Teachers and Politics in England and Wales: The Role of the National Union of Teachers in the Making of National Education Policy since 1944 9781487580025

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Teachers and Politics in England and Wales

Ronald A Manzer

Teachers and Politics in England and Wales The Role of the National Union of Teachers in the making of National Educational Policy since r944

University of Toronto Press

©

1970

Ronald A Manzer

Reprinted in 2018 All rights reserved First published in Canada and the United States by University of Toronto Press UTP SBN 8020-167«)-0

ISBN 978-1-4875-8106-0 (paper)

Printed in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner Ltd, Frome and London

Contents

page vii

Acknowledgements Introduction X

ix

The Structure of Educational Politics The political head of the education sub-government The leaders in the education sub-government The channels of influence in the sub-government Changes in the distribution of power

2

I

3 6 IO 22

The Constraints of Teachers' Politics Maintaining the membership of the N.U.T. The divided profession The predominance of the N.U.T. The problems of union democracy

3

The Electoral Power of Organized Teachers The battle of the I per cent, 1954-56 The education sub-government united: the block grant campaign, 1957-58

4

73

The Technical Power of Organized Teachers The creation of the Certificate of Secondary Education The secret garden of the curriculum The supply of teachers

5

57

84 90

97

The Settlement of Teachers' Salaries

108

Discontent among the teachers The role of the N.U.T. Conference Concern at the Ministry The failure of the Burnham Main Committee

109

V

120 124

137

vi 6

CONTENTS

Pressure Group Politics and Educational Policy The power base of the union The pattern of educational politics The demand for education Educational policy and the British political process

Index

Tables 1

2

3

Salary scales of teachers on the Burnham scale: prewar, 1956 and 1964 Analysis of non-personal allowances other than London allowance by type of school, March 1953 and October 1959 Teachers' average salaries, March 1963

112

113 117

Acknowledgements

My attempt to describe the government of education in England and Wales gained immensely in accuracy and insight from having extensive cooperation from a wide number of persons actively engaged in making national educational policy: Sir William Alexander; H. E. Birkbeck; Rt. Hon. Sir Edward Boyle, M.P.; T. A. Casey; the late Rt. Hon. Lord Chuter-Ede; Rt. Hon. Lord Eccles; Sir Ronald Gould; Rt. Hon. Quintin Hogg, M.P.; A. W. S. Hutchings; Fred Jarvis; Hon. J.C. Jennings, M.P.; R. Mabbott; Lord Redcliffe-Maud; M. G. PowellDavies; K. Ronald; E. H. Simpson; Miss L. Spaulding; P. Taylor; and Miss S. D. Wood. Each contributed in one way or another to my understanding of educational politics in England and Wales. None should be associated with the final expression of views in this study. Inexperience in using the skills of political analysis is one of the most difficult problems confronting the researcher preparing his first manuscript. I am grateful to have been able to draw upon the experience and wisdom of Professor S. H. Beer of Harvard University, who supervised my work on the doctoral dissertation and encouraged me in its revision for publication. Dr. Asher Tropp and Professor Robert McKenzie of London School of Economics and Political Science supervised my research in London during the academic year of 1964---65. Both Dr. George Baron, University of London Institute of Education, and Dean Stephen K. Bailey, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University, read versions of the manuscript and provided me with helpful comments and encouragement. I owe a special debt of gratitude to W. Bruce MacDonald who first interested me in the study of the politics of public education and has enthusiastically argued the issues and problems with me ever since. The Canada Council provided me with a pre-doctoral scholarship which made possible my period of research in England during the academic year of 1964-65. Naturally the Council's grant of financial assistance to my project in no way commits it to the views expressed in the chapters which follow. Like so many doctoral dissertations mine had the financial support of a working wife, but my debt to my wife is far greater than this. Without her continuing sense of perspective the work would undoubtedly have been a lower quality and my life immeasurably poorer. Vll

Introduction

Education is a powerful factor in determining the shape of a modern society. Recognition of its importance for the wealth and power of a society has risen dramatically in recent years. As a result, the "demand" for education has increased; and education has assumed a prominent place among contemporary public issues. This change in the relationship between "education" and "politics" has, in turn, tended to disrupt the operation of established institutions and procedures for making educational policy and caused a search for new organizational forms. The purpose of this study is to describe the main institutions and procedures for making national educational policy in England and Wales since 1944 and to assess the effect that the increased demand for education has had on them. Educational policy-making in England and Wales in the 1940s and early 1950s was characterized by a closed partnership of the Ministry of Education, the local education authorities, and the teachers. The circumstances which made their relationship easy and viable changed, however, as the demand for education increased; and the institutions and procedures which typified the earlier period were put under pressure to change as well. The National Advisory Council for the Training and Supply of Teachers has been suspended. The Secondary Schools Examinations Council has been merged into the more ambitious Schools Council for Curriculum and Examinations. The Burnham Main Committee now includes representatives of the Department of Education and Science on the management side in its negotiations. The increased demand for education thus prompted an effort to create new relationships inside the old partnership which would take account of new pressures and demands. The analysis here is given special focus by its emphasis on the ability of a particular pressure group to influence the making of educational policy after 1944. That pressure group is the National Union of Teachers, the largest of the professional associations of teachers in Great Britain. An educational pressure group like the National Union of Teachers begins with certain advantages in the British political system. It derives a degree of influence from the general approval bestowed upon the place of education in the community and upon the role of interest groups in the British political system. There are no anti-school organizations. The extensive commitment of virtually all groups within the society to the ~aintenance of a system of public JX

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TEACHERS AND POLITICS

education facilitates the access of educational interests to decisionmakers. Acceptance of the political activities of organized groups by British conceptions of authority has the same effect. Consultation and negotiation are regarded as a right, and a Minister is in for a difficult time if he denies it. The widespread use of advisory committees with both official and unofficial representation is a formal recognition of this situation. Of course neither of these facilitating conditions is of much value if the group is unable to make effective use of the access achieved. Given the relatively favourable cultural context within which the group operates, the salient factors determining the ability of the National Union of Teachers to influence educational policy are the structure of educational politics within which the Union attempts to exert influence, the characteristics of the membership and internal organization of the Union, and the nature of the demand for education in the community. Each of these requires investigation to assess the effect of the N.U.T. on policy development. Together they provide the criteria for the evidence presented in this study. The structure of educational politics in England and Wales is described in Chapter 1. The membership of the National Union of Teachers and the professional organization of teachers is the subject of Chapter 2. The case studies of the Superannuation Bill Campaign and the Block Grant Campaign, described in Chapter 3, provide further evidence about power relationships in the educational system and illuminate the short-term influence the N.U.T. can bring to bear on the political process. The case studies of the Certificate of Secondary Education, the Schools Council, and teacher training, described in Chapter 4, illustrate the influence the N.U.T. can exercise because of the "technical" knowledge it can provide to policy-makers. Consideration of the effect of changing demand is taken up in the case studies of Chapter 4 with the development of the new examination, the Schools Council, and the conflict over auxiliary teachers. The theme of increased demand also dominates the description of the negotiation of teachers' salaries in Chapter 5. The case study method of presenting evidence has certain disadvantages, requiring as it usually does the inclusion of considerable detail which is largely irrelevant to the specific point being made. Offsetting this is the convenience of the case method for describing the operations of a pressure group, especially in the field of education where problems tend to be vertically defined. The detail of case studies conveys to the reader some of the luxuriance and complexity of the political process. It promises a useful contrast to other studies of British education which have largely failed to convey this quality, neglecting many of the nuances and subtleties of educational politics. The problem, studied here, of adapting the provision of education

INTRODUCTION

Xl

to a changing set of economic and social circumstances has a significance which goes beyond the immediate issue-area of education in England and Wales. Because decisions taken collectively by a society about its provision for education are instrumental to developing the wealth and power of that society, an understanding of how decisions are made in this issue-area is critical to understanding the course of any modern society. Moreover, the institutions and procedures devised for collective decision-making with respect to the provision of education are only one part of the set of institutions and procedures which comprise the political system of the society. As such, they can be expected to share many features with other areas of that political system. One of the questions which has been persistently raised in recent years has been the adequacy of the response of British governmental institutions and procedures to the changing demands of the 1960s. Analysis of the response of the educational system may contribute to an understanding of the general problems confronting the British governmental system during this period. Nor is the question of the relationship between education and politics one that is limited to England and Wales. It has been raised in a number of different political systems as the importance of education has been recognized and the demands it makes on the resources of the community have risen. If the study of comparative politics has any significance, an understanding of the politics of education in England and Wales should help to illuminate the political issues which have arisen in other countries, with respect to education, in recent years.

I

The Structure of Educational Politics

Politics is the process by which social values are authoritatively allocated. 1 If the objective of a pressure group is to influence that process of allocation, then its political activities must be directed towards securing authoritative status for the particular values it advocates. The modern British political system is characterized by a dispersion of decision-making power. 2 One result of this pluralistic structure is its tendency to produce closed "sub-systems" or "sub-governments" of politicians, officials, and pressure group representatives. 3 Because each sub-government becomes an effective centre of decision-making for a particular area of public policy, there is less need for individual groups to compete for the favours of some integrated decision-making structure than would be the case in the absence of pluralization. Over relatively long periods of time fairly stable relationships usually develop among the interests clustering about a decision-making centre. They tend to defend the status quo which permits them to exist and pursue their objectives against only limited competition. Such a structure can constitute a powerful brake on political change. 4 The government of education in England and Wales takes the form of a "sub-system" or "sub-government". Most decisions about national educational policy are made within a tripartite structure involving the Department of Education and Science, 1 David Easton, The Political System (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1953), p. 129. 2 Harry Eckstein, "Group Theory and the Comparative Study of Pressure Groups", in H. Eckstein and D. E. Apter (eds.), Comparative Politics: A Reader (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1963), p. 396. 3 The term "sub-government" is attributed to Douglass Cater, Power in Washington, cited in S. K. Bailey, The New Congress (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1966), p. 63. The term "sub-system" is used by Donald Blaisdell, American Democracy Under Pressure (New York: Ronald Press, 1957), p. 38. 4 V. 0. Key, Jr., Parties, Politics and Pressure Groups (5th ed.; New York: Crowell, 1964), p. 70.

2

TEACHERS AND POLITICS

local education authorities, and organized teachers. 1 The "political head" of the education sub-government is the Secretary of State for Education and Science. 2 For a pressure group aiming to influence the making of national educational policy, the existence of a sub-government for education means that the political activities of the group must be designed to persuade, directly or indirectly, the Secretary of State for Education and Science, and through him the Government, with respect to the values it advocates. The critical member of the Government at large is the Chancellor of the Exchequer. If a pressure group can convince the relevant Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, ordinarily it has not much else to worry about. 3 Because the Chancellor of the Exchequer is more isolated from the demands of a pressure group than is the Secretary of State, the group can only influence him (and the Treasury) indirectly, through the Secretary of State or through Parliament and the effects of public opinion. The Secretary of State for Education and Science takes most of his advice from the senior officials of his Department. 4 Thus an educational pressure group must first of all convince the civil servants of the merits of its case. The group's channels of communication to Departmental officials become a matter of vital importance in its efforts to affect policy. Deputations to the Department are the formal basis for more effective, informal exchanges in direct discussion between "counterparts", in conferences of interested groups, and in working parties. National advisory committees are another means of developing policy proposals acceptable to all important interests involved. In all the exchanges, the ability of the pressure group to affect policy will depend on its access to information that is relevant to the decisions being made. Only 1 For one special set of decisions, those affecting religious education, the churches must be added to the structure, but they have no importance for policy-making outside their own sphere and are not considered in this study. For a discussion of the churches and educational policy, see Marjorie Cruickshank, Church and State in English Education (London: MacMillan, 1963). 2 Before 1944 the political head was the President of the Board of Education. The Education Act of 1944 made him the Minister of Education. In February 1964 he became the Secretary of State for Education and Science when the Ministry of Education became the Department of Education and Science. • S. H. Beer, "Pressure Groups and Parties in Britain", American Political Science Review, L (March 1956), 9. 4 H. C. Dent, The Educational System of England and Wales (London: University of London Press, Ltd., 3rd. ed., 1966), p. 77.

THE STRUCTURE OF EDUCATIONAL POLITICS

3

moderate claims well-supported by technical information are likely to get serious consideration. 1 The process of articulating the claims is a complicated and ongoing procedure, requiring continual revisions and elaborations of policy demands as discussions and negotiations proceed among the interested parties. Where the Department is free to negotiate with an educational pressure group, deadlock is unlikely. Where its freedom to negotiate is sharply limited by Treasury or party policy and that of the group limited by the demands of its membership, the conditions for an impasse are established. 2 In these circumstances bargaining inside the education sub-government may break down and the participants have to appeal to the political system at large for a settlement. For educational pressure groups in England and vVales such an appeal is usually made with a "public campaign". The public campaign is an exceptional event in the politics of the education sub-government, however; and, in general, access to political as opposed to administrative arenas is definitely of secondary importance for all the groups in the subgovernment. In this chapter the main elements of the education sub-government will be described. The role of the Secretary of State for Education and Science as political head of the education subgovernment will be assessed, and the focal points and channels of influence in the decision-making process of the sub-government will be identified. Consideration will also be given to the effect on the distribution of power in the sub-government arising from a change in the demand for education.

The political head of the education sub-government As "political head" of the education sub-government, the Secretary of State for Education and Science, is the public link between the education service and the national political system. The role of political head may be given a variety of interpretations by the occupant. He may simply choose to remain aloof from the internal decision-making of the sub-government. If so, he will leave the 1 Gabriel Almond, "A Comparative Study of Interest Groups and the Political Process-Research Note", American Political Science Review, LIi (March 1958), 278. 2 Harry Eckstein, Pressure Group Politics: The Case of the British Medical Association (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1960), pp. 107-8, 150.

4

TEACHERS AND POLITICS

senior officials of the Department to negotiate acceptable policies with the representatives of the educational pressure groups and limit his participation to advocating the agreed policies before the Government and Parliament. He may choose varying degrees of involvement as an active participant in the policy-making process. The choice the political head makes will reflect to some extent his own personality and political ambitions. His choice will also vary from one issue to another. Issues that involve technical matters will be left to the professional educators for settlement within the sub-government. Issues of some political importance will probably involve the political head in their settlement, but the frequency with which such issues arise varies considerably. In the past, the Education portfolio has been a middle-rank ministerial position because of the highly administrative, relatively non-political nature of its subject matter. There have been political issues to be settled in the education service. They have periodically reached large proportions, developing over a period of time; and the ministerial office has then taken on a new dimension. The leadership of R. A. Butler during the negotiation and passage of the Education Act of 1944 is a notable example. But, at least at the national level, education has not been as continuous a source of important political issues as economic policy and foreign affairs always are. When a major political issue in education has been settled, it has tended to be followed by a rather long period of quiet administration. During such periods there is little opportunity for an aspiring politician to display his talents or develop his reputation. He is reduced by events to being a figurehead and public spokesman for the education sub-government. For this reason the influence of personalities on the role of the political head tends to be overshadowed by, and often reflects, the political importance attached to education at a given time. The relationship between educational issues and political personalities can be seen in the list of political heads who were Ministers of Education after 1945. The change of name from President of the Board of Education to Minister of Education, and the increased powers bestowed on the office by the Education Act of 1944, meant no change of status. This continued to depend, as it always had, on the way the Minister and his office were treated by the Government; and this, in turn, depended on the importance of the political issues to be decided in the provision of the educa-

THE STRUCTURE OF EDUCATIONAL POLITICS

5

tion service. Consequently, with the exception of the campaign against the Teachers Superannuation Bill, the six Ministers of Education from 1945 to 1959 operated in relative political obscurity. A case in point is that of Sir David (now Lord) Eccles. Appointed to repair the difficulties caused the Government by Miss Horsbrugh's Superannuation Bill, Eccles during his first tenure in the office (1954-7) tried to enlarge the role of the Minister in making educational policies. With the notable exception of his involvement in the White Paper on technical education in 1956, his efforts were quite unsuccessful and went unnoticed outside the education sub-government. After the election of 1959, Sir David Eccles was moved from the Presidency of the Board of Trade back to the Ministry of Education. It was a rather unusual appointment, for, as Eccles remarked, "usually you go up or out-not sideways like this". The press at the time regarded the change as a demotion. The Schoolmaster (October 23, 1959) urged that Eccles should not see it that way but should take his appointment as a mark of the importance the Prime Minister put on education-that he put a senior Minister in charge, that the appointment carried a seat in the Cabinet, and that it was among the first ministerial changes announced. In retrospect, it can be argued that the journal's optimism had some justification. As expenditure increased on education, as it became more and more a centre of national attention, and as serious rethinking of the structure of English education moved forward, the political importance of the Ministry was increasing. The Board of Trade and the Ministry of Education had never been all that far apart in the hierarchy of preferment, and now the status of Education had increased to equality. Sir David Eccles, was a victim of Macmillan's drastic Cabinet changes in July 1962. There was some regret at his going. The Economist (July 21, 1962) called him the ablest of the outgoing Ministers and described the new appointments as Ministers "who have been installed as new volcanoes in new departments and told to erupt". What is significant is the fact that the Prime Minister now considered the Ministry of Education an appointment to be used for establishing an image of vigour and modernization. The appointment of Quintin Hogg as Secretary of State for Education and Science in February 1964 marked another step in the enlargement of the office. Hogg very much wanted the headship of the reorganized and enlarged Department, and he got it B

6

TEACHERS AND POLITICS

after an interesting conflict with Sir Edward Boyle. The details are obscure 1 and matter less than the fact that two leading politicians were competing for the Education appointment. It was a situation quite new to the Department and suggested its new political importance. The first appointments of the Labour Government confirmed the importance which had been attributed to the office by the Conservative Governments of the early 1960s: Michael Stewart in October 1964 and, when he became Foreign Secretary and the first to be promoted directly from Education to a "senior" Ministry, Anthony Crosland in January I 96 5. 2 By the middle of the 1960s the office of political head had emerged into the position of leadership and authority which had been created by Butler in his 1944 legislation, but which had never been fulfilled in fact. It had become an office with much greater political standing than it ever had in the past, representing a good opportunity among the spending departments for enhancing a political reputation. The likelihood that it will remain so has been increased by the acquisition of responsibility for the scientific research councils, higher education, and the arts and sports, decisively enlarging the dimensions of the office, and by the political importance that education seems certain to have in England and Wales in the foreseeable future. For the educational pressure groups the situation is a paradoxical one. Stronger Secretaries strengthen education versus other issue-areas in the general competition for public resources, but stronger Secretaries are also more active participants in making educational policy and forces for change in established relationships.

The leaders in the education sub-government To the extent that the Secretary of State for Education and Science participates actively in making educational policy, he can be considered as one of the leaders inside the education sub-government 1 See R. A. Manzer, "Teachers and Politics: A Study of the Role of the National Union of Teachers in Making National Educational Policy in England and Wales, 1944 to 1964", doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, 1966, note 18, pp. 118-19. 2 When Crosland went to the Board of Trade in August 1967, Patrick Gordon Walker became Secretary of State for Education and Science. His appointment came after a disappointing political career and his Secretaryship was not a happy one. He was succeeded in April 1968 by Edward Short, formerly the Postmaster General and a N.U.T. Member of Parliament.

THE STRUCTURE OF EDUCATIONAL POLITICS

7

as well as its leader outside in the national political arena. In spite of greater participation in recent years by Ministers and Secretaries in educational decision-making, however, the Government's principal leaders inside the education sub-government have continued to be senior officials in the Department of Education and Science. As Lord Bridges has described the norm, the Minister of any Department "is bound to be preoccupied with the wide range of work which his position involves-his parliamentary duties, his discussions with his Cabinet colleagues, and his contacts with his constituency and with national bodies. It must be for the Permanent Head, whose working life centres in the Department, to see that both he himself, and the Department as a whole, are working in harmony with the Minister's ideas". 1 If the Permanent Secretary fails to provide firm leadership and to establish himself as the focal point of the Department, his role may be filled by one of the Deputy Secretaries. In any case, the precise relationships among the top senior officials are only of minor importance because of the collegial nature of Departmental decision-making. Collegial government is a norm of British central administration, indeed of the British political culture in general, and the Department of Education and Science is no exception to this norm. Factors other than the Minister's preoccupation with his position outside the education sub-government also contribute to giving the senior officials in the Department a position which is perhaps more prominent than is usual in other departments. The non-recurring nature of the political issues confronted in education is one such factor. During the long periods of relatively quiet administration which tend to follow major settlements in educational politics, the senior officials quite naturally emerge as leading figures in the development of policy. One of the most powerful Permanent Secretaries in British public administration was Sir Robert Morant from 1902 to 1911. In the interwar years, Permanent Secretaries like Selby-Bigge and Sir Maurice Holmes were more involved in the development of the educational system than the Ministers they served, just as were Sir John Maud and Sir Gilbert Fleming after the war. Because the traffic in policy issues comes overwhelmingly from below in the Department of Education, 1 Lord Bridges, "The Relationship between Ministers and the Permanent Departmental Head", Canadian Public Administration, VII (September 1964), z8o.

8

TEACHERS AND POLITICS

its political head is less an initiator of policy than he may be in other services. This remains true notwithstanding the more positive assertion of initiative by dynamic Ministers like Sir David (now Lord) Eccles, Sir Edward Boyle, and Anthony Crosland. The established relationships of the education sub-government also put a premium on permanence and enhance the position of the senior officials as leaders on the Government's side. Decisionmaking in the development of educational policy is traditionally by agreement with the local authorities; the teachers' organizations; and, where relevant, the churches. The "friendly and conspiratorial" triumvirate of Sir Percival Sharp (Secretary of the Association of Education Committees, 1925-45), Sir Maurice Holmes (Permanent Secretary of the Board of Education, 1936-45), and Sir Frederick Mander (General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers, 1931-47) entrenched a pattern of relationships which has dominated policy development ever since. 1 The "dependence" of the Minister on his officials, commonly alleged in Education, may be thus explained as the result of the relative permanence of both Departmental and pressure group officials who operate in the context of the established procedure in the education sub-government of doing business with the agreement of all concerned. The collegial nature of leadership in the Department has a parallel in the leadership of organized teachers. In spite of the existence of elected officers, the internal focus and the external symbol of the decision-making structures of most English trades unions tends to be their chief paid officials. The teachers' leaders in _the education sub-government are the general secretaries of the teachers' unions. It has been well-established practice for these union leaders to develop policy informally among themselves, argue it out through their respective associations, reach an agreed policy, and negotiate with the Department and the local authorities. Among the leaders of the teachers' unions the General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers is in the focal position, but his position is more ambiguous and more difficult than that of the Permanent Secretary in the Department of Education and Science. The General Secretary must maintain an organization, the N. U. T ., 1 Asher Tropp, The School Teachers (London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1957), p. 2.15.

THE STRUCTURE OF EDUCATIONAL POLITICS

9

which is characterized by a relatively large membership and highly democratic procedures of internal government. At the same time his leadership must cope with the external competition from the spokesmen for smaller but still influential teachers' unions: the Incorporated Association of Headmasters, the Incorporated Association of Headmistresses, the Association of Assistant Masters, the Association of Assistant Mistresses, The National Association of Head Teachers, and the National Association of Schoolmasters. The combination of centrifugal influences inside the teaching profession is quite formidable, as we shall see in the next chapter. Nevertheless, if teachers are to act collectively to affect educational policies, the General Secretary of the N.U.T. must take the lead in managing and conciliating the disparate interests of his organization and the profession. In recent years the General Secretary has inevitably been the object of severe criticism from the discontented elements of the teaching profession, and this has tended to undermine his influence in the sub-government. He has perhaps contributed something to his own problems by failing to react with the firm leadership such a challenge to his position requires, although in this regard his leadership is more consistent with the political norms of the Union than that which might have been expected from his more strong-willed predecessor. Each of the 162 local education authorities can turn for support to three national associations: the County Councils Association (C.C.A.), the Association of Municipal Corporations (A.M.C.), and the Association of Education Committees (A.E.C.). In the area of education the A.E.C. is predominant. Its influence in the making of educational policy depends partly on the position and influence of the Education Committees in the system of local government and partly on the membership of the Chief Education Officers. The latter are the chief administrative officers for the local education authorities. They all belong to the A.E.C. and contribute in a major way to the life of the organization. The undisputed leader of the local education authorities in the decision-making structure for national educational policy is the Secretary of the A.E.C. Like the General Secretary of the N. U.T. the Secretary of the A.E.C. sits on all the important national advisory committees. He is secretary of the Authorities' Panel in the Burnham Main Committee. He devotes himself fully to the business of national educational policy, which no one else on his

lU

ThACH.l:H{:S ANU PULITIC:S

side does; he is generally recognized as the spokesman for the local education authorities in the educational partnership. Because the membership of the A.E.C. is much less extended and diffuse than that of the N.U.T., the A.E.C. does not have to rely so much on an elaborate internal system of consultation to formulate members' views into a unified policy. The homogeneity of the interests it represents makes the Secretary's task of managing his organization that much easier. Officials at the Department know that most of the time the Secretary can "deliver" his organization and that his expression of local authority opinion is representative, and this enhances his influence. The present Secretary, Sir William Alexander, also enjoys a great deal of personal influence deriving from political skills developed over twenty years of experience in educational politics. It is difficult to say how much of his influence a new Secretary would inherit, but since 1925 Sir Percival Sharp and Sir William Alexander have constructed a fairly strong set of relationships around the office. The personal influence of the new A.E.C. Secretary might decline until his ability was demonstrated, but his position as spokesman for the local authorities would not be in doubt.

The channels of influence in the sub-government From the point of view of the N.U.T. the connections which it maintains with official and unofficial groups are channels of access to influence educational policy. The National Union of Teachers is represented on nearly one hundred outside bodies, ranging from the Cadet Entry Liaison Committee at the Admiralty to the Youth Hostels Association of Great Britain. 1 Each of these bodies provides the Union with an opportunity, however minor it may seem at times, to inject expressions of its policy into the making of educational policy. The Union also sends deputations to the Department of Education and Science, joins working parties, makes submissions to Departmental committees, and deals directly with Departmental officials. It writes letters to editors, obtains publicity for education in general, and sponsors Members of Parliament in both major parties. Not all of these means of access are equally important to the 1 The list is given by Walter Roy, The Teachers' Union (London: Schoolmaster Publishing Company Ltd., 1968), pp. 163-5.

THE STRUCTURE OF EDUCATIONAL POLITICS

II

N.U.T. The pushing back of policy decisions into the executive which has characterized English administration in general and educational administration in particular, forces a pressure group to direct its political activities at the executive. Since the Secretary of State for Education and Science is advised by his civil servants, an educational pressure group must convince the civil servants. The channels of influence which the group has to the bureaucracy, directly and indirectly, are therefore the most important to it. Commenting on the fact that the Department commonly sends a draft of any new regulation to the headquarters of the N.U.T. for its comments and criticisms, S. H. Beer concludes, "It is understandable that the Union finds it hardly worthwhile any longer to send a formal deputation to the minister, although not many years ago, before it had won its present 'recognition', it fought strenuously for the right to such audiences." 1 The function of the deputation is now more ritualistic than substantive. It has become the public symbol for the whole range of less formal exchanges which comprise the substance of the process of private consultation between the Union and the Department, including the constitution of joint working parties and the exchange of letters, memoranda, and telephone calls. Leaders of the Union undertake a deputation to reassure the membership that their policy demands have been presented to the Department for consideration and action. Resolutions of the Annual Conference on sensitive matters like school meals duties, for example, are often presented by a formal deputation for this reason. The Minister may also fulfil his own obligations by calling in deputations. In I 9 59, for example, a deputation from the N. U. T. met the Minister at his invitation to discuss the question of grants to church schools. The discussion formed part of a series which the Minister was holding with leaders of the churches, teachers' organizations, and local authorities. Again the deputation was not so much an effective means of exchanging suggested policies as it was an assurance in an area sensitive to the educational public that consultation was in fact taking place. It is a commonplace in studies of the political activities of organized groups to observe that officials of the interest groups have their "counterparts" in appropriate Departmental sections and that officials on both sides usually work closely together to solve 1

Beer, op. cit., p. 8.

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their common problems. Like the close relations between Her Majesty's Inspectors in regions and the Chief Education Officers of local education authorities, the direct connections between Departmental officials and officials of the teachers' unions are an important element in the smooth functioning of the educational system. In the administration of policy, such informal exchanges expedite business moving through more formal channels. In the development of policy, extensive "sounding out" of opinion before making public commitments is common on both sides. Where a deputation produces official action of some kind it is often a working party that is set up. In the simplest cases the working party is used to determine the agreed facts concerning any controversy. This was the purpose, for example, of the working party on teachers' pensions set up in 1955. 1 More usually, it is a means for tripartite negotiations on an issue falling outside the competence of any existing national advisory committee. A useful example of the sequence and interaction of deputation, direct consultation, and working party was provided at the 1958 N.U.T. Annual Conference. In response to a motion that the Executive take immediate action to ensure teachers were relieved entirely of school meals duties, the Executive's activities during the period 1956-1958 were the subject of an extended report. 2 In this two-year sequence, which must be regarded as typical, the deputation was employed as a formal procedural device for opening discussions after the discontented expressions of the 1956 Annual Conference, for publicly stating positions on each side, and for reassuring the profession that its interests were being considered. The Union indicated its two objectives as, first, an immediate lightening of the burden imposed by duties; and, secondly, the eventual formation of a fully staffed ancillary service which would relieve teachers of all duties. The former, they felt, could be achieved by more ancillary help in supervising children, more clerical assistance, and a simplification of school meals accounting procedures. "The Minister promised to try to help, but ... he was not very forthcoming." This opening gambit was followed by direct exchanges between officials of the Union and the Ministry, as a result of which a possible area for negotiations was defined. In particular, there was a 1 2

See Chapter 3, pp. 60-1. The Schoolmaster, April 18, 1958, pp. 767, 769.

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13

difference of opinion on the possibility and desirability of achieving the Union's long-term objective. By agreement, the conference of teachers, authorities, and representatives of the Ministry which met on April 1, 1957, confined its attention to settling a short-term policy to relieve teachers of part of the burden. A working party of representatives of local authorities and teachers was set up to examine the simplification of school meals registration and accounting procedures. The implications of the report of the working party, which made no mention of the Union's long-term objective, made the report unacceptable to the N.U.T. Executive but forced it to reconsider its own policy. On November 2, 1957, it produced a document of its own, outlining both long- and short-term policies, as an alternative to the report of the working party. Discussions then took place between some representatives of the local authorities and the Executive to see how far they could reach an agreed short-term policy which could be impressed upon the Ministry. Two of the four points of their policy, calling for ancillary help and clerical assistance, were accepted by the Ministry and eventually were included in Circular 349 issued in March 1959. Simplification of registration and accounting procedures was left to be settled between the authorities and the teachers. The fourth point, the request for relaxation of restrictions on the provision of diningroom accommodation and facilities, involved changes in school building policy with implications beyond the immediate area of negotiations. The Ministry turned it aside with the suggestion to collect more evidence showing need (perhaps to convince the Treasury?) and the promise of another conference. One interesting aspect of this particular set of representations concerning school meals duties was the interaction between the external advocacy and the internal formulation of Union policy. The procedure of articulation turns out to be a complicated and on-going one, closely connected to the reception of preceding representations. The Union does not merely revise its objectives according to what seems to be feasible at the time. It also elaborates its objectives, breaking them down into short-term policies defined in sufficient detail to be implemented immediately and long-term goals in the direction of which short-term policies should proceed. There is no need to emphasize that such procedures require much patience from members bearing the classroom

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burden and deeply involve the leadership of the Union in the task, requiring considerable political skill, of evoking the required forbearance. Direct action by the teachers to exert pressure in the subgovernment for their policies is exceptional; but when sanctions were implemented in the autumn of 1967, the outcome was again the creation of three working parties. The 1967 Special Conference voted for implementing a phased series of sanctions, if salary negotiations were not successful, involving withdrawal from school meals duties, withdrawal from work in schools where unqualified persons were employed, and regional strikes. Salary negotiations in the Burnham Committee reached an impasse in June; and as an arbitration tribunal was set up, the N.U.T. determined to carry through with its sanctions. Beginning in September, Union members in eighteen selected areas refused to supervise school meals or to work with unqualified teachers, causing considerable difficulty and expense for their local authorities. The Secretary of State began talks with the teachers and the local authorities almost immediately. At the end of October the Secretary and the authorities proposed to set up three working parties-------one within the Burnham Committee to examine the salaries superstructure, a second to consider the supervision of school meals, and the third to report on the position of unqualified teachers. The Union pressed for a declaration of intention to remove the primarysecondary differential and received a pledge to consider the problem of salary superstructure "in a spirit of goodwill" and in the light of the Plowden Report (which had recommended ending the differential). The reports of each of the working parties represented a success for the Union: the working party on school meals recommended that supervision no longer be compulsory and this took effect in August 1968; the working party on unqualified teachers recommended that no temporary or occasional teachers be employed in schools after August 3 1, 1970, and the regulations were so amended in August 1968; and the working party within the Burnham Committee recommended that the primary-secondary differential be significantly reduced and this was accepted by the full Committee in November 1968. 1 An important means of influencing the Department of Educa1 The Teacher, August 9, 1968, pp. 1, 12; August 30, 1968, p. 6; November 22, 1968, p. 3.

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15

tion is through the elaborate system of committees and advisory councils which characterizes the education sub-government. The system was developed under the Board of Education, partly in response to the increased demands of the teachers for recognition and partly out of the Board's own weakness in combining the efforts of then over three hundred local education authorities into a national policy. Many important policy proposals are developed through the advisory committees; and, while the securing of implementation is usually a lengthy and complicated procedure, they constitute a basic method of building consensus on educational policy. A unanimous report from a national advisory committee on a problem where some action is necessary will naturally carry considerable weight in the Department. The letter to the Minister accompanying the third report of the Secondary Schools Examinations Council (S.S.E.C.), for example, pointed out the delicate balance of the support for its recommendations. These proposals have already been the subject of wide consultations both by our Special Committee and by the Council, with the Associations and Bodies concerned. The Report has been repeatedly revised to meet suggestions and objections put to us by those consulted; and while the Council would not claim that they have been able fully to meet all points of view, they confidently believe that the proposals as they now stand represent the fullest measure of reconciliation that it is possible to achieve at this stage of the different and often conflicting points of view of those hitherto consulted. Officials confronted with such a report can do little else but recommend it be accepted, with the appropriate dotting of i's and crossing of t's. This is especially true where any changes would break a reconciliation and restart the bargaining. The Ministry, for example, would not risk interfering with the pattern of representation agreed in the Lockwood Report for the Schools Council. 1 Officials only interfere where they can clearly demonstrate inadequacies in the report, for example, information not sufficiently considered or the unacceptability of the report to important groups. If an outside group joins the ranks of the educationists, it is expected to conform to the prevailing modes of behaviour in the sub-government; and substantial pressure can be applied on it to 1 Ministry of Education, Report of the Working Party on the Schools' Curricula and Examinations (London: H.M.S.O., 1964), Appendix B.

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do so. Associated-Rediffusion's unseemly burst into schools television programming in 1957 came as a surprise to educationists "firmly wedded to methods of consultation and deliberation" ; and apparently neither the Ministry of Education, the teachers' unions, nor the Association of Education Committees knew about the project beforehand. 1 Sir Ronald Gould, speaking to the 1963 Annual Conference, used the outcome of the controversy as an illustration of collective action to safeguard the teacher's freedom in the classroom. When Associated-Rediffusion decided to run school T.V. programmes, I was alarmed to discover that they proposed to do this not only without consultation with individual teachers, which anyhow is impossible, but without referring to representative teachers. This could have resulted in a television-based curriculum over which teachers had no control. Sir William Alexander and I complained, for we believed only a representative body could reflect the needs of the schools and maintain standards. A bitter struggle followed, in which television interests argued they would do as they liked, to which Sir William and I replied that we couldn't stop them broadcasting, but a word from us would stop the knobs being turned and the programmes being received. To cut a long story short, representatives of teachers and authorities now act as guarantors of the standards and suitability of the programme. In this sphere, where individuals could not control, the profession collectively must do so. Lobbying is another means of indirectly influencing educational policy. Lobbying involves personal approaches to Members of Parliament, sending letters or cards to them, and bringing to their attention petitions and other evidence of public support for a group's claims. More broadly, it may include any contacts with members of both Houses which are intended to influence their political behaviour. 2 The methods and results of lobbying have been described by a number of authors, and it would be tedious to repeat. Three points ought to be made, however, about the educational lobby. First, the attitude of educationists to the discussion of their service in Parliament is rather schizophrenic. After making a determined effort to isolate education from "the vagaries of party politics", they complain when it is not an issue for enlightened debate between the parties in the House of Commons. 1 The Schoolmaster, January 4, 1957, p. 5. 2 Allen Potter, Organized Interest Groups in British National Politics (London: Faber and Faber, 1961), p. 256.

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17

Very often the complaints show a naive view of the function of Parliament, which is, after all, the ground for fighting a prolonged election campaign. Secondly, when debate does take place in the House on education, the parliamentarians are heavily dependent on educational interest groups for their material. A routine example occurred in May 1960 on one of the occasions when the Opposition used "Supply Day" to attack the Government's educational policy. The debate centred, especially for its basic information, on a recently published Union pamphlet, Fair Play for our Primary Schools. Both sides made wide use of it, an example of how the N.U.T. may start the wind blowing and then provide grist for the mill as well. Thirdly, teachers are not very effective at lobbying in the narrowest sense. The N.U.T. has been responsible for organizing some of the biggest onslaughts of the Central Lobby; but far from impressing Members, sending too many to the Lobby only appears to annoy them. During the 1963 lobby over salaries when six thousand teachers descended on the House of Commons, the reaction of Members was not to proffer the solicited support but to insist that the Minister settle the matter, one way or the other, and remove the annoyance. The bigger the lobby the more effective the public demonstration, however; and this side-payment may compensate for any failures to influence Members directly. A mass lobby also provides a convenient outlet for the enthusiasm of rank-and-file members, who could not otherwise participate in the dispute of the moment. Like many other organized interests the National Union of Teachers undertakes to canvass candidates at a general election on their attitudes to educational policy. The General Secretary sends a letter to all candidates announcing that local and county associations of the Union will be approaching them and mentioning the issues regarded as important by the Union. Union headquarters then sends out a list of questions to the local and county associations that are put to the candidates, preferably by an interview but perhaps by questionnaire, to secure their views and possibly even pledges of support. The candidates' replies are never very revealing and do little more than introduce the local Union leadership to the candidate and begin his education about the Union's point of view. Ordinarily there is a relatively large group of former school teachers in the House of Commons and they provide a core of

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potential representatives and opinion leaders on most educational issues. In the Parliament elected in October 1964, for example, twenty-five members of the N.U.T. or its affiliate, the Association of Teachers in Technical Institutes, were elected. The Union has not been satisfied with this, however, and has tried to ensure the prerequisites of effectual lobbying-good intelligence, established access to Members of Parliament, and facilities for confident and timely briefing 1-by supporting selected candidates. The conditions for support are membership in the Union for not less than seven years preceding the date of application or for the whole of a teaching career, whichever is shorter, and the support of the candidate's personal application by a local association of the N.U.T. The supported Member gets £350 a year from the Union. He is not bound to advocate N.U.T. policy. The Union's decision to support a Member (like his decision to ask for it) is based on the harmony of his educational views and those of the Union. After that the Member decides what he can and cannot support and advocate. In 1955, for example, I. J. Pitman supported the Government against the Union on the Teachers Superannuation Bill, while J.C. Jennings voted against the Government on a three-line whip. To deflect charges of political favouritism, from the membership as much as from outside the Union, candidates from the three parties are supported; but Labour candidates have been considerably more successful than Conservatives or Liberals. Local associations of the Conservative Party, especially in the good seats, adopt very few teachers as candidates; and Liberal candidates with any chance of success are hard to find. As a result of the election of October 1964 the N.U.T. suffered the novel experience of seeing all its spokesmen in the Labour Party disappear into the Government, as Michael Stewart became Foreign Secretary; Edward Short, Chief Whip; Dr. Horace King, Deputy Speaker; and George Thomas, Under Secretary at the Home Office. During the 1945 Labour Government only the late Lord Chuter-Ede was in the Government, as Home Secretary. The work by Members of Parliament supported by the N.U.T. is not as important to the Union as it was when the Union was still striving for recognition and could not always depend on having direct access to the Government to assert its views. Nevertheless, 1 S. E. Finer, Anonymous Empire (London: Pall Mall Press Ltd., 1958), p. 60.

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19

the M.P.s still perform useful services for the Union; and there is no thought of ending the relationship. By supporting candidates the Union is assured of dependable advocates on the floor of the House and especially in the Committees. The members work with the Union's Parliamentary Committee to secure amendments to legislation which the Union considers desirable. Although a major dispute between the Government and teachers no longer means a complete severing of relations, it is particularly at a time of crisis that the M.P. may act as mediator or communicator between the Government and the Union. Occasionally the Minister may use him to inform the Union of a view which he does not wish to state officially. In general, the Members provide the Union with political intelligence about the situation in the House of Commons and advise on the best approach for exerting influence. The M.P.s supported by the Union also advocate its views inside the parties they represent. In both parties teachers are seen as a politically conscious interest which in most constituencies cannot be disregarded. Each parliamentary party has an Education Committee, and the General Secretary is periodically invited to address the Members. Occasionally submissions are made to the parties in an effort to influence policy. In 1959 Gaitskell appointed a committee under Gerald Gardiner to report to the Labour Party on the problems of young people and the contribution that public and voluntary agencies could make to their solution, and the N.U.T. gave evidence to it. 1 But on the whole, the relationship between the Union and the parties is deeply inhibited, reflecting the low temperature of educational politics, the disinclination of the Union to become involved in party politics, and the irrelevance of party educational policy to the overwhelming amount of national educational policy. The avoidance on the part of the N.U.T. of involvement in policy questions that are matters of party conflict can have implications for educational change. It is best illustrated by the notably uncommitted position the N.U.T. has taken on the question of reorganizing secondary education to provide for comprehensive education. In this case caution was particularly necessary because, in addition to external party divisions, the membership was internally divided on the educational desirability of reorganization. Until recently the Union supported secondary reorganization 1

Potter op. cit., p.

312.

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because "we have always stood for considerable and varied experimentation in the organization of secondary education, and we are satisfied that the comprehensive school is one of the forms that such experimentation might take, if only because of the grievous problems which arise when selection for a tripartite or bipartite system has to be made". 1 The Union's chief concern was that the "experiment" should be conducted under reasonable conditions, in particular that local teachers' associations should be adequately consulted prior to reorganization, that local teachers should be fully protected, and that the question of implementing comprehensive education should not be made irrelevant by a failure to provide sufficient resources for it. In replying to the Minister's controversial announcement in 1951 that proposals involving exclusively comprehensive schooling in an area would not be approved at the Ministry, the N.U.T. merely announced its regret that educational policy should be subject to party politics; pointed out that the pattern was already fixed in many cases one way or the other; and concluded that so much remained to be done to implement the 1944 Act that building should make good the gaps in the system, not facilitate reorganization. It was not until 1964 that a tentative commitment to secondary reorganization was finally made by the N.U.T. in its evidence on primary schools to the Central Advisory Committee for Education, and this was subsequently confirmed by resolution of the Annual Conference. Two points need to be made, however, to put this change in policy in perspective. First, the party conflict had virtually disappeared from the issue with Sir Edward Boyle's indication that the Conservatives would not withdraw the Labour Government's Circular (10/65) on comprehensive education. Secondly, the Union continued its insistance that reorganization be supported by full consultation with local teachers and by sufficient resources to make schools truly comprehensive. The attitude of Union members toward affiliation with the Trades Union Congress offers another illustration of their refusal to become involved in partisan politics as well as their concern for their professional status. Unlike the secondary school associations, the N.U.T. has always worked closely with the T.U.C. in the pursuit of common goals, and T.U.C. educational policies usually follow closely N.U.T. policies. But the N.U.T. has so far refused 1

The Schoolmaster, July 19, 1951, p. 65.

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21

to affiliate with the T.U.C. In 1966 the matter of affiliation came up for a full debate in the Union's Annual Conference for the first time since 1939. Two familiar arguments dominated the discussion. First, affiliation to the T.U.C. would inevitably involve the Union in issues of partisan politics and commit it to at least implicit support of the Labour Party. Such a departure from the traditional political neutrality of the N.U.T. would have a serious effect on the membership of the Union and jeopardize any chance of achieving professional unity. Secondly, the N.U.T. prided itself on being a professional association, not a trade union. The 1966 Conference voted against immediate affiliation, but the 1967 Conference revived the possibility. As a result talks were held with representatives of the T.U.C., the National Association of Local Government Officers, and the Association of Teachers in Technical Institutions, the N.U.T. affiliate which joined the T.U.C. in 1966; and N.U.T. observers attended the 1967 Conference of the T.U.C. The N.U.T. Executive voted twenty to fifteen to recommend affiliation to the 1968 N.U.T. Conference and its recommendation was accepted (139,607 to 81,323), subject to the approval of the Union's membership in a referendum. This first N.U.T. referendum on affiliation rejected it by 43,222 votes to 31,499, with about 30 per cent of the members eligible voting. The conclusion of the T.U.C. general secretary on the result was direct and plain-spoken, "Evidently they still think that affiliation implies a political commitment, which it doesn't. The other thing is sheer snobbery. They don't think they have anything in common with manual workers." Given the increasing importance of the T.U.C. as a channel to influence Government economic policy and the experience of N.A.L.G.0. (which held five referenda between 1948 and 1964 before getting a majority for affiliation), it is safe to predict that the N.U.T. will eventually affiliate with the T. U. C. ; but it will not happen until further change occurs in the attitudes of Union members with respect to the status of professional workers in the T.U.C. as well as its involvement in partisan politics. Most efforts by the National Union of Teachers to influence general public opinion have the objective of advancing the cause of education in general and the acceptance of the Union's ideals in particular. A good illustration of this kind of public relations occurred during 1963 when the Union and especially its Publicity C

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Department provided the impetus behind the Campaign for Education. The objective of the Campaign was to gain prominence for the claims of educational advance-greater public expenditure on education, an increased supply of teachers, and an expansion of higher education. Eventually eighty-six organizations combined to support the Campaign, and 130 distinguished public figures from Ronald Searle and the Archbishop of Canterbury to Frank Cousins and Professor A. J. Ayer were associated with it as patrons. The activities of the Campaign and their effect were summarized in its report. The efforts of the Campaign nationally and in so many localities have made their impact on press, radio and television, the public and politicians, and the scale of our activities has exceeded anything we could have hoped for twelve months ago. Nearly 300 public meetings; two highly successful national rallies; a very topical and well made film; a widely publicized survey; teams of speakers addressing local organizations; the speeches to the Campaign of the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition, the Leader of the Liberal Party, and their educational experts; the Conference on Educational Finances and the organization of Britain's First National Education Week supported with such enthusiasm and imagination in so many parts of the countrythese have been the highlights of the Campaign and to judge by the comments which others have made, the cumulative effect has been to impress on many people the importance of our work and the significance of our cause. 1 The Campaign for Education illustrates the sort of group activities which can be used by the Minister and the Department as support for their demands upon the Treasury. Without the Campaign and the atmosphere it promoted, for example, the Minister of Education would not have got as much as the £84 million for school building which was approved by the Government. The Campaign for Education thus exemplifies the essential purpose of the Union's public relations. It is not to persuade the public, or some sector of it, to pressure the Government to spend more on education but to create a favourable environment in which to put claims through the regular channels of influence.

Changes in the distribution of power Consultation and negotiation are the conventional procedures for making decisions about national educational policy in England 1

The I963 Campaign for Education (London: N.U.T., 1964), p. 3.

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23

and Wales. The concept of an educational "partnership" is a widely used expression of this convention. If it is to be effective, the convention of educational partnership requires a dispersion of power in the educational system among the central administration, the local administration, and the teachers. The terms of the convention at any given time depend on the sources of power enjoyed by the National Union of Teachers, the Department, and the local education authorities and on the relationships existing between them. The power of any actor in the education sub-government to influence national policy is thus very much a relative property, and, because power bases and relationships can change, the terms of the convention of partnership can also change. Under the Education Act of 1944, the President of the Board of Education was transformed into a Minister whose duty it would be to "promote the education of the people of England and Wales and the progressive development of institutions devoted to that purpose, and to secure the effective execution by local authorities, under his control and direction, of the national policy for providing a varied and comprehensive educational service in every area". These are strong words, and the general power of controlling and directing local authorities in carrying out national policy is very much more definite than the "superintendence" given to the President of the Board by the Education Act of 1918. In practice, however, "the change of name made little difference and those who saw in it some sinister ambitions for a greater measure of central control were no doubt relieved". 1 Those who had hoped for greater leadership from the centre were disappointed. The clear and bold lead which R. A. Butler had seemed to promise failed to materialize in the postwar years for three reasons. First, the nature of the problems to be confronted and solved did not require it. Quite the contrary, the rebuilding of the educational system presupposed the most extensive cooperation. Rebuilding the system involved achievement of large quantitative targets which were agreed and non-controversial. The programmes for emergency teacher training and emergency building were the typical problems of this period. The shortage of mathematics and science teachers, which would become a matter of deep concern in the early 1950s, was unthinkable as a problem in the context of the 1 Sir Griffith Williams, "The First Ten Years of the Ministry of Education", British Journal of Educational Studies, III (May 1955), 101.

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immediate postwar years. Secondly, the atmosphere in which educational policy was formulated was conducive to maintaining the existing distribution of power. The Education Act of 1944 and immediate postwar attitudes to schools were derived from a social idealism which affected administrators and teachers alike. It provided a basis for understanding in the educational system which tended to minimize conflict and make the question of leadership irrelevant. Thirdly, the three men who succeeded to the positions of leadership in the system, Sir John Maud, Ronald Gould, and Dr. Alexander, accepted the need for partnership in the generally accepted terms of the interwar period. In particular, Maud worked harmoniously in the partnership; and most of the officials he led at the Ministry had been there before the war and accepted and continued the old traditions. The "partnership" was only a description of a situation. It could not prevent, although advocated as the norm it could slow down, changes in the distribution of power in the educational system. Throughout the 1950s the factors which had supported the existing distribution of power after 1944 were steadily undermined. The achievement of the emergency plans for rebuilding the system left a need for a renewal of policy decisions. More specific problems had to be met and solved, and a new system of priorities agreed. The order of priorities was now less obvious and disagreement more in evidence. At the same time, the spirit which characterized the early period receded. With scarce resources ideals could not be fulfilled, and the result was disillusionment. The educational system also shared in a more general change in social attitudes. There was a reaction in favour of more "conservative" policies, which stressed competition rather than cooperation, external rather than internal incentives, the importance of material rather than non-material ends, and the individualistic rather than the collective nature of social life. 1 This change was reflected in the schools in a greater emphasis on the vocational aspects of education and the use of examinations as set objectives. It was reflected among teachers by rising discontent with the material condition of the profession. Gradually, new men came into the Ministry who did not share the tradition of partnership of the interwar period. They read the 1 William Taylor, The Secondary Modern School (London: Faber and Faber, 1963), p. 40.

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25

Education Act and wondered why the Ministry did not exert a more positive influence. The rapid expansion of the educational system compelled officials to adopt a more critical attitude to the allocation of resources for education. This was not shared by the teachers or the local authorities. Beginning in the late 1950s the Department attempted to assert more positively the needs of the community, as it interpreted them, in the formation of national educational policy. This challenge to the established procedures for governing British education, deriving from a changing demand for education, now seems to have been temporarily contained by the old structure of relationships. The nature of the challenge and the manner of its containment will emerge from the discussions of teacher supply, teachers' salaries, and curriculum development.

2

The Constraints of Teachers' Politics

The power of organized teachers to affect educational policy is a function of the political structure within which they operate. The role assumed by the Secretary of State in the education subgovernment, the distribution of power among its chief decisionmaking centres, and the channels of communication among these centres, are all factors which must be taken into account in assessing the political influence of the teaching profession. The power of organized teachers is also a function of "teachers' politics", and the opportunities and constraints arising out of the organization of the profession itself represent another set of factors which must now be given consideration. The analysis here begins from the proposition that a basic factor in shaping an organization's external behaviour is the internal problem of maintaining its membership. This is a crudely expressed conclusion from the theory of "organizational equilibrium" advanced by Chester Barnard and Herbert Simon. 1 Each member receives from the organization inducements in return for which he makes contributions to the organization. A member will continue his participation in the organization only as long as the benefits from the inducements offered him (measured in terms of his values and in terms of the alternatives open to him) are as great as, or greater than, his costs of belonging to the organization. For a large pressure group, such as the teachers' unions in England and Wales, the satisfaction of goals common to the whole membership will not be sufficient as inducements to maintain the organization. If such inducements were all that were offered, a rational member would resign from the organization, cease paying his share of the costs of maintaining it, and still continue to enjoy the common benefits. Some type of coercion, such as compulsory unionism, or some kind of positive inducement which can be denied to non1 James G. March and Herbert A. Simon, Organizations (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1958), pp. 83-4.

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participants will be necessary to get a large group of individuals to act to achieve their common or group interests. 1 It follows that to understand the pressure group's pursuit of favourable public policies, we must consider the nature of its inducements for ensuring its survival and the factors, centrifugal in their effects, which lower the value of these inducements. Legal protection, professional exchange, and social pressures are three positive, selective inducements ensuring the maintenance of an organization through which the potential political power of teachers can be mobilized. These inducements have not been sufficiently strong to overcome the disunity of the teaching profession which is reflected in the continued existence of a number of competing unions. Nor have the governing institutions of the largest of the unions, the N. U. T ., been able to conciliate effectively the varied attitudes and values of its own members with respect to external policies. As a result the complexity of "teacher's politics" is an important constraint on the pressure-group activity of the teaching profession inside the education sub-government.

Maintaining the membership of the N.U.T. The organization of the N.U.T. in 1870 became possible when denominational differences among elementary teachers were submerged in the compromise of the Cowper-Temple clause on religious education in the Education Act of 1870. From its earliest years the Union was actively engaged in lobbying Members of Parliament on educational matters; dispatching memoranda and deputations; holding public meetings; undertaking "agitations" or "campaigns"; and, after 1895, supporting its own Members of Parliament. These activities in the pursuit of benefits for the whole profession resulted in a number of improvements, but the survival of the organization depended primarily on its provision of certain services to individual members. In the nineteenth century the conditions of service in the teaching profession were highly variable with severe problems of oppression, insecurity of tenure and low salaries a common circumstance, particularly with the smaller rural boards and church schools. For dealing with these employers, the Union offered two valuable services to its members. First, the Union maintained a 1 Mancur Olson, Jr., The Logic of Collective Action (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965), p. 2.

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"register" of unsatisfactory employers for consultation by members, a service which not only informed members of conditions of service but also confronted boards with the threat of recruitment problems if minimum conditions were not maintained. Secondly, the Union supported its members with legal action against the offending boards. As the Union became more efficient in its legal work, there was an increasing tendency for cases to be settled out of court. The mere knowledge that behind every Union member stood the legal resources of the Union played an important part in building up membership from the 1880s onwards. 1 Because teachers remain liable to legal actions brought by parents of the children they teach, legal aid continues to be a major inducement for teachers to join the N.U.T. Support for the individual teacher in any justifiable legal action against the local education authority employing him also remains an element in this service, but it is much less important now that teacherauthority relations in general have been regularized. A difficulty between teacher and employer is now more likely to be resolved by one of the several Regional Officials which the Union maintains on a full-time basis primarily to look after the individual problems of its members. In addition to this professional protection the N. U. T. makes available to its members a range of attractive individual insurance programmes through the Teachers Assurance Company, an affiliate of the Union. The Union now has its own building society which offers members opportunities for investment and favourable terms for house mortgages. Members are also eligible for benefits from some non-Union enterprises, such as the preferential interest rates on consumer credit arrangements offered by one finance house. Access to these selective benefits of membership in the N.U.T. becomes even more attractive when it is considered that cost of membership is only four guineas a year. A second form of selective inducements the Union offers members is its facilities for professional exchange. Teachers have always shown a high propensity for association, and the meeting of teachers for mutual improvement in their work appears to be as old as the work itself. 2 A substantial portion of the Union's weekly journal is devoted to news and articles on "technical" matters; and the Union sponsors a range of study groups, courses, and 1 Asher Tropp, The School Teachers (London: William Heinemann 2 Tropp, ibid., p. 44. Ltd., 1957), p. 145.

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29

conferences aiming to improve the teachers' professional performance. Social pressures constitute a third type of selective inducements for members of the Union. In general, social pressures and social incentives operate as selective inducements only in groups sufficiently small in size for members to have face-to-face contact with one another. 1 In a large group which is "federal" in constitution, the constituent units may be small enough to apply social incentives as a basis for group action. In its fifty-four county associations and 690 branch associations, the latter ranging in size from fifty to five thousand, the N.U.T. has just such a "federal" organization; and in the smaller branches social pressures and incentives likely operate as a positive element in group cohesion. The types of social functions which are arranged by local associations may be judged from the list compiled by Walter Roy: "welcome teas" for newly appointed teachers, dinner dances, coach trips to theatres and places of interest, dances and socials, sherry parties, whist drives, dramatic activities, garden parties, annual religious services, and sectional meetings of a social nature for young teachers, retired teachers, men or women members. 2 This kind of inducement was probably of greater importance to the Union's organization in its earlier years when the greatest number of local branches were much smaller than they are now. Nevertheless, the teacher's place of work continues to involve face-to-face interaction with colleagues; and the staff common room of a school continues to be a fairly intimate place in a country where large schools are the exception. The key figure in the application of this type of incentive is the School Collector, who is a member of the active minority at the local level and who acts as go-between and informant for his school and the local association. Finally, it should be noted the Union maintains student organizations in the Colleges of Education (teacher training colleges) and many of its members are recruited in the colleges, where individuals are probably highly susceptible to social incentives, before the individual even formally enters the profession. While selective inducements have always been much in evidence as instruments for maintaining the membership of the N.U.T., the Olson, op. cit., p. 62. Walter Roy, The Teachers' Union (London: Schoolmaster Publishing Company Ltd., 1968), p. 39. 1

2

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alternative to them, coercion, has not been used. Despite its concern with the education of working-class children and its friendly relations with the Trades Union Congress, the norms of the Union strongly reject the compulsory unionism associated with the trade union movement. The case of the Durham "closed shop" illustrates the strong measures members of the Union are prepared to take against the imposition of compulsory unionism even when, paradoxically, their employer insists on it. In 1950 the Durham County Council ruled that all employees of the Council had to be a member of a recognized trade union or professional association. The executive committee of the Durham County Association of the N. U.T. immediately rejected the decision by the County Council and received the full support of the National Executive Committee. When negotiations reached an impasse in April 1951, the N. U. T. began to collect the resignations of teachers in the East and Central Divisional Executives of the County. When the first resignations came in, the sympathetic Minister intervened under Section 68 of the Education Act of 1944, using his power to prevent a breakdown in the provision of educational services and ordering the Durham County Local Education Authority to refrain from asking if applicants were Union members. The following spring the issue rose again when the County Council ruled that applications for the extension of sick payments would be considered only if made through a trade union or professional organization. When the National Executive Committee again determined to collect resignations to force the Council to withdraw the rule, the response of members was strongly positive. On May 18, 1952, the National Executive Committee decided five thousand teachers in Durham County would be asked to send their resignations to the Union if no agreement was reached with the County Council by the end of the month. During the month of June 3790 members handed in their resignations, representing a response of 75 per cent. Under this pressure the County Council referred the dispute to the Minister of Labour who ruled against the Council. The "paradox" of participation in large trade unions has been described as over 90 per cent of unionists not attending meetings or participating in union affairs, yet over 90 per cent voting to force themselves to belong to the union and make considerable dues payments to it. 1 In contrast with most trade union members there 1

Olson, op. cit., p. 86.

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is no "paradox" about the participation of N.U.T. members, if the Durham case can be taken as an approximation of a vote on compulsory unionism. Seventy-five per cent resigned in the space of a month in protest against compulsory unionism; and, although attendance is not as low as many British unions experience, 7 5 per cent consistently fail to attend general meetings of local N.U.T. associations. This symmetry of behaviour of members of the N.U.T., contrasted with the asymmetry of behaviour of members of industrial trade unions, is common among professional workers in Britain and is consistent with differences often observed between the value systems of professionals and trade unionists. Most professional associations can afford organizational norms rejecting coercion as a means of organizational cohesion because their control over entry to the profession, creating an implicit "guild system", is just as effective. The notable examples in this respect are law and medicine. But teachers in England and Wales have no effective control over entry to the profession (although they would like to have it). Their rejection of compulsory unionism in favour of reliance on the relatively weak organizational inducements of legal aid, professional exchange, and social pressure represents an important limitation on their power. It also puts the achievement of higher salaries in a new perspective in the order of organizational goals. The limitation on power arises from the fact that an organization maintained by coercion can more easily employ "direct action" methods of external pressure, which involve relatively high costs for individual members, without endangering its survival. A strike sharply raises the costs of a member's participation. In the absence of compulsory unionism strike action is not possible as a means of pressure unless the membership is virtually unanimous on its desirability. The situation of an organization held together by selective inducements rather than coercion is analogous to that of the "voluntary state" where a tax must be completely agreed upon by individual citizens before it is levied. No coercion in collecting taxes is necessary and no restriction of individual freedom occurs. Procedurally, the Union has attempted to ensure this result by providing that direct action must be approved in a referendum by 75 per cent (since 1967, 66½) of the membership. This rule has constituted a high but realistic barrier to direct action. The salary dispute in the autumn of 1961, described in

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Chapter 5, illustrates the difficulties and disadvantages this limitation on power involves when there is a direct confrontation between the Union and the Government. The question of salaries is commonly assumed to dominate the interests of the N.U.T., and the organization is often described as nothing more than a "teachers' trade union". There is much truth in this observation. Members of the Union are certainly concerned about their salaries. A highly vocal segment of the membership regards higher salaries as a paramount objective, ensuring that much of the Union's internal and external activity is devoted to the salaries question. Despite the prominence of this issue in Union affairs, however, the rejection of compulsory unionism indicates higher salaries are not regarded as common benefits from which it is necessary to exclude those teachers who bear none of the costs of attaining them. Contrast this with an industrial trade union voting "closed shop" precisely in order to exclude from the benefits of higher wages workers who refuse to share the costs of membership in the union, including strikes. When the Durham County teachers "voted" against a closed shop, they announced in effect that the existing inducements were of greater importance than the collective benefits that could only be achieved by accepting a compulsory union rule. Given the importance of direct action as an instrument in pressuring for higher salaries, one is led to conclude that the achievement of higher salaries is by no means the over-riding objective it is often alleged to be.

The divided profession The centrifugal pressures in the teaching profession in England and Wales are reflected in the history of factionalism in the organization of elementary teachers and in the continuing existence of a number of competing teachers' unions. The teachers' unions other than the National Union of Teachers which have some importance both directly as an influence on policy development and indirectly as an influence on the demands made by the N.U.T. are the product of either the separate school systems which grew up in the nineteenth century and were confirmed in the Education Act of 1902, or the internal dissensions which developed inside the Union around the turn of the century. To the former belong the Incorporated Association of Headmasters (I.A.H.M.), the Incorporated Association of Assistant Masters (A.M.A.), the Associ-

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ation of Headmistresses (A.H.M.), and the Association of Assistant Mistresses (A.A.M.). To the latter belong the National Association of Head Teachers (N.A.H.T.) and the National Association of Schoolmasters (N.A.S.). In the early 1890s a number of informal pressure groups inside the Union began to crystallize into internal and external associations.1 First, as it became clear that another comprehensive piece of legislation would soon be necessary, the division between teachers in "voluntary" schools and teachers in "board" schools intensified. In 1889 voluntary school teachers in London reacted to the militant activities of the independent Metropolitan Board Teachers' Association by forming the Metropolitan Voluntary Teachers' Association as an association inside the N.U.T. with the aim of capturing control of the Union and using it against the M.B.T.A. In 1893 the M.V.T.A. began recruiting members throughout the country; and in 1895 it became the National Association of Voluntary Teachers, still with the aim of getting control of the Union. Despite a bitter internal struggle the N.A.V.T. failed to gain control of the N.U.T.; and, after the passage of the Education Bill of 1902, it narrowed down to its base in London and went inside the London Teachers' Association (once the M.B.T.A.) in 1905. Secondly, a division developed between headmasters and assistant teachers as it became clear increasing numbers of assistants would never get headmasterships. The Union traditionally was (and still is) run predominantly by headmasters. In 1887 and 1888 the assistants began forming separate associations inside the Union; and in 1895 the first national conference of assistant teachers was held, adopting four assistant teachers as candidates for the Union's elections. In 1900 and 1902 assistants were elected President, and a greater number of assistant teachers were elected to the Executive. This success prompted the formation inside the Union in 1897 of the National Federation of Head Teachers. Created as a discussion group to put informal pressure on local authorities on matters affecting heads and to operate as a special interest group inside the N.U.T., the association later elected independent status as the National Association of Head Teachers. Most of its members retain a membership in the N.U.T. as the organization to which they belonged before becoming head teachers. 1

Tropp, op. cit., pp. 153-159.

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Thirdly, after the turn of the century a division developed inside the Union between men and women. To this point women had played little part in the operation of the N.U.T. After 1900 several organizations were formed with the aim of levelling up the status of women teachers and capturing the N.U.T. for the women's suffrage movement. When the Union refused to adopt the principle of equal pay, the National Union of Women Teachers established itself as a breakaway union. When the N.U.T. did accept the principle of equal pay in 1919, the N.U.W.T. continued its separate existence, supported mainly by its connections with the women's movement in general. Always a small group, it disbanded in 1961 with its objective of equal pay finally achieved. Meanwhile, a group of male teachers reacted to the acceptance of the equal pay principle in 1919 by forming the National Association of Schoolmasters. In 1922 it broke away from the N.U.T. on the grounds that the Union would always be dominated by a majority of women. Militance, as well as masculinity, has been characteristic of the N.A.S. It grew from 5000 in 1923 to 10,000 in 1947 to 18,000 in 1958, but its most spectacular growth came in the restive years of 1959 and 1961 when it gained a total of nearly 12,000 members. The growth of N.A.S. membership is closely associated with discontent in the profession, and it is because of this that the N.A.S. creates such a problem for the N.U.T. Much of the attraction of the N.A.S. has rested on its willingness to take direct action to support its demands. Threats of direct action can gain members frustrated by the moderate demands which the survival of the N.U.T. necessitates, as well as occasional advantages. The prospect of N.A.S. members quitting school meals duties, which would have paralysed the school meals system, was a factor along with support in the Conservative backbenches, in persuading the Minister to bestow "official recognition" on the association in 1961, giving it two seats on the Burnham Committee and representation in other national advisory bodies. 1 1 The support which the N.A.S. has won among the backbenches of the Conservative Party is quite remarkable. For example, as part of the campaign for N.A.S. representation on the Burnham Committee, a Conservative M.P., Robert Jenkins, tabled a motion in the House of Commons in November 1960 expressing the opinion that the N.A.S. should be represented. The motion had eighty-eight signatories, the overwhelming number being Conservatives. The N.A.S. itself is uncertain about the explanation of the support. Part of it no doubt rests on the

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35

Until very recently the N.A.S. has refused to accept the established procedures of the education sub-government, but there are signs of change. Representation on major national advisory bodies has sharpened the picture of political reality held by the Association's leaders. In the past the tendency was to overestimate the power of politicians and underestimate that of civil servants. There was some initial surprise at the true balance of affairs. Now an awareness of the importance of useful information and moderation in approaching and impressing civil servants is growing, although it is not yet widespread in the rank and file. Suggestive of the resulting adjustment in strategy was the appointment of a fulltime Education Secretary in 1964 to look after the expanding educational work of the N.A.S. M. G. Powell-Davies, Education Secretary of the N.U.T., once estimated that the competition between the two unions cost them one and a quarter million pounds between 1921 and 1959. After 1959 the intensity of the competition increased dramatically as thousands of teachers, frustrated with the moderation of the N. U. T. in its pursuit of higher salaries, left the Union to join the N.A.S. While the N.A.S. had been virtually ignored in the education sub-government heretofore, by 1961 this was no longer possible; and "official recognition" soon followed. The N.A.S. now recognizes, even if it does not admit in public, that it has gained as many converts from the N.U.T. as it is likely to get. The competition between the two unions has shifted to the recruits coming into the teaching profession from the training colleges. This shift, together with the tendency through expansion to a younger profession, has made both unions more responsive to the demands of young teachers. All of the groups described above were first formed to use the established organization of the N.U.T. to achieve goals which benefited a part of the Union's membership at the expense of the rest. The success of one group in achieving its objective prompted masculinity of the N.A.S. and the anti-N.U.T. feeling which exists among Conservative Members. The vocal London teachers are very leftwing and give a wrong impression of the N.U.T. membership's political sympathies. The very fact that there are few teachers among Conservative backbenches and many on the Labour side and that N.U.T.-supported Members over many years built up much support in the Labour Party meant also that Conservative Members were the only possibility for N.A.S. recruitment.

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the organization of opposing groups in the parts of the membership adversely affected. Even after breaking away the competing organizations remained weak, overshadowed by the N.U.T., and little threat to its hegemony. The Union continued to control the provision of individual services which attracted teachers to membership in a professional association; and the new groups, with one exception, were unable or unwilling to provide comparable inducements. The N.A.V.T. disappeared as soon as the Education Act of 1902 was passed. The National Federation of Class Teachers survived as a weak pressure group inside the N.U.T. until the basic scale was adopted in 1939 as Union policy. Then, with its basic goal achieved, it ceased to be a factor in Union politics. The N.U.W.T. established a separate organization on the basis of its connections with other women's organizations but was always a small union. The N.A.H.T. has persisted as a weak pressure group but an effective means of professional exchange for headmasters in non-selective schools. The exception is the National Association of Schoolmasters, and it demonstrates the necessity for a group to develop a set of selective inducements independent of the established organization if its separate existence is to be assured. The N.A.S. from the beginning adopted a rule that none of its members could belong to the N.U.T. Consequently, the N.A.S. forced teachers joining its organization to forsake the selective inducements of the N.U.T. which might undermine their attachment to the N.A.S. The importance of this element in explaining the bitterness which has characterized the relations of the N.U.T. with the N.A.S. and has been relatively absent from relations with the N.U.W.T., N.A.H.T., and the four secondary school associations is confirmed by the Union's demand that peace between the two organizations could only come with the N.A.S. rescinding its rule against joint memberships with the N.U.T. The experience of the N.U.T. with factionalism illustrates how an established pressure group can be the source of new pressure groups. The established pressure group provides the initial asset which a "potential" group lacks-an established organization. After using the established pressure group to supply the initial organization and given some means to maintain its own organization on an independent basis, a breakaway organization may survive and even flourish, its weakness or strength depending upon

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37

the weakness or strength of its inducements. In this competition of groups there is likely to be considerable exploitation of the great by the small.1 The members of the N.A.S., N.A.H.T., and the four secondary school associations derive enormous benefits from collective goods achieved by pressures originating from the N.U.T. The N.U.T. attempts to spread the costs of lobbying for benefits accruing to the whole profession to the members of the smaller unions; but, since the N.U.T. will probably lobby in any case, the smaller unions can usually escape with paying less than their "fair share" of the cost. The implications of factionalism in the N. U. T. for professional unity may also be noted. The selective inducements available to the N.U.T. are sufficient to hold slightly over two-thirds of the teaching profession in the organization. The experience of the N.U.T. indicates that a much stronger selective inducement would be necessary to achieve an "all-in" organization. A much-touted candidate is control of entry by the profession, but whether this would be sufficient is not predictable. The educational system grew up divided and so the teaching profession grew up divided as well. The N.U.T. was a union of teachers in "elementary" (non-selective) schools. During the latter part of the nineteenth century four associations-the Incorporated Association of Headmistresses ( 1874), the Association of Assistant Mistresses (1884), the Incorporated Association of Headmasters (1891), and the Assistant Masters' Association (1891) -were established to serve teachers and heads in the "secondary" (selective) schools. In 1919 an Executive Committee of the Joint Four Secondary School Associations was created to formalize consultation among the four associations, which obviously had a great deal in common. The elementary and secondary school systems were quite separate, formally until 1944 and informally even after that; and the teaching "profession" in fact constituted two professions with little reason for competition between them. After 1944 the inducements offered by the N.U.T. were not sufficient to undermine the secondary associations. Indeed, the memberships of the Joint Four have been reaching into non-selective schools where they have found members in the teachers of "grammar type" streams and subjects, thus confirming the importance of professional exchange for the maintenance of British teachers' associations. 1

Olson, op. cit., p. 35. D

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Moderation has traditionally characterized both the internal politics and the external policies of the Joint Four. As in the case of the N.U.T. this moderation is directly related to the maintenance needs of the organization. The predominant inducement for members in general has been professional exchange rather than protection, for historical reasons connected with the different place the grammar school has had in the development of English education; and reliance on this weaker inducement has perhaps occasioned a more careful approach to external relations. More important, the memberships are 90 per cent graduates teaching in grammar schools. The extension of the associations into the nonselective schools has not affected this homogeneity of membership very much. Policies have changed gradually to accommodate a new kind of member; but the change has been evolutionary, because the educational interests of newly acquired members are close to the traditional interests of the Joint Four. The resulting high degree of homogeneity reduces the likelihood that factions will strain the internal cohesion of the Joint Four. The more homogeneous the membership the more likely an effective consensus will be reached on the goals of the organization, implying a moderate internal politics. The secondary school associations lack the tradition of struggle which is part of the N.U.T. ethos. Educating the intellectual elite as they do, teachers in grammar schools have not had to struggle against the cultural undervaluation of the education of the masses to the same extent as teachers in non-selective schools in order to realize professional and educational goals. In promoting the education of working-class children, the N.U.T. was part of a general movement in British society to improve the condition of the working class. The secondary school associations were fairly isolated from this social movement. Secondary education in the nineteenth century was essentially the education of the middle class; and changes in the social composition of the grammar schools in this centu,ry have not substantially altered this connection, because of the link between education and occupation and because of the strongly middle-class ethos of the schools. When their status is apparently challenged, as it seemed to be in 1945, the grammar school teachers react strongly; but in general they are more secure in their status than other teachers. Indeed their position has been one to which other teachers have aspired and struggled.

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39

In general, the pressure-group activities of the secondary school associations seem to reflect a realization that, in the absence of any real political power, moderate claims well-supported by technical evidence are what count with official groups. The exercise of considerable political influence by the Joint Four is based on the status and prestige of representing grammar schools and graduate teachers, and there is little doubt that each of these resources affects favourably the reception of the claims advanced. The Joint Four, for example, are regarded by "official groups" which deal with teachers demands as more professionally oriented, less "trade unionist", than the N.U.T.

The predominance of the N.U.T. In spite of the existence of several competitors, the National Union of Teachers is easily predominant among the teachers' unions of England and Wales, both as a professional organization and as a pressure group. The growth of the N.U.T. reflects the growth of the English educational system and of the teaching profession.1 Its size relative to that of competing unions in an important area of public policy is an elementary factor in its great influence in the education sub-government. It is the Union's size which lends urgency and cogency to its claims on the government and which impresses politicians, press, and public. It is also the Union's size which assures its General Secretary his prominent role in the education sub-government. Two other factors, both related to the size of the Union, contribute to the predominance of the N.U.T. as a teachers' pressure group: the extended network of its formal organization and the representative character of its membership. The membership of the N.U.T. is organized in a complex network which includes local branches, county associations, advisory and consultative committees, local and national executive committees, a staff of permanent 1 The National Union of Teachers increased its membership between 1901 and 1961 as follows: 1901: 45,154; 1911: 72,400; 1921: 115,577; 1931: 144,723; 1941: 156,199; 1951: 200,II3; 1961: 256,146. (Source: The Schoolmaster, April 6, 1962, p. 851.) The memberships of the other major teachers' associations in 1960 were as follows: Incorporated Association of Headmasters, 16 54; Association of Headmistresses, 1299; Incorporated Association of Assistant Masters, 22,000; Association of Assistant Mistresses, 16,000; National Association of Head Teachers, 13,750; National Association of Schoolmasters, 22,651. (Source: Roy, op. cit., p. 158.)

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officials, and an Annual Conference. The relevance of this kind of organization for efficient educational administration is such that if it did not exist it would have to be created. The fact that it does exist and is controlled by teachers provides them with a powerful opportunity to exercise a collective influence over the formation of educational policy. Three parts of the Union's formal organization need to be described at this point as factors in its political influence: the local organization, the system of committees serving the National Executive Committee, and the permanent officials of the national organization. The local organization of the National Union of Teachers provides the Union with a strong cadre of organizations strategically dispersed throughout the country. Each of the local organizations tends to be dominated by an "active minority". The number involved in this active minority varies between associations, but its membership is generally limited to the local executive committee and the representatives of the local association in the schools (the School Collectors). Whereas attendance at general meetings is low, except during a time of crisis, attendance at local committee meetings is high. Once the committee has agreed on a certain line of policy it is rare for it to be changed by a general meeting. The rank-and-file membership, most of whom belong to the Union more to enjoy the legal services it provides than anything else, expect the lead to be taken in this way and accept it. The local associations are fairly independent of the national organization of the Union. They receive a fixed proportion of the membership fees, which they collect for the national headquarters. A plethora of local news sheets and journals provide an effective means of communication at the local level, over which the National Executive and officials have little or no control. Nor is it unknown for a local association to make arrangements with its local education authority which contradict established national Union policy. The independence of the local associations and the dominance of local "active minorities" can create difficult situations for the leadership of the national organization. There is no guarantee that the local active minorities represent their memberships on all issues, and local leaders can push the Union in policy directions for which there is little support in the membership at large when the crisis is upon it. The problem is compounded to the extent that elected representatives at the national organizational level come

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4r

to rely on the policy demands of local leaders as being broadly representative. Offsetting the effects of local independence is a genuine feeling of loyalty to the national headquarters, which makes the branches a source of strength on many national policy issues. For example, in the campaign against the Superannuation Bill, described in the next chapter, the local executive committees were a critical element in mobilizing opposition at the local level and channelling it in directions suggested by the national headquarters. The elected leadership of the national organization of the Union resides in the National Executive Committee which includes thirty-six members elected every two years from twelve electoral districts, four representatives of the Association of Teachers in Technical Institutes (A.T.T.I.), two of the Association of Teachers of Domestic Science (A.T.D.S.), and the national treasurer. Membership on the National Executive Committee has its perquisites but the work is demanding. Full-time teachers spend every other weekend on Union business, attend local meetings on weekdays, and represent the Union on outside bodies. The full Executive meets monthly; its seven standing committees meet every two weeks. In 1958 advisory committees, similar to the longstanding ones on grammar schools and technical education, were set up for primary, secondary modern, and comprehensive and bilateral schools. As a result the Executive Committee and, in particular, its Education Committee are now served by a set of specialist advisory committees covering primary and secondary education. Non-Executive members of these committees are elected biennially in elections which alternate with those for the Executive. The Executive may also appoint consultative committees to report on special problems. The report of the Consultative Committee on The Curriculum of the Junior School, for example, took five years to prepare. The membership of these committees will usually include distinguished outsiders, as was the case with Investment for National Survival, a report on educational expenditure.1 Ad hoc committees are created for special purposes, for 1 The Committee was chaired by Sir Charles Morris and included Sir Eric Ashby, Richard Bailey, Sir Hugh Beaver, Dr. (now Lord) Bowden, Lionel Elvin, Norman Fisher, A. G. Grant, J. A. Hunt, F. W. Oakley, C. T. Saunders, Richard Titmuss, George Woodcock, and Dr. Michael Young. It was advised by Simon Pratt and John Vaizey.

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example, the Ad hoc Sub-Committee on the Government's Greater London Plan, set up in July 1962.The Committee included the Executive members for the affected area, representatives of the A.T.T.I. and A.T.D.S., the relevant regional officials, and officials of the Education and Law Departments of N.U.T. national headquarters and of the London Teachers' Association. The Committee provided a focus for the Union's analysis of the implications of the reorganization, its eventual opposition to it, meetings with M.P.s on possible amendments, and a deputation to the Ministry of Education. The National Sectional Meetings, sponsored by the Union, also play some part in the articulation of membership opinion. They are held each year during the Christmas vacation and are devoted to purely technical problems. They have no direct impact on policy, but resolutions of the meetings are sent to the Executive of the Union and cannot fail to have some effect. In March 1958, for example, the Executive was considering whether to set up a working party on the methods of ascertaining, from an educational standpoint, children who are thought to be educationally subnormal. The working party had been recommended to the Executive by the Advisory Committee for Special Schools, which had discussed the matter as a result of a resolution adopted at the National Sectional Meetings. The General Secretary of the N. U. T. has already been identified as the focal point of its organizational structure. He inherits a position of influence which has been established over many years. Invariably, he has been a past national president of the Union with a long and wide experience in teachers' politics. He becomes a permanent feature of the Union landscape. There have been only six General Secretaries since the Union was founded in 1870. 1 The administration is very much his administration. Senior officials exercise influence of their own over policy, but they do it within a set of general policy objectives which derive their force from their acceptance by the General Secretary. They may try to pressure him in countless ways, but they are ultimately dependent upon him for his prestige, power, and leadership. The power that accrues to the General Secretary through dom1 The seventh General Secretary has been appointed. He is Edward Britton who was named General Secretary Designate in June 1968 and will succeed Sir Ronald Gould as General Secretary following the 1970 Annual Conference.

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inating the bureaucracy of the Union is reinforced by the lack of cohesion in the Executive Committee, the body to which the General Secretary is nominally responsible. The National Executive Committee of the N.U.T. is a meeting of forty-three teachers' representatives, not a Cabinet. Debates in the Committee are reported in the Union's journal. Decisions are taken by majority vote, but members in the minority in no way regard themselves as committed to supporting the decision. Thus the opposition to resolutions proposed to the Annual Conference by the majority of the Executive is often led by dissenting members of the Executive. Given such an individualist bias, the National Executive needs firm direction if it is to function effectively; and the General Secretary, supported by the senior permanent officials of the Union, is the only person in the position to provide it. As the key decision-maker in the largest and most influential of the teachers' unions, the General Secretary is the principal leader on the teachers' side in the development of policy in the education sub-government. As the principal leader on the teachers' side he wields greater influence inside the Union. He is, for example, the Leader of the Teachers' Panel of the Burnham Main Committee, the representative body for negotiating teachers' salaries, which is by far the most important. He also led the Union's representation on the National Advisory Committee on the Training and Supply of Teachers. Because of his personal interests and capacities, Sir Ronald Gould has been a leader in the affairs of international teachers' organizations (he was, for example, the first President of the World Confederation of Organizations of the Teaching Profession); and this has contributed to his prestige inside his own union. Given the support of the General Secretary, the influence of the Union's twenty-one permanent officials pervades the entire policymaking process of the Union through the committee structure. Certainly a senior official is in a position to make his views on policy count. The death of R. W. Hickman, then senior official in the Education Department, prompted The Schoolmaster (March 2, 1962) to write that the Union had been deprived of "its principal spokesman on educational matters" and to elaborate on the work he had done. He represented the Union on many bodies-on the Secondary School Examinations Council and the Ad Hoc Committee on Sixth Form

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Studies, on the school examinations council of London University as well as its matriculation board for mature students, on the council and committee of management of the London Institute of Education, and on the education advisory council of Associated-Rediffusion. The part which Richard Hickman played in the Union's evidence to the Pilkington, Anderson, Crowther and Robbins Committees would be hard to over-estimate. He had the ear of the Headmasters' Conference and of the training college teachers-in addition to his secretaryship to the Education Committee, he was also secretary of the Union', Advisory Committee for Training Colleges and University Departments of Education-and was well known in the Schools Division at Curzon Street.

Such a contribution is obviously more than the routine execution of policy. The permanent official who serves a committee will prepare its agenda and write its reports. If there is any research or intelligence required by the committee in its deliberations he will provide it. The preparation of the Union's submission on primary education to the Central Advisory Council (the Plowden Committee) is instructive. In preparing the evidence the Secretary to the Education Committee had to take into account two kinds of factors: first, the attitudes of the Education Committee and the Executive, whose approval he would need for the document; secondly, the arguments likely to be presented to the Plowden Committee by other interested groups. Taking account of the arguments to be presented in other submissions requires advance intelligence reports, and the N.U.T. is endowed with a very respectable reconnaissance system, the product of its size and the far-flung interests and activities of its members. In the preparation of this kind of technical submission, there was no summing and calculating of the views of members. Members' views on primary schools were investigated through the elaborate system of committees the Union maintains for just this purpose, and they were incorporated into the evidence. But it was the Secretary to the Committee who digested the material, put it aside, and wrote a complete report. His report was subjected to discussion in the Education Committee and in the Executive Committee, and marginal changes were made before approving it. In this sense, the Executive made the policy of the Union; but it was the Secretary who in preparing the report set the focus of their discussion, the framework of their argument and the limits of their debate. He, in turn, worked implicitly within the limits,

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as he understood them, of the evidence of members' views and the attitudes of the Executive (with an occasional push at the limits of tolerance wherever he thought it desirable). The evidence of the N.U.T. to a body like the Plowden Committee is based not on educational research but on the personal experience of teachers in the classroom. The Union's organization is designed to collect, aggregate, and articulate this experience and then feed the information into the national educational policymaking process. The views of the individual teacher in the classroom are sometimes distorted by this procedure of aggregation. Some such distortion is an unavoidable consequence of the reconciliation of individual views to form a unified set of Union policies and is necessary if information is to be put into a form suitable for affecting policy decisions. There is obviously no need to defend this reference to classroom teachers in the decisionmaking at other levels. The fact that the Union is organized to facilitate it is an important source of its influence, albeit dependent on the reasonable accuracy of the information provided by the Union. The information, based as it is on the collective experience of teachers in classrooms, is not the product of technical expertise in the sense usually assumed by pressure group theorists. The teaching profession is very far from being the object of public myths about the scope of its expertise or of the self-effacing attitudes by laymen which attach to some other professions, notably the medical profession. 1 There seems to be a widespread public belief that doctors know what is the best organization for medicine, but there is no such belief that teachers know what is the best organization for education. The representative character of the membership of the N.U.T. is a factor in its political influence, giving its policy demands a potentially more persuasive force than that supporting the demands of competing unions. Because the National Association of Schoolmasters bars women from its union, the National Association of Head Teachers limits itself to head teachers, and the Joint Four associations are confined to secondary school teachers, the N.U.T. can claim with some justice to be the only association truly representative of the whole teaching profession in England and Wales. This does not mean that the Union is without some 1 Harry Eckstein, Pressure Group Politics: The Case of the British Medical Association (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1960), p. 70.

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biases in the composition of its membership, as we shall see; but it does mean that potentially the Union's leadership, compelled by the demands of maintaining its own heterogeneous membership, can provide a kind of political knowledge which is unobtainable from more homogeneous competitors. 1 Even if the collective judgement of the Union's membership on some policy matters is suspect it cannot be ignored, because the cooperation of teachers in the classroom is necessary for the successful execution of all policies. Policies which alienate teachers are ultimately self-defeating, and the Union's organization comes closer than any other to articulating the needs and views of the profession in general. The Union was originally an organization of teachers in elementary schools, and it continues to represent predominantly teachers in the primary and secondary modern schools, the descendants after 1944 of the elementary schools. About 68 per cent of the teaching profession belonged to the N.U.T. in 1960. This covered 79 per cent of teachers in primary schools, 54 per cent of teachers in all types of maintained secondary schools, 22 per cent of teachers in university training departments and training colleges, and 57 per cent of teachers in establishments of further education. 2 The N.U.T. membership teaching in maintained secondary schools included 71 per cent of the teachers in secondary modern schools, 27 per cent of the teachers in grammar and technical schools; and 63 per cent of the teachers in other secondary schools, including comprehensive and bilateral schools. Because of the positive relationship between type of school and graduate teachers, it is not surprising to find that the Union tends to under-represent university graduates in the profession. About 35 per cent of graduates in all types of schools belonged to the N.U.T. in 1960, and just over half of them were teaching in primary or non-selective secondary schools. One-third of the membership is male and twothirds female. In spite of the predominance of women in the membership, men play the leading part in local meetings and executive committees; and they dominate the National Executive Committee. The primary teacher membership of the Union is also underrepresented on the Executive. In 1960 primary teachers comprised 1 On the politician's need for political knowledge, see David B. Truman, The Governmental Process (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1951), pp. 332-5. 2 Roy, op. cit., p. 159. The proportions have not changed significantly since 1960.

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57 per cent of the membership, but held only sixteen seats on the Executive. Secondary school teachers, one-third of the membership, held twenty-two seats. 1 In age the Executive ranged from forty-one to sixty-four, the average age being fifty-five. Perhaps the most prominent feature of the N.U.T. Executive is its domination by head teachers. In 1962, among the sixty candidates for the Executive over three-quarters were head teachers and two-fifths were head teachers in primary schools. Over five-sixths of the members elected to the Executive were head teachers, half of them heads of primary schools. This prominence of head teachers on the Executive is scarcely surprising. On the one hand, their occupational roles require the development of leadership qualities which can be transferred to teachers' politics; they have the highest status in the teaching profession; and they have greater opportunity to engage in teachers' politics. On the other hand, one way for a teacher to get a headship is to be active in the N.U.T., thus bringing himself to the attention of the local authority; and the skills of the teacher-politician can be transferred to the work of the headmaster, as well as vice versa. There is some criticism of this "domination" by head teachers, implying that the N.U.T. is less militant than it otherwise might be and that the implementation of Union policy suffers as a result. 2 The fact remains that there is virtually no competition from assistant teachers for candidacy in Union elections. The teachers with the record of involvement in educational politics which members must have to stand for election are also the teachers likely to get appointments as head teachers. The membership of the Union wants and expects the leadership of these teachers. That it may dislike some of the policy outcomes is another matter entirely. It is a widely advanced proposition with regard to recent educational politics that in the reconciliation of interests inside the N.U.T. the bias is strongly in favour of young teachers, especially women, and policy demands are seriously distorted as a result. As The Economist (June 10, 1961) put it in referring to the salary dispute of that year, "the Union dog appears to be being wagged by its long tail of younger (and often temporary) teachers, and by the newly militant generation of girls and young men in the training colleges". But women are not politically active in the Union. The Executive Committee is composed of teachers with many years of 1

Roy, op. cit., p. 73.

2

Roy, op. cit., p. 74.

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service, most of whom are head teachers. Young teachers may provide the demonstrations like those at the Union's national headquarters in 1961, but they do not dominate local association meetings. Because the numerically dominant sectional interests in the Union do not directly control the decision-making areas of the organization, the translation of these interests into important influences on Union policy must result from the Union's democratic organization. The alleged excessive influence of these interests can only be attributed to an excess of democracy.

The problems of Union democracy The National Union of Teachers is an organization comprising many diverse interests. A political compromise worked out inside the Union is thus likely to be more effective in securing the general support of the profession than that produced by any of the more homogeneous teachers' organizations. This heterogeneity of interests, the sheer size of the Union relative to its competitors, and the extended nature of its political system give the N.U.T. a political and administrative importance far greater than that enjoyed by any of the other teachers' groups. The Incorporated Association of Headmasters may have considerable influence on the question of secondary school reorganization, because it represents headmasters and grammar schools; or the National Association of Schoolmasters may convert a threat of militant action with respect to school meals duties into access to policy discussions. But these are particular instances and provide no basis for a continuous influence on educational policy in general. It is possession of this latter which distinguishes the N.U.T. from other teachers' professional organizations in England and Wales. As sources of political power the services performed by the Union in making national educational policy depend for effectiveness on the demonstrable success of the Union's political procedures and institutions in accurately formulating the views of teachers and the personal and professional terms on which their professional services will be secured. Persistent shortcomings in this respect could seriously undermine the influence exercised by the Union and, because these services are important to policy formulation, damage, educational development. Once a settlement is reached, "official" groups expect the leaders of the pressure group to enforce the settlement on its membership; and the ability

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to do this also depends on the effectiveness of the pressure group's system of internal government. Certain characteristics of the internal government of the N. U. T. represent potential weaknesses for an organization seeking to exert effective political pressure, and these characteristics are deeply rooted in long-standing democratic political attitudes. Its record of internal pressure groups and breakaway unions, the heterogeneous composition of its membership, the conflicts between the Executive and the "floor" at the Annual Conference, and the battles between the moderates and the militants inside the Executive make perfectly clear that the Union is no monolithic organization. The education of the teacher, his occupational role, and the focus provided by the school and its staff common room make it relatively easy to mobilize sectional interests, "potential groups", into formal pressure groups. Asher Tropp has argued that this characteristic of Union politics is the basis of its democracy. If the N.U.T. is among the most democratic of all large unions it is partly because any grievance among any section of its members will almost automatically bring forth a "National Association" of sufferers from that grievance with a periodical publication and an annual conference. In minimizing the number and size of such associations, the officials tend by and large to obey the will of the majority of the members. 1

Maintenance of the organization is certainly an important part of the explanation for the responsiveness of the Union leadership to the demands of the members. Equally important is the fact that Executive members, wishing to be re-elected, reflect the demands of their district electorates; and this behaviour is sanctioned by the democratic orientations of the Union's political culture. Effective democratic government requires a judicious mixture of the functions of both representation and administration. In most trade unions democratic government is impossible because the latter function dominates the former, because (it is pleaded) the organization must be unified to gain its external objectives. In the N.U.T. the complaint more often is that the representative function predominates and that the Union is ultra-democratic at the expense of its external objectives. In fact, the Union displays important procedural weaknesses in performing both governmental functions. 1

Tropp, op. cit., p. 159.

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The rank and file of the N.U.T. are moderates in their attitudes to "trade unionist" issues. 1 The politically active members in the local associations tend to be more militant. The Executive Committee has a solid majority of moderates elected by the mass of members in the Union elections. Thereafter, contacts with the members and the expression of their demands come mainly through the local associations. Responsiveness to the demands of the membership expressed through this channel can be misdirected and seriously damaging to the Union's reputation. Speaking to the 1962 Annual Conference, the President (John England) referred to the debacle of the salary campaign the previous autumn. The gap between the Executive and the membership-and indeed between the officers of local associations and their members-must be bridged. It seems fantastic now that Executive members were prepared to commit their colleagues by the thousand to the most strenuous action a few months ago, that local secretaries swore that their members were with us to a man, when in the event but for the timely evidence of a referendum we should have suffered a terrible defeat. This procedural weakness in performing the representative function is closely connected with a weakness on the administrative side. The advocates of militancy in the highest counsels of the Union work together on an informal basis. They are not organized and they lead no "party". But they are more actively supported by the militant groups in the membership than are their moderate colleagues on the Executive. The absence of continuous and overt support from the mass of moderate members for "their" representatives on the Executive makes it extremely difficult for the latter to convince the well-supported militant opposition to accept a compromise in the Union's external policy which reflects an acceptable balance of the interests involved. By the time the 1 I have used the words "moderate" and "militant" to describe two different and important sections of opinion inside the Union on the attitude to be taken towards issues like salaries, pensions, and school meals duties. The militants are more ready to take direct action to enforce their demands, less ready to compromise than the moderates. The moderates may share the same objectives, but believe they must be achieved slowly by cooperation and negotiation with the other educational partners. This division has probably always existed in the profession, but since the interwar years the moderates have governed the Union. The militants are sometimes called "radicals", but this implies certain attitudes to issues like corporal punishment or comprehensive schools, which the militants do not necessarily share and which the moderates may very well advocate.

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moderates are mobilized to expressions of support or dissent, as they finally were in the 1961 referendum, the militant members are often too aroused to accept any compromise. The majority of the Executive Committee must then impose a settlement, which will reflect the majority of members, but which is too late to effect a reconciliation between the majority and minority views in the union. Because neither moderates nor militants on the Executive Committee represent and lead organized "parties", the problem of effecting an acceptable reconciliation of interests is made more difficult. There are no widely accepted procedures whereby members, particularly on the militant side, are committed to agreements made by their representatives on the Executive Committee, as members of actual parties would be committed by their leaders. The leaders of the N.U.T. are well aware of the weaknesses in its governmental structure. The rapid growth of the Union, the discontent in the teaching profession and the rapid expansion of the educational system in recent years have thrust demands upon the Union's organization and revealed problems not encountered in less demanding times. There have been some efforts to remodel the Union's institutions: the system of advisory committees established in 1958, the introduction of biennial rather than annual elections in an effort to reduce the expenditure of Executive members' energies on Union elections, and even the employment of management consultants to assess the efficiency of the Union's internal administration. These efforts have done something to alleviate specific difficulties; but they have had little effect on the basic governmental problems, which are rooted deeply in the highly democratic political culture of the Union. The organization of the National Union of Teachers became possible through the compromise on religious instruction embodied in the Education Act of 1870. The Act was part of the general drift away from laissez-faire associated with an increasing "Radical" influence on policy in the latter part of the nineteenth century. 1 The Radicalism manifested in the 1870 Act was also present in the teachers' politics of the period. From its origin in 1 S. H. Beer, British Politics in the Collectivist Age (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965), p. 67. Beer points out that "Radical" policy involved certain exceptional acts of state intervention to provide a service or correct some undei;irable consequences of the free economy. Unlike later "Collectivist" policy it was not an effort to reshape the economic system as a whole or to alter its foundations.

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1870 to the present time the organizational attitudes and procedures of the N. U. T. have been significantly affected by the Radical influence in the British political culture. Two essential elements of Radical politics are that the will of the majority should decide major policy questions as directly as possible and that the ultimate political unit is a rational, independent individual. 1 These elements of majority rule and individualist bias are salient features of the political culture of the National Union of Teachers. The lack of cohesion in the Executive Committee, the reliance on majority voting in the Executive Committee and at Annual and Special Conferences, the easy flow of policy communications upward but not downward in the organization, the failure to find a basis for union with other teachers' groups, the suspicion of greater centralization of national educational policy-all testify to the continuing influence of "Radicalism" in the political orientations of the Union's membership. Undoubtedly, this saliency of Radical attitudes in an organization characterized by weak membership inducements is no accident. In combination in the N.U.T. they make for a considerable restraint on its freedom to manoeuvre as a pressure group. The Annual Conference of the N.U.T. provides a useful illustration of the effect of Radical attitudes on procedures and institutions. Inside the Union the Annual Conference is popularly regarded as an integral part of the Union's democratic structure, the foremost check of the membership on the power of the Executive. The annual report of the Executive is submitted to it for approval, it can debate any subject falling within Union aims and objectives, and it is the only body that can legislate for the Union. It can review the work of the Executive, pass judgement on it, and form policy which the Executive has to implement. Formally, then, the Annual Conference is the supreme law-making and policyforming organ of the N.U.T.; but in practice it is less important than its formal powers make it out to be. For one thing, interpretation of any legislation passed is the prerogative of the Executive. More important, the Conference is the fourth largest in England with over two thousand delegates. Apart from a small core of regular attenders, mostly local secretaries of long standing, many delegates are attending only their first or second conference. Such experience as they have tends to be extended over a number of 1

Beer, ibid., pp. 41, 43.

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years, because most associations try to vary the members in their delegation as much as possible; and this has the advantage of spreading the stimulating effect of the Conference. The Conference tries to be more than a demonstration of professional solidarity, but its large size and its composition of largely inexperienced delegates both work to inhibit the policy-making function. The conflict of objectives at the Annual Conference can be seen in the traditional division between the "floor" and the "platform". More than anything else the delegates to the Conference want to state unequivocally their professional aspirations and ultimate aims. The Union officials and the Executive want a set of feasible policy guidelines for the next twelve months. The Executive (or the operating majority of it) tries to exploit such procedural advantages as it has to secure amendments to motions, give itself as much freedom of action as possible, and prevent Conference from committing it to unrealistic objectives. Ordinarily, the Union leadership is quite successful in this tactic; but there have been some notable failures. The increasing restraints imposed by Union Conferences on the freedom of the leadership to negotiate with respect to teachers' salaries, detailed in Chapter 5, are good examples of the way in which Conference can invade the policymaking area. The widespread attribution of ultimate authority to the Annual Conference, by leaders and members alike, ensures that Conference is one of the most important political symbols of the organization. The recognition that a body the size of Conference cannot adequately fulfil its policy-making functions has tended to underline this formal, legitimatizing function. Nevertheless, the positive value attached to the participation of the membership in the framing of policy through a representative organization, which characterizes the Radical theory of "government by the people" and which is strongly supported in the N.U.T., can become a serious constraint on the leadership's freedom to bargain, as it did in the salary disputes of the 1950s and 1960s. The centrifugal effects of the individualist bias of Radical attitudes have been moderated in the case of the National Union of Teachers by the basis the organization has on a productive function (teaching), by its close association before the Second World \Var with the education of one social class, and by the side-effects of the hierarchical system of authority existing in the English E

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school system. The authority of the headmaster and the deference paid to him, for example, are shared to some degree by the General Secretary as leader of the Union. Nonetheless, many of the problems of the Union in recent years can be traced to the difficulties of reconciling traditional political norms with the demands on its organization posed by contemporary educational policy. In particular, the existence of these predominantly Radical attitudes seems an important part of the explanation for the Union's inhibitions about developing a more integrated, cohesive decisionmaking structure in response to the increasingly centralizing demands of national educational policy. The political influence of the National Union of Teachers is dependent on the political divisions in the Union and the profession at any given time and on the success of the Union's leadership in preventing them from undermining its external relations. By casting doubt on the relevance of the information provided and on the ability of the General Secretary to deliver the organization, the division between moderates and militants inside the Union in a setting of excessively democratic political traditions and procedures is a potential source of weakness to the Union's political power. This division in the Union has a parallel inside the profession. Conflicting elements of the Union are presented with focal points of moderation (the Joint Four) and militance (the N.A.S.) outside the organization which threaten the maintenance of its membership from opposite directions. The pattern of organized interests outside the National Union of Teachers impresses one with the dimensions of its internal governmental problems. Each of the six associations outside the N.U.T. is relatively homogeneous in the interests it represents. This is not true of the N.U.T., which contains inside it significant sectional interests closely similar to those found separately in the six competing associations. On the one hand, the existence of an external competitor can be exploited to strengthen a sectional interest inside the Union. The militants inside the Union seem to have been most effective in using the competition of the militant N.A.S. to frighten Union moderates and press their own policy demands. On the other hand, in any policy disagreement the Union is under pressure to prevent disaffection in opposite directions, moderates to the Joint Four and the N.A.H.T. and militants to the N.A.S. The latter is the more significant. When the crisis is ulti-

'I'HE CONSTRAINTS OF TEACHERS' POLITICS

55

mately confronted in the Union and the mass of membership is finally mobilized, it is overwhelmingly moderate. Because the risks of conflict are so great and the means of organizational survival are so limited, the Union leadership tends to operate with great caution, a manner which is not always best designed to exert a strong influence on policy development. The N.U.T. needs to reconcile conflicting interests inside itself in the face of a set of corresponding interests organized in relatively homogeneous groups outside it. It is a problem for which there is no solution which does not involve considerable changes in the alignment of the whole teaching profession. It cannot be said the leaders and members of the Union are not aware of this. The N.U.T. is a long-time advocate of an "all-in" professional association. Such a solution is not 'acceptable to the other teacher groups. They fear, probably rightly, that the Union's sectional interests would dominate any such body and propose instead a federation in which each union would retain its identity. But the N.U.T., willing to merge its identity in an all-in association, refuses to enter a federation, where more than likely it would be steadily reduced to a women's union, its now heterogeneous character altered in the direction of greater homogeneity by the procedures of federation.

3 The Electoral Power of Organized Teachers

Organized teachers have two different kinds of political power. "Electoral power" is based on the ability of the teachers to intervene directly and immediately in the course of the "continuous electoral campaign" and threaten the fortunes of politicians. "Technical power" is based on the need administrators have for information from the schools and for the cooperation of the teaching profession in policy-making and implementation. The electoral power of the National Union of Teachers is exercised through a public campaign. Public campaigns arise out of major discontents, and Parliament is seen by the campaigning group as the court of appeal for its discontent. 1 Resorting to a public campaign, the N.U.T. intervenes directly in the political arena, its target politicians not bureaucrats. Of the organizational factors providing the Union with the ability to campaign effectively, the important one is its size. The size of the union makes possible the structure of local organizations ready to enforce a public campaign throughout the nation and ensures the attention of politicians and press vital to its success. The greater tendency of the N. U. T. to resort to public campaigns than other groups may be attributed to the genuine "electoral" power it is able to exercise through this technique and to the belief in the Union, based on its successful use historically to resolve several political crises, that such campaigning can be effective. The Radical political orientations which are prominent in the N.U.T. also tend to sanction this kind of political activity. Of the two types of power, technical power is more important for the N.U.T. than is electoral power. Technical power is a continuing factor in securing a voice for the teaching profession in making educational policy. Most of the Union's goals can be satisfied by approaches, direct and indirect, to the Department 1 J. D. Stewart, British Pressure Groups: Their Role in Relation to the House of Commons (London: Oxford University Press, 1958), p. 120.

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where technical power is most relevant. The use of electoral power by the N. U. T. is also inhibited because direct political attacks can make the problem of organizational maintenance more difficult. Given the greater importance of technical power, the effect of the electoral power of the N. U. T. as a potential resource in its relationship with the Department of Education should not be underestimated. The Union's electoral power provides a convincing complement to the technical power which is the important source of influence with the bureaucracy. Moreover, there are occasions when bargaining inside the education sub-government reaches an impasse. Then the teachers can exert pressure for a favourable settlement in the Cabinet and the House of Commons by mobilizing general support through a public campaign. Two public campaigns carried out by the Union in the 1950s serve to illustrate the uses and limitations of such campaigns and the degree of electoral power wielded by the N.U.T.: the campaign against the Teachers Superannuation Bills in 1954 and 1956 and the campaign against the block grant in 1957-58.

The battle of the I per cent, 1954-56 In January 1954, the Minister of Education, Florence Horsbrugh, introduced the Teachers Superannuation Bill into the House of Commons, raising the rate of contribution to the teachers' pension fund from 10 to 12 per cent, to be divided equally between teachers and authorities, and empowering the Minister to draft regulations for dependents' protection, to be met by a reduction in the teacher's lump sum or death gratuity. The introduction of this Bill had been preceded by two years of consultation and negotiation between teachers, authorities, and Ministry officials. A report of the Government Actuary on the teachers' superannuation fund presented in March 1951 showed a deficit of £xo2·5 million. The teachers had hesitated to accept the figures; but as a result of discussions between the Ministry, the teachers, and local authorities throughout 1952, the teachers finally admitted the existence of a deficiency in the fund, the persistent instability in their pension scheme, and the necessity for some changes in the terms of its operation. What they did not admit was any responsibility for repairing the deficiency. In July 1952, the General Secretary of the N.U.T. was informed that the Minister would seek an amendment to the 1925 Teachers (Superannuation) Act to raise the rate of contribution

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of both teachers and authorities from 5 per cent to 6 per cent. In October, the Minister received a deputation from the Union to discuss the amendments to the 1925 Act, and this was followed by correspondence and consultation with both the Ministry and the national associations of the local education authorities. In February 1953, Miss Horsbrugh publicly proposed an increase in contribution from 5 to 6 per cent; and the teachers immediately announced their opposition. In an effort to reach a solution the Minister agreed to delay legislation until after the report of a working party set up by the teachers and the local authorities. This report was completed in July 1953, referred to the constituent groups for approval, and finally sent to the Minister early in December; but it had little effect on the provisions of the Bill introduced by the Minister. Feeling against the Superannuation Bill rose rapidly in the profession. The Executive of the N.U.T. immediately announced its unanimous opposition. Special meetings of local associations were held with exceptionally high attendances, resolutions were passed, letters were written, and deputations were dispatched to M.P.s. A Union Member of Parliament, W. G. Cove, introduced a motion opposing the Bill which was soon replaced by an official Opposition motion. The N.U.T. sent a letter to all M.P.s stating its opposition to the 1 per cent increase, pointing out that entrants would have to help liquidate the deficiency, and arguing that teachers were being accorded worse treatment than any other public employees. Many Conservative backbenchers were sympathetic to these arguments. They felt the Government was alienating the teaching profession unnecessarily by seeking to eliminate what was only an actuarial deficiency at a time when teachers were dissatisfied by educational economies and inadequate salary awards. About twentyfive Conservative M.P.s even felt strongly enough to be prepared to vote against the Bill. 1 In February Miss Horsbrugh appeared before two meetings of the Conservative Parliamentary Party's Education Committee to defend her proposals and answer questions. She had a very difficult time at each meeting, as a substantial number of M.P.s pressed for the Bill to be withdrawn. According to one report, the second meeting took the unprecedented action of calling for a vote; and the Government's plans were rejected 1

H. C. Debates, vol. 547, col. 271-2, Dec. 6, 1955.

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by a two to one margin. 1 The Minister also sent a memorandum to the Government's supporters rebutting the Union's letter to Members of Parliament. The memorandum argued that the Exchequer would cover the deficit of £102 million plus interest up to April 1, 1948, and £3 million of the deficiency from salary increases since 1948, so that newcomers to the profession would pay an extra I per cent only for the deficit since 1948 and not for all of that. Unless there were some unforeseen development over and above the impending increase in salaries and the various changes in the Bill, there was no reason to suppose that the 6 per cent rate would not remain unchanged for a long time. In terms of cash the increase was not much; and, while causing some dissatisfaction, it would not affect recruitment to the profession. The Minister's memorandum did little to deflect teachers' criticisms. In a formal reply the N.U.T. noted that the Minister now admitted that newcomers would pay to help liquidate a past deficiency for which they were not responsible. They insisted that the teachers' fund was not the only actuarially based public scheme in the red and accurately remarked that equal pay would make nonsense of predictions of stability. By good timing and "expeditious organization" the N.U.T. had copies of its reply to the Minister in the hands of M.P.s before the meeting of the 1922 Committee on February 27th. Presumably called to consider Members' salaries, talk at the meeting was mostly about the Superannuation Bill. Both Butler, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Boyd-Carpenter, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, argued for the Bill at this meeting; but a solid group of backbenchers remained unconvinced. In part at least, this was because they were unable to ignore their post-bags, which continued to reflect the depth of feeling against the Bill in the teaching profession. In response to a question in the House on February 25th the Minister stated that she had received 830 protests against the Bill addressed to her or the Ministry, mainly from individual teachers and teachers' organizations. She had also received a large number of letters through some 280 members of the House of Commons. 2 This protest through the post-bags was as strong as one had ever been on any issue, educational or otherwise. 1 The Daily Express, cited in The Schoolmaster, February 26, 1954, p. 325. 2 H.C. Debates, vol. 524, col. 49, February 25, 1954.

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The pressure on the Minister was now strong enough for her to look for some relief. In March she wrote to the N.U.T. suggesting talks of an exploratory nature to amend the Bill's provisions for new entrants to the profession. When a deputation from the Union met the Minister on March 24th, her suggestions included two alternative schemes: one whereby teachers received benefits which would be the actuarial product of the contributions actually paid in respect of each individual; the other whereby the benefits would be kept in a separate account. In either case the new scheme would not have the 3½ per cent interest rate of the 1925 Act and would probably have to take 3 per cent. The same evening she put her suggestions to a meeting of the Education Committee of the Conservative Party. On March 27th, the N.U.T. Executive considered the proposals and rejected them as leaving new entrants worse off than they were under existing provisions. Another letter was dispatched to M.P.s noting the Minister's proposals for new entrants and stating the Union's reasons for finding them objectionable. On March 30th, assurance was given by the Government that the Bill would go on but the text might be amended. From here Miss Horsbrugh's Bill went the path to oblivion, hurried on its way by continued agitation from the teachers. On May 28th, The Schoolmaster concluded that "the Union's campaign against the increase in pension contributions has provided a phenomenal display of the effects which can be secured by cohesive action within a well-knit and ably led organization on an issue in which there have been no personal differences or divisions of loyalties.''

In October 1954, Miss Horsbrugh was replaced by Sir David Eccles. As a first step in reopening the issue of teachers' pensions, the new Minister of Education invited the associations of teachers and local authorities to a meeting at the Ministry in February 1955. In making the invitation, he indicated that the Government was ready to wind up the present accounts and accept liability for the whole (and growing) deficiency; but the new scheme must have contribution rates sufficient to cover future liabilities and establish clearly at the start whose responsibility it was to find the money to meet future deficiencies. As a result of this meeting, two working parties (one for England and Wales and one for Scotland) were set up to ascertain the facts

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relevant to the terms of the lv1inister's proposition and to assemble information about existing pension schemes for comparable services. These reports were submitted to the Minister in June, and in July he called a second conference. Up to this point there were no negotiations, and no one entered into any commitments. The parties of the dispute merely sought to agree on facts and define more precisely their disagreement. It was agreed that changes in longevity of life, salary rates, benefits and retirement age had produced the present actuarial deficiency and would be likely to do so again. That left two problems: who paid the increase in contributions and who paid for future deficiencies. Early in October the N.U.T. received a letter from the Permanent Secretary containing proposals for new legislation. The scheme involved an increase in contributions from 10 per cent to 12 per cent from April 1, 1956, to be divided equally between the teachers and their employers; a credit from the Government to the "fund" of the sums necessary to balance it (actuarially) as of March 31, 1956; retention of the existing interest rate of 3½ per cent; an actuarial valuation every five years; and any deficiency to be met by the local authorities. When the result of soundings in the Ministry on the possibility of getting widows', orphans', and dependents' protection as an additional benefit proved disappointing, the Executive decided to recommend that the Special Conference oppose the Minister's proposal to increase contributions. Indeed, the membership reaction was such that the Executive had no other choice if it wanted to remain at the head of the teachers' movement. As The Schoolmaster wrote on November 11, 1955, there can be no shadow of doubt about the teachers' depth of feeling against the proposal to raise their contributions by I per cent. They cannot forget that after the First World War, in order to make the teaching profession more attractive, they were given a non-contributory scheme, and thus put on a par with civil servants. They remember how this was taken from them, first by means of a forced levy and then by a regular contribution of 5 per cent. Miss Horsbrugh's attempt to raise this to 6 per cent and all the wrath it engendered are within easy memory. They see the present proposal, different though its setting may be, as another device for worsening the economic position of teachers and reducing professional standards. In no way does it make up for the penalties suffered by teachers in the past. Confronted by an aroused membership, the Executive still

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believed compromise could be reached if the increase of contributions to 6 per cent were accompanied by a substantial improvement in benefits. In practice, this meant the provision of benefits for widows, orphans, and dependents. The Minister tried to persuade the local authorities to compromise on the provision of such benefits, but they would not agree to any proposals that involved increased contributions. Indeed, they regarded this as the quid pro quo for accepting liability for future deficiencies. The Minister, caught between the teachers, the Treasury and local authorities, was forced to oppose the teachers. The Special Conference on November 19th was a foregone conclusion. "In putting forward its Motion to oppose an increase in contributions the Executive felt that it sensed aright the opinions of the rank and file of the Union." 1 In so far as the opinions of the rank and file were reflected in the Conference, the view was strongly confirmed. An amendment, instructing the Executive to "employ, if necessary, the full resources of the Union to defeat the Minister's proposal" was accepted and the resolution was carried without dissent. The second battle of the I per cent was underway. The Teachers Superannuation Bill was introduced by Sir David Eccles on November 25, 1955. The debate and the vote on the Second Reading took place on December 6th. The Government's decision to bring the Bill forward for Second Reading so soon after its publication left the N.U.T. and the other teachers' organizations little time to marshal protests. In the event the assault mounted by the N.U.T. was quite formidable. Three days before the Bill was presented to Parliament for its First Reading, the N.U.T. had told its local secretaries to approach M.P.s to influence parliamentary opinion. On November 28th, the local secretaries were alerted that a communication was being prepared for all schools in their area. The circular issued from Hamilton House urged local and county associations to take immediate action. Meetings of associations were to be called at once, speeches or official statements made on the Bill, a resolution adopted, and press publicity secured. The circular also suggested that deputations be sent to local M.P.s in their constituencies or, if necessary, at the House of Commons. If this were not possible, they should be sent an official letter. Individual teachers should 1

The Schoolmaster, November 25, 1955, p. 757.

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also write their M.P.s. Documents containing background material, including a summary of arguments for use by school staffs taking part in the campaign, were sent from national headquarters to the local and county associations. Their response was immediate. Meetings were held, and protests were published. Many associations went well beyond the directions from Hamilton House. The Bedfordshire Association, for example, meeting in Luton on December 3rd, discussed a possible withdrawal of services and got national publicity as a result. Nearly a thousand teachers from London and the Home Counties lobbied their Members at the House of Commons. M.P.s' postbags were deluged and letters filled correspondence columns. Space, costing £1500 to £2000 an advertisement, was bought in the national press to publicize the teachers' case just before the Second Reading. On December 1st, the N.U.T. sent a letter to all M.P.s on the subject of the Superannuation Bill. Existing arrangements concerning current and future actuarial deficiencies and rates of contribution were compared with the Horsbrugh and Eccles proposals. The letter pointed out that the Union did not quarrel with the Government Actuary's arithmetic nor with the Minister's desire to place the fund on a sound financial basis. It did take issue with the I per cent increase in the teacher's contribution and some other details, but only the I per cent was dealt with in the letter. A brief history of teachers' pensions was given ("to explain much of the teachers' bitterness"), including the two previous (1935, 1954) attempts to secure a 6 per cent contribution, as well as the arguments Gould had made against the increase at the Special Conference. It concluded with a plea for support. On December 3rd, it was proposed in the Executive that, if the Bill passed its Second Reading, Union members should be asked to cease to collect school savings for an agreed period. After some debate, the motion was passed eighteen to thirteen. The result of the decision was not accepted altogether happily by some of those present. Later Mr. England told the 1956 Annual Conference, "After the school savings ban was passed all hell broke loose on the Executive. I have never seen such an exhibition of sheer bad temper in my life. (Cries of 'No'.) Well, I was there. The democratic system works very well while it goes your way, but if it goes against you it is not so good." The possibility that, from the beginning of summer term,

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members of the Union would withdraw from non-statutory duties connected with the school meals service was also discussed by the Executive and then referred to the Emergency Committee, which consisted of the officers of the Union and the Chairmen and ViceChairmen of the Law and Tenure and of the Salaries and Superannuation Committees. This first intensive mobilization produced a campaign that was remarkable in its intensity. The Schoolmaster (December 9th) described it as "a phase of intensified activity which probably has no precedent in the history of the Union-at least not since 193 1". This phase ended with the debate on the Second Reading on December 6th. Among the Conservative backbenchers only Mr. Jennings, the N.U.T. Member, voted against the Bill on its Second Reading. At its meeting on December 7th, the Emergency Committee of the N.U.T. decided to circularize the secretaries of local and county associations, suggesting they express thanks to the M.P .s who had supported the teachers, and make further representations to those who had not. It was felt no further action could be taken at the moment on the question of benefits for widows, orphans, and dependents; but the General Secretary was directed to get an assurance from the Minister that action would be taken on the lines outlined in the House. As the Minister had, somewhat vaguely, promised to consult the local authorities again respecting a suitable scheme and there was a "considerable body of opinion" in the House that the teachers' material conditions were unsatisfactory, it was suggested that the circular, asking members of the Union to refrain from collecting school savings, should be deferred until the meeting of the full Executive on December 10th to permit time to study the House of Commons debate. The Emergency Committee also decided, by one vote, to delay announcing withdrawal from school meals duties. There was bitter disagreement about whether the Executive's reference of the issue to the Emergency Committee had entailed putting a withdrawal into effect if the Bill passed Second Reading or merely consideration of the implications of such a withdrawal to be reported back to the next Executive meeting. Given time to consider, the Executive showed how deeply divided it was on whether to take this form of direct action, or not. The Union solicitor contributed to the problem by suggesting that "voluntary" duties

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undertaken by teachers in connection with school meals had become, by usage, contractual obligations. Eventually, at an Executive meeting on February 18, 1956, a withdrawal from school meals duties was approved; but the decision was to remain confidential until the Executive's next meeting on March 3rd. On February 28th, the Emergency Committee held its sixth and last meeting. The report of the Committee to the Executive on March 3rd of the difficulties involved in implementing the proposed withdrawal from school meals duties prompted the Executive to reverse its decision of February 18th approving the action. It was evident that, divided as the Executive was, the membership would be seriously split; and there was no certainty about the extent of membership support for a withdrawal. It was even feared that the Government, confronted with such action, might introduce legislation compelling school meals duties rather than allow the service to break down or concede to the teachers' pressure. Moreover, the withdrawal would now come too late, beginning with summer term while the Bill got its Third Reading on March 7th. Inside the Union, it was widely felt that once Parliament declared its will, the Union could no longer take direct action except through the electoral process, an interesting assertion of the norms of the political culture. The paralysing effect of the evenness of the division in the Executive over this issue of direct action, a minor one in this campaign, was to be something of a private rehearsal for the public play of 1961. At the meeting of the National Executive on December 10th, a motion to rescind also the ban on school savings collection was lost sixteen to twenty. Members were still to be asked to cease collecting school savings for the spring term (roughly January 9th to March 27th) in order to express the teaching profession's displeasure at the treatment it had received and to call public attention to the worsened conditions. Expenditure of up to £100,000 was authorized for a press and publicity campaign on teachers' salaries, and an appeal for contributions to a "fighting fund" was launched. Up to this point the Union had been receiving its most extensive publicity free. The Union was "news". It had received two hundred leading articles and 3088 references, including a large number of feature articles based on material supplied by the Union's headquarters. 1 1

S. E. Finer, Anonymous Empire (London: Pall Mall Press, 1958), p. 90.

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When the Teachers' Panel rejected an interim salary increase on December 21st and chose to negotiate for a new scale to take effect from October 1, 1956, the Minister's position at once became more difficult. In response, the Government took the unprecedented step on January 5th of declaring in advance its willingness to give sympathetic consideration to any proposals to increase teachers' salaries. Eccles said the Government would have been "willing to approve the introduction of a reasonable interim increase of salaries from April I next", the date when the Teachers Superannuation Bill would take effect; but he agreed that a full salary review was also important. He pointed out that the Government was engaged in a major advance in British education and needed the cooperation of both local authorities and teachers. The Economist, on January 14th, observed a minor panic in the Government with Eccles persuading his Cabinet colleagues against postponing the Bill only at the price of announcing a favourable attitude to an increase in salaries. Although it was viewed in the Press as "something on account" and "a long overdue rise", both the N.U.T. and the local authorities were quick to point out that the Government could not make a salary offer. Gould suggested that, if the Government were so anxious to show good faith, a "tangible expression of its good will" would be to accept the amendment tabled in the Standing Committee by Robert Jenkins (Conservative M.P.) postponing the Bill until the teachers were granted salary increases. At an all-day meeting on January 7th, the Executive voted to confirm the ban on the collection of school savings despite the Minister's announcement. The Union's permanent suspension between two sections of opinion in teachers' politics was well illustrated at this juncture in the reactions of its competitors. On the one hand, none of the four secondary associations supported the Union's action. At the New Year's conference of the A.M.A., for example, its General Secretary (Hutchings) said that "in our judgement the present situation demands a more constructive and relevant course of action", but members should not take over the duties of teachers who stopped collecting. The Vice-President of the N.U.W.T. termed the N.U.T. action "unprofessional". On the other hand, the N.A.S. was characteristically militant. Its Executive found 89 per cent of the N.A.S. membership ready to cease school meals duties and 92 per cent prepared to stop collect-

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ing school savings. The N.A.S. decided to ban the collection of school savings and proposed joint action with the N.U.T. on banning meals duties. On January 7th, the N.U.T. Executive decided against immediate joint action and suggested, in turn, a meeting to effect "a wider and more permanent unity", effectively killing the idea. 1 First replies to a questionnaire to local secretaries on the efficacy of the ban on collecting school savings, showed "loyalty to the Union to a remarkable extent". In most areas the ban was entirely effective; and, even in the areas not reporting complete cooperation, the percentage of support was "very high indeed". In mid-January, the Union's position looked strong. In a speech on January 20th, the Minister suggested two alternative ways to deal with the current objections to his Bill: postpone the Bill until the next salary increase, normally April 1957, or bring forward a salary increase to the date when the 1 per cent became payable. The Government, he said, preferred the latter. The question remained whether he would postpone the date when the 1 per cent became payable from April 1, 1956, to October 1, 1956, the date which the Burnham Committee had agreed for a salary increase. The tone of his speech encouraged teachers to think that he would make the concession. At this point, the Joint Four sent a letter to all M.P.s making three points. First, salaries and superannuation were connected. Hence the Minister should request the Burnham Committee to submit recommendations as a matter of urgency. Secondly, the Minister should initiate further discussions on improving the Bill, especially protection for widows, orphans, and dependents. Thirdly, until these two points were carried out, Parliament, if it passed the Bill, should not ask for increased contributions from teachers. How much effect this letter had on the course of events is difficult to judge. The demands of the Joint Four were more moderate than those of the N.U.T. (which could not openly accept the 1 per cent increase) but greater than the final 1 When two hundred Sunderland members of the N.A.S. ceased school meals duties and were dismissed for it, the N.U.T. supported their case (which was eventually won in the courts) because it saw at stake the "voluntary" nature of the duties, a principle the N.U.T. had always insisted upon. But the Sunderland dispute was too late to affect the Bill, only erupting on March 23rd. The N.A.S. ban on meals duties, like that originally proposed in the N.U.T., only started in summer term after the Parliamentary phase was over.

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settlement would involve and still greater than the Minister at the time accepted (the implications of the second point being quite unacceptable because of the position of the L.E.A.s). The letter may have impressed on the Minister the tendency of moderate opinion among teachers and the direction he had to take, if not to get their support, at least not to alienate them too much. In early February, the Minister introduced into Committee an amendment to postpone the operation of the Bill from April 1st to October rnt. The Economist on February 4th remarked that "it is sad to see the Minister of Education in flight before the shaking fists of the teachers" and thought that, while the Tory backbench opposition group would be pleased, it was unlikely to satisfy the teachers who would only accept it as evidence that militancy pays. In an editorial "We are not appeased" (February 10, 1956) The Schoolmaster emphasized that Eccles had by no means placated the teachers, even though he may have satisfied his own backbenchers; but the campaign was effectively at an end. As an epilogue to the superannuation campaign the debate on its outcome at the Union's Conference in April was predictably chaotic. The relevant sections of the Annual Report were referred back by a vote of 131,896 to 68,501 and the ban on the collection of school savings was extended to the summer term. At the end of it, plainly, the Union leadership had been strongly censured for its "failure". John Vaizey has argued in a most convincing fashion that to have teachers' pensions based on a national fund is quite unnecessary, 1 but the fund was never in question in this campaign. The Union queried the figures in the Government Actuary's report in the first place, but it was soon convinced of their authenticity. Once it was agreed to balance and stabilize the fund, the limits of the debate were severely narrowed. Disagreement turned only on how to do it. The Government wanted a rate of 6 per cent each for authorities and teachers. The teachers insisted that they should pay only 5 per cent. "Fifty-fifty" is one of the more prominent bargaining points around which negotiations tend to settle. The existing rates of contribution were established according to this convention, and the Government merely proposed to continue it. This was acceptable to the local authorities but not to the teachers. They wanted 1 John Vaizey, The Costs of Education (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1958), pp. 172-80.

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either to adhere to the established bargain at 5 per cent each, leaving the Government to balance the fund, or to change the settlement, giving the authorities a 7 per cent rate and the teachers 5 per cent. The chance of obtaining either was small from the beginning but pressure from the membership left the Union's leadership no choice but to try. At the very least, concessions might be obtained, in particular an acceptable scheme of benefits for widows, orphans, and dependents and an increase in salaries to offset the increased contributions. The applicat10n of pressure by the teachers was made easier by the simplicity of the issue as they saw it. Early in the campaign The Schoolmaster pointed out that the debate was not about the gains or losses resulting from the Bill, which the Minister was trying to suggest; it was a struggle against the increase of I per cent. It was easy to mobilize the members against it, just as it would later be difficult to mobilize them against the block grant. But because of this, it made compromise difficult, if not impossible, since no other issues could be used for trading purposes. The local authorities would not contribute to the only worthwhile concession, a scheme for widows, orphans, and dependents. The Treasury was absolutely unwilling to let the Minister commit the Government to the expenditure and, therefore, to the principle of Government support for such a scheme. It became win or lose for one or the other, a situation heavily loaded in favour of the Government. Miss Horsbrugh's Bill failed because it was a bad Bill, badly managed. The superannuation deficit was almost wholly a backservice problem. Yet her Bill involved new entrants in helping to pay for the deficit, a grievance which the Minister tried too late to correct when the N.U.T. could already sense her failure. It also assumed stability for the future and did not provide for future deficits, an assumption that was almost immediately proved wrong. The Bill introduced by Sir David Eccles showed the results of this experience. Future deficits were provided for; the interest rate of 3½ per cent was retained; and the Eccles Bill accepted full liability for the past, thus evading the problem of new entrants. The circumstances in which the Horsbrugh Bill was introduced were scarcely propitious. With an election in sight, Conservative backbenchers were unwilling to antagonize important groups in their constituencies, especially where the Labour opposition candidate was a teacher eager to exploit the issue. It was also a period F

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of general educational economy which had seen continual opposition to the Minister by educationists. She had built up no stock of good will in the educational world on which to fall back to ease the bitterness of the struggle. The economic position of the teaching profession was also relevant. As will be seen in the chapter on salaries, white collar workers in general and teachers in particular were nearing the end, though they could not see it at the time, of a decade of a worsening of their salaries relative to working-class occupations. This was the real source for the intensity of their attack on the Government. The opposition strategy devised and implemented in the superannuation campaign by the Union leadership was a reaction to demands for action from the rank-and-file membership of the Union. In order to make that strategy effective, however, the leadership had in turn to mobilize the support of the membership behind its policies. Once this was done it made negotiation and retreat more difficult. The situation was complicated by the fact that the Executive was never sure just how far the membership supported it. This uncertainty, reflecting the fact that direct action depends on the attitudes of members normally outside the active political process of the Union, accounted for the genuine divisions in the Executive and its vacillation about the tactics to be employed. The Minister and his advisers were equally uncertain. The Government had to make sufficient concessions to prevent a serious breakdown in service, which a withdrawal from school meals duties would have produced. After that, as long as the Government was prepared to risk the damage campaign propaganda might do to its "image", it need go no further. Such an affair becomes ultimately a contest of political judgements between the leadership of the Union and the Minister and his advisors as to what degree of support the opposition to official policy can mobilize. In this instance, the Executive by a close margin confirmed the Minister's judgement; and it was undoubtedly the correct thing to do. In the 1961 salaries dispute the Executive was not quite so discermng. The case shows just how much a pressure group can gain by merely producing legislative delay. In a crowded House of Commons timetable the Government must postpone relatively unimportant legislation which becomes so controversial it threatens to disrupt the whole timetable. The failure of the Minister who

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cannot get his legislation through the House of Commons reflects on the whole Government, and he loses political standing accordingly. For Eccles the Bill was his first big parliamentary task at the Ministry of Education, and his standing was at stake. He had a much better Bill with which to start than Miss Horsbrugh had. Even so, it appeared that the Cabinet was ready to postpone the Bill once again when trouble appeared. Eccles was fighting for his Ministerial life and the immediate price was his announcement of a favourable attitude to a salaries increase. Later, it required a postponement of the operation of the Bill for six months; but he was able to secure these concessions and survive them. As a first impression it may appear that the key to the strength of the Union's pressure was its success in gaining the support of a significant group of Conservative backbenchers. This seemed to put the Union in a position, not merely to influence the Government, but to threaten it through its influence with the Government's own supporters. Certainly these backbenchers were an important means of access to the Government for the Union to put its case, but they hardly constituted a serious threat to the Government. The talk of possible revolt among the backbenchers on the issue cannot really be taken seriously. If the Government had wanted to do it, it could have forced the Bill through; and only Mr. Jennings would have rebelled, as he did in any case. The point is that the Government had no intentions of forcing it through; it was not that sort of Bill. The Teachers Superannuation Bill was not one to which the Government as a whole was committed. It was a matter which involved the Treasury, the Minister of Education, and his educational partners. The renewal of a policy decision, made necessary by the Government Actuary's report, which was agreed among them, was for all practical purposes a matter of indifference to the Government as a whole, unless and until the repercussions of that settlement threatened to extend beyond the internal affairs of the educational system. It was a measure of the N. U. T .' s success that it was able to create the impression that this was in fact likely to happen, something it was not able to do in the campaign against the block grant. It was equally important that the Union was here dealing with the Minister of Education, who was actively concerned for the sake of future administration not to alienate the support of the teaching profession, rather than with a Minister of

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Housing and Local Government, who suffered no such constraint. The technical power of the N.U.T. can complement its exercise of electoral power, as well as vice versa. The case also illustrates the power position of the other teachers' organizations in the politics of education in England and Wales. The N.A.S. got some publicity for direct action in Sunderland after the whole affair was settled. The Joint Four letter in January 1956 may have been evidence for the Minister and his advisors about the direction and the extent of the concessions they still had to make to ensure that teachers did not resort to direct action against them. The former action was irrelevant to the campaign; the latter, probably useful but certainly not decisive. In the exercise of electoral power it was the N. U. T. that counted. The campaign against the Teachers Superannuation Bill had reverberations throughout the rest of the period under study on both the policies advocated by the Union and the perception of the Union by its various publics. It is impossible to establish, but it is almost certainly true that the campaign contributed in a major way to creating a public image of the N.U.T. as a trade union oriented primarily towards the material benefit of its members. The campaign gave content to this image by arousing teachers to active concern about the material condition of their profession. It is too much to name the campaign as the cause of the discontent manifested in the following decade. The campaign was itself a reflection of important changes occurring in English education and society. The social background of the teaching profession was being slowly altered. The middle class was beginning to reassert itself, and the teachers shared the concern for their status and the submergence of social idealism in more individualistic and materialistic demands which characterized this reassertion. What the superannuation campaign did was to give point and maturity to these changes. Because of the nature of the issue, existing discontent was connected also with the grievances of the past. It revived inside the Union "the ideology of betrayal" which went back to the dispute over payment-by-results in the 1860s. The parallels between the 1954 campaign and that in 1922 on the same issue were remarkable. The campaign thus had a firm base in the Union's political history, confirming support for the long-standing idea that teaching was inevitably a little-respected and ill-used profession.

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Finally, the campaign, as a result of the search for an end to it, diverted the attention of teachers to improving their salaries, a fixation that after suitable gestation produced its own campaign. The campaign against the Teachers Superannuation Bill helped to create and served to mark a turning point in postwar educational politics in England and Wales.

The education sub-government united: the block grant campaign, 1957-58

Occasionally, the established pattern of relationships in the education sub-government is challenged externally. In such circumstances educational interests, ordinarily competitive, react with cooperative measures to defend their common interest. The classic example was the combination of virtually every educationallyoriented organization against the "block grant" proposals of the Conservative Government in 1957, which ended in complete failure to achieve its objectives. In February 1957, Mr. Henry Brooke, the Minister of Housing and Local Government, announced in the House of Commons a proposal to replace separate percentage grants with a general or block grant to cover nearly all local government services. The single most important service affected was the education service, and the leaders of the organized educational interests were unanimously against it. Their opposition was based on three assumptions. First, the level and the pattern of educational expenditure were functions of the grant formula. About 60 per cent of expenditure by local authorities on education derived from the Government. Under a percentage grant scheme the central Government paid twelve shillings of each pound of increased expenditure. Under a block grant the Government paid a flat amount to the local authority to cover a number of services, and any increase in expenditure had to be met by the local authority. Such a system was seen as a certain means of putting an end to educational advance, since marginal expenditures for educational advance would have to be met entirely by the local authority. Secondly, the distribution of power in the educational system was seen as being intimately connected with the grant formula. One consequence of a block grant would be a shift in the balance of power from the Ministry to the local authorities. Under a

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percentage grant system the Ministry could threaten to cut off the authority where a school was inefficient. It was even considered doubtful if the Act of 1944 could be administered under a block grant because the Act was full of definitions of Minister's powers all of which, it was contended, depended ultimately on the threat of cutting financial aid. Since local authority dominance of a national system of education would not be tolerated, a block grant could only be regarded as a prelude to the assertion of even greater central control. Another consequence of a block grant would be a shift in power inside each local education authority from the Education Committee to the Finance Committee and the full Council. The defence of the role of local education authorities in the tripartite system by the National Union of Teachers has always been essentially a defence of the Education Committees. The proposed changes in the grant formula appeared, then, to involve undesirable changes in the pattern of educational power and put in jeopardy both the freedom of the individual teacher and the influence of the N.U.T. The closed sub-system of Education Committees, Ministry, and teachers' unions was being threatened with the complication of "outside" interests which would make the task of control over educational policy more difficult. Thirdly, the teachers in particular regarded education as a national service, locally administered. A percentage grant recognized this status; a general grant implied that education was a local government service. The Education Act of 1944 had intended a national policy, locally administered. Now the introduction of a block grant challenged this concept which the teachers had so long cherished and supported. The education sub-government proceeded to establish a united front against the block grant. Early in March 1957 Sir Ronald Gould addressed a letter to ten thousand members of County and County Borough Councils and to co-opted members of the Education Committees, outlining the Union's position on the proposal for block grants and seeking support for a campaign to continue the percentage grants. The N.U.T. Annual Conference was urged by one member of the Executive that the motion on block grants was "the most important motion which Conference would have to consider, looked at from the point of view of the future of education in this country". Unanimously, the Conference viewed with concern the block grant proposal, believed it would hurt education,

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and called on the Government to retain the percentage grant. At the Conference of the Association of Education Committees in June there were only four votes against a resolution condemning the Government's intentions to apply block grants to the education service. In two speeches in March and June, the Minister, Lord Hailsham, strongly defended expenditure on education, asserted it his duty to ensure that a block grant did not harm educational effort, and assured his audiences he was not apprehensive about the outcome. He left the impression that, while loyal to the Government, he was by no means converted to a block grant as the ideal method of financing education. 1 Actually, it would be more accurate to describe him as by no means convinced that the block grant merited all the fuss the educationists were making about it; but, since they were opposed, he felt obliged, as their Minister, to take their part. Consequently, he did oppose the measure in Cabinet and the educational triangle was complete. The Government's White Paper on Local Government Finance was finally published in mid-July. It indicated that the separate grants to be absorbed in the general grant were those for education (but not those for school milk and meals), agricultural education, health services under the National Health Service Act 1946, fire protection, child care, town planning, road safety, traffic patrols, registration of electors, physical training and recreation, residential and temporary accommodation under the National Assistance Act 1948, and school crossing patrols. The N.U.T. General Secretary sent a second letter to the County and County Borough Councillors, again drawing their attention to the dangers in the Government's proposals with arguments based on the assumptions described previously. Copies of the letter were also dispatched to all M.P.s in time for the debate in the House of Commons at the end of July on the Government's White Paper. When the new school term opened in September, the N.U.T. began organizing a series of public meetings with the A.E.C. in large urban areas. They began in late October in Leeds; and meetings were held in Nottingham, Cardiff, Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester, and, finally, London, a rally featuring Gould and Alexander on December 2nd at Central Hall, Westminster. At the meetings it was customary to pass unanimous resolutions condemning the block grant proposals as a serious threat to the 1

The Schoolmaster, June 14, 1957, p. II47,

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educational system. Of course the purpose of the meetings was not to persuade the immediate audience. The people there were already against block grants. For the audiences the meetings were an opportunity to participate in the campaign and demonstrate their strong feelings. For the leadership they provided opportunities to direct the actions of individuals into channels useful for the campaign and platforms from which their case could reach a wider audience through the reports of press, radio, and television. Putting the educationists' point of view to M.P.s, especially to Conservative backbenchers, was considered vital. Personal letters to an M.P. and, where possible, calling on him were counted the most effective form of individual pressure at this stage, particularly in marginal seats. Dr. Alexander told one audience, "Go home, sit down and write to your M.P. saying 'If you don't vote against this measure I will vote against you' "; and pointed out to another, "The bodies which are supporting this campaign can command something like three million votes-I believe that is enough to unseat any Government." The concluding rally at Westminster had representatives of every major organized educational interest on the platform: N.U.T., N.A.S., Association of Assistant Mistresses, Assistant Masters' Association, Association of Headmistresses, Incorporated Association of Headmasters, Educational Institute of Scotland, Ulster Teachers' Union, Association of Teachers in Colleges and Departments of Education, Association of Teachers of Domestic Science, Association of Teachers in Technical Institutes, Association of Principals of Technical Institutes, National Union of Students, A.E.C., London County Council, Joint Education Committee, National Association of Divisional Executives for Education, National Federation of Parent-Teacher Associations, and the Workers' Educational Association. According to The Schoolmaster (December 6th), the rally was "generally agreed to have been the most impressive demonstration of unity among educationists in the country's history". The demonstration of unity left the Government unmoved, but it did seem to have some effect on the press. When the Local Government Bill was published it showed no change in the distribution of power and none of the independence that talk of greater freedom had led local authorities to expect. Segments of the press not previously sympathetic began expressing doubts

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about the effects of block grants on education. At the end of November, a Union official was able to report that one achievement of the campaign so far was that "it had led to a complete change of tone in certain responsible sections of the Press". While the Education Committees were part of the opposition from the beginning, the local councils were less certain of their position. The educationists naturally considered it important to their campaign that local councils supported their opposition, but they never succeeded in getting their outright support. The County Councils Association was ready to accept a block grant provided some assurances were given by the Government with respect to the amount of the grant, the provisions for review, and the promised reduction of central control. During debate on the Bill the Minister of Housing and Local Government actually argued that the local governments were not in general against the Bill, nor against including education in the general grant. Although Dr. Alexander quickly produced figures refuting him, the educationists never received the kind of active support from the Councils which would have carried some weight with the Government. 1 In a pressure politics campaign ambiguity was no help at all. The period in which it was useful to arouse the public through a campaign and convince it of the link between educational setbacks and the Government's grant policy was past. In their meetings, pamphlets, and press conferences the educationists had attempted to align as much strength as possible behind the demand for amendments. They felt that the public campaign had established and consolidated the unity of their opposition, and this would be the deciding factor in eliciting far-reaching amendments from the Government during the Committee stages of the Bill. On December 13th, The Schoolmaster recognized it as a foregone conclusion that the Government would carry the Bill through the Second Reading in the House of Commons but remained optimistic about the eventual outcome. We venture to assert ... that this is likely to prove a Phyrric victory for the Government. Deliberately to flout the views of organized educa1 Dr. Alexander's inquiry to County and County Borough Councils found that sixty of them were opposed to the general grant and had passed resolutions to that effect; twenty-six were not opposed in principle, but required amendment to the Bill before they would be satisfied; twenty-four refused to comment; and only two gave outright support to the Bill. (The Schoolmaster, February 14, 1958, p. 294.)

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tional opinion throughout the country is hardly a wise move, even in the narrowest political sense. In a wider context, the effect of subjecting education to a restrictive financial system, and so cutting back development at a time when the need for expansion is so urgent, must inevitably prove a disastrous policy for the country as a whole, and will certainly rebound, sooner or later, on the Goverment itself. When J. R. Bevins, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Housing and Local Government, moved the Third Reading, he pointed out that since its introduction the Local Government Finance Bill had received I 13 hours of debate and sixty-nine divisions. It had done the educationists little good. The Schoolmaster sadly noted that it was unusual for a major piece of legislation to pass both Houses without some alteration of substance at the Committee stages, but the Government had made sure this one did. The educational pressure groups, which had started out with such high hopes, failed to achieve any important amendments to the bill-with the exception of an amendment restoring to the Minister of Education the power to reduce the grant to authorities neglecting the education service. 1 Why did the campaign end with such a whimper? The educationists failed to prevent the introduction of the block grant because they were unable to create any immediate political difficulties for the Government. Their campaign never vitally involved their own rank and file, had only a limited effect on the press, and left the general public unmoved. Particularly detrimental to the success of the campaign was the fact that the memberships of the teachers' unions were never aroused about the issue. In sharp contrast with the campaign against the I per cent increase in pension contributions, the block grant hardly affected M.P.s' postbags at all in spite of the appeals to conferences throughout the country. Far from the rank and file goading the N. U. T. Executive as had been the case in the superannuation 1 If a general grant had to be applied, the educationists wanted to have a specific proportion of it earmarked for education. An alternative would be to exclude educational expenditure from the general grant and continue to provide for it with a percentage grant. If neither of these was acceptable, a third possibility was to reduce the period of the grant from the proposed minimum of two years to only one year, together with a safeguard ensuring that the amount fixed would not be less than that of the previous year and would rise with a rise in the number of pupils on the educational rolls. The Union was unable to get these or any of the minor amendments it retreated to advocating.

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campaign, the Executive led the block grant campaign all the way. The members of the teachers' unions dutifully seconded the opposition of their leaders; but, without a direct challenge to their immediate self-interest as there had been with the increase in pension contributions, the members declined to become intensively involved. Thus, the Government found itself facing nothing more than the opposition of the leadership of the organized educational interests, something it must have expected and taken into account in deciding to undertake the Local Government Finance Bill in the first place. Failing to create any unexpected political difficulties for the Government, the educationists had to rely on the strength of their case against the block grant to secure the amendments they wanted. On this point they also failed to persuade the Government because they could not demonstrate the validity of their assumptions about the relationship between the method of educational finance and the state of the educational service. In fact, since the implementation of the block grant, there has been no evidence that it entails any of the effects forecast in the campaign against it. Expenditure on education has continued to increase in rather spectacular fashion. There has been no shift in power away from the Education Committees. The Minister, if anything, has extended his power over the development of national policy. Yet leaders of the teachers' unions remain convinced that their campaign was right. If educational expenditure had not increased so rapidly, they maintain, the deleterious effects of the block grant on marginal educational expenditure and the power of the Education Committees would be more apparent. This demands a reconsideration of the three assumptions of their opposition. There is no definite evidence that the grant system is an important determinant of either absolute or marginal expenditures on education. 1 Even if there were, the argument for the percentage grant encouraging marginal expenditure and the block grant leading to economy rests on an assumption of freedom to follow the 1 Jerry Miner, Social and Economic Factors in Spending for Public Education (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1963), p. 101. Miner concludes that to a considerable extent state aid to local government is a substitute for local educational expenditures. If there is in this way an implicit balancing of marginal returns and marginal expenditures in spite of the grant system, the question of whether marginal expenditure falls on the rates (block grant) or on the estimates (percentage grant) becomes largely irrelevant.

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incentives of the grant. 1 This freedom did not exist. For example, the Ministry has since 1918 controlled any capital expenditures by the local authorities, imposed a system of approved unit costs for education, and required the submission in advance of detailed estimates of local educational expenditure. The general grant must function within the same network of controls. Indeed, if resource inputs are relatively fixed, a circumstance in which English education may find itself, the use of a percentage grant could even be harmful by encouraging unwarranted competition among local authorities for the limited resources, thus inflating educational factor prices and worsening the problem of educational finance. The distribution of power in the educational system is not dependent in any important sense on the grant formula. The power of the Minister to maintain standards is almost entirely exercised by directive, by examination of building and staffing standards and by the operations of the Inspectorate. To attribute more than negligible influence to the grant system is to suppose it is a threat which gives content to the Minister's acts. This is most unlikely. The Minister's power to act rests on the recognition and acceptance of his authority by the local education authorities. The influence of the Education Committees in the structure of local government derives from the size of the educational effort relative to other local public services. A change in the grant formula which does not affect that relationship cannot materially affect the Committees' influence. The achievement of a general grant can be regarded as an advance to a more rational system of local public finance by making more explicit the process of comparing marginal costs and marginal benefits. An optimum allocation of public services at the local level can only be achieved where the provision of any one service is not distorted by the subsidy implicit in a percentage grant. This is the situation the general grant aimed in theory to create. Because they are organized to get as much as possible for education without particular regard for other public functions, it is not surprising that the organized educational interests opposed the change. Despite the theory, the fears of educationists did have a real basis, related to their third assumption that education is a national 1 W. H. Burston, "The Block Grant", British Journal of Educational Studies, VIII (May, 1960), 172-3.

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service, locally administered. The representative institutions of democracy work satisfactorily only when public issues are weighed in them in a form and a context they can comprehend. The difficulty in England and Wales is that services are divided between central and local provision and that those provided centrally are the more important ones. Education, therefore, finds itself competing for funds with town planning, road safety, and recreation. The costs and benefits of education were apparently to be denied direct comparison with defence and social welfare services, services comparable in public importance to education. Educational expenditure was to be considered in a context unlikely to produce a socially satisfactory result. Carried to its logical conclusion the argument seems to imply that education should be a public service provided by the national government. The educationists have never wished to go that far. It is perhaps not surprising, however, that in both the United States and England they have pressed for the isolation of decisions about educational expenditure from the competition of other local expenditure decisions. What the teachers in England and Wales failed to understand was that the grant formula itself had no real importance in determining the framework for expenditure decisions. It might have, if freedom to follow its incentives existed; but the freedom did not exist and was unlikely to be created. Seen in perspective, the change from the percentage grant to a block grant becomes no more than the Government said it was at the time, a convenient change for administrative reasons. The political perception of the educationists was faulty with respect to their own power, the relationship between the grant formula and the education service, and the effects of a change in the grant formula given the existing context of institutions and procedures. Even allowing for this failure to understand the issue, or lack of it, the campaign against the block grant suggests both the conservatism and the insecurity of the educational interest groups, two qualities which will be encountered again in this description of their political life.

4 The Technical Power of Organized Teachers An association of professional teachers like the National Union of Teachers performs two functions essential for the efficient administration of the educational system. First, it articulates and communicates to higher levels information about the provision of education in the schools which is indispensable to decisionmaking.1 Secondly, it presents the personal needs and professional specifications that teachers expect the system to satisfy. Each of these functions makes the teachers' union a potential source of important decisional information; and, therefore, each can be converted into political influence. The exercise of "technical" power underlies the three case studies collected in this chapter. The involvement of press, Parliament, and politicians which characterized the exercise of "electoral" power is here exchanged for advisory committees and bureaucrats; and policy outcomes are often the adjustments of several years of consultation and negotiation. The events leading up to the creation of the Certificate of Secondary Education illustrate how information about developments at the technical level is filtered through the organizational network of the teachers' union and fed into the national policy-making system. The events leading up to the creation of the Schools Council show how the N.U.T. and the A.E.C. were able to conserve the status quo and prevent an attempt by the Ministry to obtain a greater influence in curricular decisions. The lengthening of the period for teacher training from two years to three in 1960 represented the fulfilment of a policy objective which had been accepted in principle in the sub-government since 1944. The technical power of organized teachers only explains the 1 For an analysis of the educational system in terms of its "technical", "managerial", and "institutional" functions, see Talcott Parsons, Structure and Process in Modern Societies (Glencoe: Free Press, 1960), pp. 59-96.

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ability of the profession to intervene effectively in each of the cases that is described below. The rationale for the intervention in each case is the collective defence of traditional professional values in the face of changing demands on the educational system. The freedom of teachers in their class-rooms is a strongly-held professional value in England and Wales. As The Schoolmaster (September 30, 1960) stated with respect to the Beloe Report, It has always been a source of pride to the profession, and a very proper one, that in this country the teacher has the inalienable right to decide what to teach, and how to teach it, and in so far as he is the best judge of the child's readiness to learn, when to teach. The structure of external examinations and the nature of the school curriculum, considered below, are both matters which impinge directly on this freedom in the classroom. The problems of teacher supply serve to illustrate the manner in which a conflict between, on the one hand, the values of teachers with respect to the status of their profession and the education of children and, on the other hand, the view of outside groups with respect to the needs of the educational system can be translated into serious policy differences. The three case studies illustrate the way in which the institutions of the educational system may be affected by new demands. Where the new demands were successfully harmonized with traditional values of the profession, as defended by its "technical" power, the Certificate of Secondary Education and the Schools Council were created. Where the new demands could not be reconciled with old values, the result was impasse with respect to policy output and a breakdown of the institution governing teacher supply, the National Advisory Council on the Training and Supply of Teachers. Finally, the cases described in this chapter go beyond immediate educational issues to illustrate the relevance of English cultural norms for English educational politics. The empirical quality which characterizes so much of British politics can be seen, for example, in the dispute about an external examination and its resolution at the point it threatened a traditional value. Again, the static quality of British political life is evident in the creation of the Schools Council to solve the problem of society's interest in curricular development. As one of the principals involved remarked, "The Schools Council may not work, but it had to be

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tried first." This measured approach to political change is one of the basic elements of British political life. Finally, all the aspects of "muddling through" are apparent in the response to the introduction of auxiliaries into the classrooms. Behind the stalemate over the Department's proposal, some schools have resorted to part-time education; but many more have introduced auxiliaries into the schools anyway and a few local authorities have developed fairly elaborate policies governing their employment. Given time such developments in the schools will no doubt make the dispute between the Department and the N.U.T. irrelevant on this particular issue and register another example of the pragmatic qualities of British public administration.

The creation of the Certificate of Secondary Education That whoever controls examinations controls the curriculum is one of the maxims of educational politics. The attitude of educationists to externally assessed examinations has altered considerably since the war and immediate postwar years. The manner of the change, its articulation, and its integration into educational policy decisions illustrates one pattern of educational policy-making. The Crowther Committee's report in 1959 remarked that "the most promising part of the educational system for experiments in new methods of teaching relatively difficult things will be in the middle streams of Modern schools-but only if they are left free from the cramping effects of a large-scale external examination". 1 In the years 1939 to 1945 such a sentiment would have been considered relevant to all levels of secondary education. 2 In its memorandum to the Consultative Committee on the Education of Children up to Age Fifteen (Hadow Committee) in 1926, the N.U.T. testified against the idea of an externally assessed leaving examination; and it 'continually criticized the School Certificate Examination in the interwar years. In 1946 complete abolition of external examinations was still the official policy of the Union; but, as a result of the compromise over the first report of the S.S.E.C., a reconstructed external examination (the General Certificate of Education) was accepted as suitable for students proceeding to 1 Ministry of Education, Central Advisory Council (Crowther Committee), IS to r8, Vol. I (London: H.M.S.O., 1959), p. 94. 2 William Taylor, The Secondary Modern School (London: Faber and Faber, 1963), p. 128.

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further education. 1 Protected by the age limit of sixteen for entry to the G.C.E., after 1947 it was only the modern schools that were to be free from the "cramping effects" of external examinations. However sound on educational grounds the reaction against external examinations was before and after the 1944 Act, it ran counter to social and economic forces tending to make quasivocational studies, examinations, and paper qualifications more, rather than less, important. 2 Instead of being discarded as a temporary device (as the Norwood Committee of the S.S.E.C. hoped in 1943) or confined exclusively to students in selective courses (as the S.S.E.C. hoped in 1947), the G.C.E. examination at the O-level grew steadily in influence and prestige; and the numbers taking it from all types of schools continued to rise. By 1959 one-third of the candidates for the G.C.E. came from outside the grammar schools. 3 At the same time entries increased to externally assessed examinations other than the G.C.E. A number of schools and local authorities established local school-leaving examinations, mainly for pupils completing a four-year course of secondary education. Experiments of this nature at the local level were welcomed by the Ministry's Circular 289 in 1955, but local examinations had only local currency. Consequently, increasing use was also made of the examinations of the larger and long-established, privately organized examining bodies. 4 Illustrative of their growth was the Beloe Committee's finding that the candidates for the examinations of the Royal Society of Arts increased from 3904 in 1958 to 6833 in 1959. These increases occurred in the face of the Minister's objections and in spite of difficulties the School Regulations put in the way of entering pupils for such examinations. 5 The demand for 1 Ministry of Education, Secondary Schools Examinations Council, "Examinations in Secondary Schools" (London: H.M.S.O., 1947), p. 5. 2 Taylor, op. cit., pp. 104-5. 3 Ministry of Education, Secondary Schools Examinations Council (Beloe Committee), "Secondary School Examinations Other than the G.C.E." (London: H.M.S.O., 1960), p. 9. 4 The eight most important named by the Beloe Committee are Royal Society of Arts, College of Preceptors, London Chamber of Commerce, City and Guilds of London Institute, Union of Lancashire and Cheshire Institutes, Union of Educational Institutions, Northern Counties Technical Examinations Council, and East Midland Educational Union. 6 Outside the G.C.E. pupils under the age of sixteen could only be entered for external examinations privately by their parents, who bore any expense involved.

G

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external examination was a "mass movement" which developed outside the official governing institutions of the educational system, arising from the classroom level and persisting in spite of official disapproval. It was an educational development too widespread to be ignored indefinitely. Eventually it forced up for reconsideration and renewal the policy decisions taken after the war about the role of external examinations in non-selective schools. A sub-set of institutions which was instrumental in this process of policy change was the National Union of Teachers. Acceptance of the initial report of the Secondary Schools Examinations Council in 1947 constituted a first, unobtrusive step in the change of opinion inside the N.U.T. on the question of external examinations. Acceptance of the second report, permitting head teachers to enter pupils under the age of sixteen at their own discretion, was another. A third sign of changing attitudes was the increasing influence of the representations of the N. U. T. Grammar School Committee. In 1951 the Union approved a resolution sponsored by the Grammar School Committee that the pass level of the G.C.E. 0-level had been established at too high a level and ought to be lowered. By 1954 the National Union of Teachers was demanding greater freedom for teachers to enter pupils for external examinations. In particular, it sought the withdrawal of the regulation that the minimum age for entering the G.C.E. from a secondary modern school was sixteen. In the same year a resolution passed by the Union's Annual Conference called for increasing the output from the nation's secondary schools and contended that the need should be met, in part, by "enabling secondary modern schools to develop specialized courses, including courses leading to the General Certificate of Education and other desirable examinations where teachers deem them appropriate, by providing the necessary material and staffing conditions". A year later the Executive still supported this resolution but opposed any attempt by local education authorities or other bodies to set up any new external examinations outside the G.C.E. On the recommendation of the Grammar School Committee, the Executive instructed the Union's representative on the S.S.E.C. to achieve a lower pass standard in the 0-level examination and to oppose any proposal for a G.C.E. level lower than the 0-level. In response to the dissatisfaction being expressed about opportunities for pupils in non-selective schools and the growing

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demand for a new kind of external examination for them, Circular 289, issued in July 1955, set out the Minister's own views as a basis for general discussion. It stated that the present standard of the G.C.E. at both O-level and A-level should be maintained, that the establishment of any new general examinations of national standing for secondary schools or the widespread use of privately organized external examinations would be discouraged, and that the Grant Regulation which required school authorities not to enter any pupil under the age of sixteen for an external examination except the G.C.E. would not be varied. The Education Committee of the N.U.T., after considering Circular 289, a report of the Grammar School Committee, and a report of discussion in a joint committee with the A.E.C., recommended to the Executive in January 1956 that the Ministry be supported in maintaining the present structure and standards of the G.C.E. and in opposing the introduction of any new lower level external examination, but that the Grant Regulation which required school authorities not to enter anyone less than age sixteen for an external examination except the G.C.E. should be amended. In advocating support for the present structure and standards of the G.C.E. the Education Committee was plainly recommending a major change in the policy of the Union, which had since 1951 advocated lowering the O-level pass standard and making the G.C.E. a more attractive and feasible objective for pupils of lesser ability. After some debate the change in policy was rejected by the Executive and an amendment to lower the standard of O-level passes was adopted twenty-two to fifteen. The closeness of the voting in the Executive on a proposed change in an established external examination suggests that the "mass movement" had not yet gained a strong foothold in the governing institutions of the Union, particularly since the proposal in question had been official Union policy for five years. In its comment on Circular 289 the S.S.E.C. had recommended that an ad hoc committee be appointed to study the question of an external examination below the G.C.E.; but, when the Minister sought the views of the S.S.E.C., it declined to offer advice. Following the comments submitted on Circular 289, the Minister issued Circular 326 in July 1957 reaffirming that he would not vary the former circular without further information. At his request the Central Advisory Council ( Crowther Committee) undertook to

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investigate the matter as part of its inquiry into the education of students aged fifteen to eighteen. The policies advocated by the N.U.T. before the Crowther Committee in respect of external examinations were essentially those produced in response to Circular 289, but behind them were important developments in attitude. The Union continued to oppose any new external examination, and it is clear there was wide support for this in the Union. The recommendation to make entry to the G.C.E. and other external examinations easier had been Union policy for a number of years, but now it was definitely envisaged that lowering the passmark of the G.C.E. O-level would be a first step in its gradual evolution into an external examination for average pupils. We believe that the tendency will be to move more and more away from "O" level requirements [for university entrance, etc.] and to regard this level as satisfying the examination needs of the average, rather than the able pupil. It may also be added that the present pass mark is too high for some of the purposes for which the examination results should be used. If it were slightly lowered the examination results might prove more useful than they are at present. The Union's brief to the Crowther Committee showed no great sense of urgency about coping with the rising demand for an external examination for average students, and this attitude was reflected in the conclusions of the Crowther Committee published in December 1959. The Committee admitted the strength of the pressure for a lower-level examination but concluded that "to set about the construction of a national system of minor examinations would be to rush to the other extreme. The right course, in our view, for the next five years or so is to watch very closely the development of regional and local examinations and to postpone any question of a national system until the experience of these years is available to be assessed." 1 Nonetheless, concern was now increasing in the teaching profession about the rapid growth of external examinations outside the G.C.E. framework. The S.S.E.C. decided the matter was at last urgent enough for it to undertake its own inquiry, and a committee under the chairmanship of Robert Beloe was set to work in July 1958. Its report two years later was the decisive event in the creation of the new examination. The Beloe Committee foresaw 1

Crowther Committee, p. 85.

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that in five to ten years almost all schools would be entering pupils for external examinations and that examining below the G.C.E. probably would become increasingly concentrated in the eight existing regional and national Examining Bodies. As the number of candidates increased and employers and users became familiar with the certificates, their syllabuses and papers would come to "exercise great and perhaps decisive influence on the development of the schools". The Crowther Committee had recommended five years delay. The Beloe Committee believed that at the end of five years the situation would be only more dangerous and more difficult to remedy. It concluded that the Minister had to take the initiative by creating a new examination below the level of the G.C.E. for pupils of average ability. The reaction of the leadership of the N. U. T. to the report of the Beloe Committee, as expressed in The Schoolmaster (September 30, 1960), left no doubt that the Union's official policy of equivocation would now be altered. "We are no longer exploring roads which can be easily abandoned. External examinations are with us in a big way, and they are here to stay. The question is no longer whether we approve or disapprove of them, but what we intend to do about them now that they are here." The profession had to decide whether the curricula and organization of the schools should be left outside examining bodies or "whether they should remain where they rightly belong, in the hands of the teaching profession". There could be no doubt where the traditional interest of the profession and the Union lay. In December 1960 the Education Committee of the N.U.T., on the advice of its advisory committee, recommended the principle of a national examination on the lines suggested in the Beloe report be accepted as preferable to the existing multiplicity of examinations; and the Executive Committee adopted it as official Union policy. 1 In July 1961, the fourth report of the S.S.E.C. was sent to the Minister, advising the creation of a new examination. The Minister was not very happy about the decision he had to make, but the consensus which had been built up behind the proposal was so extensive that he had 1 The Union continued to remind the Minister and the S.S.E.C. that it was Union policy to slightly lower the pass standard of the G.C.E. O-level and that, if this were done, a new examination might not be necessary. There was no support for this compromise and it was not pressed.

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no choice but to accept. On July 17, 1961, he announced that, having to choose between prohibiting all examinations other than the G.C.E. for non-selective schools and trying to improve the existing system along the lines proposed, he had decided on the latter course of action. To the educator, the educational development growing out of the "mass movement" at the technical level would seem the most important feature of this case. To the student of educational politics what is more interesting is the manner in which the inarticulate demands of this "mass movement" were translated into official educational policy. This translation cannot be explained without reference to the institutions of the N.U.T. Inevitably, the upsurge of the secondary moderns towards an external examination was articulated through the institutions of the Union. In the Union's extended network of committees, panels, and branches the argument about external examinations went on; and the implications of official N. U. T. policy, if not its language, gradually altered as a result. This leisurely process would no doubt have continued without a definite conclusion if the findings of the Beloe Committee had not placed the whole issue in a new context. The report of the Beloe Committee showed the "movement up" virtually out of control, to such an extent that by strengthening the private Examining Bodies it was threatening the professional freedom of teachers. With a vital interest of the teachers suddenly at stake, the movement, too far gone to be reversed, had to be pressed to a conclusion which was educationally sound but which guaranteed the traditional freedom of the profession. The result was the Certificate of Secondary Education.

The secret garden of the curriculum A prominent example in the early 1960s of the assertion of more positive administration by the Ministry was the creation of the Curriculum Study Group. Although concern on the part of the central authority for the content of education was not a new thing, in the recent past first the Board and then the Ministry had deliberately refrained from interfering with the direction of schools. Under the Education Act of 1944 the local authorities are competent to prescribe curricula, but they have imitated the lead given by the Ministry and left the matter largely to the professionals. The Curriculum Study Group was originally conceived by Sir

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David Eccles. The first suggestion of a venture by the central authority into what Eccles described as "the secret garden of the curriculum" came in the course of a debate in the House of Commons on the Crowther Committee's report on March 21, 1960. Expressing his regret that education debates were devoted exclusively to bricks and mortar and organization, Eccles stated that he would "try to make the Ministry's voice heard rather more often and positively' and no doubt more controversially" on what was taught in the schools and training colleges. Because of divided opinion in the Inspectorate it was two years before the Curriculum Study Group was officially announced. When it came, the announcement was made without prior consultation with organized educational interests. The Group was to involve H.M.I.s, administrators and experts coopted from the outside. It would provide a nucleus of full-time staff to organize and coordinate research studies. Its work would be linked with that of the universities, practising teachers, local authorities, research organizations, professional institutes, and others concerned with the content of education and examinations. Eccles envisaged the Group as a relatively small, "commando-like unit", making raids into the curriculum. This was implied in the comparison of the proposed Curriculum Study Group to the Development Group in the Architects and Buildings Branch. Started after the war, the Development Group was highly successful in improving the development of school buildings by combining administrators, architects, quantity surveyors, and H.M.l.s into working teams. Each team completed a project for an L.E.A. and planned, tested ideas, and considered successes and failures. Like the Development Group, the Curriculum Study Group presumably would be invested with no greater authority than was merited by the quality of its contribution to the work of the education service as a whole. In the case of the Development Group this was considerable. In a letter to the educational associations, the Permanent Secretary described the Curriculum Study Group as a response to the pressure of rapid change and increases in knowledge. At a time characterized above all by the speed of change, we believe that the Ministry and Inspectorate have a useful contribution to make to thinking about the educational process, arising partly from the knowledge we obtain from the view we have of the whole of the educational field, partly from our contacts, through central government, with some

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of the mainsprings of change, and partly from our opportunity (which we share with some large local education authorities) to form interdisciplinary teams capable of bringing to bear on current and future problems a considerable concentration of skill and experience. And it seems to us peculiarly important that we should make this contribution where it is a matter-as it so often is today---of foreseeing changes before they become apparent on the ground, and of placing before our partners in the education service a range of possible solutions to future problems. The recognition of the needs of an educational system expected to service a rapidly changing society, the dissatisfaction with the performance of the system according to established relationships, the desire to assert more strongly the role of the central administration as the leader in a period of change-all of which characterized the Ministry's changing attitude to teachers' salaries and supply were also part of the Ministry's rationale for its intervention into the development of school curricula. It marked a definite departure in the Ministry's conception of its role in the formulation of an important area of educational policy. In more general terms, it involved the insertion of an agent of the community into what had previously been regarded almost entirely as a technical or administrative problem. As such, it was unlikely to go unchallenged by the educational interests. The initial reaction of professional educators to the Curriculum Study Group was hostile. 1 There was fear that the prestige of the Minister behind any recommendations of the group would make them practically mandatory and uneasiness about the comparisons that were being drawn with the Development Group in school building, a policy area where the Ministry exercised a relatively large measure of control and direction. On the central issue of the interpretation of the educational needs of society there were two points of view. One regarded the existing system, where this was 1 See the comments of spokesmen for the educational interests in reaction to a paper by D. H. Morrell, "The Freedom of the Teacher in Relation to Research and Development Work in the Area of Curriculum and Examinations", Educational Research, V (February 1963), 83-103. This study is not concerned to delineate the internal politics and decisionmaking of the Ministry, but the contribution of Mr. Morrell to the Ministry's curriculum initiatives cannot be underestimated. Mr. Morrell was Joint Head of the Curriculum Study Group and later associated with the Schools Council. He came to the C.S.G. from the Development Group in the Architects and Buildings Branch. Before that he was private secretary to Sir David Eccles.

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the function and responsibility of the head teacher, as the desirable pattern. External influences, which kept the schools thinking about curriculum changes and adaptations, impinged upon the head teacher and were translated by him, with the aid of his staff, into the life of the school. Parents, the local requirements of industry and commerce, the school governors and local councillors, his knowledge of the views of the Ministry and the Government, his professional colleagues, the church-all provided evidence for the head teacher and influenced the choices he made. According to this view, it was difficult to see what a Curriculum Study Group could do to help the head teacher improve the conclusions he made from the evidence already available. The second view, held by Sir Ronald Gould and Sir William Alexander, accepted the argument that the interests of society were not being asserted strongly enough within the present pattern of curriculum formulation but disagreed with the Ministry about the desirable changes. Gould admitted that curriculum programming was not self-evidently the concern of teachers, but neither was it that of the Ministry. For this reason he objected strongly to the unilateral intervention of the Ministry without full use being made of the usual consultative machinery. Sir William Alexander went even further to see a threat of substantial change in the distribution of educational power. To prevent this and to safeguard the future, the Curriculum Study Group should be brought under a representative body. Local education authorities, teachers, and other relevant agencies of society could then be involved in determining the programme of the Curriculum Study Group. A representative body, liketheN.A.C.T.S.T. or the S.S.E.C., was "a normal procedure in English education" ; and, if the Minister wanted the cooperation of local authorities and teachers, he must set one up. The Curriculum Study Group never did comprise "experts" in the sense implied at its origins. Essentially, the members of the Group were H.M.I.s and Ministry officials who tended to make judgements based on administrative experience rather than conduct research to illuminate choices. With a few exceptions, there were no experts in the Ministry or the Inspectorate of the type envisaged by the original proposals for the Group; and the number recruited from outside was negligible. This group of H.M.I.s and Ministry officials was never large and produced little of the kind of material which had been expected. Far from being a research-

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oriented, commando-like unit, the Curriculum Study Group, lacking a common, binding interest, did not have even the cohesion of a departmental committee. It is difficult not to conclude that the "projects" under its care would have been carried out just as easily if there had been no Curriculum Study Group and that the Group, if not exactly a fiction, was largely irrelevant. The disappointing reality behind the image projected by the Minister cannot be explained without knowing the divisions inside the Ministry on the issue, which combined with the uncooperative attitude of the educationists to block the development of the Group. The question is why the educationists were upset by the Curriculum Study Group in the first place. Both Sir Ronald Gould and Sir William Alexander accepted the basic premise of the Ministry in creating the Group, that the existing pattern was no longer satisfactory. The issue, as Gould put it, was not centralization but its form and extent. It was not the reality of the Curriculum Study Group but the principle of interference by the central authority in curricular matters that concerned Gould and Alexander. They insisted, for the sake of the future, that the principle by itself was unacceptable and unthinkable and could only be made so by the creation of a representative body. This continuing insistence on a representative body, even after the weakness of the Curriculum Study Group must have been known reflects the realization by Gould and Alexander that some kind of action was necessary, that the future should be safeguarded, and that any exertion of central control had to be made through a representative body if the balance of educational power was not to be seriously disturbed. In May 1963, Sir Edward Boyle announced that a Schools Council would be formed along the lines of the representative body demanded by Gould and Alexander. It would cover all aspects of curriculum and examinations in primary and secondary schools, with the Curriculum Study Group serving as its secretariat. A committee was set up under the chairmanship of Sir John Lockwood to plan an organization for the Schools Council for the Curriculum and Examinations. Reporting in March 1964, the committee affirmed existing principles. 1 Schools would retain the 1 Great Britain, Ministry of Education, Report of the Working Party on the Schools Curricula and Examinations (London: H.M.S.O., 1964),

pp. 9-10.

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fullest possible measure of responsibility for their own work within a framework reflecting the general interest of the community in the educational process and taking account of requirements of further education and professional organizations. There would be no career secretariat or study-team organization. The Council would be organized as a free association of partners, not advisory to the Ministry of Education alone, but to all its member interests. Members retained the right to take decisions affecting their own interests but would seek to coordinate decisions through the Schools Council. The Council's work would lead only to recommendations, supported by nothing more than the authority of good research. Teachers were assured a majority on the Council. As The Teacher (March 20th) concluded, it was "an organization which can cock a snook at the Ministry any time it likes, yet has no powers of dictation over the man in the classroom". The Curriculum Study Group, in theory at least, represented an attempt by some people in the Ministry of Education to take greater responsibility in an area of policy which had previously been left to the educationists. The terms on which that responsibility seemed to be demanded were unacceptable to the educationists. They wanted and, in the end, the Minister conceded the creation of a representative body independent of the Government. It was a concession completely in harmony with the traditional manner of developing national educational policy. It was equally a concession in harmony with the traditional practices of British public administration. 1 To be sure, there were a number of officials at the Ministry of Education who wanted to convert the Curriculum Study Group into the high-powered research unit it was advertised to be; but they lost out to their more conservative colleagues, supported by the educationists, who preferred to experiment carefully, to make no sudden departures, to try to assimilate the required adaptations within traditional practices. Like the reconstruction of the management side of the Burnham Main Committee, the original constitution of the Schools Council merely legitimatized a long-established pattern of informal relationships among teachers and central and local administrators in the area of curricular development. In this sense it represented a genuine victory for the teachers and local administrators who had 1 See Brian Chapman, British Government Observed (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1963).

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opposed the Curriculum Study Group. But the Schools Council did create a legitimate institutional location for debate about curriculum and established the right of the central administration to contribute to that debate. Thus the Department was left in a stronger position to affect curriculum than it had before the Curriculum Study Group was formed. Given the circumstances it is not surprising that the Schools Council, created out of controversy, has continued to be controversial. No one denies that the bulletins and working papers produced by the Council's secretariat have been useful and even influential documents. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in its Curriculum Improvement and Educational Development (1967) has gone so far as to suggest that other countries might find the Schools Council an appropriate model for an organization to promote curricular change. But for educational change in England and Wales the matter is not simple, for the distribution of power in the education sub-government is also at stake. In November 1966 lengthy consideration of the functions of the Schools Council by the Executive of the National Union of Teachers revealed serious discontent with the operation of the Council. Both the size and the effectiveness of teacher representation on the Council and its committees were in question. From the founding of the Council the Union has tried without success to get greater teacher representation in general and, in particular, to have its own representation enlarged to reflect its predominance among the teachers unions. The teachers on the Council and its committees have found themselves overwhelmed with paper (as one member complained, "two pounds of documents two days before a meeting"), unable to cope effectively with all the material confronting them, and thus unable to take the initiative themselves or to prevent its being taken by the Department of Education and Science. The problem has been compounded by the Union's failure so far to adapt its own organization to support its representatives appointed to the Council and its committees. In contrast with those members of the N.U.T. Executive who see the Schools Council as "power hungry", however, the Times Educational Supplement has argued (February 24, 1967) that the reservations that greeted the birth of the Council in 1964 have led it to cast itself in a humble role that underestimates both the value and the

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urgency of its work. As a result it sees the Schools Council in danger of becoming excessively defensive and failing to provide the leadership necessary in this policy area. Whether the Schools Council does provide leadership in curricular development, or not, the argument surrounding it is not ended. Advance and adaptation with the agreement of all important interests concerned is comfortable, but it is also notoriously slow. In a time demanding fairly quick responses to changing situations, where policy decisions must be renewed much more rapidly than previously, it is likely to be highly frustrating and costly as well. The criticism of the Schools Council reflects both the frustration of those wanting more rapid change and the discontent of those concerned to protect traditional values and prerogatives. That criticism is certain to continue as long as pressure for curricular change continues. But whatever the differences between teachers and administrators, they have been limited to the education sub-government. Common agreement that the broad interests of society need to be better represented and inserted more positively into the process of curriculum formation has not resulted in any effort to improve the representative function of the sub-government by going outside it, for example, to Members of Parliament. As a result the Schools Council may be regarded as an assertion of orthodoxy and, quite possibly, an opportunity lost.

The supply of teachers Within the National Union of Teachers there exists a potential conflict between, on the one hand, teachers' ambitions to fulfil professional ideals and improve their status and, on the other, their view of the needs of the educational system in terms of teacher supply. In its external relations the Union confronts another, more serious, potential conflict between its professional aspirations and the view held by other groups of the needs of the educational system. This latter type of conflict appears to be a continuous situation where agreement is, at best, temporary because technicallevel people and community agents have different functions and tend, not surprisingly, to see the problems of the educational system in the context of the function they serve. The circumstances in which the conflict between aspirations and needs is of the former, internal type are fairly narrowly defined. A recent example was the acceptance by the National Union

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of Teachers in 1956 of a scheme for governing the distribution of teachers. Measures for affecting the distribution of teachers had been a feature of the educational scene for many years. 1 Before the Second World War the staffing establishments of each elementary school were reviewed annually by the Board of Education, primarily as a means of controlling educational expenditure. From 1941 to 1946 each local education authority was assigned a quota of newly trained teachers, who were required to spend at least one year in the service of their first employer. After 1948 arrangements were introduced to control the distribution of women teachers in infant schools, but early in 1956 this women teachers' scheme was discontinued. Local authorities were allowed complete freedom in the number of appointments they made, although those better placed were expected to exercise restraint in recruiting. During the year evidence of increasing maldistribution accumulated. The N.U.T. organized an ad hoc committee to examine the problem in July 1956, and in October the Ministry called for a conference of local authorities and teachers to consider corrective action. The Schoolmaster (October 12th) remarked that in this crisis the Union has a three-fold responsibility. As a body of educationists it is profoundly concerned to avert a local break-down in the educational system. As an association of colleagues working for a common end it is equally concerned to relieve the hardship which the present position is inflicting on its members in the shortage areas. And as a national organization it must at all times have regard to the staffing and recruitment position at the national level. Its task, therefore, is to press for measures which will effectively help the short-staffed areas, but which will not rebound at the national level to damage the interests of all its members-including those in the shortage areas. No solution emerged from the conference, but it was agreed that positive steps would have to be taken to improve the distribution of teachers. The proposals advanced by the N. U. T. involved going outside the educational system to solve the problem. 2 The Minister 1

See Ministry of Education, "Teachers on Quota", Reports on Educa-

tion, No. 8 (February 1964).

2 The N.U.T. proposed that men teachers finished with professional training should be released from the national service and men finishing professional training in 1957 and later should be deferred. To get them into shortage areas there should be resort to incentives but not direction. The Union suggested assistance by the local authorities in obtaining housing, priority in nursery accommodation for children of married women teachers, and improved working conditions in the classroom. It

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insisted that it had to be solved inside the system with the resources presently available. This could only mean some form of rationing; but it was promised, as a condition of the Union's agreement, that the scheme would not entail the direction of teachers. In December, after submitting it to both the teachers and the local authorities for comment and consultation, the Ministry issued Circular 318, which introduced a new method of alleviating maldistribution by setting each local authority a precise objective (a "quota") by which to shape staffing policies. The Union's initial support for the quota scheme is accounted for, first of all, by its recognition of the need for some remedial action and of the impossibility of securing resources outside the system. Secondly, it was believed in 1956 that control over the distribution of teachers would be needed only as a temporary expedient. Thirdly, considerable pressure for relief had developed inside the Union from local associations in disadvantaged areas like Birmingham. In the event, expectations for the supply of teachers were disappointed. Persistent staffing difficulties have made it necessary to prolong the quota indefinitely. Despite some criticism of the scheme, the gap between the staffing standards of the best and worst placed authorities is half what it was in 1956; and the staffing standards of the great majority of authorities now fall within quite a narrow range of variation. 1 It is generally agreed that, so long as there are not enough teachers to go around, control of distribution needs to be continued to protect the shortage areas and avoid gross disparities in staffing standards. The local associations in shortage areas provide continuous pressure in the Union for such controls, and the quota scheme continues to be supported as the least of possible evils. The achievement of a three-year course of training for teachers in 1960 was probably the outstanding improvement in quality in the rejected a quota system or financial incentives. It did indicate its willingness to examine carefully and without prejudice any system of establishments or quotas which might be proposed, an expressed willingness to negotiate which suggests it had little confidence in the acceptability of its own proposals. 1 The local education authorities with the highest ratios of pupils per full-time teacher in 1968-69 were Bootle 27·2, Derby 27·2, Ipswich 27·2, Birmingham 27·1, Nottingham 27·1, Leicester 27·1. Those with the

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educational system after the school-leaving age was raised in 1947. Like raising the school-leaving age, three-year training was a product, somewhat delayed, of the convergence of professional and political opinion around an agreed programme of educational reform in 1943. Lengthening the teacher-training course to three years was first recommended in 1919 by a Committee of Principals of Training Colleges. It received increasing support throughout the interwar years, including the support of the N.U.T.; and it was included among the recommendations of the McNair Committee in 1944. The McNair recommendation was accepted in principle by the Minister of Education with the observation that, in view of the urgent need for additional teachers, lengthening the normal course could not at that time be authorized. The Association of Teachers in Colleges and Departments of Education presented a plan, in 1950, for the gradual implementation of a three-year course; but the National Advisory Council on the Training and Supply of Teachers put it off on the grounds that any measure reducing recruitment before 1957 (when pressure in the schools from the high wartime birth rate was expected to decrease) could not be considered. Early in 1955 the Advisory Council concluded that it was time to consider again the feasibility of introducing a three-year training programme. During the early 1950s the picture had seemed to change and the strain to be easing. In particular, the slowing down of recruitment after emergency training ended was less than expected; and wastage fell, as fewer teachers, especially married women, left the profession and more women returned to teaching than had been expected. A sub-committee was set up, which reported in March 1956; and the fifth report of the Advisory Council published in the same year recommended three-year training. The report foresaw a rapid change in demand for teachers in the early 1960s. The number of children in school would be at its highest peak in the years 1958 to 1961. Thereafter, it would fall until 1967, when it would be four or five hundred thousand below 1961. At the same time it was assumed that the net annual increase in teachers would average seven thousand up to 1961 and six lowest were Breconshire 20·2, Montgomeryshire 19·6, Cardiganshire 19.6, Merioneth 19·2, Radnorshire 18·6, Isles of Scilly u·6. (Source: The Teacher, February 23, 1968, p. 3.)

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thousand thereafter. These expectations of an increase in the teaching force and a decrease in the number of school children, argued the Council, offered a unique opportunity to introduce three-year training. Some reduction in recruitment would be quite compatible with a continued reduction of the size of classes. The Council even went on to point out that there was a limit to the number of additional teachers which the schools could absorb and the country could afford in a period of declining school population. Without the introduction of the three-year course, it was not impossible that there would be some difficulty in the early 1960s, as there never had been in the 1950s, in maintaining full employment in the teaching profession. 1 Given the situation with respect to teacher supply described by the Council and its own longstanding commitment to a three-year training course, the Government had little alternative but to accept the recommendation. The wide support the recommendation enjoyed among educationists, the lingering hostility of teachers to the Government over the Teachers Superannuation Bill, and a desire to soften the anti-education image the block grant promised to create-all contributed to the Government's positive decision. In June 1957, Lord Hailsham announced that training would be extended to three years for the class entering the colleges in September 1960. The enthusiasm which greeted the Minister's announcement did not last long. It soon became clear that the assumptions of the Advisory Council about wastage in the profession and the size of the school population were hopelessly wrong. In February 1958, Sir Edward Boyle announced that wastage had grown rapidly. The net increase in teachers had dropped to just over five thousand in 1957 compared with an average of 6500 over the previous seven years. Despite this falsification of optimistic estimates about teacher recruitment, the Government remained committed to the "great forward project" of three-year training. There could be no going back, Boyle insisted, on this piece of forward policy which had been deliberately announced in both Houses. Despite some argument from outsiders that a reduction in the size of classes was the main priority and that three-year training 1 Ministry of Education, National Advisory Council on the Training and Supply of Teachers, "Three Year Training for Teachers", (5th report; London: H.M.S.O., 1956), p. II.

H

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must now be postponed, there is no evidence the Government ever seriously considered changing its policy. At no time does a Government relish the charge that it has broken a pledge to an important sector of the community. 1 Probably a postponement of three-year training would have been welcomed by the Government if the educational pressure groups had advocated.it. The National Union of Teachers, the Association of Teachers in Colleges and Departments of Education, and the Institutes of Education in the universities all continued to support three-year training and oppose any postponement. In the circumstances the Government made no attempt to reverse established policy. Since 1959 the Government has been increasing its programme of training-college expansion at a remarkable rate. Each year the programme has had to be revised upwards, but targets have been achieved with considerable success. The National Advisory Council on the Training and Supply of Teachers had urged an expansion of the colleges to 36,000 by 1962; and, after some hesitation, the Government accepted this figure as the target for 1964. By 1961, the promise was revised to 54,000 places by 1966. In fact, the number of students in training colleges increased from 3 I ,ooo in 1959-60 to 54,000 in 1963-64. In October 1962 the Advisory Council recommended a target of 80,000 students at training colleges by 1971; and this was accepted by the Government in January 1963. In 1966-67 the number of students in the colleges was 84,000. In February 1965 the recommendation of the Robbins Committee for 40,000 entrants to the colleges in 1973 was accepted; and the National Advisory Council urged in its ninth report that this target be achieved two years earlier. In 1966-67 there were over 33,000 entrants to the colleges, a figure the Robbins Committee anticipat€d by 1971 and the N.A.C.T.S.T. for 1969. Thus, expansion has been remarkable, running well ahead of the targets and involving a sharp increase in expenditures. Monetary outlays on training teachers in the Colleges of Education rose from £5·6 million in 1955 to about £23·1 million in 1965 or, in real terms, from £4·2 million to about £u·o million. 2 With the expansion of the teachers' training colleges a change has 1 Peter Self and Herbert J. Storing, The State and the Farmer (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1963), p. 75. 2 John Vaizey and John Sheehan, Resources for Education (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1968), p. 93.

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occurred in the attitude of the Government to the supply of teachers. However much the Government and the Union might agree on the commitment to an expanded educational programme, the Government's approach to the problem of teacher supply must also include an efficient use of every means of increasing and effectively deploying teaching personnel. Just as meeting the demand for an expanding educational system has involved both increasing teachers' salaries and allocating expenditure on salaries in more efficient directions, so the demand for teaching manpower has had to be met by a combination of expansion and reallocation of resources inside the system. As in the case of salaries, the efforts by the Government to solve the problem have led to conflict with the teachers. The disagreement over the employment of auxiliary teachers to ease the shortages in the classroom is a useful example of an impasse over policy produced by a conflict between professional aspirations and the realities of public economy. In May 1961, the Minister of Education proposed in the House of Commons that, to go some way to meet the shortages disclosed by the Advisory Council, auxiliary assistants should be employed in the primary schools. They would be young girls who wanted to work with children or married women who had raised their families and could now help in the schools. The suggested goal was ten thousand auxiliaries in the schools by 1965. The N.U.T. immediately announced its opposition to helpers doing any teaching. It deplored the Minister's failure to consult the Advisory Council and insisted that the only solution was to expand the teacher training programme on the scale outlined by the N.A.C.T.S.T. and to restore the ~cuts in university grants to increase the number of teachers available from the universities. A year later Eccles wrote to the chairman of the Advisory Council suggesting the employment of more part-time teachers in the schools, short-service employment for some women teachers, and the creation of some sort of auxiliary service. After some hesitation the Council rejected the suggestions. In September 1962, the N.U.T. Executive issued a policy statement on the use of ancillaries in the schools. It stated that certain categories of ancillaries were necessary, but none was capable of the education of children or should have any part in a teacher's duties. The Union's statement of policy made it plain that its conception of

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school helpers did not involve them in any teaching duties, and this continues to be the official Union view. An increase in the number of ancillary helpers outside the classroom of the kind envisaged in the Union's policy statement would decrease the burden on, but not greatly ease the shortage of, qualified teachers inside the classroom. Despite equivocation about the extent of the teaching duties to be undertaken by auxiliaries, there is no doubt that Ministry proposals involved them doing some teaching under the direction of qualified teachers. Proponents of an auxiliary service contend that teachers would thus become managers, and their prestige would be increased. Teachers are not convinced. First, as Sir Ronald Gould has pointed out, there is no accepted division of functions in teaching, as there is in other professions where auxiliary assistance is employed. Much of the force of feeling against the proposal among members of the Union derives from a fear that semi-qualified auxiliaries would blur the line between qualified and unqualified teachers and undermine the hard-won status and self-esteem of the teaching profession. Secondly, supervision, it is argued, would tend to fall on the youngest and most inexperienced members of the teaching profession. It is also regarded as questionable whether suitable women would be attracted by a salary much less than the existing minimum for a qualified teacher. Thirdly, teachers believe that the delivery of pupils into the hands of "child minders" must be resisted in the interests of the children. Replying to a leading article on the subject in The Economist, Fred Jarvis, an official of the Union, wrote, "We differ from you not on the seriousness of the teacher shortage but on what needs to be done. Apparently you see the problem only in terms of getting children from a place called home to a place called school and making sure that there is somebody to look after them. The N.U.T.'s concern is for the quality of the education received by the child. It therefore takes a different view on the employment of auxiliaries .... " 1 Three policy changes could be made to ease the teacher supply problem: raise the age of entry to primary school from five to six, introduce auxiliaries into the classrooms, or settle for part-time education. The first is rejected as inadequate and unacceptable by all concerned. The second is rejected by the teachers. To them education on a part-time basis is preferable to handing pupils over 1

The Economist, September 19, 1964, p. 1077.

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to "child minders". Their critics "can imagine no policy, and no other trumped-up expedient, that would more wickedly aggravate the existing disadvantages suffered by children in the parts of the nation least favoured with modern housing or modern schools". 1 The dilemma between policy based on educational considerations and policy reflecting economic considerations is obvious. The advocates of an economic approach, including appropriately enough The Economist, contend that "trained teachers, that scarcest of resources, must be deployed with the maximum efficiency. The refined instrument must be used for fine tasks. The less fine tasks must be done by less expensively sharpened tools." Turning the teacher into a kind of manager, however, involves recasting the traditional role of the teacher, which gives him a direct, personal relationship in loco parentis with each individual child in his class. It is this educational tradition and situation which, ultimately, the teachers aim to protect. In all the debate, the National Union of Teachers has often come under strong attack. The unstated assumption in all the criticism seems to be that the Union's official policy misrepresents the true attitudes of teachers to helpers inside the classroom, but there is no good evidence that this is the case. The Ministry was not prepared to assume it. Nor was it prepared to alienate the teachers by forcing auxiliaries upon them. Teachers are called upon to relax their traditional attitude to some kind of help inside the classroom, among other reasons, because this traditional attitude no longer corresponds to urban realities. The force of this argument cannot be denied. For as far ahead as can be seen, there will not be an abundant supply of teachers. The Secretary of State (Crosland) has pointed out that, if help is not given in the classroom, teaching will simply collapse in certain areas for lack of teachers. The Secretary's responsibility as an agent of the community could thus conceivably lead him to impose auxiliaries on the teachers. Equally, he might be forced to adopt the expedient, acceptable to teachers, of part-time education. In the meantime, a very real conflict of social and educational values is being worked out inside the educational system. It is interesting to observe the effect of this change of circumstances on the National Advisory Council on the Training and Supply of Teachers. The conciliatory style of its deliberations and the consequent unanimity of its recommendations, which 1

The Economist, September 12, 1964, p. 996.

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characterized the first decade of its operations, have given way to internal divisions too serious to be submerged. In the eighth report of the Council (1962) a group of distinguished members dissented from the recommendation that the period of teacher training be eventually raised to four years, expressing their dissatisfaction with the arguments for professional unity and parity with other professions adduced by the majority of the Council. The ninth report of the Council showed it to be deeply divided over the use of auxiliaries in the schools and over the introduction of a fourterm year for the teacher-training colleges proposed by Sir William Alexander. The Chairman, Mr. Alan Bullock, resigned as a result of the strong disagreement in the Council, which he felt unable to resolve; and the Secretary of State has so far refused to reconstitute the Council despite considerable pressure to do so from the teachers. The pressure of an expanding educational system has thus not only created policy dilemmas; it has also put traditional policy-making procedures in the education sub-government under a severe strain which they could hardly have been expected to bear when they were devised many years ago. The ninth report of the N.A.C.T.S.T. also revealed its political incapacity. The report indicates that the teaching force of 360,000 in 1963 in all kinds of educational institutions would have to nearly double by 1983 to maintain current policy objectives and grow to 750,000 if primary classes are to be reduced to a maximum size of thirty pupils. Plainly, as the Council concluded, a teaching force would be required which far outstrips all other professions in its combination of sheer size and fully professional standards of qualification. In respect of size it could only be compared with the labour force employed in certain of the country's major industries. Yet, reporting in such a context, the Advisory Council completely disregarded the manpower demands of other sectors. The report admitted, for example, that to build up and sustain such a teaching force would require about half the annual output of the higher educational system. It specifically refused to consider whether this demand was too much. Its recommendations were devised and advanced in what amounted to a social vacuum. The Council failed to proceed from its recognition that old standards like class sizes of thirty in secondary schools and forty in primary schools are outmoded and that pupil-teacher ratios are more relevant to the consideration that these ratios could intentionally be allowed to rise

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as a matter of social policy and to the problem of what would be the organizational and educational implications if they were. Essentially, the Department of Education and Science was getting policy advice from a body which was no longer in a position to give it. The Council did not know what was the politically relevant framework within which to make its recommendations regarding educational policy. It was neither functionally responsible nor psychologically disposed to settle such questions for itself. Since it included no members responsible to the community for devising such a political framework, such as Members of Parliament, it was not even equipped to e:ffect a reasonably approximate substitute. Accordingly, its advice became either largely irrelevant, where its political assumptions were unjustified, or at most provided sectional support for the Minister in his contest for funds with the Treasury and other departments. In either case, the Advisory Council, used to proceeding by consultation on the basis of an agreed set of priorities, found itself unable to resolve the tensions created by the pressures of a rising demand for education and with its usefulness pretty much at an end.

5 The Settlement of Teachers' Salaries

1944-64

The procedures established to negotiate teachers' salaries in the years after 1944 took for granted that the convergence of educational interests which had characterized the reconstruction period would continue indefinitely. 1 The fact that the Ministry of Education was left out of direct negotiations, except as an observer, implied the absence of any national economic or political interests which had to be'represented overtly in the negotiations and integrated into the final settlement. When the demand for education increased in the 1950s and the question of the relationship between education and the needs of the community was reopened, this original assumption was progressively undermined and the existing negotiating procedures were inevitably subjected to increasing strain. Two different developments can be distinguished in the history of the settlement of teachers' salaries between 1944 and 1964. First, there was the growing, if somewhat sporadic, discontent of the teaching profession with its remuneration. Secondly, there was the less obtrusive, but persistent, increase in the concern of the central administration for the structure of teachers' salaries and their relationship to a national incomes policy. By the early 1960s 1 In April 1944, Mr. R. A. Butler announced the constitution of two Burnham Committees instead of the existing three to service the reformed educational system. The Burnham Main Committee was to negotiate salaries for teachers in all types of primary and secondary schools. The Teachers' Panel of this Committee was to be composed of the following representatives: N.U.T. 16, A.T.T.I. 4, Joint Four 6. The Authorities' Panel had the following representatives: C.C.A. 9, A.M.C. 6, A.E.C. 6, L.C.C. 3, and Welsh Joint Committee 2. After years of pressure by the N.A.S. and a number of Conservative M.P.s sympathetic to the cause, the Minister of Education in 1961 agreed that the N.A.S. should have two representatives on the Burnham Committee. The N.A.H.T. was also given a representative at the same time. Under the terms of the Remuneration of Teachers Bill introduced in November 1964 the central government was brought directly into the negotiation machinery on the management side, and thus ended the Committee as it operated throughout the period here under review, 1944 to 1964.

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109

it was obvious that there existed a deep policy division between the teachers and the central administration, based on distinctly different views of the response required from the educational system to the new demands being placed upon it. This conflict of interest between the teachers and the central administration, as it manifested itself in bargaining about teachers' salaries, could not be resolved in the Burnham Main Committee. The institutions and procedures of the Burnham Committee were devised in a period of educational harmony, when the demands on the educational system were low and the interest of the community in the educational service was negligible. They were designed to settle an "economic" question between employers and employees. In the 1950s the argument gradually shifted from inside the Burnham Main Committee to debate and settlement in the political system outside it as the Committee proved unable to adapt itself to and secure a procedure for salary settlements in harmony with the changing needs of the educational system (a career salary structure) and the economy (an incomes policy).

Discontent among the teachers In the first ten years after its reorganization in 1944 the Burnham Main Committee was the scene of four sets of full negotiations and two requests (one abortive and one successful) for cost-ofliving increases. 1 With the exception of the challenge from the 1 The basic scale agreed in 1944 (£300 to £525 for men and £270 to £420 for women) involved substantial increases in the salaries of those teachers who had previously been serving under elementary school regulations. Grammar school teachers came off much less well, prompting their "agitation" against the new committee. There was curiously little controversy about the settlement of 1948 which made only marginal changes in the previous award. Despite this, teachers' average salary increased from 107 per cent of the basic salary to 109 per cent, where it remained until the 1956 award, suggesting the importance of considering the intensity of use, as well as the structure, of additions and allowances. In 1949, in response to a demand from the teachers for an increase to restore the relativities in salary scales disturbed by advances to other professional workers, the Authorities' Panel made a tentative offer of £75 for men and £60 for women. In September the pound was devalued and Cripps and Attlee appealed for the maintenance of incomes at existing levels. Accordingly, the Authorities' Panel withdrew its offer. In 1950 a new agreement was negotiated which involved a scale for men of £375 to £630 and for women of £338 to £504. In 1951 a special claim for an increase on the basic scale was made on the grounds of increases in the cost of living. After the Authorities' Panel

IIO

TEACHERS AND POLITICS

Joint Four over the unification of the previously separate committees for elementary and secondary teachers, 1 no serious differences disturbed the settlement of teachers' salaries during these years. After 1954, however, the discontent which grew among teachers about their salary scales increasingly took on the character of an express challenge to the political settlement of 1944. These grounds for discontent about the material condition of the teaching profession may be related to the sectional interests in the profession, the problem of creating an acceptable structure of salary differentials, and the apparently deep-rooted feeling of teachers that society has not given the profession its due.

(a) Salary changes and sectional interests In 1944 the NcNair Committee, outlining the salary needs consistent with a new view of education in the postwar period, specified four tests for teachers' salaries. (a) a test of personal need: they should make possible the kind of life which teachers of the quality required ought to be enabled to live; (b) a market test: they should bear a relationship to the earnings of other professions and occupations so that the necessary supply of teachers of the right quality will be forthcoming; (c) a professional test: they should not give rise to anomalies or injustices within the teaching profession; and (d) an educational test: they should not have consequences which damage the efficiency of the education provided in any particular type of school or area. 2 refused, an appeal to the Minister to intervene was also turned down but in terms which encouraged the reopening of negotiations. Eventually, an independent tribunal recommended £40 for men and £32, for women and this was accepted. In 1953 the Burnham Main Committee negotiated an agreement which gave the teachers a scale of £450 to £725 to take effect April 1, 1954. 1 The Joint Four publicly announced they did not support the proposals of the 1944 agreement but offered no counter-proposals. The N.U.T. regarded this action as a threat to the settlement and to the combined basis of the new Committee. The Joint Four undertook a campaign, with the House of Commons its target, to have the agreement and the machinery that produced it set aside. Mr. Butler settled the matter in the House, arguing that the Education Act of 1944 defined secondary education in a new way and the grammar school teachers would have to accustom themselves to it. Unrest continued among grammar school teachers until the mid-195os when it became clear that the grammar schools were not in danger and that salary differentials were beginning to widen. 2 Great Britain, Board of Education, Teachers and Youth Leaders,

THE SETTLEMENT OF TEACHERS' SALARIES

II I

While there is nothing about the application of these criteria which necessarily reduces the argument over salaries between employers and employees, they do represent the convergence of educational interests in the reconstruction period on which the operation of the Burnham Main Committee was predicated. It is instructive to consider postwar salary changes in terms of them. The test of personal need involves consideration of changes in the absolute and relative standards of living of the teaching profession. Table I compares salary scales for teachers in 1964 with those effective in 1956 and 1938. A teacher's salary in 1956 had to be about three times what it was in 1938 for him to maintain his absolute standard of living and about three-and-a-half-times to enable him to keep his place in the community. 1 In fact, between 1938 and 1956 teachers did considerably less well than even the minimum 300 per cent increase necessary to maintain their absolute standard of living. Even if one conceded that teachers' salaries were relatively high in 1938 because of the success with which the Union had fought salary cuts during a period of falling prices, the decline is still remarkable. 2 After 1956, however, this relative decline was reversed. To maintain a 1956 standard of consumption in 1964 a teacher had to have a salary increase of the order of 122 to 124 per cent. 3 To maintain an equal share in the country's higher standard of living his 1956 salary had to increase by 154 to 159 per cent. Column 5 of Table I shows that, with the important exception of qualified men at the bottom of the scale, teachers maintained and even improved their relative standard of living between 1956 and 1964. The market test proposed by the McNair Committee requires a comparison of changes in teachers' salaries with changes in the earnings of other professions. Such a comparison shows that the relative decline between 1938 and 1956 was not limited to teachers. It was shared by other salaried workers. While the country was 7 per cent richer on the average in 1956 than it had been in 1938, a Report of the Committee to Consider the Supply, Recruitment and Training of Teachers and Youth Leaders (McNair Committee) (London, H.M.S.O., 1944), p. 32. 1 The Economist, January 21, 1956, p. 185. 2 Teachers would certainly not accept that teachers' salaries were relatively high in 1938. They regard them as just the reverse. The McN air Committee concurred in this judgement, calling teachers' salaries "demonstrably inadequate" and recommending substantial increases. 3 The Economist, May 30, 1964, p. 926.

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TEACHERS AND POLITICS

Prewar

(£)

1956 as % 1964 as % 1964 as % of prewar of 1956 of prewar

1956

(£)

Graduates Men (4 yrs. training) 249-480 Women (4 yrs. training) 228-384

546-821

880-1500

219-171

161-183

353-313

492-681

880-1500

216-177

179-220

386-391

Qualified Men Women

450-725 411-601

630-1250 630-1250

250-198 254-209

140-172 153-208

350-342 389-434

180-366 162-288

Table

I Salary scales of teachers on the Burnham scale: prewar, 1956, and 1964. (Source: The Economist, May 30, 1964, p. 927)

wide group of professional workers was 15 to 30 per cent poorer. When 1964 was compared with 1956, however, the professional workers had much less cause to complain. Every type of salary earner considered in The Economist's analysis had at least maintained their 1956 standard of consumption; and many, like the teachers, had maintained or even improved their share in the country's higher standard of living. The third criterion stated by the McNair Committee, the professional test, pertained to the internal equity of the salary structure of the teaching profession. 1 A narrowing of salary differentials in the teaching profession was favoured by the circumstances of the immediate postwar years: the prevailing social idealism of the period, the Union's aspiration for a united profession, the change from selective secondary education to secondary education for all established in the Education Act of 1944, and the general upgrading of working-class incomes relative to middle-class incomes. 2 Table 1 shows that between 1938 and 1956 the percentage increases of salary scales were greater for qualified teachers than for graduates and greater at the minimum than at the maximum. Between 1956 and 1964 salary differentials increased in the teaching profession as percentage increases in salaries were greater 1 Additions above the basic scale are made to a teacher's salary if the teacher is a graduate, with provision for a higher addition for a "good" honours degree; if he teaches in London or in a school designated as being of exceptional difficulty; or if he has undertaken further pedagogical studies after joining the profession. Allowances above the basic scale are made for teachers who have positions of special responsibility in schools: head teachers, deputy head teachers, heads of departments, and three levels of graded posts. 2 It seems likely that the relative improvement of the elementary teachers after the war was associated with the general improvement of working-class incomes.

THE SETTLEMENT OF TEACHERS' SALARIES

113

for graduates than for non-graduates and greater at the maximum than at the minimum. From March 1947 to October 1959, the average income of teachers rose from 7 per cent above the basic salary to 13 per cent above it. 1 Table 2 shows that the increases in allowances over this period had the effect of widening salary differentials among groups of teachers. In both 1953 and 1959 grammar school teachers held more generous allowances than either primary or modern school teachers and changes between these dates favoured the grammar school teacher. The secondary modern teacher also appears to have gained more than the primary school teacher. While immediately after the war it is certain it was smaller, by 1959 the differential between the average income of qualified primary school teachers and grammar school graduates All Primary primary & secondary Proportion of teachers with allowance ( %) 1953 Head 12·5

Special Post 17·8 Both 30·3 1959 Head 10·5 Special Post 3 1 ·7 Both 42·4

Secondary Secondary Secondary modern grammar

16·7 II 8 28·5 16·4 16·4 32·8

5·6 27·2 32·7 4·4 50·5 54·9

6·7 18·8 25·5 5·1 39·6 44·6

4'4 44·6 48·9 4·7 69·2 73·9

121 62 97 272 107 190

285 85 II9 641 165

209 71 107 539 130 177

481 95 130 872 199 231

26 79

49 171

0

Average value of allowance

(£)

1953 Head 149 Special Post 75 Both 105 1959 Head 345 Special Post 149 Both 198 Average value of allowance per teacher employed (£) 1953 30 1959 83

29 62

203

33 I II

Table 2. Analysis of non-personal allowances other than London allowance by type of school, March 1953 and October 1959. (Source: Frieda Conway, "School Teachers' Salaries, 1945-1959", Manchester School of Economics and Social Studies, XXX (May 1962), p. 169) 1 Frieda Conway, "School Teachers' Salaries", Manchester School of Economics and Social Studies, XXX (May 1962), 166-7.

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TEACHERS AND POLITICS

was probably very similar to that between the incomes of elementary school teachers and grammar school teachers with degrees in 1938, roughly 77 per cent. 1 The National Advisory Council on the Training and Supply of Teachers reported a serious shortage of graduates to teach science and mathematics in December 1953. Its findings may be taken as the turning point in Government policy on salary differentials in the teaching profession. In approving the 1954 salary scales the Minister expressed the hope that the local authorities would make more generous use of the possibilities for granting special allowances. When an investigation by the Ministry into use of allowances in 1954-55 showed that over the whole country only half the sum available was being used, the Minister asked the Burnham Committee to review:the situation and a more generous interpretation of the section of the 1954 report concerning special allowances was agreed. Again at the Minister's urging the 1956 Burnham Committee report discontinued the system of special allowances and replaced it by provision for the appointment of deputy head teachers and heads of departments and the creation of three levels of graded posts. The intention of the new system was to reduce variations from one area and one school to another and to set up a graded "career structure" for teachers' salaries. At the time the leaders of the N.U.T. regarded acceptance of the scheme as necessary to assuage the unrest of the Joint Four and maintain the unity of the Teachers' Panel. The shortages of mathematics and science teachers demonstrated by the N.A.C.T.S.T. created a rationale for improving the system of allowances. Successive Ministers had interested themselves in the problem and directed their influence and the implicit threat of intervention at obtaining improvements. In contrast with this persistent pressure from the Ministry, the local authorities, and the secondary associations to accept the scheme, the Union's leadership encountered little immediate resistance from its rank and file, which was much more concerned about the basic scale. Nonetheless, however sympathetically the leaders of the Union may have regarded the need to support the local authorities in devising a stronger career structure, they were not for long able to ignore the concern and the discontent of important sectional interests in the Union about the tendency to widen differentials. 1

Conway, ibid., p. 173.

THE SETTLEMENT OF TEACHERS' SALARIES

II5

The provisions of the scheme agreed in 1956 virtually assured that this concern and discontent would deepen. The additions and allowances introduced in 1956 were based upon a teacher's qualifications, length of service, and responsibilities, each long acceptable to the Union as a criterion for variations in salaries; 1 but two basic problems of salary differentials in the teaching profession went unresolved. The first problem was that the number of allowances allotted to each school was determined by the number of pupils in the school weighted by a points formula which favoured older pupils. Secondary schools are larger than primary schools and have the older pupils. Consequently, many more allowances have been available to secondary teachers, particularly to grammar school teachers, than to primary teachers. The primary-secondary differential in the points formula was said to be justified by the greater administrative responsibilities in secondary schools and the need for more advanced, specialized academic work. Teachers in primary schools, however, saw the differential as implying that older pupils were more important than younger ones and that secondary schools were more important than primary schools. They were unhappy about accepting this apparent reflection on their status and prestige, to say nothing of the reduction in the possibilities to increase their incomes. Ending the primarysecondary differential thus became one of the principal objectives of the selective strikes in the autumn of 1967, and a significant change in the formula was finally achieved. 2 The second problem connected with the pattern of salary 1 These criteria were first stated by Sir Frederick Mander, then General Secretary, in 1935 and confirmed at the 1939 Annual Conference. See S. E. Barnes, "Individual, Local and National Bargaining for Teachers' Salaries-a Study of the Period 1858-1944", unpublished doctoral dissertation, London University, 1960, p. 358. 2 The number of positions in a school for which allowances could be made was determined before April 1969, by the number of pupils in the school weighted by a points formula which assigned one unit for each pupil under age 13, two units for pupils aged 13 and under 15, four units for each pupil aged 15 and under 16, six units for each pupil aged 16 and under 17, and ten units for each pupil aged 17 and over. As a result of an agreement reached in the Burnham Committee in November 1968, from April 1969 the weighting of pupils under age 13 was increased from one to one and one-half points, thus increasing the number of posts above the basic scale in the primary schools by approximately nine thousand. (See The Teacher, November 22, 1968, pp. 1, 8.) Since the policy of the N.U.T. and the Teachers' Panel had been to get a weighting of one and one-half points for all pupils under age 15, presumably there will be further representations on the matter.

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TEACHERS AND POLITICS

differentials arises from the effect of differential possibilities for promotion. As Table 3 illustrates, in the early 1960s graduates had better promotion prospects than non-graduates. Although the differential between men and women decreased with the introduction of equal pay, men still had better promotion prospects than women. Hence the differentials between primary and secondary schools were affected for both graduates and nongraduates by differences in their chances for promotion. By comparing the average salaries of teachers with different training in different types of schools it is possible to rank the "average career" possibilities as follows: (1) men secondary graduates, (2) men primary graduates and women secondary graduates, (3) men primary non-graduates and women primary graduates, (4) men secondary non-graduates, (5) women primary non-graduates and women secondary non-graduates. Consideration of salary changes in the light of the four tests for teachers' salaries enunciated by the McNair Committee in 1944 thus reveals one explanation for the antagonism demonstrated by different groups of teachers against postwar salary settlements. Comparative data on salary changes show that teachers experienced a considerable decline in their standard of living between 1938 and 1956 but that this was an experience shared by other salaried workers. In the case of the teachers the campaign against the Superannuation Bills from 1954 to 1956 provided the occasion for mobilizing the rank and file and articulating their dissatisfaction. The effect of the discontent created by this postwar experience may be judged, for example, from the explanation of The Schoolmaster (November 28, 1958) as to why a Special Conference of the N.U.T. had just rejected a 5 per cent increase in salaries. The rejection is an expression of the Union's feeling, built up during the post-war period, that the local education authorities as employers of teachers have not met the profession's just salary claims. Why should teachers' salaries, which were admittedly too low before the war, be even lower today when present-day figures are converted into their pre-war values? The basic scale maximum paid today is worth much less than the former Burnham Scale III maximum of £366. The Authorities would like to forget this comparison, but the teaching profession intends to remind them of it until their claims are satisfied. After the first world war the real salaries of teachers were considerably improved compared with the relevant pre-war period, but the reverse has happened since the end of the second world war.

THE SETTLEMENT OF TEACHERS' SALARIES

Primary school teachers Age Men grads Men non-

grads

25 25-29 3o-34 35-39 4o-44 45-49 5o-54 55-59 60-64 65 and over

810 912

uo9

1317 1499 1612 1650 1641 1601

623 774 1004 1230

13u

1363 1400 1460 1458

Women grads 846 890 1003 n33

1260 1351 1421 1465 1440

117

Women nongrads 631 767 92 3

1052 n46

1219 1249 1263 1268 1227

Total averages 1406

1233

1196

1024

Women grads

Women nongrads

835 985 1229 1438 1568 1677 1667 1690 1698

658 812 1004

Secondary school teachers Age

Men grads

25 25-29 30-34 35-39 4o-44 45-49 50-54 55-59 60-64 65 and over

836 997 1265 1509 1665 1741 1794 1792 1753

Total averages 1405

Men nongrads 657 810 1023

1221 1303 1330 1358 1395 1386

n34

1203 1257 1295 1331 1308 1244

1124

1319

99°

Table 3 Teachers' average salaries, March 1963 (£). (Source: Great Britain, Ministry of Education, Statistics of Education, Part 3: r963

(London: H.M.S.O., 1964), pp. 78-9)

Whether one accepts this view of teachers' salaries is not especially important. What is relevant is that teachers believed it to be true, and the belief strongly coloured their political action in the years to come. I

II8

TEACHERS AND POLITICS

The data also suggest how sectional interests in the profession were differently affected by the salary changes. In the first decade after the war non-graduate teachers did improve their salaries relative to graduate teachers. Differentials inside the profession were narrowed, and it is not surprising that the Joint Four Associations opposed this trend. After the changes in the structure of allowances and additions in 1956, however, they retreated into relative quiescence; and the N.U.T. and the N.A.S. emerged as the dissident groups. In the second decade after the war all the changes ran against important elements of the Union's membership. The differential between primary and secondary teachers widened. So did that between the grammar school teacher and the secondary modern teacher. As a result of poorer promotion prospects non-graduate men teaching in secondary modern schools were particularly badly placed; and they have been an important source of discontent inside the Union. (b) The under-valuation of the teaching profession The discontent among teachers with their salaries cannot be completely explained by the level of salary scales and their differential impact on sectional interests in the profession. It is useful to be reminded at this point that other professional groups have been as dissatisfied as the teachers with their salary earnings. In part, this is a reflection of the fact that British economic growth over the past ten years has not been sufficient to support the country's commitments abroad and at the same time satisfy aspirations for higher standards of living at home. The teachers, like everyone else, have campaigned for a larger share of a cake which is growing too slowly to accommodate everyone's demands. Teachers are affected, too, by the general anxiety created by the "creeping" inflation which seems endemic to the British economy and which requires everyone to keep running just to stand still. The demonstrated success of salary- earners in maintaining their relative standard of living from 1956 to 1964 indicates that general economic factors do not completely account for the degree of discontent some groups have shown. The salary demands of many professional groups seem to be determined less by how much their incomes have fallen behind prices or the incomes of other professional groups and more by a deep-rooted feeling that society is not giving them their due in terms of status and prestige. That this

THE SETTLEMENT OF TEACHERS' SALARIES

119

is true at least for teachers is suggested by the view they take of negotiations in the Burnham Main Committee. A comment by Sir Ronald Gould in his 1956 article for the Yearbook of Education on "Factors Affecting Teachers' Salaries in England and Wales" is revealing. The employers are guided by what they consider the salary level necessary to attract sufficient recruits of the right quality to the profession; the teachers do not dissent from this, but they place more emphasis on a salary level which would reflect the high regard in which the profession should be held, and which is comparable with that seen to be obtainable in other professions. 1 One implication of "a salary level which would reflect the high regard in which the profession should be held" is that any decision about that level is a political one about the social value to be attached to particular jobs, not an economic one. Where the institutions for settling a salary claim are based on the assumption of an economic rather than a political decision, as was the case with the Burnham Main Committee, it seems inevitable that negotiations must move outside them to be settled. Moreover, it is possible to avoid conflict, frustration, and discontent only where the teachers and the public broadly agree on what social value shall be attached to education and the teaching profession. Where they do not, some kind of breakdown is likely. This is what has happened in recent years in the negotiation of teachers' salaries. The salary demands made by the teachers have been increasingly unrealistic in terms of what has appeared to be economically or politically possible. Teachers have, in fact, done better than many other groups in the past ten years. The salaries actually achieved by teachers, especially the internal shifts in pay structure, are reasonably in line with economic realities. 2 Furthermore, public attitudes toward the pay and status of teachers seem to support these economic realities. A private survey carried out for the N.U.T. at the beginning of 1959 found that the general public rates the social value of teachers highly, has fairly realistic ideas about what they are now paid, regards it as desirable that teachers 1 Ronald Gould, "Factors Affecting Teachers' Salaries in England and Wales" in Robert King Hall and J. A. Lauwerys (eds.), Yearbook of Education, I956 (Education and Economics) (New York: World Book Co., 1956), p. 456. 2 John Vaizey, Teaching in a Modern Economy, Joseph Payne Memorial Lectures (London: College of Preceptors, 1962), p. 11.

120 TEACHERS AND POLITICS should be better off now than they were before the war, and thinks that what teachers are now paid is reasonable enough. This suggests that the agents of the community in this area of policymaking-the Authorities' Panel and the Minister-have accurately reflected their constituents in their dealings with the teachers. From the teachers' point of view they only confirm the feeling that the society undervalues the teaching profession.

The role of the N.U.T. Conference The Annual Conference of the N. U. T. has already been described as having primarily a stimulative rather than a policy-making function. The Radical norms of democratic government, prominent in the Union's political culture, accord a place of special importance to the representative body of the membership; and this is reflected in the Union's constitution which places ultimate governing authority in the Conference. It is only in exceptional circumstances, however, that Conference emerges from the handicaps of its size and the composition of its membership to intervene in the policy-making process inside the Union. Teachers' discontent with their salaries has provided such exceptional circumstances. Taking advantage of the constitutional position of the Conference and the sanction of Radical norms for democratic action, dissatisfied elements in the Union's membership were able to press their policies upon the leadership to such an extent that the possibilities for bargaining in the Burnham Committee were severely limited. The result was an important element in the gradual shift of the argument over teachers' salaries from inside the Committee to debate and settlement in the political system outside it. The more assertive role of Conference in the question of teachers' salaries began at the Annual Conference in April 1954, following the 1954 salary award. A resolution instructing the Executive to secure a basic scale of £500 to £9oowas proposed; and, according to its usual practice, the Executive opposed the inclusion of definite figures in the salary resolution. They were over-ridden by the Conference by 96,202 votes to 83,651, the first time the Conference had successfully pinned the Executive down to securing anything more than "the best possible award". The 1956 Annual Conference, coming after the increase in superannuation contributions and in the middle of Burnham negotiations, tightened this constraint by instructing the Union's

THE SETTLEMENT OF TEACHERS' SALARIES

121

negotiators not to agree to a scale less than £500 to £1050 and by defeating the Executive amendment to get a "satisfactory agreement" by 102,244 votes to 101,070. When the Burnham negotiations resumed, the Authorities' Panel produced a "final offer" of £475 to £87 5. If this offer was refused, they threatened to call a press conference and make public the fact that the teachers were refusing to negotiate. The teachers' representatives on the Committee believed that in such a confrontation "public support" would lie with the authorities. Gould was sharply aware that the narrow rejection of the Executive's amendment in Conference indicated the membership was too divided to contemplate militant action in support of their demands. The leaders themselves were quite prepared to accept a lower offer. After some argument the N.U.T. representatives decided that they were elected to lead salary negotiations, that the position had materially changed since their instructions had been issued by Conference, and that they must do what they thought best. An agreement was quickly reached on a basic scale of £475 to £900 for men and £430 to £720 for women, and both the Executive and the Special Conference endorsed the action. The dissenters at Conference could not muster enough votes to have a card vote taken. The Schoolmaster on May 18th concluded, perhaps too optimistically in view of later events, that the effect on the membership of taking a salaries decision in a structured situation was economic and political realism: "It is fair to say ... that Conference was aware that it was facing a real situation in which suppositions and hypotheses did not help. In such a situation Conference traditionally exhibits sound sense. It wanted a clean and clear-cut decision with no ifs and buts." The N.U.T. Conference took a further step into salary negotiations in November 1958 when for the first time it rejected a provisional agreement reached in the Burnham Committee and recommended by the N.U.T. Executive. The salary resolution adopted by the Annual Conference in April 1958 instructed the Executive to obtain a complete review of teachers' salaries. This was rejected by the Authorities' Panel but provisional agreement was reached on a 5 per cent interim increase from January 1, 1959, with a new agreement to begin on April 1, 196o. The N.U.T. Executive accepted this compromise and voted twenty-nine to thirteen to recommend the offer be accepted by the Special Conference. The Executive resolution to accept the award was opposed

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in the Special Conference with the argument that it should be rejected in favour of a fight with no liabilities, and after some lively debate the resolution of the Executive majority was lost 112,893 votes to 100,596. When the authorities refused to negotiate further, only the intervention of the Minister secured first an interim increase and later a final settlement. The dissatisfaction of the teachers which had appeared in 1954, 1956, and 1958 was even more marked in 1961, as not only did the Special Conference reject the provisional agreement of May 30th but it was recommended to do so by the Union's National Executive. The Burnham agreement reached in 1959 had been agreed to last until March 31, 1962. By December 1960, the teachers decided to ask for negotiations to terminate the award no later than March 31, 1961. The teachers' claim, argued a leading article in The Schoolmaster on December 9th, was based upon "the disturbed relativities which have had the effect of placing teachers in a much lower position among the salaried groups and upon the importance of education and teachers to the community". On May 30, 1961, provisional agreement was reached in the Burnham Committee. The total cost of the proposals would be £47½ million, nine-tenths of which would be applied to the basic scale. The scale would be £600 by increments of £30 to £1200 and would include four "booster" increments for teachers in their middle twenties and thirties. On June 2nd, after a debate of nine hours, the N.U.T. Executive decided to recommend that the Special Conference reject the offer. In addition to the shortcomings of the basic scale the Teachers' Panel had been unable to obtain either an earlier starting date than January 1, 1962, or the equalizing changes desired in the points system. The motion to recommend acceptance was voted down twenty-six to fifteen. A motion to accept the award provided the starting date was moved forward to October 1, 1961, was amended to advise complete rejection; and the amendment was passed twenty to nineteen. For the first time the Executive went to a Special Conference recommending rejection of the agreement reached by the Teachers' Panel. Conference was to be asked to approve a token one-day strike by all N.U.T. members and a complete withdrawal of teachers in selected areas for an extended period if a deadlock was reached in Burnham.

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At the Conference an amendment to reject only the starting date failed without a card vote, indicative of the difference in feeling between the Conference and the Executive; and a decision to seek the reopening of negotiations on a wide front rather than on particular points of dispute was passed by II8,015 votes to 99,286. A second amendment to call another Special Conference if negotiations broke down was rejected 117,575 to 101,447. The result was somewhat ambiguous for there was no time to vote directly on the resolution to strike. The Executive assumed it would have been approved and considered a plan of action was agreed if negotiations failed. Mr. Selwyn Lloyd's "Little Budget" of July 25th raised by the full 10 per cent the consumer tax regulator, increased the bank rate to 7 per cent, and squeezed Government spending and bank advances. Popular reaction to the measures taken to meet the balance of payments crisis concentrated on the "pay pause", which, it was thought, would slow down the wage-price spiral for a few months and allow time for a long-term incomes policy to be agreed and implemented. Because the financial measures and the pay pause were announced together there could be no prior consultation about implementing the pay pause. 1 As a result those involved in the particular task of negotiating teachers' salaries were unaware until the very last that their frame of reference had been torn apart. Although Dr. Alexander already had Eccles' agreement to approve an award of £47½ million, the decision of the N.U.T. Special Conference to reject the award left the state of negotiations uncertain. Considering the mood in the Treasury, Eccles probably had some difficulty in the Cabinet to save a £42 million award for the teachers. Because of the impossibility for any consultation the teachers were presented with a f ait accompli, the Minister's freedom to manoeuvre being narrowly constrained by Government economic policy. However, the Ministry of Education now determined to push the matter even further. It seized the opportunity created by the economic crisis to obtain an adjustment in the career structure of teachers' salaries and to .associate the Minister more closely with negotiations. This move by the Ministry reflected a deepening concern on the part of the central administration about its role in the settlement of teachers' salaries. 1 S. Brittan, The Treasury Under the Tories (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1964), pp. 237-8.

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Concern at the Ministry Perhaps the most curious feature about the original constitution of the Burnham Main Committee was the absence of the Ministry of Education as a party to the negotiations. It was rumoured that the Minister played an important role behind the scenes in the Authorities' Panel, but it was never publicly admitted. Both Sir Ronald Gould and Sir William Alexander always insisted on the Committee's freedom from Ministerial interference. In a debate in the House of Commons in March 1963 Sir Edward Boyle was asked if he had had discussions with the employers' panel. He replied, The answer is "No". I am not sure that perhaps all hon. Members realize how closely the Ministry of Education is in touch with local authority associations on all sorts of educational topics. It is certainly true that during the long period since last June [1962], while these negotiations have been going on, the opportunity has been taken for informal exchanges of views about teachers' salaries with representatives of their associations but I never asked them, and the associations have never made any commitment, about the course they intended to pursue. Any informal discussions have left the associations completely free to formulate the policy which guides their members on the employers' panel. 1 There were no official discussions with the Authorities' Panel, and they entered into no commitments. Representatives on the Authorities' Panel were simply informed of the Minister's views and were expected to take account of them in formulating their offer. The Minister was always kept well informed of developments in the Committee and the implications of any proposals put forward. Ministry officials on the Committee provided the means of communication between the Minister and the Committee, "an office which may test the ingenuity as well as the ability of a man to deal with delicate situations". 2 There are two explanations why the Minister was prepared to accept what amounted to bilateral negotiations (as long as he kept his power of refusal in reserve). First, formal provision for tripartite negotiations is the exception rather than the rule in British 1

Reported in the Times Educational Supplement, March 29, 1963,

p. 657.

2 The Schoolmaster, September 14, 1950, p. 290, commenting on the retirement of Sir Griffith Williams, who had been in charge at the Ministry of arrangements for the Burnham Committee.

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industrial relations. 1 Secondly, the arrangements reflected the conventions which had grown up inside the educational partnership in the interwar years. Any attempt by the Ministry to intervene directly in negotiations would have been taken by teachers and authorities as an attempt to upset the existing distribution of power. Given the circumstances in which the Burnham Main Committee was set up in 1944, the Ministry had neither the desire nor the need to participate actively in negotiations. The informality of the Ministry's association inevitably resulted in some misunderstandings and a certain amount of subterfuge; but, as long as the assumptions on which the Committee was established remained relevant, the arrangements were effective. The interests of the local education authorities and the Ministry lay in the same direction. To reach a settlement the Authorities' Panel might press beyond what the Minister had recommended to them; but in doing so they had to remember that, if they went too far, he could reject the settlements and many of their members would happily support him. Like the leaders of the Teachers' Panel, the leaders of the Authorities' Panel had the not impossible task of managing a number of disparate interests. Only when the nature of the teachers' demands began to change, forcing the parties outside the Committee for a settlement, and Ministry officials felt increasingly compelled to assert the needs of a rapidly expanding service did the old negotiating machinery finally break down. The convention respecting the Minister's passive role in Burnham proceedings was established at the outset by the first Minister of Education, R. A. Butler. At an early stage in the 1944 negotiations there was disagreement between the Panels about the basis and method of negotiations, and the guidance of the Minister was sought. Butler described this approach to the Minister in a situation of deadlock as unprecedented and not normal for the future. In the past Panels had gone to the Chairman for arbitration and the Government wanted this to continue. If agreed proposals did not reach the Minister, there would be no national scales. Sir Frederick Mander concluded from this that a refusal by a panel to accept proposals made by the other side does not lock, bolt and bar the door to a settlement. There is still a national alternative-arbitration. But if compromise and arbitration are both 1 H. A. Clegg, "After Burnham What? Tripartite Salary Negotiations", Education, June 7, 1963, pp. 1128-9.

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refused, there is no national alternative. Such a refusal constitutes a plain repudiation of the system of national bargaining established by the new Act-and no other is now possible. In such circumstances the only alternative is local bargaining. 1

This was certainly the view taken in the immediate postwar years. In 1944 it brought the N.U.T. and A.T.T.I. to agree to the authorities' proposals on graduate additions, for example; and it provided the pressure to prevent a breakdown in negotiating the 1950 settlement. The passive position of the Minister enunciated by Butler and accepted by Mander in 1944 was progressively eroded after 1950 from two different directions. First, when the teachers found themselves facing deadlock in their negotiations with the local authorities and unable to get a satisfactory agreement, they did not hesitate to appeal for the Minister to intervene to prevent a breakdown and secure a settlement satisfactory to each side. In the autumn of 1951 the Teachers' Panel submitted a claim to the Burnham Main Committee for a revision of the basic salary scale as a result of the rapid rise in the cost of living. When no agreement could be reached with the Authorities' Panel, the Executive of the N.U.T. requested that the Minister (Miss Horsbrugh) use her good offices to secure a settlement. Because of procedural niceties the deputation making the request to the Minister was to be composed, not of the Teachers' Panel, but of the individual organizations represented on it. The Minister was not distracted by this procedure and refused to take any action at the behest of the constituents of one Panel only, since this would only undermine the Burnham Committee. Significantly, the Minister did indicate that she would be prepared to consider whether there was anything she could do to assist if she were approached by the Burnham Committee as a whole. Fortified by what seemed a favourable attitude from the Government, the Teachers' Panel asked for and received an opportunity for further negotiations which proved successful without further resort to the Minister. The Minister's promise of help became a reality in 1959. In the autumn of 1958 the Special Conference of the N.U.T. voted to reject the Burnham Committee's tentative agreement of a 5 per cent interim increase and demanded a complete and immediate review of teachers' salaries. The Authorities' Panel refused even to 1

The Schoolmaster, December 13, 1945, p. 485.

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consult its constituents on the question of complete negotiations before April 1, 1960; and the N.U.T. was left as its only alternative to try to coax the Authorities into negotiations through the Minister. The Minister agreed that the Burnham Committee should resume its functions, but only if both panels were prepared to discuss the matters at issue without preconceived ideas about the outcome could the Committee reasonably be asked to resume its meetings. The Teachers' Panel unanimously agreed to the conditions and a meeting was arranged. At that meeting of the Burnham Main Committee it was agreed to open negotiations for a new award. In the interim the teachers accepted an increase of 5 per cent on the 1956 terms of agreement. The N.U.T. Executive voted thirty-five to two to recommend acceptance of the proposals, and the Conference agreed by an overwhelming majority. The resort to the Minister on two separate occasions in the 1950s is understandable in view of the failure of the 1944 machinery to provide any means of arbitration outside the Committee (which is, in itself, indicative of the atmosphere in which the machinery was created). Nonetheless, it did serve to draw the Minister publicly into the proceedings and undoubtedly made it much more difficult to object when he directly asserted his interest in the settlements of 1961 and 1963. The second set of events tending to undermine the passive position of the Minister in salary negotiations reflected the divergence of educational interests in this, as in other, areas of policy under the pressure of rising educational demand in the second part of the 1950s. A direct expression of Ministerial concern about the structure of a salaries award occurred as early as 1954 when Miss Horsbrugh stated her assumption that local authorities would make more generous use of the special allowances and area pool now provided to create a more adequate "career" salary structure for teachers. The settlement of the 1956 award marked another hesitant step by the Minister into negotiating procedures. The 1956 award left the terminal date open; and the Minister gave his approval to it on the assumption that, except for some major change in circumstances, it would continue in force for the "normal" period of three years. The N.U.T. quickly pointed out that the assumption was not justified by the report and was unacceptable to the Union in an inflationary period. The matter was not pressed, but the Minister's concern to maintain relative stability

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in teachers' salaries pointed up their connection with national incomes policy and the problem of inflation. In fact, the report did remain in effect until 1959. In negotiating the 1959 award the Burnham Committee took the unprecedented step of announcing its provisional agreement on a basic scale of £520 to £I000 before other details has been completely settled. After a number of meetings between February and the end of May, the Authorities' Panel had made its "final offer", the above, and the teachers rejected it. At a meeting of Panel Leaders and the Chairman to try and resolve the deadlock, the teachers then learned for the first time that the Minister had already told the Authorities' Panel a settlement greater than £510 at the minimum would not secure his approval. When the Minister (Lloyd) addressed the Committee on June 5th, he accepted the need for an improvement in salaries but imposed a global limit of £15 million on the increases. This was exactly the sum involved in the final offer of local authorities. The Minister indicated the Government was satisfied with the general pattern of salaries, additions, and special allowances but found a minimum greater than £51 o unacceptable. The Leaders of both the Teachers' and the Authorities' Panels expressed regret that the Minister should have attempted to fix detailed provisions in a Burnham report. When the Authorities' Panel renewed its previous offer, including a minimum of £520, it was accepted. The Minister's expressed concern for the minimum salary disappeared when the agreement was presented to him for his approval. He merely informed the Burnham Committee that he was prepared to accept their recommendations because they had tried to meet his concern about non-inflationary proposals (that is, the agreement would last two and a half years). He accepted the £520 minimum, although he did not think "a sufficient case had been made out for the increase now proposed at the minimum of the basic scale either on educational grounds or in the light of the Government's policy of encouraging stability of wages and prices". He added, "I should expect, however, that due note would be taken of the views which I have expressed on this occasion when the time comes to undertake a further salary review.'' 1 In a reply to the Minister on behalf of the Committee the chairman indicated that it considered its duty was to give independent advice to the 1

The Schoolmaster, July 24, 1959, p. 175.

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Minister and could not be committed to any particular limitations for the future. The 1959 negotiations left behind them a deepening concern about the future of the Burnham Committee. Its machinery seemed to be creaking badly. Eighteen months had elapsed between the time the Teachers' Panel initiated negotiations and the time the new scales came into force. One tentative agreement had been rejected, and negotiations had been started again only by the Minister's intervention. In the end, agreement was again reached only as a result of direct interference by the Minister. The confrontation between the Ministry and the teachers arising out of the negotiations of 1961 was the most serious in negotiations from 1944 to 1964. The first phase of the dispute during the summer was touched off by the consequences with respect to teachers' salaries of the Government's measures to defend the value of the pound. The second phase was the result of the Ministry's effort to exploit this first dispute to get a more efficient structure of teachers' salaries. In his statement concerning the economic crisis in the House of Commons on July 25th, the Chancellor described the economic situation as such that the Government could not agree to the proposed pay increase for teachers which had been provisionally agreed in the Burnham Committee on May 30th and rejected by the Special Conference of the N.U.T. on June 17th. When the Minister of Education met the Burnham Committee the next morning he made three points. First, the Government could not agree to an overall increase of more than £42 million in teachers' salaries. Secondly, he would like to see the salary differentials contained in the proposed agreement retained or even increased. Thirdly, some arrangement had to be made for making the Minister's views on the salary settlement known to the Burnham Committee earlier in the negotiations. Experience has shown how difficult it is for all concerned if there are no recognized arrangements whereby the Minister can be associated with the Burnham Committee negotiations until the stage of approval of the ratified agreement is reached. The Government has decided, apart from the present economic situation, to open discussions on how the Minister can if necessary indicate to the Committee at an early stage in future negotiations his views on the size and nature of the salary

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settlement. This change is required to ensure that constructive use is made of the powers already vested in him to approve or reject the settlement. 1

The N.U.T. Executive refused to recognize the Minister's interference and instructed its representatives on the Burnham Committee to ignore the Minister's statement and reopen negotiations as instructed by the Special Conference. Following the precedent of the action taken by the Burnham Committee after the intervention of the Minister in 1959, the Teachers' Panel and the Authorities' Panel proceeded to ratify the provisional agreement of May 30th. This first phase of the dispute ended with the Minister maintaining his position but indicating his willingness to meet the Burnham Committee early in September. It had been dominated by the Government's general economic measures, the effect of which was to confront the teachers with a f ait accompli on their salary award. As such it represented nothing more than the consequences in the particular sector of education of the rather clumsy implementation of a general economic policy. During the second phase the issue of the career structure of teachers' salaries and the association of the Minister with future Burnham negotiations, which had been interjected into the affair, emerged as the matters of real importance. On September 4th the Minister met the Burnham Committee and told it the Government would not retreat. The Government now intended to introduce legislation to modify the Burnham Committee. The alternatives were to accept the £42 million limit and agree to redistribute this revised sum, in which case there would be no need to rush through further legislation; or to refuse, in which case the Government would pass new legislation to impose the cut and to give the Minister powers to amend recommendations from the Committee. He thought the former preferable, since legislation should be carefully worked out and the teacher's claim was urgent. He also indicated that the Government was prepared to accept an award without a terminating date so the Teachers' Panel could return to the Burnham Committee as soon as the financial crisis was over. The N.U.T. in turn prepared itself for a massive demonstration against the Government. Local associations began arranging 1

The Schoolmaster, July 28, 1961, p. 162.

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demonstrations and meetings of protest. The General Secretary announced a national campaign for ten thousand teachers to lobby Members of Parliament on October 24th, the day Parliament would reconvene (later changed to October 23rd). A national petition was organized calling for the full Burnham award and the preservation of free negotiating machinery. Individual teachers were urged to write their M.P.s or go to see them during the recess. The Executive proposed to ask the Special Conference, set for October 7th, to condemn the Ministry's use of an economic crisis to destroy the Burnham Committee. The Conference would also be asked to approve a programme of political activity which included the organization of joint protest with other interested bodies, the notice that N.U.T. members would withdraw from the school meals service beginning November 1st, a national strike for one day on October 24th, and strikes in selected local areas. On September 22nd, the Executive considered the widespread criticism in the membership of its plan for a "technical" strike under which teachers would continue to perform all their normal duties while refusing to work as state employees. It was decided to send all members a referendum paper asking whether they supported a levy of 5 per cent of gross salaries for a "technical" strike as recommended by the Executive or for an "industrial" strike. A second referendum paper was sent to 30,000 members in the areas likely to be called on to take direct action, asking whether they were willing to strike and what kind of strike action they were prepared to take. The results of the referenda were revealed at the Special Conference on October 7th. Of the 31,054 forms sent to selected areas, 85 per cent were returned. In presumably the most militant districts only half the membership was prepared to take direct action. Of these 44 per cent (13,579) of the membership favoured an "industrial" strike and only 6 per cent (1910) favoured a "technical" strike. Of the 207,951 forms sent out to the whole membership, 72 per cent were returned. Only 37 per cent (77,390) of the Union's membership was prepared to pay a levy for "industrial" strikes. Since Union rules then required 7 5 per cent of the membership to support a strike, sustained direct action could no longer be contemplated. Nonetheless, undeterred, the Conference decided teachers would resist with a national one-day strike on October 23rd; a mass lobby of M.P .s on the same day; a complete

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withdrawal of school meals duties before and after meals, starting on November 1st and continuing until the Executive ended it; and political action by joining the Labour party or protesting within the Conservative party, by writing M.P.s and persuading others to do so, and by making teachers' feelings known in the press. For the Executive of the N. U. T. the results of the referenda had a more sobering effect. The referenda had not included specific questions about a one-day strike or withdrawal from supervising school meals, but the Executive was aware that many members had serious misgivings about the proposed sanctions and that some had already determined not to follow the Union's policy. If the N.U.T. rejected and the Joint Four accepted, there might even be new support for reviving a Burnham Secondary Committee; and the Minister might not be so willing to refuse it as Butler had been in 1944. At a meeting on October 16th involving teachers, authorities, and Ministry, Eccles promised to delay the introduction of his legislation, provided the Burnham Committee accepted his salary scale and the N.U.T. withdrew its school meals sanctions and the one-day strike. The local authorities, for their part, undertook to start negotiations not later than July 1, 1962, for an award to begin April 1, 1963, and to resist any Government attempt at discriminatory action concerning the teachers' salary negotiating machinery. Two days later, without reference to the Special Conference, the N.U.T. Executive decided to support the proposed agreement by a vote of twenty-three to fifteen. It was explained that there had been no time to call a conference to ratify the Executive's decision, since it did not reach agreement until October 18th, the lobby and strike were set for October 23rd, and the Minister would have laid his Bill before Parliament if they took place. Still, it was understandable that many teachers were bewildered by the Executive's decision to accept. Deputations of teachers demanding explanations descended on Hamilton House all through October 23rd. Two hundred teachers held a meeting in the canteen, while a thousand more demonstrated outside. Fifteen hundred teachers paraded to within a mile of Parliament in an unofficial protest march. Many local associations held meetings passing resolutions against the Minister and condemning the Executive's decision. Early in March 1962, the Minister announced that the legislation

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to limit the powers of the Committee had been postponed. Discussions had been held with the N.U.T., as had been promised when the sanctions were removed and the settlement reached. More talks were promised before the introduction of any legislation, and the Minister invited these as he announced the withdrawal of the Bill from the Parliamentary queue. Exactly why the Bill was withdrawn is not known. The simplest explanation is that the teachers and the local authorities put up such a long and bitter fight that, in the compromise whereby they accepted his award, Eccles abandoned his plan for legislation. The Minister's advisers were divided on the subject. Some wanted to continue the legislation. Others thought the unreformed Committee should be given another chance on the supposition that the shock of intervention would take effect and both sides of the Burnham Committee would be more amenable in future. 1 Eccles also encountered some unexpected political opposition, presumably in the Cabinet. The Government was having difficulty in agreeing on its incomes policy to follow the pay pause. 2 The refusal of the Cabinet to choose between "unpalatable alternatives" with regard to an incomes policy as a whole may well have extended to the reconstruction of the Burnham Committee. Given the pressure of his clients, the division of his advisers and the indecision of his colleagues, Eccles had little choice but to concede. When it came, the Minister's statement was nicely timed to have the maximum effect on the fortunes of the moderates in the Union elections. The Schoolmaster concluded on March 16th, "Who can now doubt that we did right last October?" The Union elections for national officers seemed to confirm the judgement. Dawson and Miss Stewart, who had supported the original motion on June 2nd to accept the provisional agreement, won the two vice-presidencies from Darvill, Jones, and Whitfield, who had opposed it; and Barnett defeated Archbold for Treasurer. In retrospect, the turning point in the dispute was the result of the referenda revealed at the Special Conference on October 7th. Up to this point the teachers had some success in mobilizing pressure against the Government. The Minister, if he did expect support from the Authorities' Panel, did not get it. They were content to stand back and offend no one. The national press gave 1

Times Educational Supplement, March 1, 1963, p. 417; April S, 1963,

p. 7z3. K

2

Brittan, op. cit., p. z39.

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general support to the teachers' cause, although it is doubtful if this would have survived a strike. The teachers also managed to gain the indirect support of the influential unions of white-collar workers like the local government officers and the doctors. Against this array the Minister, supported by the Government, could threaten legislation; and in the end this was decisive. The Union could hope to fight only if it wielded a comparable kind of power. It could do this only if it were completely united and determined on direct action. A narrow majority of the Executive felt confident of this unity and of the militancy of the membership. The situation was a classic illustration of impasse in the departmental-pressure group relationship. The Minister of Education could not modify his fundamental position because of the Cabinet's economic policy; the Executive of the Union could not (or thought so) concede because the membership refused to accept a compromise. The referenda showed the Executive it had seriously misread the constraint of the membership. Deprived of real power the leadership of the Union at once concentrated on the issue of the Government's proposed legislation to modify Burnham Committee procedures. For it had also become clear by now that the Government's legislation was designed, not just to settle the current dispute, but to modify the course of all future negotiations. Once the restraints on one side were loosened, a settlement was quickly reached. The conclusion of the trend of negotiations in the Burnham Main Committee came with surprising suddenness. At a meeting on January 24, 1963, the Committee agreed on a basic scale of £650 to £ 12 50, involving an average rise of 6½ per cent. The provisional agreement put most of the £22½ million needed to pay the increases on the basic scale where the N.U.T. wanted it. It favoured young teachers with "boosters" in the fourth and fifth years of teaching. It also provided for the establishment of primary school department heads. Another provision abolished the scale for two-year trained teachers and gave them treatment similar to three-year trained teachers. Finally, teachers were promised a new review if the economic situation changed rapidly. The National Union of Teachers, confronted with an increasingly restive membership, had needed a settlement which emphasized the importance of the basic scale at the expense of the salary

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superstructure. Their position was supported by the Joint Four Associations. The Joint Four in general favoured wider salary differentials, but by 1963 they thought that differentials had been widened enough for the time being and that the basic scale ought to be attended while the pattern of differentials was re-examined. They agreed with the N.U.T. on the danger to professional unity of serious disaffection among some groups of teachers if differentials were indiscriminately increased any further. Up to the meeting of January 24th the authorities and the teachers had been far from agreement. During the course of the negotiations the Minister's advisers on the Committee had found nothing in the offers of the Authorities' Panel which the Minister could not accept, but on January 24th the negotiations took a completely unexpected turn. Apparently the teachers convinced the authorities of their case, and the Authorities' Panel conceded more than the Minister was prepared to accept. Perhaps the Authorities' Panel thought the Minister would accept the award rather than risk another confrontation with the teachers. Perhaps it merely decided to step aside, as it had in 1961, in a dispute which primarily concerned the Ministry and the teachers. Whatever the case it was now clear that a substantial policy conflict had developed between the Ministry and the teachers over the structure of salaries and that the interests of the Ministry were no longer close enough to those of the local authorities for it to entrust its representation to them. The associations represented on the Burnham Main Committee proceeded to ratify the agreement reached on January 24th. Then, on February 20th, Sir William Alexander and Sir Ronald Gould were invited to Curzon Street for talks with the Minister. Boyle told them he would reject the scales provisionally agreed (which he had not officially received as yet) and that he wanted the award redistributed. Both Gould and Alexander were anxious to find out if there was any room for negotiation. Were they being consulted or were they being told? Gould later reported, "After a considerable amount of argument, the Minister was bound to admit that the decision had already been taken, that the Cabinet supported it, and that we were being told." 1 The N.U.T. immediately questioned "whether Ministerial interference with a freely-negotiated settlement, arrived at on both 1

The Teacher, April 26, 1963, p. 5.

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sides by people who may be presumed to know their business, is in the long run likely to do any good to the education service". 1 Answering questions in the House of Commons, the Minister replied that no "Minister of Education, whatever his party, can disengage from considerations of the structure of teachers' salaries, which must affect teacher supply and the staffing of the schools". 2 When the Burnham Committee approved its provisional agreement in the middle of March, the Minister refused to ratify it. Legislation was introduced in the House of Commons permitting the Minister to impose a settlement without destroying the Burnham Committee. Until March 31, 1965, he would have the power to make orders in the matter of salaries while discussing Burnham procedure with the local authorities and the teachers in order to revise it and give the Minister a part in the proceedings. The first of the orders was back-dated to April 1963. It secured the Ministtr's objectives by shifting resources from the bottom of the scale towards the top. Although more than six thousand teachers protested the legislation in a lobby of the House of Commons, they had no effect on the outcome. What is striking throughout the 1963 dispute are the completely different views of the problem held in Curzon Street and at Hamilton House. The opposition of the National Union of Teachers to the Ministry's policy was widely regarded as no more than the predictable reaction of a trade union defending its members. Obviously, there is much truth in this; but it is not the whole explanation. It ignores the Union's longstanding commitment to the basic scale and its close association with the goal of a united and high-status profession, which has always been a cherished part of Union ideology. It ignores, too, the set of educational ideals which has inspired the Union from its beginning, offering a view of "education for its own sake" to which the application of benefitcost analysis is the ultimate heresy. For Ministry officials heresy was preferable, as they saw it, to madness. With the large increases in entrants needed and available at existing salaries, it was economically inefficient to offer them higher salaries. It was equally inefficient not to attack wastage by raising payments in the middle ranges of the salary scale at a relatively small addition to total expenditure. Policy had to be 1 2

The Teacher, February 22, 1963, p. 18. The Teacher, March 1, 1963, p. 2.

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based on these new needs and trends. Lord Eccles put it plainly in supporting the Minister's legislation in the summer of 1963. The Bill (giving the Minister temporary power over salaries' awards) had, he argued, uncovered a great issue in education-the right of the Minister to get his own way when he felt the public interest was not being served by an agreement reached by his other partners. He left no doubt about his feelings on the matter. I find it difficult to see how children are to receive the kind of education we wish to provide for them in this scientific age unless the Minister has the power to force the pace where progress is most needed and correspondingly to postpone some advances not of the first urgency. The Minister must have this residual power, and it is to be hoped that the making of the big policy decisions-and salaries is one of the biggest-can be shared with his partners in ways more satisfactory than at present. This Bill is a good example of the difficulty of arriving at agreed decisions. 1 Under the terms of the Teachers' Remuneration Bill the Department of Education and Science was given its place on the management side of the Burnham Main Committee. Ironically, because of the electoral victory of the Labour Party on October 15, 1964, it fell to a former N.U.T. Member of Parliament, Michael Stewart, acting as Secretary of State for Education and Science, to introduce the Bill.

The failure of the Burnham Main Committee The disputes detailed in the preceding sections emphasize the ambiguity of the Union's approach to salary negotiations. The membership in general was not prepared to take direct action to enforce its demands for higher salaries and status, but neither was it prepared to accept the awards negotiated by the Teachers' Panel. In 1959 the Minister's intervention had the effect of forcing the Union to act realistically. In 1961 the implications of refusing the provisional agreement were carefully stated: they meant direct action. It is doubtful if the results of referenda like the ones taken in October would have been much different in June. Yet the Special Conference refused the agreement. Under the circumstances it can hardly be described as a realistic decision. No doubt the Minister would still have intervened as he did, but he could hardly have done so on the same terms as he was able to do when 1 Times Educational Supplement, July S, 1963, p. 17.

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he projected himself into an unsettled situation. The situation emphasizes the widening gap between the teachers' salary demands and the salary possibilities available to them, given existing economic and financial conditions. It points up the fact that, from 1956, the Conferences of the Union imposed increasingly serious restraints on the Union's negotiators. These restraints could not be loosened until some event in the negotiation proceedings permitted the Union's leadership to present the question of the salary dispute, not in the ideological terms of scales appropriate to the status of the profession, but in terms of present alternatives. In 1956 only the threat of a press conference by the Authorities' Panel was necessary. In 1959 the Minister's intervention was needed. In 1961 the strike referendum provided the sobering effect. Increasingly the negotiators found it difficult to slip out of the restraints placed upon them until the negotiations reached some kind of crisis proportions. Procedures in the Burnham Main Committee progressively broke down as the amplitude of conflict necessary to impress Union Conferences increased. The inappropriateness of the Burnham Main Committee for settling what increasingly appeared as a political, not an economic, question made the reference of disputes outside it for settlement inevitable. The intervention of the Minister was hastened by three other developments. The first was the increasingly apparent need for some kind of national incomes policy. John Vaizey has argued that the Conservative Government ordered the destruction of the Burnham Committee as part of a general policy to get greater power over wage and salary settlements in the economy. 1 There is something in this, although Vaizey overstates it. Concern for a wages policy was connected with Sir David Eccles' intervention in July 1961. Sir Edward Boyle's recognition of the need for an incomes policy may have strengthened his resolve to intervene in 1963, but it was certainly not decisive. Secondly, for a number of years the Ministry had been issuing suggestions and emitting warnings about the structure of teachers' salaries. While approving the 1954 award, Miss Horsbrugh had urged the local authorities to make wider use of the area pool. In November 1954, Sir David Eccles asked the Burnham Committee to review special allowances; and the 1956 revisions were the out1 J. Vaizey, Britain in the Sixties: Education for Tomorrow (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1962), pp. 88, 90.

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come. Geoffrey Lloyd expressed concern about the size of the minimum awarded in 1959. When Sir David Eccles intervened in the negotiations in 1961 to reduce the award from £47½ to £42 million, he added that he would like to see the differentials contained in the proposed agreement retained or even increased. Finally, Sir Edward Boyle's intervention in 1963 was made because he was convinced the award agreed by teachers and authorities was badly distributed. An increasing concern in the Ministry with the "career structure" of teachers' salaries is evident. \Vith teachers' salaries absorbing over 60 per cent of expenditure, educational expansion increasingly compelled economic considerations to be taken into account. Differentials increased in teachers' salaries; but teachers who accepted, even supported, this tendency were also concerned not to move too quickly and seriously impair professional unity. Ministers and Ministry officials were convinced that differentials were not being widened quickly enough. Confronted with the enormous problem of providing for a rapidly growing system, they regarded the rationalization (in an economic sense) of the salary structure as of the first importance if other educational and social priorities were to be met. The danger to professional unity would have to be risked. The teachers were not prepared to accept this risk, and the basis for conflict was established. 1 Thirdly, the Government found it could no longer depend on the local authorities to represent its interests in coming to an agreement with the teachers. The evidence indicates that in 1961 and again in 1963 the local authorities' panel made agreements with the teachers which involved sums well beyond those the Government had privately informed the Authorities it would be willing to accept. Faced with finding a very large part of the salaries bill and finding its informal voice ignored, there was no alternative for the Ministry but to insist upon some formal access to the proceedings. The reasons for the intervention of the Department are fairly clear. The underlying dynamic on the teachers' side, which led 1 In describing the main considerations as "economic", I would not like to ignore the educational implications of the decision for wider differentials. Failure to widen differentials, for example, could mean the end of hopes to attract mathematics and science specialists into the schools, perhaps forcing the curriculum to be revised in the direction of greater generality and less specialism.

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them to take increasingly assertive positions in salary negotiations, is more difficult to explain, compounded as it seems to be of a number of interacting elements. First, internal professional differences contributed at least something to the heightened concern of teachers for their material well-being. The policy of the Department was to widen differentials inside the teaching profession. After 1956 the differentials between primary and secondary teachers and between grammar school teachers and secondary modern teachers widened. Since the changes created by the Ministry's policy ran against the most important elements of the Union's membership, it is not surprising if that membership became increasingly restive. The successful negotiation of the new scheme of allowances for posts of special responsibility in 1956 suggests the awareness on the part of the Union's leadership of the problems confronting the Ministry and the local authorities, but the growing strength of the N.A.S. made leadership inside the teaching profession increasingly difficult in these years. The N .A. S. provided a competing and essentially irresponsible attraction outside the Union threatening the maintenance of its organization, while militants inside the Union were able to use this threat to stretch the salary demands being advanced. With the increasing community of interest between the Joint Four associations and teachers in the secondary moderns and comprehensive schools as "grammar-type" offerings were extended in the 1950s, the N.U.T. found itself in an even more vulnerable position, which heightened the intensity of its internal political differences. At the same time, while the N.A.S. provided the real problems for the Union's leadership, the growth of the rival organization was itself_ symptomatic of increasing ferment in the teaching profession. Secondly, the policy of widening differentials threatened important professional ideals. For teachers in primary and secondary modern schools (the old elementary schools) the basic scale is a symbol of the struggle for a high-status, unified profession which has not yet been won. Any undermining of that basic scale is immediately translated into a threat to professional equality. It was precisely this concern with professional equality and unity which led to the negotiation of the ill-fated 1963 agreement with its concentration on improving the basic scale. Differences in school needs and organization between primary and secondary levels led

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to the creation of a points system in 1956 to achieve the desired balance in the distribution of allowances and additions; but primary school teachers saw the points system, valuing the older pupil more than the younger, as a reflection on the status and prestige of themselves and their schools. In general, teachers were strongly committed to the social idealism which pervaded the educational consensus of the 1940s. It seems likely that the demand for quasi-vocational education in the 1950s and the changed goals which accompanied it contributed something to the sense of frustration in the profession. Thirdly, the economic and political realities which determined Ministerial policy confronted a teaching profession having a deeprooted feeling that it was socially under-valued. Despite the fact that teachers apparently maintained their share in the country's higher standard of living from 1956 to 1964, it was not this which teachers noticed as the Affluent Society came to Britain in the 1950s. What one did find were teachers comparing their lives with those of the working class around them and expressing resentment at their continuing lower-middle-class "poverty" in contrast with the new working-class "affluence". It is possible that this feeling of resentment was strengthened by the changing class background of teachers, as the members of the profession have been drawn increasingly from the lower middle class rather than from the working class. 1 Certainly, the discontent of the teachers cannot be viewed entirely apart from the general discontent of the middle class which appeared in Britain in the late 1950s and early 1960s in such places as the Conservative Party Conferences of 1955 to 1957 and the Orpington by-election in 1962. Fourthly, the general political conditions of the 1950s and early 1960s tended to put a premium on more militant group action. The decline of class antagonism, the widespread acceptance of the basic framework of the Welfare State and the Managed Economy, and the narrow electoral balance between the two major parties set the stage for a competition between the two major parties focusing on group appeals. 2 In such circumstances, as it became apparent that politicians bidding for support were responsive to 1 See Jean Floud and W. Scott, "Recruitment to Teaching in England and Wales" in A.H. Halsey, J. Floud and C. A. Anderson (eds.), Education, Economy and Society (Glencoe: Free Press, 1961), pp. 541-3. 2 S. H. Beer, British Politics in the Collectivist Age (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965), p. 349.

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group pressures, organized groups tended to press their demands with ever greater assertiveness. This era of pressure group politics, which the British system was experiencing in the 1950s and 1960s, interacted in a positive way with the internal divisions of the teaching profession, the threat widening differentials held for prized professional ideals, and the widespread feeling that the teaching profession was socially under-valued. Political atmosphere and professional concerns combined to induce teachers in general and the N.U.T. membership in particular to press their demands with increasing insistence on their satisfaction. In summary, the demands advanced by the N.U.T. for teachers' salaries were stretched by competition with the N.A.S. and stretched again by militant elements inside the Union, based upon discontent at widening differentials and a feeling that the real social value of teachers went unrecognized. All of this took place in a political atmosphere which put a premium on the assertiveness of pressure groups. At the same time the efficient administration of the educational system and its integration with national public policy as a whole seemed to the Ministry to demand a stronger insistence on the economic efficiency of the salary structure than the teachers were willing to admit. The attitude of the N.U.T. was supported by the concern of the Joint Four not to impair professional unity. The Government's resolve was fortified by the unreliability of its silent partnership with the Authorities' Panel. For the present at least, it is difficult to see how the inclusion of the Department really corrects the fundamental weakness of the old Burnham Main Committee. It was a committee constructed to settle economic questions and was being presented with questions which were essentially political in nature. The new machinery does provide for outside arbitration in the event of deadlock in the Committee. In some circumstances, the Minister may set aside the arbitrators' award; but such action is subject to debate in Parliament, perhaps an unconscious recognition of the nature of the problem. It is too early to tell how effectively the reconstructed Committee will dispatch its tasks. The inclination is to be pessimistic. Negotiators probably will continue to be forced outside the Committee for settlement. In the first two rounds of negotiations after the reorganization of the Committee, in 1965 and 1967, teachers and management ended in complete deadlock; and settle-

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ments were reached by resorting to arbitration. But there is no reason to think that the arbitration procedures in the long run will be accepted by teachers as "just", a precondition if they are to feel the settlement had not been imposed and if the interests of both parties are to be genuinely reconciled. 1 The whole question raises the substantial and so far unresolved problem of determining the incomes (and status) of non-productivity-oriented occupations in a democratically planned economy, a subject outside the scope of this study. It only seems doubtful that the reformed procedures for teachers' salaries represent an acceptable solution as they stand. 1 John Plamenatz, "Interests", Political Studies, II (February 1954), 6-7.

6 Pressure Grau p Politics and Educational Policy

The introduction to this study identified three important factors affecting the ability of a pressure group to influence national educational policy. Given the cultural context within which policy is formulated, those factors were the power base of the pressure group, the pattern of power in the education sub-government, and the demand for education. In this concluding chapter the main f eatu res of the evidence already presented are brought together to assess the political power of the National Union of Teachers and to summarize its role in the making of national educational policy in England and Wales.

The power base of the Union As an association of classroom teachers the National Union of Teachers performs two general functions which are important for efficient administration of the educational system and which, therefore, result in political influence for the Union. First, it articulates and communicates to higher administrative levels in the educational system information about developments at the classroom level. Secondly, it presents the personal needs and professional specifications that teachers regard as having to be satisfied if the goals of the system are to be achieved. The simple function of articulating developments at the technical level is best illustrated by the case study of the establishment of the Certificate of Secondary Education. The growth of external examinations during the 1950s created an argument that went on inside the Union for several years. The changing composition of professional attitudes on the subject was regularly articulated by the extended set of committees and conferences maintained by the Union. The results informed the policies advocated by the leadership of the Union and, through them, influenced policy-makers representing the local authorities and the central administration. This deliberate development of policy was abruptly ended only

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when it became apparent that a vital interest of the profession-the preservation of its professional independence-was at stake. In the beginning the development at the technical level was reflected through the institutions of the Union. In the end it was support from the Union for renewal of the policy decision on examinations which was decisive. The specification of educational needs by the National Union of Teachers derives from the need the educational system has for the professional competence and the cooperation of the members of the Union in order to provide an efficient educational service. This need can be seen as a source of influence for the N. U. T. in all the questions of policy examined in the preceding chapters. The proposal for auxiliary teachers in the classrooms has foundered as a national policy on the refusal of teachers to risk hard-won professional status by admitting semi-skilled workers into the classrooms. The Curriculum Study Group had several problems, not the least of which were teachers' suspicions and hesitations about cooperating with a Ministerial group conceived without the usual consultations. Associated-Rediffusion found it had to consult the teachers if it wanted its programmes screened in the classrooms. Even with the primarily "trade unionist" issues like salaries and pensions the conditions are still operative. Salary demands advanced by the N. U. T. on behalf of its members cannot be taken at face value, but neither can they be ignored. If an efficient and effectual teaching force is to be maintained its expectations with respect to remuneration must be satisfied. There is no way for disaffection in the teaching profession to be created more quickly than for these expectations to be rudely denied, as they were during the superannuation campaign of 1954-56 or during the salary disputes of 1961-63. Despite the fact that such disputes no longer result in a severing of relations between the Ministry and the Union (as was the case in the nineteenth century), nonetheless a gulf is created. Leaders cannot easily deal on "friendly and conspiratorial" terms with each other and dispute in public at the same time. Teachers react by dragging their feet in other areas, and the problems of administering the educational system in all areas become more complicated. The requirements for the competence and cooperation of the teachers affect the calculations of political officials to some extent; but they are more germane to the bureaucracy, since they affect the

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Department's ability to provide an efficient service. The Minister and, even more so, his political colleagues are more concerned about direct interventions like the two public campaigns described in Chapter 3. The campaign against the block grant shows how unimportant such interventions can be when the educationists are unable to create any unexpected political problems for the Government or its supporters. The campaign against the Teachers Superannuation Bill shows the very sizeable political difficulties teachers can raise in the right circumstances. The state of the superannuation fund ,was a policy issue of interest only to the Ministry of Education and the Treasury. The Minister, having agreed terms with the Treasury, was expected to put the legislation through without excessively damaging the Government's image or delaying the rest of its programme. Endowed with the resources to mobilize a fight in Parliament and supported by an aroused membership which lent its demands for delay an aspect of respectability and legitimacy, the Union was able to force the retirement of one Minister and threaten the career of another to the extent that considerable concessions were secured. Despite the public campaigns, education in England has lacked political currency. The survey carried out for the N.U.T. found it ranked well behind housing, old age pensions, and hospitals in 1959 in terms of electoral relevance. It has not ranked high as a campaign issue in the national elections since 1945. Most politicians have avoided becoming directly involved in problems of educational policy, and educationists have encouraged this by emphasizing the isolation of education from "politics". This attitude seems to be changing. Emphasis on education is at least regarded as essential to creating an image of modernity for a party or a Government. The replacement of Eccles by Boyle was a notable event in this respect. Since the activities of the Secretary of State for Education and Science have become more important to the image of the Government, it is more sensitive about his political image. This provides the N.U.T. with a greater power resource than it possessed in the past, for the Union has a definite capacity to affect the political image of the Minister of Education. But the rising sensitivity of Governments to education has brought increasingly talented men to the office of political head and closer consideration of the implications of policy demands, both of which have complicated the Union's task in influencing

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the Government. Dealing with Sir Edward Boyle or Anthony Crosland must be quite different from dealing with George Tomlinson or Florence Horsbrugh only ten years before. The sources of power which are peculiar to the teachers as professional educators are supported by several, more general sources of power. In the first place, teachers are recognized as an important sectional interest in any constituency. Often, they are actively engaged in constituency politics. The N.U.T. has local organizations in every constituency in England and Wales. The active minorities in these branches may be somewhat deficient in the formation of Union policy; for the execution of policy they are most effective. Notwithstanding the fact that the N.U.T. is very widely disliked among Conservative Party backbenchersperhaps even explaining it-teachers cannot be ignored in most constituencies. Their own prominence and organization is strengthened by the support they can command from their own M.P.s, from the many Labour M.P.s who were teachers, from the trade union movement, and from the press. In any political system it counts to have friends; and, over the years, the N.U.T. has secured a good many who are prepared to speak up on its behalf. Not to be neglected is the sheer size of the N. U. T. relative to its competitors. It is this size which lends urgency to its claims for articulation and cooperation; which makes possible the politically relevant location of its branch organizations; and which impresses politicians, press, and public. However, this only partly confirms the proposition that a group's influence will vary in a collectivist polity with the percentage of the specialized area in its membership. It does not appear to be true of the influence ranking of the other teachers' groups. The Incorporated Association of Head Masters probably ranks second behind the N.U.T., deriving its influence from the authority enjoyed by its members as headmasters. The influence of the National Association of Schoolmasters, the second union in size of membership, is less than that of the Assistant Masters' Association or even that of the Association of Assistant Mistresses, except where its militance threatens efficient administration. If the N.U.T. is to succeed as a pressure group, the technical sources of its influence and its general political strength must be positively supported by the internal political process of the Union. Where it is doubtful that the views of teachers are being accurately

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formulated or that the leadership can "deliver" the membership, the external influence of the leadership is weakened; and the power of the Union to affect policy is limited. There is considerable evidence to suggest that the internal political structure of the Union is a source of weakness in the Union's power base. The internal divisions of the Union's political life, described for convenience in Chapter 2 as between "moderates" and "militants", are not by themselves to be regarded as a source of weakness. Indeed, given the wide variety of professional and individual interests subsumed in the Union's organization, they are to be expected. It is these divisions in the context of an excessively democratic set of political traditions and procedures which must be regarded as confining. Inside the Union the "militants" are relatively well mobilized in the active minorities of the local associations. The "moderate" mass of teachers who belong to the Union and elect the majority of the Executive are ordinarily quiescent, potentially important, and usually mobilized too late to avoid crises. The mobilization of members for any sort of direct action depends on members normally outside the political process of the Union. Since it is always difficult to know how these members will react to any given proposals, confrontations between Minister and Union leadership sometimes amount to a contest of political judgements. That between Eccles and the Union's leadership over the provisions for the Superannuation Bill illustrates this point. The fiasco over the referenda in the 1961 salary disputes indicates just how much the activist political structure of the Union can distort the attitude of the rank and file and plunge the leadership into pursuit of impossible goals. The division over school meals duties during the Superannuation Bill campaign and the salary dispute of 1961 also show how hazardous are Executive Committee procedures. A majority decision of half a dozen, let alone one, is virtually irrelevant in enforcing a decision on the membership if that decision does not effect a reasonable compromise among various Union interests. Among both "moderates" and "militants" alike there is too much of a tendency to see Union democracy in terms of simple majority decisions rather than effectual compromises of diverse interests. The situation suggests a certain lack of political sophistication among the teachers, which is supported by other evidence-the

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campaign against the block grant, the reaction to the Curriculum Study Group, the excessive concern about the entrance of the Minister into the Burnham Main Committee. A failure to understand the sources of its power or to recognize the realities of politics can prevent an organization from utilizing its maximum resources. 1 A persistent misallocation of political efforts could ultimately undermine the entire political position of the Union by casting doubt on the relevance of the information it provides and the actions it takes. The failure to comprehend the realities of politics in its policy deliberations is partly the result of a procedural gap in the internal government of the Union. Over time it has developed in such a way that the collective experience and demands of the members are articulated and channelled upwards, but there is no effective downward communication of the framework within which these demands must be put and of the resources available for distribution to education. As a result demands made by the membership often appear uninformed and unreal from outside the profession. The evidence for this proposition depends on the policy demands made by teachers. In respect of salaries, manpower, buildings, and equipment their demands have been derived from longstanding ideals and goals and have refused to admit the implications of the relative shift from educational theory to economic considerations as a basis for national policy determination. It may be argued that teachers cannot afford to admit any narrowing of the possibilities for educational policy if they are to continue as an effective pressure group. This is compatible with the view that it is no affair of the Union what percentage of Gross National Product goes into education or how much public expenditure should be devoted to education. It must press regardless for the kind of educational system it believes is necessary; and in practice, because ideals are unlimited, this means getting as much as possible for education without regard for other public functions. This essentially irresponsible attitude is perhaps defensible in a pluralistic society where conflicting demands are adjudicated by the Government. It is constrained in a practical way by the fact 1 This point has also been made about teachers' organizations in the United States, See N. A. Masters, R. H. Salisbury, and T. H. Eliot, State Politics and the Public Schools (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964), p. 271.

L

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that extreme demands, which cannot and will not be met by official groups, undermine the Union's status with the official groups; cast doubt upon the reliability of its representations; alienate its friends by embarrassing them on their association with it; and disappoint its own rank and file who, their expectations going unfulfilled, resolve to make even sterner demands next time around. At the same time, it is pertinent to inquire whether a more extended sense of social responsibility is not in order in view of the Union's insistence on a leading role in the government of education in England and Wales. If a pressure group has acquired a place in the government of an issue-area like education, if it has come to provide some of the social functions of a community institution, which the N.U.T. clearly has done, then a perception of the responsibilities of the organization in terms which ignore this acquired community function may be incompatible with efficient educational administration. There is certainly no guarantee that the practical political restraints on social irresponsibility, referred to above, will be sufficient to prevent the problem arising, particularly given the difficulties arising from the democratic character of Union politics. The function of communication between community institutions and the Union's membership is one of leadership, and a failure in the performance of the function may be attributed to a failure in leadership. Inevitably the leadership of the Union has been subjected to this kind of criticism. Too often, as Union policy has lurched from the illusory extreme of the unattainable ideal up against the stern realities of Treasury economics, the leaders of the N.U.T. appear to havefailedto forceupon the membership realization of the infeasibility of their demands. They seem to have preferred the easier course of aggregating demands-higher salaries, better schools, more teachers-than the more demanding task of developing long-term policies with a definite order of priorities. The General Secretary must impress his will on the organization if the democratic character of Union politics is not to prove a serious handicap in external relations. Only he has the position and prestige to do it. His position is thus more akin to that of the General Secretary in most industrial trade unions than it is to the permanent officials of professional associations like N.A.L.G.O. or the British Medical Association. It is possible to point to instances where firmer direction from the General Secretary might

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have prevented a miscalculation, for example, the decision in June 1961 to reject the salary award and the decision in July 1961 to fight the Government's "pay pause" decision. Salary negotiations in the period under survey probably helped create a feeling outside the Union that the General Secretary could no longer be counted upon to "deliver" his organization. The General Secretary's own operational political philosophy may be a contributing factor, in that he appears to subscribe to the Radical political norms traditional to the Union much more than did his predecessor Mander; and these norms tend to be subversive of strong leadership. If, on balance, the leadership of the Union has been sometimes uncertain in the face of the changes occurring in recent years, the constraints on its response imposed by the maintenance needs of the organization must in fairness be emphasized. Sir Frederick Mander contended with the same Union traditions as Sir Ronald Gould. Mander apparently dominated the Union to a remarkable extent and shaped its ideals into feasible policy objectives. But then Mander led the Union in its struggle against the educational economies of the 1930s and in the legislative achievement of many of its long-term goals in the Education Act of 1944. These tasks were not easy; but they did not impinge upon the internal politics of the Union in the same way as did in the 1950s the rising discontent of teachers, the changing social demands on the educational service, and the increasing need for a reorientation of educational and Union goals. The posture of the teaching profession in recent years has been much more reminiscent of what Beatrice Webb remarked in 1915. Commenting on the sectional organizations of the Union, she wrote that in so far as they correspond with a genuine differentiation among the membership [they] may have been necessary, if the Union was to continue all embracing. But such internal sectional developments have certain harmful results. They distract the energy, which might otherwise be given to the advancement of the interests of the N.U.T. or of the profession as a whole to internal intrigue. 1

However much one may sympathize with such expressions, then as now, it is difficult not to admit that in such a period the energies of the leadership must be directed at the organizational 1 Beatrice Webb, quoted in Asher Tropp, The School Teachers (London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1957), p. 159.

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goal which is basic to all others-maintaining the size and morale of the membership. This has more than occupied the leadership of the Union in recent years.

The pattern of educational politics The pluralistic structure of British government and the nature of the Union's power base indicate teachers ought to pursue a political strategy of containing educational issues inside the education subgovernment in order to achieve desirable policy outcomes. Such a strategy is only possible if teachers are prepared to sacrifice certain policy alternatives in favour of the more predictable procedures of the sub-government for settling educational problems. The necessary condition for this strategy of containment is relatively high agreement among teachers about desirable policy settlements. If such agreement does not exist, it will be considerably more difficult to contain policy differences inside the sub-government, particularly given the peculiar characteristics of educational politics. The description of the power base of the National Union of Teachers indicated that the Union has a strong capacity to influence events in the educational system and a much more limited degree of influence in the political system in general. This is in harmony with the findings of other students of British pressure group politics. Education tends to confirm the proposition that a pluralistic structure produces little closed sub-governments of politicians, officials, and pressure group leaders with each subgovernment acting as an effective centre of decision-making for a particular area of policy. Externally, the sub-government defends the status quo which permits its groups to exist and pursue their objectives against limited competition. The campaign against the block grant was included to illustrate the defence of the power of the education sub-government against an outside challenge. Unfortunately for the educationists in this case, they failed to demonstrate they could make any effect on the continuous electoral campaign either in the way of immediate political repercussions, since the membership was never aroused, or from the long-term effects of bad policy, since the connection between educational expenditure and the grant system was never decisively shown. The campaign against the Superannuation Bill involved the sub-government and the Treasury. The campaign

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against the block grant involved the sub-government with another department and with Government (and party) policy. Together, the two cases illustrate the relative ease of exercising influence on the centre of official power contained inside the sub-government (and through the Minister on the Treasury) and the immense difficulty of exercising influence on a centre of power belonging to another issue area (in this case Housing and Local Government). Such a power structure implies that an important element of Union strategy should be to limit policy conflicts to the procedures of the education sub-government and to prevent, in so far as possible, "outsiders" becoming involved. The use of such a strategy emerges from a study of Union policy. Only one illustration need be recalled here-the salary dispute of 1961. Confrontation of the Government and the challenge issued to its economic policy in the first stage of the 1961 dispute were only possible-and even then unlikely to be successful-if the teachers could threaten a complete disruption of the educational service through a strike. When that was ruled out, the leadership of the Union soon reduced the dispute to the confines of the education sub-government, the Government lost interest, and Eccles dropped his plans for legislation. Educational administration has become more centralized, but this has not resulted in anything more than marginal shifts of power to the Department. The Department may be more active, but it operates in close consultation and negotiation with the national organizations of teachers and local authorities and the restraints imposed upon its activity by them remain substantial. The creation of the Schools Council which formalized the tripartite structure in the area of curriculum and examinations and the terms on which the Department was finally admitted to the Burnham Main Committee must both be seen as positive indications of the influence wielded inside the educational system by the teachers. After the explosion and mutual withdrawal of 1961, the teachers' salary demands in 1963 were relatively restrained. The Minister's intervention was of strictly educational relevance, the support he needed and received was quite limited, and his achievement was a limited one. The new Burnham Main Committee is, after all, very little more than a formal institutional expression of a longstanding procedural fact. It may be more convenient. It does not

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essentially alter existing power relationships in the educational service. The reconstitution of the Burnham Main Committee and the creation of the Schools Council show that Ministerial assertions, without positive support from the wider political system, are not sufficient to effect more than minor institutional changes in education. The increasing vulnerability of the Government's political image to educational developments makes it quite possible that such support will in future be forthcoming. The leadership of the N.U.T. is not entirely free to pursue the optimal strategy of containment. Indeed, it may not be the increased interest of the community in education but the discontent of the rank and file which makes it impossible for the Union's leadership to contain an issue inside the sub-government. In salary negotiations reviewed in Chapter 5, for example, two different developments can be seen to have occurred. First, there was the slow evolution of Ministerial concern about the salary structure. Secondly, there was the highly irregular increase in the pressure from teachers for a sizeable advance in the social value attributed to their profession. The latter development as much as the former was responsible for the disagreement between the Department and the Union getting beyond routine procedures for settling salaries. A sociological analysis of the discontents of the teaching profession is outside the scope of this study. However, the nature of the profession has been slowly changing during the period under study; and it is likely that these changes have contributed something to the instability of teachers' politics. The teacher's image of himself, his social role, and his profession does not at any time encourage recognition of economic and political realities. He has a ''Utopian" thought-style in the sense Mannheim describes it. In recent years the threat which expansion of the educational system has posed to traditional professional ideals has reinforced a concern for the material condition of the profession which grew out of the relative decline in salaries during the first decade after the war and the campaign against the Superannuation Bill. Nor have teachers been immune to the general social and psychological changes occurring in British society as it proceeded from the Welfare State to the Affluent Society. The reaction of the teachers to the fate of their salary demands during the economic crisis of 1949 contrasted with that of 1961 or to the proposal in 1943 for

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emergency training contrasted with that for auxiliaries in 1960 illustrates the attitudinal changes which have taken place. The heightened importance of material benefits in the Union's internal and external relations is suggested by the fact that it has been virtually impossible to talk of alignments in the profession or in the Union except with regard to attitudes to salary structure, pensions, and relief from school meals duties. Inside the Union and inside the profession the real and deep divisions have been over salaries. The achievement of equal pay silenced the National Union of Women Teachers, but the N.U.W.T. had never been a real threat to professional unity. Equal pay did give a real grievance to the schoolmaster struggling to raise a family and a cause to the National Association of Schoolmasters, which has since threatened professional unity in a serious way. The N.A.S. has followed the course of a militant movement, refusing to become involved in administration and to accept responsibility even after it achieved official recognition in the Burnham Committee. On the other side the Joint Four have in general sought to strengthen differentials; to protect the status of the graduate and the grammar schools; and to preserve the elitist ethos, if not the structure, of English education. The Union has been caught between the two in a competition which undermines its professional responsibility from different directions and places a premium on policies which will maintain the Union's membership intact. The greater degree of centralization in the formulation of national educational policy and the gradual erosion of the power base of the local authorities heightens the priority given by the Union to the restoration of professional unity. While disunity continues, a rudimentary political objective of the National Union of Teachers will be to preserve the position of the local authorities and the representatives of their national organizations in the decision-making structure as an additional balance to the authority of the Department. Viewed in the context of the divisions inside some industrial or crafts trade unions or in terms of the material demands they make and the action they take to enforce their demands, teachers have to be regarded as a relatively quiescent sectional group. The question arises, therefore, as to whether the assertions made above about the effects of professional divisions on political influence are not overdramatizing the situation. The answer rests with the

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qualities which distinguish educational politics from trade union politics or even medical politics. Like the medical service, the educational system serves a clientele whose cooperation must be maintained to provide the service at all. Doing this is a difficult and ambiguous task, and teachers are understandably extremely sensitive about it in their external relations. The direct recipients of the service constitute a clientele which is unable to care for itself. There is a great sensitivity to the rights of children in the educational system. This also affects procedures and restrains actions. The teaching profession is very far from being the object of public myths about the scope of its expertise or of self-effacing attitudes by laymen, which attach, for example, to the medical profession. The teacher has his own kind of expertise; but it is much less mysterious, much more subjective, than that of a scientist. The teacher working in the classroom is a situation within general experience, however unreal general conceptions about it may be; and this increases the propensity of parents, administrators, and politicians to interfere with what goes on in the classroom. As a result the professional competence of teachers is more vulnerable than most, and this inevitably inhibits their external policies. Finally, mass education is a public service pure and simple. This particularly affects the National Union of Teachers, which has always represented teachers in public employment. Dock workers and automobile workers usually have more freedom to manoeuvre than most public servants because the recognition that the latter provide a public good creates expectations that the service will be determined by normal political channels, not market mechanisms. Even where the Government is intimately involved in a service like medicine or an industry like agriculture, doctors and farmers are less restricted than teachers because they have recognized individual rights and positions which teachers do not possess as thoroughgoing public servants. The nature of its clientele, the vulnerability of its professional competence to outside interference, the fact it is a public servicethese considerations induce in the teaching profession a sensitivity to "public opinion" which is a strong restraint on its political activities. They combine with the nature of the Union's power resources to support the leadership in keeping the temperature of

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educational politics low. The power of the N.U.T. is greater, the professional competence of its members is less subject to interference from outside, and the "respectability" of the membership is less endangered when policy differences are settled inside the education sub-government.

The demand for education The increased demand for education which developed in the 1950s inevitably focused public and political attention on education. The demand has been for a national policy. It has been for "training" rather than for "education". The changes in the school population-the increase in the birth rate and the tendency to a longer school life-have confronted the educational system with the need to grow at quite rapid rates. This has required change inside the system and has posed a threat to traditional educational values. The partnership concept was suitable during a period when the educational system was static or only slowly changing. In a period of rapid change a lead was needed; and providing it seemed to fall to the Ministry, as both the teachers and the local education authorities were not coherently enough organized to provide it. Inevitably this threatened that the Minister would gain power at the expense of the other two. The rapid growth of the educational system also raised new considerations of public economy. This is most clearly seen in the development of a salary structure for teachers and the solution of problems of teacher supply. The large public expenditure, involved in the growth of the educational system have steadily widened the gap between the Union, which insists on its old ideals, and the Ministry, which confronts other competitors for scarce resources in a stop-go economy. This has progressively altered the nature of the Union's influence throughout the period under review. The institutions and procedures for formulating educational policy existing after 1944 evolved from a period when politicals administrative, and professional views of what was educationally desirable converged in a remarkable way. As a result the teachers' unions, especially the N.U.T., acquired a prominent and influential position in the development of educational policy. As social and economic circumstances altered, political and administrative views diverged from those of teachers. Unaccustomed stress was

158

TEACHERS AND POLITICS

placed on the institutions and procedures of the education subgovernment, and educational politics ceased to be merely a matter of minor adjustment. While this theme emerges at several points in the study, in the chapter on negotiations in the Burnham Main Committee an attempt was made to show in detail how operative procedures were established after the war; how they functioned; and how they gradually altered under the impact of changed economic, social, and educational conditions. The National Union of Teachers must now be regarded as a powerful conservative influence in the politics of English education. This conservatism is explained by the Union's traditional professional concern for the education of the individual, its refusal to sacrifice longstanding educational ideals, the distractions created by divisions inside the teaching profession, and the threat to the collective role of teachers in the policy-making process posed by a more national orientation and centralization of educational policy. But the very fact that the National Union of Teachers has so far been remarkably successful in maintaining its position and defending its interests is a revealing comment on the power the Union wields inside the education sub-government. The assertion of traditional educational interests by the teachers has been paralleled by an equal uncertainty on the part of the Department of Education and Science about the assertion of the community's interests in the educational process. In its two most important acts of initiative the Department demanded an effective voice in salary negotiations and established the Curriculum Study Group, but in each case it was divided about the proper course of action and never wholly committed to either. In each case the educational interests, for the moment at least, have contained the Department's stretch and obtained a favourable redefinition of powers formalizing tripartite relationships. In no case has the Department yet had the sustained support from the general political agencies of the community, in particular the Cabinet, which would be necessary to decisively define new relationships in the educational system. As a result of this assertion on one side and uncertainty on the other, a satisfactory relationship between "education" and "politics" has yet to be achieved. The resulting ambiguity in educational policy shows all the signs of the traditional British habit of "muddling through" which worked so well in the past, but which

PRESSURE GROUP POLITICS AND EDUCATIONAL POLICY

159

is perhaps less defensible when the social costs of ambiguity are rising rapidly. As Edmund King has written, English education "shows the virtues of an evolutionary approach and at the same time reveals the weaknesses of a patchwork policy in an increasingly streamlined world" . 1 It was during the period of nineteenth century educational reform that the N.U.T. was formed. Its influence then was directed at the attainment of a system of common schooling to achieve universal literacy. It would be unfair to argue that the Union is responsible for initiating reform. It did not play this role from 1870 onwards. What it did was to press through to its conclusion in educational terms the general political need stated in 1870. This was intimate involvement rather than initiative. At the time of writing the general political need for education in the 1970s remains unstated. Basic questions respecting the status of teachers in the community and the content and structure of mass education in a technological society remain unsettled. The N.U.T. has used its acquired position, when it has not been distracted by internal and professional divisions, as a brake on change to assert traditional educational ideals. To accommodate these goals, it has demanded that educational expenditure increase at a rate which the community is quite unlikely to concede. Yet for its part the community has so far refused to specify any social framework within which educationists could devise a consistent educational policy. Until a more meaningful dialogue is established between the educational system and the general political process, educational policy is likely to remain uncertain and ineffectual.

Educational policy and the British political process One of the salient features of the British political culture is its support of evolutionary change. This tends to induce a static political outlook; but, while such norms of gradual change slow down innovation, they also generate acceptance of innovations. 2 Abrupt and sweeping changes are out of character with the gradual evolution of the British political system. They are equally out of character with the educational system in England and Wales. The 1 Edmund King, Other Schools and Ours (New York: Rinehart and Co. Inc., 1958), p. 70. 2 Richard Rose, Politics in England (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1964), pp. 48-49.

160

TEACHERS AND POLITICS

static quality of the British political system led, some observers contend, to a failure of the political system to adapt properly to the needs of the British social system in the 1960s. From this point of view the shortcomings of the education sub-government and the policy produced by it in response to demands for change are only particular illustrations of the general faults of British government in recent years. Certainly the problems of British education are by no means peculiar to this policy area alone. The very fact that the political need for education has not been stated illustrates the strong tendency in British government to remove issues from the public political arena. The tripartite structure of the education subgovernment is a paradigm of the pushing back of political decisions from Parliament into the executive and beyonrl which characterizes so many policy areas. 1 The analysis of the N.U.T. in this study could be extended to the influence over the development of social policy of a wide number of British professional and trade union organizations. 2 The contention that national political knowledge is needed in making educational decisions and that it is absent under existing institutions like the National Advisory Council for the Training and Supply of Teachers, the Schools Council, and the Burnham Main Committee is only a particular illustration of the general argument that policy-making is isolated from political knowledge in the British governmental process. 3 One observer has concluded that Britain is not a pluralistic society, but a special form of the corporate state. 4 The kernel of truth that 1 See, for example, Roland Young, The British Parliament (London: Faber and Faber, 1962). 2 See, for example, Michael Shanks, The Stagnant Society (Baltimore and Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1961), especially pp. 70-138. The Economist, which has often been severely critical of the N.U.T. and its policies, has certainly not confined its criticism to the Union alone either. 3 Bernard Crick, The Reform of Parliament (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1964), p. 176. 4 Brian Chapman, British Government Observed (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1963), p. 18. Chapman means by this that the tendency of any Government proposing to extend the scope of the public services has been to find, or if necessary to create, a body, which would be at least notionally independent of the Government; that in British public administration departments which possess executive powers and directly administer public services are with few exceptions aberrations; and that there seems to be a general feeling that Ministries ought to be controlling and inspecting bodies, responsible for the formulation of overall policy and seeing that someone else carries out the policy.

PRESSURE GROUP POLITICS AND EDUCATIONAL POLICY

161

remains in this observation after even the most devastating criticism 1 is well illustrated by national educational administration with its Inspectorate, its dependence on local education authorities, and its resort to bodies like the Schools Council. The level and the type of performance capacity created in the educational system is now recognized as one of the most important determinants of the wealth and power of a modern society. The provision of this educational performance capacity is one facet of a larger political question confronting the British social system. Britain seems to have neither the governmental machinery nor the cultural temperament to effect a technologically oriented society at the speed required for the country to maintain its relative power position and obligations abroad while satisfying aspirations for rising living standards at home. In education, economic and social pressures have already resulted in changes like the Certificate of Secondary Education, the reorganized Burnham Main Committee, and the Schools Council; but these changes cannot yet be said to go far enough, fast enough to do more than gradually shift the balance of English education to the needs of a more technologically oriented society. At the same time one needs to be reminded that a society may quite properly choose to sacrifice living standards or power or both for values which it fears may be lost in the process of rapid change. Education in Britain remains one issuearea in which a conflict of social values is still being worked out. The considerable power of the N.U.T. in the formulation of educational policy ensures that the National Union of Teachers will be a critical decision-making area in the making of the multitude of social choices which in the end add up to the answer to the British question "What sort of an island do we want to be?" 2 1 See the review of Chapman's book by D. N. Chester, "British Government Observed", Public Administration, 41 (December, 1963), 375-384. 2 This is the question raised by Shanks, op. cit., pp. 232-6.

Index Alexander, Sir William, 10, 16, 24, 75-7, 93-4, 123-4, 135 Annual Conference (N.U.T.), II, 12, 16, 20-1,40,42n,43,49,52-3,63,68,74-5, 86, 120-1 Archbishop of Canterbury, 22 Archbold, J., 133 Ashby, Sir Eric, 4 m Associated-Rediffusion, 15-16, 145 Assistant Masters' Association (A.M.A.), 9, 32, 37-9, 66, 76, 147 Association of Assistant Mistresses (A.A.M.), 9, 33, 37-9, 76, 147 Association of Education Committees (A.E.C.), 9, 10, 16, 75-6, 82, 87, 108n Association of Municipal Corporations (A.M.C.), 9, 108n Association of Principals of Technical Institutes, 76 Association of Teachers in Colleges and Departments of Education (A.T.C.D.E.), 76, 100, 102 Association of Teachers of Domestic Science (A.T.D.S.), 41-4, 76 Association of Teachers in Technical Institutes (A.T.T.I.), 18, 21, 41-2, 76, 108n, 126 Authorities' Panel, 9,

108n, 109n, 120-1,

124-8, 130, 133, 135, 138-9, 142 auxiliary teachers, x, 84, 103-5, 145, 155 Ayer, A. J., 22 Bailey, Richard, 4m Barnard, Chester, 26 Barnett, 0., 133 Beaver, Sir Hugh, 4m Bedfordshire Teachers Association, 63 Beer, S. H., II Beloe, Robert, 88 Beloe Committee, 83, 85, 88-9, 90 Bevins, J. R., 78 block grant campaign, x, 57, 69, 73-81, IOI, 146, 152-3 Board of Education, 15, 90 Board of Trade, 5 Bowden, Lord, 41n Boyle, Sir Edward, 6, 8, 20, 94, 101, 134-5, 138-9, 146-7 Bridges, Lord, 7 British Medical Association, I 50 Britton, Edward, 42n Brooke, Henry, 73 Bullock, Alan, 106 Burnham Main Committee, ix, 9, 14, 34n, 43, 67, 95, 108-II, II4, II Sn, II9, 121, 124-9, 130-8, 142, 149, 153-5, 160-1 Butler, R. A. (now Lord), 4, 6, 23, 59, 108n, I xon, 125-6, 132 Campaign for Educ&tion, 22 canvassing candidates, 17 case study approach, x Central Advisory Council, 20, 44, 87 Certificate of Secondary Education, x, 82-90, 144, 161

Chancellor of the Exchequer, 2, 59, 129 Chapman, Brian, 160n Chief Education Officers, 9, 12 City and Guilds of London Institute, 85n College of Preceptors, 85n Conservative Party backbenchers, I 8, 34n, 58-60, 64, 68-9, 71, 76, 108n, 147 Consultative Committee on the Education of Children up to Age Fifteen, 84

counterparts,

2, 11, 12

County Councils Association (C.C.A.), 9, 77, 108n Cousins, Frank, 22 Cove, W. G., 58 Crosland, Anthony, 6, 8, 105, 147 Crowther Committee, 44, 84, 87-9, 91 curriculum development, 25, 82-4

Curriculum of the Junior School, The, 41 Curriculum Study Group, 90-6, 145, 149, 158

Darvill, C. S., 133 Dawson, H., 133 Department of Education and Science, ix, I-4, 7, 8, II, 12, 14, 15, 22-3, 56-7, 84, 96, 107, 137, 153, 155, 158

deputations,

2, 10-12,

27, 42, 60

Development Group, 91-2 Durham County Teachers ' Association, 30

East Midland Educational Union, 85n Eccles, Sir David (now Lord), 5, 8, 60, 62-3, 66, 68-9, 71, 91, 103, 123, 132-3, 137-9, 146, 148, 153 Economist, The, 5, 47, 66-7, 104-5, II2, 160n Ede, J. Chuter, 18 education: demand for, ix, x, 108, 127, 144, 151, 157-9; and politics, ix, xi, 146-7, 156-9; and social class, 38 Education Act of 1870, 27, 51; of 1902, 33; of 1918, 23; of 1944, 4, 20, 23, 30, 74, 90, II2, 151 Education Committee (N.U.T.), 41, 44, 87, 89 Education Committees, 74, 77, 79, 80 education sub-government: definition, 1-3; political head, 2-6; channels of influence, 2, 3, 10-22; role of public campaigns, 3, 57; leaders, 6-10; pattern of power in, 22-6, 144, I 52-8; impasse in, 57,133; strains on procedures, 35, 106, 157-8, 160; united, 73-4; problem of community representation in, 97, 107, I 58 Educational Institute of Scotland, 76 educational partnership, ix, 1-2, 22-5, 157 educational priorities, ix, xi, 23-5, 149, 150, 160-1 Elvin, Lionel, 41n Emergency Committee (N.U.T.), 64-5 England, John, 50, 63 Executive Committee (N.U.T.), 13, 21,

163

INDEX 30, 33, 40-7, 58, 60-7, 70, 78-9, 86-7, 89, 96, 103, 120-2, 127, 130-4, 148 external examinations, 83-90, 144

Fair Play for Our Primary Schools, 17 Fisher, Norman, 41n Fleming, Sir Gilbert, 7 Gaitskell, Hugh, 19 Gardiner, Gerald, 19 General Secretary (N.U.T.), 8, 9, 17, 19, 39, 42-3, 54, 57, 64, 75, 13 I, 150-1 Gould, Sir Ronald, 16, 24, 42n, 43, 63, 66, 74-5, 93-4, 104, 119, 121, 124, 135, 151 General Certificate of Education (G.C.E.), 84-9, 90 Gordon \Valker, Patrick, 6n Grammar School Committee (N.U.T.), 86-7 Grant, A. G., 41n Hailsham, Lord, 75, 101 (see also Hogg, Quintin) Hickman, Richard, 43-4 Holmes, Sir Maurice, 7, 8 Hogg, Quintin, 5 (see also Lord Hails ham) Horsbrugh, Florence (now Lady), 5, 5761, 63, 69, 71, 126-7, 138,147 Hunt, J. A., 41n Incorporated Association of Headmasters (I.A.H.M.), 9, 32, 37-9, 48, 76, 147 Incorporated Association of Headmistresses (A.H.M.), 9, 32, 37-9, 76 Inspectorate, Her Majesty s (H.M.I.), 12, 80, 91, 93, 161 Investment for National Survival, 41

MacMillan, Harold, 5 !\lander, Sir Frederick, 8, 115n, 125-6, 151

Mannheim, Karl, 154 Maud, Sir John (now Lord Redcliffc-), 7, 24 McNair Committee, 100, 110-2, II6 Metropolitan Board Teachers' Association (M.B.T.A.), 33 Metropolitan Voluntary Teachers' Association (M.V.T.A.), 33 Minister of Education: changes in title, 2n, 23; political head of education, 4, 5, 7; in sub-government negotiations, 12, 15, 17, 20, 148, 153, 157; Durham County dispute, 30; recognizes N.A.S., 34; in superannuation campaign, 57-9, 60-4, 66-9, 70-2, 146; in block grant campaign, 74-5, 78, 80, 146; in examinations issue, 85, 87, 89; in curriculum development, 90, 92-5; teacher supply, 98,

100,

101,

103,

107;

in

settlement of teachers' salaries, 114, 120, 122-9, 130, 132-8, 142, 149

Minister of Housing and Local Government, 73, 77-8 Ministry of Education: in educational partnership, ix, 24-5; senior officials,

2,

7, 8, 15, 24-5, 35, 133, 136; increasing political importance, 5; in sub-govern-

ment negotiations, 12, 13, 15, 16, 20,

42, 145-6, 157; in superannuation bill campaign, 58-9, 60-1, 70; in block grant campaign, 73-4, 80; in curriculum development, 82, 91-5; m external examinations issue, 85, 87; in

teacher supply, 98-9, 104-5; in settle-

ment of teachers' salaries, 108, 114,

Jarvis, Fred, 104 Jenkins, Robert, 66 Jennings, J. C., 18, 64, 71 Joint Education Committee, 76, 108n Joint Four, 38-9, 45, 48, 54, 67, 72, 108n, 110, 114, 118, 132, 135, 140, 142, 155 Jones, J. T., 133

123-5, 129, 131, 136, 139, 140, 142 Ministry of Housing and Local Government, 153 Morant, Sir Robert, 7 Morrell, D. H., 92n Morris, Sir Charles, 41n

King, Horace, 18

national advisory committees, 2, 10, 15, 82 National Advisory Council for the Training and Supply of Teachers (N.A.C.T.S.T.), ix, 43, 83, 93, 100-3, 105-7, 114, 160 National Association of Divisional Executives for Education, 76 National Association of Head Teachers (N.A.H.T.), 9, 33, 36, 39n, 45, 54, 108n National Association of Schoolmasters (N.A.S.), 9, 33-7, 39n, 45, 48, 54, 66-7, 72, 76, 108n, 118, 140, 142, 147, 155 National Association of Voluntary Teachers (N.A.V.T.), 33, 36 National Federation of Class Teachers, 36 National Federation of Head Teachers, 33 National Federation of Parent-Teacher Associations, 76 National Sectional Meetings, 42 National Union of Students, 76 National Union of Teachers (N. U.T.): advantages as a pressure group, ix; difficulties of leadership, 8, 9, 150-2; Parliamentary representation, 10, 17-19, 137, 147;meansofaccess, 10-22;

Labour Party backbenchers, 18, 69, 147 Law and Tenure Committee (N.U.T.), 64 lobbying, 16-19, 27, 37, 131 (see also public campaigns) Lloyd, Geoffrey, 128, 139 Lloyd, Selwyn, 123 local education authorities: national associations, 9; leader, 9; negotiations in sub-government, 13, 28, 144; under Board of Education, 15; in educational partnership, 23, 25; Durham County L.E.A., 30; in superannuation bill campaign, 57, 62, 64, 66, 68-9; in block grant campaign, 73-4, 80; in external examinations issue, 86; in curriculum development, 90-1, 93; in teacher supply, 98-9; in settlement of teachers' salaries, 114, 122, 124-5, 132-3, 139; N.U.T. support for, 155 Local Government Finance Bill, 76, 78-9 Lockwood, Sir John, 94 London Chamber of Commerce, 85n London County Council, 76, 108n London Teachers' Association, 33, 42

164

INDEX

permanent officials, 12, 28, 42-5, 53; local organization, 17, 29, 40-1, 147; avoidance of partisanship, 19, 20; attitude to T. U.C., 20-1, 30; publicity department, 21-2; maintenance of membership, 27-3 1 ; rejection of compulsory unionism, 30-2; factions, 33-7, 1 55; size of membership, 39, 47; composition of membership, 45-8; provides political knowledge, 46; problems of internal government, 48-55, 147-51; moderates and militants in, 49-51, 54-5, 148; political culture of, 49, 51-4, 56, 65, 120, 148; political power, 45, 48-9, 56-7, 72, 82, 144-51, 158; conservative influence in sub-government, 158-9 National Union of Women Teachers, 34, 36, 45, 66, 155 Northern Counties Technical Examinations Council, 8511 Oakley, F. ,v., 4111 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 96 Parliamentary Committee (N.U.T.), 19 Permanent Secretary, 7, 8, 61, 91 Pitman, I. J., 18 Plowden Committee, 14, 20, 44-5 political culture, x, 49, 51-4, 56, 65, 83-4, 95, 120, 148, 159-61 political system pluralistic, 1, 152, 160 Powell-Davies, M. G., 35 Pratt, Simon, 4111 President of Board of Education, 211, 4, 23 public campaigns, 3, 27, 56, 146 (see also block grant campaign and Teachers' Superannuation Bill campaign) public opinion, ix, 21-2, 119-20, 156 quota scheme, 98-9 Remuneration of Teachers Bill, 10811, 137 Robbins Committee, 43, 102 Roy, Walter, 30 Royal Society of Arts, 85 Salaries and Superannuation Committee (N.U.T.), 64 sanctions: regional strikes, 14, 122, 131-3, 138; withdrawal from school meals duties, 14, 34, 64-5, 67, 70, 132, 148; Durham closed shop, 30-1 ; withdrawal from school savings collection, 64, 66-7 Saunders, C. T., 4111 School Certificate Examination, 84 Schools Council, ix, x, 15, 82-3, 94-7, I 53-4, 160-1 school meals duties, 12-14, 155 (see also sanctions) Schoolmaster, The, 5, 43, 60, 61, 64, 68-9, 76-8, 83, 89, 98, 116, 121-2, 133 Searle, Ronald, 22 Secondary Schools Examinations Council (S.S.E.C.), ix, 15, 43, 84-9, 93 secondary school reorganization, attitude of N.U.T., 19-20 Secretary (A.E.C.), 8-10 Secretary of State for Education and Science, 2, 3, 5-7, 11, 14, 26, 105-6, 137, 146

Selby-Bigge, L.A., 7 Sharp, Sir Percival, 7, 10 Short, Edward, 6n, 18 Simon, Herbert, 26 Special Conferences (N.U.T.), 14, 52, 61, 63, rr6, 121-3, 126,129, 130-3, 137-8 Stewart, Michael, 6, 18, 137 Stewart, Miss M.A., 133

Teacher, The, 95 teacher supply, 83, 97-107, 149, 150 teacher training, x, 25, 82, 99-102 teacher training college expansion, 102 Teachers Assurance Company, 28 Teachers' Panel, 43, 66, ro8n, r 14, 115n, 122, 125-30 teachers' salaries: negotiations, x, 25, 6667, 73, 103, 108-43, 145, 149, 150, 155; allowances and additions, 14, 109n, r 13-15, 127, 141; differentials, 14, I 12n8, 135, 140, 142, 155;importance as group objective, 31-2, 140-2, 154-5; equal pay, 34, I 16,155; basic scale, 36, 109n, I 12-16, 120-2, 128, 134-6, 140;

post-war changes, 110-8; 1961 salary dispute, 31-2, 129-34, 148, 153-4; 1963 dispute, 134-7, 153 Teachers Superannuation Bill campaign, X, 5, 41, 57-73, IOI, 116, 145-6, 148, 152, 154 teachers' unions: collegial leadership, 8; centrifugal forces, 9, 32-9, 155; theory of organization, 26; inducements for membership, 27-9, 36-8; paradox of participation, 30-1; breakaway groups, 36-7; relative sizes, 39; predominance of N.U.T., 39-48, 72, 147 Thomas, George, 18 Times Educational Supplement, The, 96 Titmuss, Richard, 4rn Tomlinson, George, 147 Trades Union Congress (T.U.C.), 20-r, 30 Treasury, 2, 3, 13, 22, 62, 69, 71, 107, 123, 146, 150, 152-3 Tropp, Asher, 49 Ulster Teachers' Union, 76 Union of Educational Institutes, 8511 Union of Lancashire and Cheshire Institutes, 8511 unqualified teachers, 14 Vaizey, John, 4111, 68, 138 values: changing social, 24, 72, 160-1; teaching profession under-valued, 72, r r 8-20, 142, 154-5; of teaching profession, 83, 97,105, 136, 140-1, 154,157 Webb, Beatrice, 151 Whitfield, 0., 133 Williams, Sir Griffith, 124n Woodcock, George, 4111 Workers' Educational Association, 76 working parties, 2, 10, 12-14, 60-1 World Confederation of Organizations of the Teaching Profession, 43 Young, Michael, 4m