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International Socialism, Spring 1965

Gerry Lynch

Labour and Education

From International Socialism (1st series), No. 20, Spring 1965, pp. 6–12.
Thanks to Ted Crawford & the late Will Fancy.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.

1. Introduction

Oddly enough, education was going to be one of Labour’s big vote-catchers – something that would appeal to the new managerial technocrat executive and to the average working man who always votes Labour but who likes to have something to vote for. But then woe! The ‘God save our Grammar Schools’ campaign began in Bristol and Liverpool, and education was quickly buried amid acknowledgments of the rich tapestry of our grammar-school heritage. Or as Dick Crossman succinctly put it:

‘Our aim is not to “uproot” all the grammar schools, but to extend the advantages of grammar school education to all children who can profit by it, while eliminating the sense of failure inevitably associated with the 11-plus segregation.’ [1]

When you’re outlining party policy in the Times Educational Supplement you have to put it carefully, but when you’re in power you slap a full-blooded comprehensive system on them and they can’t do anything about it.

Or so the story goes. What will actually happen is that Anthony Crosland will be using his considerable intellect to stop the more hot-headed local councils from imposing completely comprehensive education. The direct-grant schools will keep a reasonable amount of independence, and comprehensives will be enjoined to maintain grammar streams. These predictions are based on a cynicism, but on a grounded cynicism. It’s all happened before. In 1945 the Labour Party Conference and the TUC policy was for multilateral schools (streamed comprehensives). The Labour Party had inherited the 1944 Education Act, and they had to implement it; since it contained no directive to select at 11, but merely to ensure free secondary education for all, the way was open. However, throughout the Labour Government Ellen Wilkinson, the Minister of Education, defended the Grammar/Technical/Modern hierarchy, and consistently went against Conference decisions in order to defend the concept. What she did, in effect, was nothing – she just let the local councils work out their solutions from their individual circumstances. This practical attitude was elevated to the plane of educational theory for the Party Conference of 1946:

‘If the teachers get the same pay, if the holidays are the same, and if, as far as possible, the buildings are good in each case, then you get in practice the parity for which the teachers are rightly asking.’ [2]

Even then it must have sounded ridiculous. A rigid class system of education, such as you had before 1944, doesn’t turn into an oasis of socialist virtue overnight. And yet the Labour conferences of the late forties came to accept the status quo, and the National Union of Teachers became more firmly attached to the system.

There are two very big differences between the educational scene of 1945 and that of 1965, The first is that local councils want comprehensive schools, the National Union of Teachers is in favour of them, and there is a general public awareness of the limitations of the selection system. The second is that there is a large body of statistical knowledge available to those who wish to change education in this country, and the evidence is so overwhelming that the politicians have to admit the consequences. The Labour Government now has to follow the local councils, not lead them, and they will have to admit the disparities between their legislation and the statistical facts they admit to. A ministerial revolution took place when Edward Boyle wrote in the foreword to the Newsom Report:

‘Their (the children dealt with by the report) potentialities are no less real, and of no less importance, because they do not readily lend themselves to measurement by the conventional criteria of academic achievement. The essential point is that all children should have an equal opportunity of acquiring intelligence, and of developing their talents and abilities to the full.’ [3]

No longer ‘innate intelligence’ but ‘acquired’. Anthony Crosland also knows the score:

‘Granted the differences in heredity and infantile experience every child should have the same opportunity for acquiring measured intelligence, so far as this can be controlled by social action.’ [4]

Crosland adds that ‘infantile experience’ is a determinant of intelligence. And yet the educational system does not take this into account. Will Crosland? He knows exactly what is needed – an unstreamed, comprehensive system – but he will allow education to be shaped by the economic pressures rather than the educational ones. People are concerned enough about their children to welcome comprehensives; if they know all the facts they would wish to do away with streaming. Just as the comprehensive idea has finally got through, so will non-streaming; it is up to socialists to push forward the ideas in the Labour Party and the Trade Unions. What follows is an attempt to put forward most of the relevant facts and to offer a few ideas.
 

2. Education and the Labour Market

The greatest single influence on education is the labour market. Most advances in education have been justified in terms of the financial benefit they would bring the country. Anyone reading the Crowther, Newsom and Robbins reports would be struck by the continued reference to those two sides of the educational coin, ‘human justice’ and ‘economic self-interest’, and to such neat concepts as ‘the pool of ability’. Most appeals for the expansion of education take the economic needs of the country as their principal basis. The Robbins Report (Appendix 4) had a section on Assessing the Economic Contribution of Education which is written by an American, as Britain had not done any research in this field – but now we have a research unit working on this very problem – it’s all a question of priorities. The Labour Party has made a great song and dance about the Robbins Report, since it has an easily appreciated financial message: it was considerably harder to give the Newsom Report a financial message, and so it quietly disappeared from the political scene. If, in a class society, most educational reform is triggered off by financial need, then educational aims and standards are bound to suffer. H.G. Wells’ comment on the 1870 Act still applies today:

‘... an Act to educate the lower classes for employment on lower class lines, and with specially trained, inferior teachers.’ [5]

Before the war, education was almost as rigidly stratified as the class system itself. The very rich sent their progeny to schools and universities specialising in the educational and social problems of the very rich; the middle middles and lower middles, with a sprinkling of foremen, supervisors and craftsmen, sent their offspring to grammar schools; and the remaining three-quarters of the population sent their children to elementary schools until they were old enough to be sent to work. There was a system of free places by which the measurably brighter of the ‘children’ would enter the ‘offspring’s’ grammar schools, but as this system expanded it became a method for cheapening the cost of education for the lower ranks of ‘offspring’, rather than a means of extending grammar school education to ‘children’ – it provided free tuition, but books, uniform, and a guarantee of keeping the child on till after he was fifteen, were demanded of the parents. Thus, although the free place system was extensively practised by the late 1930s, there was a real difference brought about by the 1944 Education Act when it abolished fee-paying in secondary schools, as can be seen in the following figures: [6]

Even the second column of figures does not represent an intellectually true picture of the nation’s children, since, as one shall see later, there is a built-in bias against working-class children in the selection process. (1951 census – 74 per cent of the male working population were manual workers.) But if class ceased to be an insurmountable barrier to social mobility in 1944, it continued to exert an influence, by being a strong source of differentials in the level of performance – the lower your social class, the less likely you were to benefit from a grammar school education. However, more of that later.

Only 25 per cent of children go to grammar and comprehensive schools – 64.9 per cent go to secondary modern schools. The labour market offers to the grammar school child a range of choice very different from what it offers to his secondary modern counterpart. In 1953-4, of boys leaving school at fifteen (the normal secondary-modern leaving age), 60.4 per cent went into semi-skilled or unskilled employment, and 32.4 per cent went into apprenticeships or ‘learnerships’. Of boys who left that same year, aged sixteen, only 30.1 per cent went into semi-skilled or unskilled employment, but 37.4 per cent went into apprenticeships or ‘learnerships’ – 25.4 per cent went into clerical employment compared with only 5.3 per cent of the fifteen-year-old leavers. [7] Since 1953 the situation has become more rigid as, more and more, clerical and skilled manual occupations have come to require GCE qualifications as entrance requirements. The labour market seems to be drawing in ever closer to the education system, and the schools become sources for the creation of talent, become demoting and promoting agencies, producing goods with the quality, price and weight carefully marked. Thus, although only one secondary-modern pupil in nineteen sits for the GCE examination, considerable pressure has brought about a new category, the Certificate of Secondary Education, so that employers can see how good or how bad the child’s second-rate education has been. Thus the only flexible section of British education has fallen to the inflexible demands of a modern capitalist economy. In the postwar period, the most obvious structural change in the labour market has been the increased demand for science and engineering graduates, not simply to replace outmoded personnel, but to take up newly-created jobs. Less obviously, but more importantly, many new skilled manual jobs exist, resulting in a relative decline in the number of semi-skilled and unskilled jobs, and also in the lowering of the status of the office worker as the differential between the salary of the office worker and the wage of the skilled manual worker grows in favour of the latter. It is the recruitment of skilled manual workers that has conditioned the educational experience of most children in this country, and part of the drive towards comprehensives and the extension of further education comes from the conditioning factor. It is interesting to note that the rigidities in the scale of social mobility occur in the highest and in the lowest class categories, since the children of professional people and of financiers tend to enter occupations in the same area of endeavour, and children of semi- and un-skilled working-class parents tend to be disadvantaged in the social mobility stakes. The most mobile social classes tend to be the lower middle and the upper manual, and the grammar school tends to be the threshold to social success. ‘The decisive stage in the educational background is the grammar school or its equivalent. If that stage is attained, further education intensifies the parental-filial association for the sons of upper status fathers and still further increases the social ascent of the sons of lower status fathers.’ [8]

One of the main emphases of the Early Leaving, Crowther, and Robbins Reports was the wastage of talent amongst lower working-class recruits to the grammar school, who left at fifteen or sixteen in large numbers. It is fortunate that a modern capitalist economy cannot predict exact numbers of recruits for exact types of jobs, since the inability to do just this ensures that a fair degree of generality occurs in the education of the average child. If, as the Crowther Report predicted, half of the children in school can expect to have to retrain sometime in their lives, the degree of generality is going to increase. The end-product of the schools will be more adaptable, grounded in general theory rather than particular practice, and will have documentary evidence of this training. On the negative side, his education will have been conducted under more social pressure, as ‘getting-on’ becomes increasingly a function of education, and decreasingly a function of effort in the place of work. Educational background will determine the limits of occupational success: effort can only determine within these limits.
 

3. Physical Limitations

The material conditions under which education takes place reflect the range of needs of the labour market. Numbers and quality of teachers, size of classes, state of buildings – all follow the inexorable pattern – those who have more receive more and become more; those who have less receive less and become less. The post-1944 Britain inherited an inevitably class-biased educational system: the public schools, the voluntary-aided grammar schools, the maintained grammar schools, the secondary schools, the all-age schools, represented a descending order of material conditions.

The Labour Government didn’t touch the public schools, and refused to withdraw the direct-grant system which enabled the old voluntary-aided grammar school to maintain a fair degree of autonomy. These two types of school were thus elevated from the common ruck. The local councils were greatly encouraged to build up their maintained grammar schools and to take places in the direct-grant grammar schools. The new secondary-modern school grew out of the non-grammar secondaries from before the war, and some all-age schools were split into two sections. The complete works, cracks and all, was then papered over with pieces of paper bearing the slogan ‘parity of esteem’, all supplied by successive Labour Party Conferences. The education-labour market would have made ‘parity of esteem’ a mockery anyway, but even within reformist limits the slogan could have been translated with more accuracy. If a system of benignant quotas had been introduced much could have been changed. Just as the American Negro doesn’t appreciate equality until a little of the arrears have been made up, so the education of working-class children cannot be seen to be equitable until the arrears in material conditions and standards have been made up. In fact, the arrears have increased.

The Newsom Report, dealing with the education of the average and below-average child, found that only 21 per cent of school buildings were ‘generally up to present standards’; 38 per cent were ‘less seriously deficient’ than the 41 per cent that were ‘seriously deficient in many respects’. Nearly half of the schools built since the war were in the ‘less seriously deficient’ category because they were ‘so grossly overcrowded’. [9] The Robbins Report, Appendix One, shows starkly the wide disparities between Local Education Authorities. [10] The percentage of the total number of 17-year-olds who were still at school was lowest in Nottingham, Salford, Dudley, West Ham and Bury. The number of entrants to full-time higher education as a percentage of the age group was lowest in Salford, Smethwick, East Ham, West Bromwich and West Ham .There is a direct relationship between staying on at school (with the chance of achieving higher education) and the following characteristics: social class of the LEA, size of primary-school classes, pupil-teacher ratio in secondary schools, and percentage of children in grammar schools. Those who have more etc. Those who have less etc. All the time this pattern remains the same the differences between the social classes grows ever greater. Many more teachers are needed. In 1947 there were 230,000 teachers; in 1960 330,000: but in order to have an adequate pupil-teacher ratio 100,000 extra are needed straight-away. [11] In other words, over the next twenty years, even with a crash programme, there won’t be enough teachers and the laws of supply and demand will ensure that the most backward social areas, the worst equipped schools, and the least amenable pupils will lose out to the more fortunately endowed. This is happening, as the Newsom Report shows: [12]

The high turnover of staff in the older working-class areas goes against one of the findings of the Report – that it is the children in precisely these areas who need stable contacts with teachers for longer than the usual form year. The educational needs of children pull one away, the laws of supply and demand the other. In the same way, graduate teachers tend to go to grammar schools. Graduates make up 19.2 per cent of the teaching profession, but only 15.9 per cent of secondary-modern teachers and 3.8 per cent of primary teachers are graduates. [13] This trend reinforces the academic-vocational split between the grammar and the secondary-modern. The pupil-teacher ratio in public schools is about twelve to one. In 103 out of the 145 LEAs in England and Wales the ratio is between 20 and 23 for secondary schools. The average size of primary classes was under 32.6 for 36 authorities, under 37.5 for 51 authorities, and over that number for 58 authorities. [14] The priorities involved are the priorities of the labour market – the semi-skilled or unskilled worker of the future doesn’t need much education, so it’s not very important that he should have good teachers and good conditions.
 

4. Streaming

Streaming is the logical development in a selective education system – you have to grade people according to their potential for making the top 20 per cent at the 11 plus. The next target is the GCE or the new CSE. If you had classes of not more than 20 then the targets could be aimed at without undue strain on a teacher taking an unstreamed class – with a class of 35, some kind of bureaucratic management is thought to be necessary and streaming is the easiest method of categorising. In Brian Jackson’s recent survey, [15] he found that 96 per cent of primary schools used streaming, that half the children were graded before they arrived, and that three-quarters were streamed by the age of seven. The streaming systems used varied widely: more than half used no kind of intelligence test, 37 per cent used no test at all, and very few schools used the normal external agencies for the construction of selection tests. Jackson tested for class bias in streaming and found the following statistics for 252 three-stream schools:

When you remember that only 44 per cent of those who pass the 11-plus are children of non-manual workers, you can see the weight of the bias in primary streaming. J.W.B. Douglas provides figures that show that streaming and 11-plus selection are self-fulfilling prophecies. [16]

Regardless of measured ability, children’s scores decreased in the lower stream, and increased in the upper stream – and this is intelligence (the fixed quantity!) not attainment. Douglas’s evidence to the Robbins Report shows that selection for grammar school automatically determines an increase in intelligence test score, although working-class children tend to do less well than middle-class children. [17]

The adoption of comprehensive schools is just around the corner, but the evidence against streaming is just as damning as the evidence against selection. Children in London’s primary schools don’t seem to suffer from an unstreamed education; and yet Jackson’s survey showed that 85 per cent of teachers are in favour of streaming, and the main reason they give is that it benefits the less able child! Unfortunately teaching unstreamed classes, especially at the secondary level, requires a different approach to teaching, an approach hinted at by the Newsom Report in the section devoted to school design, where, in recommending several prototype experimental school buildings, tutorial rooms, lecture rooms, and private study rooms are included, but the old-style classroom is left out completely. [18] This is perhaps the Newsom Report’s most revolutionary contribution, although they kept it rather quiet. Again, as with so much else, it depends upon a more favourable teacher-pupil ratio as well as the provision of such facilities.
 

5. The Ideology of the 11-plus

Psychologists have never said that the intelligence test is a foolproof indicator of innate ability. They have claimed roughly 95 per cent accuracy between test scores and actual ability – which is unmeasurable. But what very few psychologists have gone on to say is that you should not select children at the age of eleven – that is, they have not spelled out the moral and social implications of their investigations. It has to be admitted that intelligence tests are a fairer way of selecting grammar school entrants: as Floud and Halsey have shown, [19] teachers’ reports and school records lead to greater discrimination against the working-class child than do intelligence tests. Most psychologists accept the status quo where selection is necessary, then say that intelligence tests are fairer, and then send their children to public schools.

Intelligence tests have built into them a bias against the working-class child. There tends to be a greater disparity between the non-verbal and verbal component score [20] for working-class children, than for middle-class children – that is, the working-class child’s score on the verbal test often falls well below his score on the non-verbal. Bernstein [21] cites the evidence for this in a preliminary discussion: he compared a group of working-class youth with a group of public-school youth and found, not only the situation outlined above, but also that educational performance as reflected in class work was related to the verbal score, not the non-verbal. This latter phenomenon indicates that present educational methods are closely related to verbal intelligence, and must disadvantage working-class children. Bernstein also cites a study by Venables, who found amongst a group of technical-college day-release students 40 per cent of their number of equal intelligence to a group of university students. Only 8 per cent of the technical students were equal to the university students in verbal intelligence. Research by Nisbet [22] showed that the larger the family the lower the intelligence of the child, and this held constant for all social classes. Bernstein combines all this research to argue that it is the amount and type of adult verbal contact with the child that largely determines its verbal intelligence. Taken to its extreme, this means you can predict a five year old child’s chances of passing the eleven plus, by analysing the amount and type of verbal contact it has with its parents! It is this factor which seems to be at work in the statistics presented by J.W.B Douglas: [23]

The appalling inequalities shown here are most extreme in the comparison between lower-middle and lower-manual children: for each type of authority, a hundred fewer children got through – an entirely social class bias. Obviously, a number of middle-class children are wangled in through loopholes in the direct-grant and independent systems, but the figures do show a vast discrepancy between one set of intelligence examinations, and a set containing both attainment and intelligence examinations (attainment containing a high verbal component).
 

6. Class Differences in Performance

It may be thought that once the working-class child gets to grammar school his worries are over – but no. At grammar schools, regardless of ability, working-class children can’t wait to leave.

Looking at column (3) it is easy to see that once children do decide to stay on there is no noticeable class difference in their performance. Therefore the disparities in column (1) must be almost entirely a function of early leaving. The extreme nature of the disparity is seen in column (2), where, of the most intelligent children from the semi- and un-skilled workers’ families, fewer stay on at school than the least intelligent professional and managerial workers’ children. The differentiation by 11-plus intelligence grading is most important as previous figures on class differentials have made it difficult to make cross-references in this way (e.g., in the Newsom Report it is impossible to differentiate statistics for class and other variables). It might be reassuring to think the situation is getting better, that growing affluence and an increased acceptance of education among the lower orders has improved the position since the 1940s – it might be, but it just isn’t so.

‘In 1961, as in the early 50s, the proportion of children getting 5 or more “O” levels is lower among children from semi- and un-skilled working class families who pass into grammar schools in the upper third of the 11-plus intake, than among children from professional and managerial homes in the lower third of the 11-plus intake. Moreover, since 1953, the proportions have risen significantly in the highest occupational group, where the pool of ability might have been thought most nearly exhausted.’ [25]

The Robbins Report also looks at university entrance and compares social class backgrounds for 1928–47 and for 1960. Although the number getting to university had increased from 3.7 per cent of the age group to 5.8 per cent, the manual worker’s child stood proportionately less chance of getting to university in 1960 than he did in the earlier period! [26] Of all non-manual workers’ boys, 16.8 per cent got to university in 1960, but only 2.6 per cent of working-class boys got there. As with the ‘A’ levels, once students arrive at university there is no noticeable difference in performance or achievement – it’s the getting, there that counts. As you go through the range of higher education, you find the proportion of technical college and training college students who are of working-class origins is proportionately greater than the working-class component in universities. An indication of the human wastage involved in this discrimination against working-class children was given by the Crowther Report when it allocated a sample of National Service recruits to six ability groups. In the top ability group, and the second ability group, there were wide differences between the social classes as regards the proportion leaving at 15: [27]

As most of ability group one and a proportion of group two would get to grammar school if ability were the only arbiter, it is obvious that the lower down the social scale you are, the less chance you have of getting there. Any system of education that disadvantages a majority of the population in the ways outlined above cannot be tolerated. Britain’s situation is not only that of a capitalist society, but a capitalist society that is socially backward – we don’t just have a capitalist education system, we have a bad one.
 

7. Demands

Knowing all this, what should socialists put forward? There is the simple demand – ‘more’ – to start with Labour has promised a crash programme of teacher training, classes reduced to 30, more school buildings, family allowances that take into account children staying on at school, and an expansion of higher and further education. But unless there is a clear decision to expand the percentage of the national income spent on education, very few of these promises will be kept. An economic change of this nature must involve more than a juggling of taxes and a bit off the arms bill – it can only be part of a general re-orientation of government spending. In effect we are talking of socialism, and hence the first demand is related to more than just education. The proposals in the Robbins Report would involve a doubling of the proportion of the gross national product devoted to higher education (from 0.8 to 1.6 per cent), and these proposals are not revolutionary by any means. [28] As higher education is fairly well endowed and only 7.7 per cent of the relevant age group got there, it would be safe to assume that the proportion of the gross national product devoted to all education should be at least double what it is now by 1980. This kind of major reallocation of resources is beyond Labour reformism, and by pointing this out we are pointing out the need for socialism.

The influence of the labour market on education is a less straightforward problem. Even in a socialist society the problem of placing each unique human being into a job suited to him will be very great, and intellectual capacity for the job must be one of the considerations. In capitalist society it is important to obtain for people as much freedom as possible from the workings of the labour market – and a measure of freedom is given by educational achievement and objective assessments of skill such as technical qualifications. The demand for comprehensives has received great impetus from the growing awareness of the direct connection between education and eventual occupation – the secondary-modern could never achieve parity with the grammar school while continually placing its product into semi-and un-skilled manual jobs. It will be impossible to dissociate education and occupation in society while there are financial and social disadvantages connected with working-class life: the kind of social equality that is needed instead, only socialism can bring out. In California, where they have free, non-selective colleges for the 18–22 age group, a system operates where counsellors help unrealistically ambitious students to reappraise their occupational and academic aspirations: there is a very high drop-out rate, and the typical product of these Junior State Colleges would go on to get a job at the skilled manual level. [29] The crunch in California comes at this age, whereas in Britain it comes at 11, 16 and 18. Given a comprehensive system, and education for all up to 17 or 18, the grinding wheels of the labour market would operate much as they do now in California. Obviously many of the inequalities and anomalies would disappear in a comprehensive system, but the basic relationship with the labour market would be unchanged. By its reformist principles, the Labour Party reconciles itself to this basic relationship, and so will never create a system that satisfies educational principles. To campaign for a principled system of education, is to expose the limitations of reformism. The statistical knowledge that we have today entails changes in the education along the following lines:

1. An unstreamed comprehensive system from nursery education to higher education.
    
2. The depressed verbal ability of many children to be tackled by

3. The supplying of buildings and numbers of teachers to reduce classes to at least 20, so that the effects of changes 1 and 2 can be achieved.

All this implies a greatly enlarged role for the state, but (apart from the moral problem of this degree of interference) it should not mean a usurpation of the functions of the family. All the evidence shows that the degree of adult contact is a determinant of intelligence, and children from institutions tend to be retarded in this respect, [30] so the problem is one of home-school cooperation. To do this the school would have to be far more of a community centre than it is now. This means neighbourhood schools, rather than schools with large catchment areas. The case for these basic changes in the education system is far more difficult to put than the relatively simple case for comprehensive schools; but at the same time Crosland knows the facts and can be constantly reminded of them. Without pressure from socialists, Labour would not be worried so long as the necessary numbers of skilled workers, graduates and technologists came along: but faced with a constant pointing out of the disparity between the actualities of capitalism and its avowed moral aim of ‘equal opportunity for all’ Labour would have to try to do something. Education, more than other features of British society, is susceptible to change: it is governed partly by the government and partly by the local councils; as such it is especially vulnerable to pressure within local Labour Parties. It would seem to offer tangible rewards to socialists working in the Labour Party.

Footnotes

1. Times Educational Supplement, 25 September 1964, p. 457.

2. Quoted in Parity and Prestige in English Secondary Education, O. Banks, 1955, p. 141.

3. Half Our Future, Report of Committee chaired by John Newsom, 1963, p. iv (My emphasis – GL).

4. The Conservative Enemy, A. Crosland (My emphasis – GL).

5. Quoted in Education and Social Change in Modern England, D.V. Glass, Education, Economy and Society, ed. Floud, Halsey and Anderson, 1961, p. 394.

6. The Sociology of Education, Jean Floud, Society, ed. Welford et al.

7. English Secondary Schools and the Supply of Labour, Floud and Halsey, Education, Economy and Society, op. cit., p. 85.

8. Social Mobility in Britain, ed. D.V. Glass, 1954, p. 306.

9. Op. cit., Newsom, pp. 258–9.

10. Higher Education, Report of Committee chaired by Lord Robbins, 1964, Appendix One, pp.64–75.

11. Education for Tomorrow, John Vaizey, 1962, pp. 30 and 86.

12. Op. cit., Newsom, p. 246.

13. The School Teachers, Asher Tropp, 1957, p. 262.

14. Op. cit., Robbins, Appendix One, pp. 70–1.

15. Streaming: an Education System in Miniature, Brian Jackson, 1964.

16. The Home and the School, J.W.B. Douglas, 1964, p. 115.

17. Op cit., Robbins, Appendix One, p. 50.

18. Op. cit., Newsom, pp. 87–97.

19. Social Class, Intelligence Tests, and Selection in Secondary Schools, Floud and Halsey, Education, Economy and Society, op. cit., pp. 209–15.

20. Intelligence tests have questions that require the understanding and manipulating of shapes and their relationships – this is non-verbal ability that is being tested. Verbal ability is used to answer questions involving numbers and words. However, even non-verbal items have to have verbal instructions, and this may be a further source of differentiation. All answers are written.

21. Social Class and Linguistic Development: A Theory of Social Learning, Basil Bernstein, Education, Economy and Society, op. cit., p. 288. (Full references are given to research cited.)

22. Family Environment and Intelligence, John Nisbet, Education, Economy and Society, op. cit., p. 273.

23. Op. cit., Douglas, p. 153.

24. Op. cit., Rabbins, p. 52.

25. Ibid., Appendix One, p. 52.

26. Ibid., Appendix One, p. 54.

27. 15 To 17, Report of Committee chaired by Geoffrey Crowther, Part II.

28. Op. cit., Robbins, pp. 207–8.

29. The Cooling Out Function in Higher Education, Burton Clark, Education, Economy and Society, op. cit., p.513.

30. Op. cit., Nisbet, p. 275.

 
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