A Revolution Betrayed: How Egalitarians Wrecked the British Education System

Product Information

If you want a potted history of the changes to the education from victorian times to the present day, chapter two is up your street.

The book discusses the personal narratives of several ‘egalitarians’, largely to point out their inconsistencies and failings. I must correct him on one point: Peter Symonds' School in Winchester, a boy's Grammar School (which I attended from 1952 to 1959) did not become a Comprehensive school, but a mixed-sex Sixth-form college (which it remains) in 1974. An interesting take on the rise and fall of the grammar school/secondary modern system during the middle and towards the end of the twentieth century. Hitchens’ work is well referenced and highlights the selection process for free grammar school places, based on academic ability at eleven, and notes, referring to comprehensive schools, how places in popular schools are determined by post codes and parents’ income.This is an interesting read on two levels: Hitchens provides a view of the grammar schools and the part they played, and in some areas are still playing, in British Secondary Education, before their demise and the development of comprehensive education; and, for those of us who were around at the time, he provides an overview of our own education, when our future was often determined at the age of eleven, and where there was a disparity in grammar school places across counties. There are, however, gaps in his narrative, namely reference to the current standardised testing (SATs) at eleven in primary schools, and how this affects pupil selection in the upper bands of comprehensive schools. Some good points are made regarding the 11+ system that was in operation to select for the few places that existed in the grammar schools and how it was replaced by a selection based on wealth and catchment area that favoured the elitist system that the comprehensive schools, set up to replace the grammar/secondary modern, were originally designed to prevent. There is quite a good section about the dilution of academic standards that has taken place since the qualifications on offer were altered to fit the new system. If obliged to confront this inconvenient fact, Hitchens would probably argue, without evidence, that the degree examinations are in some way “biased” towards the state educated, thanks to the machinations of “egalitarians”.

Hitchens provides both a stimulating reading experience and a thought-provoking study of the successes and failures of British education post-1944. He was educated at The Leys School Cambridge, Oxford College of Further Education and the University of York. i) than those admitted from grammar schools and that the latter, so far from not “doing too much damage” to overall standards, actually outperform the privately educated. However, the book also bemoans the significant role of church schools in the current educational system. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.Despite agreeing with the urgency of some of the educational challenges identified, I fundamentally disagree with the book’s implicit view of humanity and the purposes of education.

Of course, you can never include everyone, and I was disappointed in the absence of Baroness Hale, former President of the Supreme Court, who attended Richmond Girls’ High School, a county grammar school, in North Yorkshire. In other places, it seems to be the size of schools that is key, with both grammars and secondary moderns being seen as successful because they were much smaller than comprehensives. Hitchens asserts that the 163 selective grammar schools that have survived in England are no longer allowed to be the sort of schools that they once were (whatever that may mean).In 1954 the terms “working class” and “poor” were not synonymous but, leaving that aside, Hitchens fails to explain that the reason for this report was the government’s concern that working class children who passed the 11+ and went to grammar school were not taking advantage of the opportunities offered to them – hence the report’s official title: “Early Leaving”. and (2) With most independent schools open to students from across the full ability range, provided of course their fees can be paid, have they unwittingly become more in line with comprehensive principles than they would admit?

Instead, driven by the hypocrisies and bad faith of ‘the left’ and ‘egalitarians’, and the timidity and cowardice of the conservatives, this revolution was trampled under a communist approach to schooling: the comprehensives. Peter Hitchens here surveys the development of public education in Britain from its origins in the 19th Century - necessary background for the main thrust of the book, which is the shameful failure of successive governments - labour and conservative - to protect high quality education in state schools, particularly in respect of talented children from poor backgrounds (myself included) which flourished in relatively brief period when Grammar Schools afforded those like me a chance of a good education, and the prospects of attending university in the days when a good degree really meant something. It is striking that the book sees how hard individuals work at age 11 as a just way of determining their future, and views measuring academic potential as so straightforward that there is absolutely no reason to worry about the validity of such judgements. There are some extremely valid points, but I am not convinced by their rigour as yet (I need to re-read). The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.From the book’s perspective, you either believe education is for academic rigour, selection and knowledge or you believe it is for in social engineering in the name of equality. He has published several books, including The Abolition of Britain and The Rage Against God , also published by Bloomsbury Continuum, mainly on aspects of what he regards as a Cultural Revolution which has transformed Britain for the worse in the last half century.