious differences convey and may have generated. The one is given by circumstance and chronology the opportunity to remain at home with her parents. The other, already disadvantaged in this way by her age, finds herself out of the family environment for a lot of her young life and fending for herself.
It is not for us the observers to make judgments here. But we do have a right to wonder if there is not some internal process that may have later outcomes.
Some of this I did discuss at length with one and I have lived with the effects for the other. It is my humble opinion that child A resented her estrangement and was antipathetic to her parents. Child B suffered no such doubts. And has been less than appreciative of her siblings conflicts.
And later child A found herself enthusiastically adopted into the world of another family through marriage. This was a family that carried no such traumas for her. Carried no baggage from her past. No surprise she naturally adopted the one and effectively became disenchanted with the other.
Yet of course child B was at the opposite end of this process and found child A's entirely explicable attitudes unacceptable.
Is anyone wrong? Well I would say that ill-considered schism in an education system may have much to answer for and that we look today upon a range of similar interferences which may yet, if not already, bear unripe fruit. And some of those stem not from the intense focus on fairness that drove Butler 70-ish years ago – and he still may have got it wrong.