Think Again, Mr. Crosland
Sus,—Delighted as I am to receive a reply from my , friend John Robson I am somewhat disturbed that we should appear to be quarrelling on an issue on which I know we fundamentally agree, and cause Mr. Crosland to chuckle rather than 'think again.'
The central issue is surely this. The direct-grant schools and the so-called 'public schools' are both in some danger of losing their independence from the declared policies of the present Government on education. Both are regarded as pockets of educa- tional privilege, and the strategy of Admiral Cros- land's 'shot across the bows' is all too clear. At present the 'public schools' are merely exposed to intermittent denigration and a commission. To me, at any rate, the threat to the direct-grant schools seems more immediate and sinister. They are told in effect to negotiate their integration with the local education authorities 'or else,' and it is this implied threat to their direct grant that prompted me to focus attention on the precise legal status of that grant. It is quite plain that the Minister regards them, because of it, as the soft underbelly of educational-privilege. Either he is bluffing, in which case his bluff should be called, for a take-over of direct-grant schools would indeed, as Mr. Robson points out, require an Act of Parliament—or he really means it, in which case both their historic character and their independence are threatened. They may have to choose between them, and the price of choosing the former could well be the loss of both. Moreover their fate could even be settled while the 'public schools' are still 'waiting for Newsom.'
Finally, the answer to Mr. Robson's rhetorical
question is by no means self-evident. Manchester Grammar School, though assisted by taxpayers' money. is, in the fashionable jargon, 'an elitist school' which 'creams' the local talent and 'steals more than its fair share' of able pupils and teachers. Potential Labour voters might well relish the pros- pect of seeing it expropriated. On the other hand few of them either know or care who or what the Mercers' Company is, or would bother to find out that the one school it owned is now closed and the 4 other, commonly associated with it, it merely
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