Talk:Comprehensive System

Whilst I appreciate - and welcome - the additional detail I am not happy about the tone and approach of recent edits. References in favour of comprehensive education have been removed and replaced with dubious party political references. For example you have deleted the reference to the fact (please note - fact) that Margaret Thatcher during her time as education secretary continued the policy of the previous Labour government on comprehensive schools. In fact most of the changeover from the tripartite system to the comprehensive system happened in the period 1968-75, mostly under a Conservative administration.

The material on the merits of the system is now biased because you have deleted the main arguments in favour which were:

"Supporters of the comprehensive system argue that it is unacceptable on both moral and practical grounds to select children on the basis of their ability. They also argue that comprehensive schools in the UK have allowed millions of children to gain access to further and higher education, and that the previous selective system relegated children who failed the eleven plus examination to a second class and inferior education."

Additionally the current article makes a whole series of evidence free value judgements about comprehensive education – such as:

“There is a widespread perception, shared by many of the system's advocates, that the comprehensive system has not been the success hoped for.”

“Academic performance is usually well below selective schools. This is unsurprising, since selective schools will have a natural advantage over comprehensives. However, it can be argued that the difference cannot be explained by differences in students alone.”

Who argues this? Where is the evidence for this assertion?

“In spite of the intentions of a ‘grammar school education for all’, many comprehensive schools lack resources and good teachers.”

Whose intention was it to provide a 'grammar school for all'? What evidence exists that the lack of resources and teachers is worse in comprehensives schools? Supporters would argue that teaching in a grammar school is easier than teaching in a comprehensive and that grammar school teachers would not be able to cope in the comprehensive environment.

These are not isolated examples and I am considering a wholesale rewrite of both these pages. But I feel I ought to seek comment from the authors – a courtesy not extended to me as the original author – before I do so.

Shropshire Lad

Response
While I understand that you feel strongly on the changes I have made here, I'm not certain that you're aware of the context in which it took place. Over the past two months I have been researching and writing revisions to the articles on the tripartite system, a subject that suffers from considerable neglect on the internet. Partly because of the large amount of information on comprehensive education I picked up in the process, and partly as a result of the major changes in the information carried by related articles, I felt that a thorough rewrite would help improve the situation. I found myself making so many changes that it seemed sensible to undertake a full rewrite to give the article a coherent style. I did not do so lightly, knowing that it would upset previous authors. However I hoped that they would understand the scale of surrounding changes and the organisational changes that had taken place.

I suspect that you may be unaware of some of the new information put up as a result. In partciular, you may wish to look at Debates on the grammar school, which puts the arguments for both sides on the merits of the tripartite system as articulated since the 1940s. You may also not have seen the large amount of information about discussions over the introduction of comprehensive education in the 1960s, located in the main Tripartite System article. While I would sympathise with the idea that this information should be put in the article on the comprehensive, I personally think that debates in the fifties and sixties were about the failings of the existing system, not the merits of its replacement. If you would like to include this information in the article on the Comprehensive system, I would fully understand.

As for what you classify as 'value judgements', I fully accept that these are matters of opinion. However I am saddened that you think I have included these out of personal belief rather than a desire to note contemporary debates about the system. In response to the specific criticisms you raised:


 * “There is a widespread perception, shared by many of the system's advocates, that the comprehensive system has not been the success hoped for.” I took this from the recent radio 4 series 'Comp', which was quoting educationalist Clive Chitty and journalist Melissa Benn, both of whom were and are noted advocates of the Comprehensive system.


 * “Academic performance is usually well below selective schools. This is unsurprising, since selective schools will have a natural advantage over comprehensives. However, it can be argued that the difference cannot be explained by differences in students alone.” This has been argued by Ruth Kelly, Estelle Morris and anyone associated with the government's policy of turning comprehensives into selective schools. While I agree that it is a matter of opinion, it seems to be one shared by the two main parties and many of those preparing the forthcoming White Paper.


 * As for your questions about a 'grammar school education for all', that phrase was the one used in Labour manifestos for several years prior to the issuing of Circular 10/65. If you want a specific use of it, you can find it footnoted at the bottom of the Tripartite System article. It was regularly said by Gaitskell, Crosland and Wilson. I don't think it is unreasonable to point out the difference between intentions and reality in the same way I think it is correct to show that secondary modern schools did not receive the parity of esteem that their architects envisaged.

I recommend that you have a look at the Tripartite article, since other concerns of yours (for example the lack of a reference to the Thatcher-era comprehensivisation) would, in my opinion, be met by the content there.

I suspect that the best way to resolve this dispute is for us to create a new page, counterpart to that about debates on the grammar school. Debates on the comprehensive school could then give space for arguments for and against, and we could remove the inflamatory material from the main page on the comp. I considered doing this earlier, but felt that it overlapped with the grammar debate article. In light of what you have said, I can now see that there is a strong case for such a page, and would be happy to help you flesh it out.

As for wider rewrites, I personally cannot see anything politically motivated in the article on the Comprehensive System. If you see anything, I would be happy for you to correct it. In the article on Comprehensive schools, aside from the section on debates, I accept that there are a few sentences in the history section that could be interpretted in a negative light. This was not my intention, and if you can think of better ways to phrase them it would certainly benefit the article. However I think you might be overreacting in sugesting a full rewrite of both- it seems rather unnecessary to reproduce 80% of the information content. But, if you have the time and genuinely think my writing and research are that poor that they should be replaced, I can do nothing to stop you.

I hope that we can find a way of resolving this calmly and to the benefit of the articles' readers. --Evil Capitalist 17:50, 6 October 2005 (UTC) (Copies on both Shropshire Lad's talk page and at both the relevant articles)

Reply
It is a huge jump to go from individual quotes (from Chitty and Benn) to an assertion that this is an opinion shared by many of the system's advocates. The highest profile advocate of the Comprehensive system at the moment is Roy Hattersley, and his view, stated on many occasions, is that the system cannot be judged because it was never fully implemented. In areas where comprehensives have a genuinely mixed intake the schools are usually seen to be very successful.

I also stand by my view that the entire tone of these entries (and I have read the entries on the related pages) is biased. Specifically the argument in favour of academic selection is taken as a given, whilst the main arguments against are either badly put, possibly because you are not familiar with them, or omitted.

The creation of a new page will not solve this dilemma because this is an encyclopaedia, not a debating society. The entries should be as far as is possible factually correct. If a debate exists, as it does in this area, the safest course of action is to attempt a factual summary of the position one leans towards, and leave the opposition to state their own case. You have committed the cardinal sin of putting the opposition's case for them - badly.

Shropshire Lad 19:28, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Reply to reply
On the first point, I think we are talking at crossed purposes here. The people who I said had found the comprehensive system a disappointment also argue that it had not been properly implemented. We are not discussing an abstract idea here, but the comprehensive system as it operates. Hattersley also thinks that the system has not lived up to its initial promise, because of failed implementation. I think we're arguing about unclear wording rather than philosophy here.

You are quite right to point out that this is an encylopedia, and it is one that deals with a number of contentious issues. If you look at pages such as atheism, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or abortion you'll see that one of the important functions of this encyclopaedia is to state differing views on a single topic. To characterise such a function as a 'debating society' is, in my opinion, to underate one of wikipedia's greatest strengths as a source of knowledge.

You are also right to say that I have not done justice to the arguments against selection. However, the alternative was to put no arguments at all, and as you have shown in your response to the section on 'debates' in the Comprehensive Schools article, people find that much more irritating. Those counterarguments are only placeholders until someone better equipped comes along to replace them. I would be very happy to see you edit them so that they meet your standards. --Evil Capitalist 00:21, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Is Differentiated learning simply another term for Comprehensive education? Bastie 04:43, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
 * In a word, no. Tafkam 18:42, 27 July 2006 (UTC)