Chapter 23 – Banding, Streaming and Comprehensive Education
I have already mentioned the first lesson I ever taught at BGS with 2W. After a year in the school with its strict streaming they had all written themselves off. That is something that lasts for life.
But it is not merely the effect on the B band failures it is the effect on the A band as well. I witnessed so many A banders who became lazy and arrogant. They never reached their potential.
I wanted all my students to be successful. All of them were equally important. All of them deserved to feel good about themselves.
In life you get to work and interact with many people with a wide range of ability. They all deserve respect. They all have different qualities. Intelligence is one small factor in a personality.
BGS had been forced to go comprehensive and had one year’s experience of comprehensive kids. Staff were used to the rarefied atmosphere of bright boys who were creamed off from all around and were bussed in from all over the area. The grammar system used to take the top 8% of boys based on an IQ test known as the 11+. 92% of boys were sent into the Technical Colleges or Secondary Moderns. They didn’t have the brains so they had to be good with their hands. It always amused me to hear parents talk about the grammar system and how much better it was. In most cases their son would not have got in. He would have been consigned to the Secondary Moderns. I wonder how pleased they would have been with it then?
When comprehensive education began at BGS the kids were streamed into two distinct groups. There were four classes; two larger classes who were basically A stream and would followed a grammar education and two smaller classes that were B stream and followed some watered down version. Some bright spark had the idea of naming the classes with letters. The A stream were called N & S and the two B Stream were called X & W. Somehow the connotations went over everyone’s head. At least they were not A,B,X and W.
2W had been in the school for one year. It was long enough. They’d picked up the impression that they were not wanted, not valued, and were only there under duress. They were not expected to achieve. They told me: ‘We’re the thickos.’ That was how they saw themselves.
That is the worst indictment of a system I have ever heard.
It is basically human psychology. If someone is labelled as a failure they will feel a failure. If someone is not valued they will feel worthless. If someone is not expected to achieve they will not bother to try.
I remember a talk I had with a previous Head about a very prestigious grammar school which will be nameless. They creamed off the top 6% of boys from a large catchment area in a Northern city. They then streamed these kids into five classes. They ranged from the super-bright to the very bright. The top class were destined for the top of the top. They left with inflated egos and clutches of Grade As heading for Oxbridge as a staging post to high office. The bottom class were disaffected and barely scraped a pass.
Any one of those lads from that bottom class would have been among the highest achievers from my school. They would have felt valued, worked hard and left with their A grades and a bright future.
I believe in the comprehensive system. I believe that it is the best system possible. It is also the hardest to teach but none-the-less the most fulfilling.
To make it work you have to really value every single child. It’s not about intelligence. There is much more to a human being than intelligence. It is not about achievement either. It is about effort. It is about valuing and rewarding effort. It is not about the outcome.
Once you start valuing kids for their results you have lost it. They must be valued for who they are and the effort they put in.
Once you stream them or band them you create failure. That’s as bad as the 11+.
It all comes down to finance. Mixed ability teaching is not impossible but it is extremely hard. With good support, great lesson planning and use of resources the bottom end can be extended.
Everybody wants to do well. How can we soften the frustration of those who find that no matter how hard they try they can’t do it as well as the others?
For those people who say: ‘That’s life. They’ve got to learn one day. They need to learn what life is about. There are winners and losers. It’s a hard lesson.’ I say you are absolutely wrong. I wanted my school to counter that heartlessness. I wanted to foster empathy, compassion and respect. Superior arrogance is wrong. I say we do not have to have winners and losers. That is just the way the old establishment operated. They were wrong. There are better ways of doing things. All my students were winners.
I remember one lad with great admiration. I ran a human biology course as a mixed ability class for both streams. It was a big lively group with a wide range of ability. Everyone thought it would be a disaster. It was a great success.
This one boy was from the B stream. I’d checked his test results. He was 79 on the scale. 100 was average. 79 was quite low. In order to achieve an exam pass you were supposed to be over a 100.
This lad sat at the front and concentrated really hard. He was totally focussed and putting everything in. I can still remember his serious face and wrinkled forehead. No one was trying harder.
At the end of each lesson he was invariably there at my desk.
‘Please sir, I didn’t quite understand this.’
I sat down with him and went through it until he’d got it straight. He went home and worked at it.
He got enough passes at GCSE to get into the 6th form. He got an A in human biology. He did the same in A level and got three passes. He should not have been up to doing A level.
He went to college and although he dropped out at the end of the second year he found a good interesting job. You don’t get much greater success than that.
