THE SPENS REPORT
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR]
SIR,—Lady Simon takes both you and me to task for com- menting unfavourably on the Report of the Consultative Committee of which she is a member. May I reiterate that the Report will widen the gap between the secondary grammar schools and the public schools. The cumulative effect of the suggested curriculum changes, too per cent. Special Places, the Establishment of Teachers (a cunning method for reducing salaries) and compulsory transfer can hardly fail to produce this result. The secondary grammar school will have its freedom limited and its status reduced. Many headmasters think that the introduction of too per cent. Special Places will destroy the character of their schools.
The credit for relaxing the group requirements in the School Certificate Examination belongs to the Secondary School Examinations Council and not to the Consultative Committee. The acknowledgement of this in the Report would have saved a good deal of space. But the Secondary School Examinations Council never suggested that languages should be dropped. They merely removed the compulsion to pass in a language— which is a very different thing.
With regard to Lady Simon's other point, I attempted to give a condensed account of a document of over Soo pages. This was particularly difficult in the case of a Report which hedges so often. On multilateral schools and transfer—to mention two points only—the Committee seem to have been at pains to leave a loophole for escape. Lady Simon by suit- able selection from the Report cor.t-adicts my statement that the Report recommends transfer from modern schools to grammar schools or technical high schools, but not vice versa. Let the Report speak :
" We do not consider there will be any general need for transfer from a Grammar School before the age of 16 to other than Technical High Schools." (Page 338.)
" There is much greater necessity for transfers from a Modern School to a Grammar School or Technical High School than in the opposite direction." (Page 34o.) " The kind of transfer which we consider to be undoubtedly of highest importance and of most frequent occurrence is that from Modern Schools to Grammar Schools or Technical High Schools." (Page 34o.) In view of these quotations, I maintain that my condensed statement gives the general spirit of the recommendations. I was not arguing the merits of these particular proposals, but merely using them to show how the Committee seemed hoist with their own parity. On the general question, the really important thing is that compulsory transfer is against human nature.
I note with interest that Lady Simon is an apostle of equality and that she deprecates the fact that parents choose schools for social reasons. I wonder what she means by equality and social reasons.
I find no great disposition amongst experienced headmasters to place much faith in this Report. There is resentment that the Committee in their desire to establish at all costs the case for technical high schools have done little justice to the work of the secondary schools. Many feel that the simple solution —the development of multilateral secondary schools as well as the incorporation of the junior technical schools in the secondary school system—has been rejected on no very con- vincing grounds. There are many other criticisms, and I suggest that Lady Simon asks the opinions of other head- masters who are free to speak.—Yours faithfully,
The Grammar School, Leeds, 6. TERRY THOMAS.
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