middle schools: the heart of schools in crisis

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Middle Schools: the heart of schoolsin crisisGwen Wallace a & Les Tickle ba Derbyshire College of Higher Educationb University of East AngliaPublished online: 29 Sep 2006.

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British Journal of Sociology of Education, Vol. 4, No. 3, 1983

Middle Schools: the heart of schools in crisis

GWEN WALLACE, Derbyshire College of Higher EducationLES TICKLE, University of East Anglia

ABSTRACT. This paper is about middle schools and the effects of recent policies on thecurricula organisation of six of them. We begin by establishing some general links between middleschool origins, brief history and development, and wider economic and political forces for change.Drawing on four years of research with a group of schools in one local authority, we describe someof the directions of change which followed the Great Debate. We highlight recent changes asthese schools came under increasing bureaucratic control, with the emphasis on the organisation ofpupil selection and changes from mixed ability grouping, to setting, and back to mixed abilitygroups. We conclude with some theoretical discussion related to the work of Habermas.

First established in the late 1960s, middle schools have remained a small minority ofinstitutions dealing with statutory schooling. Most middle schools cater for the ageranges 8-12 (deemed primary) and 9-13 (deemed secondary) although there areother variations. Even within each of these age ranges there may be a number ofdifferent 'types' (Blyth, 1980). In terms of pupils' ages, all middle schools span theconventional break at 11+. As has already been documented (Hargreaves, 1983), acombination of forces gave support to the origins and growth of middle schools.Included in these were both Conservative and Labour political ideologies, as theyoperated within a context of economic stringency, and a more general and wide-spread development of a rhetoric of social egalitarianism and democratisation ineducation. This combination of progressive rhetoric and comprehensive reorganisa-tion, which manifested itself in the mid-1960s, provided the ideological frameworkwithin which the 'middle school identity' emerged. More pragmatically, there werecrucial factors which affected the material development of middle schools—thebuildings, resource and curricula provision. These included the fact that middleschools were regarded as a cheap means of introducing comprehensive education ata time when the raising of the school leaving age increased pressure on resources(Blyth & Derricott, 1977; Bryan & Hardcastle, 1977; Hargreaves, 1983). At thesame time pressure from high schools arose related to the public examinationssystem at 16+ and accompanied by claims for adequate time to be spent onexamination subjects in order to cover syllabuses.

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224 G. Wallace & L. Tickle

Given the developments in educational policy since 1976 following the Callaghanspeech—the DES Green Paper of 1977, the Circular 14/77 to local authorities, therise of the accountability movement, and the setting up of the Assessment ofPerformance Unit—any of the optimistic characteristics of middle schooling whichaccompanied their emergence (Nias, 1980) are likely to have been lost. This isprobable not only in practice, where it has been argued they never took hold, butalso in 'educational' thinking. Pressures for core curricula, 'basics', and regularstandardised testing have implications for the rhetoric of pluralism, innovation,openness, egalitarianism and the development of individual 'potential', which wereonce said to make up the 'identity' of middle schools. Although Lynch (1980)argued that it was a measure of the robustness of middle schools that they hadsurvived the buffeting of ideological change, associated with economic recession andrapid contraction, he marked the North of England Conference of 1979 as themoment when local authorities designated middle schools as a 'problem' to betackled. Events have since turned what Lynch termed a 'legitimation crisis' into anattack which threatens middle school survival. A consideration of some relatedeconomic, political and ideological developments and their likely effects uponmiddle schools in the late 1970s and early 1980s provides a context for understand-ing this attack.

Middle Schools and Economic Contraction

If we ignore much of the rhetoric of the Great Debate and the 1977 Green Paper(DES, 1977) for a moment, it is apparent that the major practical contingency to bemet at the time, from the perspective of political planners, was the prospect ofdeclining economic resources. The rise in oil prices, the demands of the IMF asrepresentative of world economic forces, and the calls for more 'basic education',rather than the pursuit of policies based upon the expensive western model ofeducation, in the World Bank's (1974) paper, all pointed towards educationalcontraction and retrenchment. At a time of increasing public expectations in tunewith the 'opportunity State' (Kogan, 1978, pp. 39-44) the policy makers had toobtain acceptance by the general population of policies which would reduceeducational provision, whilst setting up the bureaucratic controls which wouldensure that changes of policy took effect. Hence we can account for the generalisedcalls to narrow down the curriculum in order to bring schooling more into line withthe 'needs' of industry; for the demands for greater centralised control over teacherpractices; and for the calls for teachers to take their 'share' of cut backs in line withcost limits at a time of economic crisis. The material effects of 'falling rolls' asnumbers in the schools declined directly aided the policy makers in legitimating cutbacks which reduced staffing and introduced patterns of early retirement, redeploy-ment and redundancy.

It is now part of the historic record that the climate of contraction has enabled amore centralised control of education to gain ground through Central Governmentcash limits, local authority spending cuts, the movement towards defining a 'core'curriculum with emphasis on 'basic skills', tighter control of examinations andcurricula through the APU and reorganisation of the Schools Council, and a generalemphasis on the 'rationalisation' of provision through the recently developedcorporate management systems in the local authorities (Salter & Tapper, 1981). Atthe same time there have been actual and proposed shifts in financing, away fromState education and towards private schools, under the banner of a 'free market

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Middle Schools 225

economy'. This has reverberated into the State sector in at least three forms: firstlyas the league tables of examination results designed to underpin 'parental choice';secondly in the piloting of proposals for the use of voucher systems; and thirdly inthe renewed emphasis on elitism through the provision of 'assisted places' in theindependent sector for a few children from State schools.

The changing stresses as they now play upon middle schools are particularlysignificant in the sociological study of English education, since these schools are aninstitutional form of recent origin and brief history, within which the effects ofcurrent tensions are highlighted. This highlighting derives from their peculiarlyambivalent position astride the primary and secondary divide. The original middleschool rhetoric was angled towards later selection of pupils and the promotion of alonger period of progressive primary practice with the emphasis on interpersonalrelationships (Plowden Report, 1967). This rhetoric camouflaged the economicrealities of tighter budgets and stricter cost limits. In the short history of middleschools the economic pressures have been revealed and the early rhetoric has beenchallenged by the sight of a balder economic expediency (Hargreaves & Tickle,1980, 1981; TES, 13/11/81). As the bureaucratic grip on middle schools tightens thequestion arises whether or not they will survive at all (Hargreaves & Tickle, 1980;TES, 6/11/81, 13/11/81). It is a question we bear in mind as we turn to our case-study evidence. For the effects of current policies upon schools, teachers and pupilsremain largely unaccounted for.

The Relationship of Policy to Practice in the Literature

One of the major sources of information regarding the effects of policy on teacherpractices has been the recent reports of HM Inspectorate (DES, 1978, 1979). Thereports of their surveys of middle schools have not, however, yet been published andwe depend for information about middle school policy and practice largely on theliterature already cited (Blyth & Derricott, 1977; Bryan & Hardcastle, 1977;Hargreaves & Tickle, 1980; Hargreaves, 1983). The present paper is closely linked toa corpus of middle school research which has been in progress at Aston University,from which detailed 'case-study' accounts have been written since 1977. These havelooked at the conflicting roles of the middle school teacher (Ginsburg et al., 1977);the response of some teachers to the education cuts which followed the Great Debate(Ginsburg et al., 1979; Wallace, Ginsburg & Miller, 1982); and the way in whichmiddle school organisation was affected by building provision (Wallace, 1980). Thedata used in the present paper are related to a wider study of the relationshipsbetween structurally defined limits and teachers' perspectives on pedagogy (Wal-lace, 1983).

Some of the earlier findings linked moves towards earlier selection and moretesting in five middle schools with the Great Debate and its effects. We present heredata to show how far earlier selection and increased testing had been accommo-dated into middle school practice by 1979. We then concentrate on the relationshipbetween policy developments and effects on curricula organisation as they devel-oped at county and school level in 1980/81. The focus is on the rhetoric of'standards' in the context of cut backs as the latter pushed teachers back to mixedability groups and general class teaching. The mediation of teachers in negotiatingthe changes is explored from their perspectives as they were confronted by thecontradiction between the demand for ill-defined and ill-understood 'standards' onthe one hand, and the cut backs on the other. Given the growing emphasis placed

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upon the curriculum, and particularly upon basic skill 'training', it is then arguedthat the traditionally accepted boundaries of individual schools are being tran-scended in ways which make institutional 'identity' irrelevant and the defence ofparticular institutions meaningless. Hence administrative intervention and parentalinvolvement are made easier.

The Case-Study—Sample and Research Method

Data used in this paper were collected as part of a larger study (Wallace, 1983)which focussed on six middle schools (five of which had been involved in the earlierresearch) in one local authority between 1979 and 1981. The rationale behind theresearch derived from the argument that changes in policy since the Great Debatehad, and were continuing to have, a significant effect upon teachers' practices. Thegeneral hypothesis was that such effects would be observable in similarly manifestedforms across all six schools, regardless of their ostensible differences. The five schoolswhich had featured also in the earlier research had been selected for their differencesrather than their similarities. These differences were apparent in size of school, age,range and type of buildings, social class characteristics of catchment area, and thestated philosophical position of the headteachers. The sixth school was added inorder to provide an institution of recent origin. This school faced problems ofunfinished buildings, overcrowded spaces and rising rolls, in some contrast to theoriginal schools whose accommodation problems had eased as rolls fell and where,in one case, there had been a severe drop in the numbers of pupils on roll. ByJanuary 1981 the numbers of pupils on roll in the six schools ranged from fewerthan 400 to more than 600. Table I indicates another measure of the differencebetween the schools by providing an approximate indication of the social class ofeach catchment area, through the use of the proportion of pupils entitled to freelunches in January 1981.

TABLE I. Percentage of pupils entitled to free lunches, January 1981

School A4.9

B8.5

The national average for1980, was 9.9% [1].

all

C4.3

schools

D17.24

in the

E6.0

twelve

F10.4

months up

Mean8.55

to October

Sixty teachers were interviewed at some time during the research. Forty-nine ofthem were interviewed twice, firstly between December 1979 and April 1980, andsecondly approximately twelve months later. Most of the interviews, based on semi-structured schedules, were recorded on tape. The status and gender of this group areset out in Table II.

TABLE II. Characteristics of the group of 49 staff who wereinterviewed twice

All staffMenWomenClass teachersSubject advisersYear group co-ordinatorsAdministrators (Heads, deputies, senior teachers)

N

4924251314139

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Middle Schools 227

The intention was to gather information which would throw light on ways inwhich the changing emphases in schooling policies were affecting teachers' perspec-tives across the schools, in spite of all the differences. Two sets of in-depth interviewswere carried out on two occasions with a lapse of a year between, in order to obtainevidence of changes in the teachers' perceptions of their own situations. During thelapse no research took place in the schools although Government and local authoritypolicies were studied, most particularly through participant observation in teacher-union activities. The main aim was to gather as wide a representation of differentviews as possible from among the group of teachers, in order to identify common effectsof policy changes. The questions on the interview schedule included matters whichrelated to the curriculum, questions about 'standards' and testing, views aboutteaching methods and the organisation of pupils, ideas on educating the 'gifted' andviews about the relationships between school, community and policy makers. Theemphasis was on how teachers 'coped', how they organised their classes, and how theyviewed their own positions within the educational arrangements. Anonymity hasbeen safeguarded by reference in the data to the status position of respondents,while individual schools have generally been identified only when organisationaleffects, rather than individual perceptions, are being considered.

County Policy and Curricula Effects: the choice of fate

The findings of the earlier work in the five middle schools have been publishedelsewhere (Ginsburg el al., 1977, 1979) and a brief summary of the most relevantpoints is sufficient here. Undoubtedly the evidence collected in 1976/77 suggestedthat teachers felt they were being scapegoated by the media and that their work wasunder attack. There were doubts about bringing schools into line with industry andsome teachers declared that it was society that needed changing. In general teachersperceived 'standards' in terms of individual pupil 'potential', and had some doubtsabout how standards might be established or measured. Questions were asked aboutwho would set the standards. Nevertheless, Ginsburg et al. noted that teachers werediscussing changes in curricular organisation and they suggested that mixed abilitygrouping was giving way to 'ability' sets for the 'basics' of mathematics, French andEnglish, while the amount of integrated work in classes was declining in favour oftime-tabled 'subjects' (Ginsburg et al., 1977, pp. 23-26).

Ginsburg et al. located the reasons for these organisational moves in the rhetoric ofthe Great Debate, the increasing pressure middle school teachers were under in theirrelationships with the high schools, and the problems experienced by teachers whentrying to cope with the demands of a mixed ability class, particularly if theyadopted the traditional didactic teaching role.

Several points need further emphasis. Firstly there was a growing pressure on allheads to adopt the Richmond Tests of Basic Skills as a measure of pupils'achievement and teacher accountability. Secondly, heads of high schools throughoutthe county were being advised to abandon any attempts to individualise the subjectoptions for 15- and 16-year-olds, in favour of options specific to three 'ability bands'.Cuts in capitation and ancillary help were in any event limiting options and HMInspectors had called for teachers to 'think again' about "the effort to provide a verywide range of options" (DES, 1979, pp. 260-261). What HM Inspectorate had inmind was it seems, the 'whole' curriculum. What happened was 'banded options'.The effect on middle schools appeared in a more rigid selection syswin which, bythe time of the 1979/80 interviews, had shifted formal differentiation back to the

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nine-year-olds in the first year. This usually meant removing those pupils who werebeing labelled 'high fliers' for some mathematics and English lessons, and providingthe 'remedials' with additional help at the same time. This left a broad 'middleband' who received relatively undifferentiated teaching. In the second year the'middle band' was further divided and French was added to the subjects thoughtappropriate for some kind of ability grouping. Teachers in one of the schools hadadopted the policy of setting pupils for science in the third and fourth year. Inanother school teachers settled for science in order to solve time-tabling problems.At the point of transfer between the third and fourth years there was littlemovement of pupils between sets as the teachers liked to keep the groups as stable aspossible. In one of the schools there was a 'top' class of pupils who stayed togetherfor all their classroom lessons in the fourth year.

The following extracts from interview data demonstrate the broad range ofreasons available to teachers to legitimate these policies. The extracts are from dataprovided by staff across all the schools, and demonstrate how the 'relativelyunexamined' concept of 'ability' (Keddie, 1971) was being adopted in order tojustify forms of organisation which differed little from the old tripartite system.More importantly, there is considerable emphasis upon providing justification forthe swing to setting, in terms which suggest that the teachers believed themselves tobe responsible for bringing it about. Those interviewed were first asked to describechanges in ability groupings that had taken place and then to suggest reasons forthe changes.

Co-ordinator (fourth year)We started off on a pretty informal basis and tried some integration . . .and it didn't work for a number of reasons. One was resources... andequipment to do it effectively. And the other one was we still have a wideability range with a few at the top and there's a big chunk in the middleand just below average ability... and gradually we introduced streaming(sic—but it was in fact setting), to try and give all of them a decentchance. It started off just with the older ones but over the years it's pickedup until there is now some sort of streaming (sic) even in the first yearnow. . . Not for every subject but for certain subjects.

(author's parentheses)

Administrator. . . as the child develops the gap between the child who has real learningproblems and the child who obviously has ability in the subject becomeslarger as it matures and it is exceedingly difficult for a teacher to give theright instruction to both and inspire both at the same time in onegroup. . .

Administrator... When I came there were only three sets for the maths in the secondyear and they'd already managed to negotiate four sets for the firstt ime . . . the year previous to my coming. And then when I came Iorganised it so there were er ability sets . . . four ability sets for mathsthroughout the school... I don't think that had been the case beforehandand also when I came none of the French was done in ability sets . . . ata l l . . . anywhere in the school and . . . um . . . actually none of the Englisheither.

The negotiation referred to here applies to the way the staff persuaded the Head to

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Middle Schools 229

permit an extension of setting. However, the Head of this school expressed consider-able opposition to mixed-ability teaching and believed firmly in the geneticinheritance of intelligence. The respondent quoted acknowledged this a little later inthe interview when he allied his views with those of the head, and declared:

. . . And its my belief that this is . . . from the point of view of the teachingof the child .. . the most efficient way of teaching certain basic skills tochildren of mixed abilities.

Class teacher (year 1)I must admit I prefer teaching the sets because children do tend to need alot of individual help and when you can give the same explanation toquite a big group rather than go through lots of different things with lotsof different children it does make it much easier. In a way you can takethem on further as well because you can concentrate on the needs of asmaller range . . .

Adviser (maths)All groups are setted, except in the first year where we take out a topgroup of just under thirty, a remedial group of twelve to fifteen and therest in the first year are in class groups . . . which is therefore mixed ability.

This teacher had previously taught in a school where all the teaching had been donewith mixed ability groups and where teachers had worked together. He declaredthat this had been an enjoyable experience but that its success depended, "upon thestaff you've got working together. We were fairly easy going and accepted everybodyelse's point of view". Questioned about the setting policies with which he nowworked, he argued:

It ties in with the maths scheme . . . The feed back I get is such thatteachers would find it much more difficult teaching a mixed abilitygroup . . . the type of material that we do.

Adviser (French)The very first year, when I started in the third and fourth year, I tookeverybody in mixed ability classes. There were only two forms . . . I think. . . at the beginning in the third year, and then they split them to make athird form during the year. Then there were only four forms in the thirdyear. Then the next year the third and fourth years were set, into five . . . Ithink it was . . . groups.

InterviewerWas there any reason for that?

AdviserI presume it was . . . well . . . I presume it was going back to the secondarymodern days. A lot of us are left over from the secondary modern, and theother staff... a lot of them were new. Four of them were probationaryteachers come in together and possibly... well I know several things wereadvised to them. You know.. . "this is how you should do it with thesenew young children". I think then they just decided it didn't necessarilywork.

This teacher went on to say that he liked both mixed-ability and setted groups. But,"while mixed-ability teaching is quite nice, it's not something to do with theimportant subjects". The interesting point here is the sense in which this teacher

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saw the swing away from mixed-ability teaching for 'important' subjects, to havecome about in opposition to advice from outside sources, and as a consequence ofexperience in schools. Furthermore, the following came from a co-ordinator in thesame school:

Co-ordinatorThe whole idea of setting has been established by (the head), and we have,you know, done as he wished.

Nonetheless most teachers, including heads, saw setting as having 'evolved' out ofexperience, ignoring the fact that it was also backed by strongly-felt changes incounty policy. The post hoc reasoning nevertheless thus placed considerable emphasison the ability of the free individual to choose how to meet the social fate, even whereprevious experiences had apparently provided evidence that mixed ability teachingcould 'work'. Yet all the teachers spoke of the practical difficulties of actually allocatingpupils to sets, particularly in the early years, and particularly with respect to thebroad 'middle band'. Data on this are presented more fully elsewhere (Wallace,1983) and we return to the problem later. For the moment it is worth noting thatthere was considerable disagreement among staff about the value of tests as adiscriminatory device and a great deal of debate about which sets were appropriatefor which pupils. Nevertheless as pupils became differentiated as a consequence oftheir differential treatment, evidence of pupil progress by the fourth year suggestedthat teachers had got it all 'about right'. As we shall see, however, the reservationsabout selection were available to provide the grounds upon which teachers couldrationalise the moves back to mixed ability work even for 'important' subjects, as thecuts began to bite further and the range and scope of curricular experiencesavailable to pupils declined again. The scope of the research between 1979 and 1981allows us to scrutinise the mechanisms of these changes a little more closely.

We turn now to the way in which county policy, mediated into schools by headsduring 1980, reactivated the crisis of legitimacy which centred around notions of'ability'. In the public arena outside of schools, the rhetoric of'standards' continuedeven as resources were cut further. Major features of these developments are thedestabilisation and fragmentation of existing relationships and the sense of policyinitiatives which reacted to rather than planned for change.

County Policy and Curricular Effects: a glimpse of reality?

Some attempt to plan to meet the problem of declining resources whilst respondingto increased demands from central government was made by local officials who putout two 'consultative' documents which set out principles for the establishment of a'common core curriculum'. The first, in the autumn of 1979, included plans forstaffing which were related to specimen time-tables detailing 'core' subjects, num-bers on roll and type of institution. The second, more philosophical documentfollowed some strong criticisms of the first. By July 1980 after the cuts in the RateSupport Grant had begun to bite, and the Clegg Commission report on salaries wasimminent, it became clear in discussions with the unions that cost factors precluded'staffing the curriculum' in any way that related subjects agreed to be desirable tocompetent specialists to be appointed to teach them. Whilst the 'core' remained onthe agenda, staffing it would depend upon measures taken within the schools, on thebasis of what staff they had left, rather than upon the authority plans. By October1980 the County Council was threatening to axe some 550 jobs, only 250 of which

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Middle Schools 231

could be matched by 'falling rolls'. By this time a new Joint Negotiating Committeeof teachers and management representatives began negotiations. At the insistence ofthe authority early retirement and teacher redeployment were tied into a singlepackage. This happened even though negotiations on early retirement alone hadbroken down in March 1979 because of union resistence to conditions.

The Teachers' Consultative Council's report of November 10th 1980 reported ameeting with the Chief Education Officer, at which the CEO projected that the 550teachers who had to go would be largely made up of "temporary teachers, teacherson fixed term contracts and by retirement". A small number of teachers might haveto be retired prematurely. The report continued:

There was a great deal of discussion on the matter by all the associationsespecially on the narrowing of the curriculum. The CEO felt that in somecases the curriculum offered by some schools was too broad and there wasroom for rationalisation. This was not accepted by the teachers . . .

He said he would bring the teachers' views to the attention of thecouncillors but that it was up to teachers and parents to 'educate'councillors.

A teacher representative reported in the TCC Report of December 10th:

Teacher members tried to impress on Councillors the severe effects the cutswere causing in the schools. It was evident that some members still believethat teachers are only trying to protect themselves and tend to blame thepresent pay rise for the further cuts . . .

There was a growing sense of impotence in the face of an authority apparently nolonger willing to even listen to teachers. For middle schools in the area theauthority's decision meant that 35 teachers would have to go. On receipt of the planat the TCC meeting the divisional secretary of the NUT said that he could notaccept it and that it should go before the Joint Negotiating Committee since itwould affect teachers' conditions of service. The CEO disagreed and the unionswithdrew to consider their position. A motion was then put forward by a representa-tive of the Secondary Heads Association:

The document will affect teachers' conditions of service. TCC deplores thedocument as the implications contained in it will destroy the educationservice (as we know it) in this County. Therefore, before any part of thedocument is implemented, the Authority should enter into negotiationswith the teachers.

The CEO was then reported to have accepted the motion and agreed to present it tothe next meeting of the Education Sub Committee, with his suggestions, althoughhe was 'not happy' with it. In the meantime the major tactic of the NUT was towork through press releases and letters to the local press, in a campaign to alertparents to pressurise the authority. Perhaps parents could make the authority 'seereason'.

At the time of the December 1980 interviews the teachers in the middle schoolsdid not know to what extent they would have to reorganise time-tables for January.Within two weeks of the end of the Autumn term the heads and deputies who hadto do this were still in doubt about the extent of loss of staff in the followingJanuary. In the event, 300 teachers'jobs were not axed after all. The county claimedthat a 'windfall' Rate Support Grant (possibly related to forthcoming CountyCouncil Elections) had allowed jobs to be saved, whilst the NUT claimed credit for

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its campaign. Nevertheless 250 teachers still had to go and there was a general'tightening up' of pupil-teacher ratios to meet falling rolls. All but one of the schoolslost staff and time-tables had to be reorganised. In at least two schools whole yeargroups were re-tested with a view to re-setting, but in two other schools staff,including administrators, opted for increased workloads rather than disrupt toomany sets and 'upset' pupils. Ironically, setting itself was now perceived as a highlyproblematic exercise in terms of the perceived imperative to differentiate at differentpoints across the year group than previously. In addition it was seen as desirable toensure that, where a set was dropped, pupils in the remaining sets were informed ofchanges in terms of the need to put some of them 'up' rather than the rest down, inorder that pupils would not see themselves as being 'punished' when they 'didn'tdeserve' it. Some teachers found the task of re-setting impossible even with theincreased use of standardised testing. At a time when standardised testing shouldhave found a heightened relevance in terms of its use-value for teachers as apotential mechanism for selection, the regard held for its results was diminished as aresult of experience.

We look briefly now at the way in which teachers across the schools perceived theproblems of differentiating pupils as, in 1980/81, they were under pressure toreorganise classes to cope with loss of staff. We then plot the way in which teacheropinions moved towards viewing mixed ability grouping for 'the basics' favourablyagain over the spring term.

The first comment is a commonly expressed view here stated by an administrator.It concerns the usefulness of testing in general:

AdministratorI think they have a certain validity to play. . . but they are indicative ofthe child who is very much above average... or as I said before the childwho's very much below average but I think their interpretation is rathersuspect when the ball's in the middle. But nonetheless we do use them.They're just one of a number of means of assessing children. They're notthe overall and only means. We don't use them to the exclusion of anyother method . . . but it's just one of a battery of information that we use.

Included in this battery were 'judgements of staff from feeder schools' and 'judge-ments of staff in our own school'. Thrown back on the tests and these 'judgements'in order to re-set pupils in mid-year, teachers tended to find themselves at a loss.

Class Teacher (on English). . . we couldn't decide a criterion for setting them and therefore when wetested we only tested for certain things and it wasn't sufficient informationto change the sets . . . so we ended up not knowing why we were setting themiddles...

Adviseryou know in theory it all sounds very simple with tests. You say well fromthat line they all go up and from that line they all go down . . . but it's notas easy as that because from our experience with them in lessons we cansay, "Oh this is ridiculous... This child shouldn't go up if this child isn'tgoing up and so on. There's a lot of anomalies that you've got to sortou t . . .

AdviserYou have some children who . . . well for instance they're very imaginative

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. . . their eyes perk up when they hear poetry and creative work . . . when itcomes down t o . . . you know, the bread and butter English, they're not sointerested . . . so how do you sort of balance i t . . . and it's very difficult totest that imaginative side in an hour . . .

It was not uncommon for the older teachers to refer back to the rigidities of the old11+ and express a wish for a test which would restore the old certainties, althoughthere were teachers who believed that they knew the children so well that tests wereirrelevant.

Administrator. . . we proved that they (the tests) were wrong and that our assessment,carefully discussed was by far the better judgement. . .

and later

. . . which brings a whole question mark over why we should test anyway.We tend to be proven.

This respondent claimed later to have been on a course and discovered that testswere no longer highly considered. Teacher judgements were 'back in vogue'.

How then did teachers decide to turn back to mixed ability teaching, even for theimportant 'basics'? We can illustrate something of the way in which the processoperated by first quoting two respondents who were interviewed late in 1980, andthen two more interviewed in February 1981. Finally we see what some teacherswere saying in April 1981.

Administrator (December)At the moment we have four ability sets . . . e r . . . in maths, in French andin English . . . Um . . . It's difficult to see how that status quo can bemaintained . . . um . . . with the possible cuts . . .

Co-ordinator (December). . . we've maintained setting as far as . . . In fact we've tried to make settingmore and more pertinent... in the sense that each group is set indepen-dently for its own ability, maths, French, science, English, and we've keptthat going.

But later

I don't know whether we're going to keep sets next year. I'm not sure. Wemay have to revert to class teaching because sets were in four groups andwe may have to revert to three groups... which will save a member ofstaff...

Administrator (early February)We could find specialists teaching a greater range of subjects if specialistsleave and are not replaced.

Administrator (mid-February). . . we shall be going backwards, I'm quite sure . . . The staffing ratios willbe going down . . . inevitably I think . . . therefore class numbers are goingto get bigger and bigger... so we'll be going back to the numbers we hadbefore the war . . .

Class teacher (April)I think it's going to change with the lack of money. I think . . . well we losttwo teachers at Christmas that weren't replaced and that meant the

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timetable in many ways being moved.. . re-formed and I can foresee usdoing a lot more class teaching...

And from the school, with rising rolls the indication that teachers might again beginto see themselves involved as active agents in the decision-making process leadingback to mixed-ability work:

Class teacher (who had previously argued for setting) (April)Personally I'd like to see more class teaching in. I would rather ditch someof the setting, even if it means losing standards a bit and getting kidsbetter settled, because I think it's more important at this stage thanacademic ability. You know. Obviously you get more out of them whenyou're in a setting situation . . . but I think, personally, that it's unsettlingthem. Now not everyone agrees with me, you know. There are two of uswho feel this in the second year and two of us that don't so we're equallysplit on this, but two of us do feel that if we saw more of our classes, andgave up a bit on the academic standards... that we'd settle the kids downa bit.

None of this means that there was any less differentiation of pupils, for ifanything the process was shifting to increasing atomisation of pupil differences basedon individual progress through exercises graded by skill level. Furthermore, amember of a county working party formed to devise a system of testing which wouldbe less costly than the tests on the market (particularly the Richmond Tests of BasicSkills), argued that 'ability' involved both a measure of the level of work done and ameasure of application to it. The implications of this for work deemed appropriate inclassrooms indicate a growth in the 'programmed' learning common in Americanschools. Apple (1982) has argued that such materials embody technical controls andde-skill teachers, turning them instead into managers of curricula materials. Twofurther sources of pressure encouraged teachers to adopt such materials, in order toconcentrate on improving measurable skills and discriminate as precisely as possiblebetween individual pupils. The first source was a fear that parents would use the1980 Education Act to 'choose' those middle schools whose pupils were getting intothe 'top set' at the high schools. The second source was the high schools, whoseteachers were requiring lists of pupils, graded individually, 'from one to onehundred and fifty', at the time of transfer, in order that high school staff mightallocate pupils to sets on entry.

As an example of one response, staff in a school where the introduction of blankettesting had consistently been resisted were now introducing whole-school examina-tions related to the testing of basic skills:

Administrator"We're finding ourselves really . . . well we're beginning to feel in competi-tion with (X School), which has caused problems and has made usthink.. . ," Right, if we don't test children more . . . we shan't know a) ifwe're doing our job as well as we hope we're doing i t . . . but moreimportantly . . . the child will have an experience of an examination situa-tion. Previously when we've done testing we've always done it in class-rooms . . . um . . . on quite a sort of informal basis . . . We have now decidedthat once a year at least, they will have formal testings in a hall sort ofsituation . . . Um really thinking that if they've not experienced this . . . this

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could be a disadvantage when they arrive at the High School... And theyfind themselves in competition with children who have already experi-enced i t . . . but it's the first time we've done i t . . .

The central concern of the rhetoric of the new policies for education appears tohave been located in the need to improve 'standards' and to monitor effectivelywhat schools were doing. The initial response of teachers and the county authoritywas to interpret 'standards' in terms of earlier selection, on the basis of thetraditional division of pupils into ability 'groups'. In spite of considerable reserva-tions about how to discriminate between pupils, none of the teachers interviewedbetween December 1979 and April 1980 actually quarrelled with the idea thatability sets could improve 'standards' in the 'important' subjects. There wasevidence to suggest however that there was no concensus amongst teachers aboutwhat standards were (Wallace et al., 1982) and, as we have shown here, there was noclear definition of either pupil 'ability' or ways of measuring it.

Even more crucially there were wide differences in curricula provision betweenschools, which made nonsense of any 'traditional' view of 'standards' based upon'excellence' and subject disciplines, simply because specialist staff in some schoolswere a dying breed. Two of the schools, Thistlebank and Yarrowfield, provide asuitable example directly reflecting staffing problems. Whilst Thistlebank retainedall but one of a staffing complement for a school of more than 600 pupils,Yarrowfield lost, irreplaceably, its Music specialist and Home Economics specialist,thus increasing problems of staffing subjects which demand a high pupil-teacherratio, such as art and craft and science, because of falling rolls. If we look at thedesignated time-table provision offered to fourth years in these two schools, we findthe following emphasis on general class teaching, at a time when we might expectconsiderable specialisation:

Proportion of time spent on English, Humanities and general class teachingThistlebank 27.5% Yarrowfield 45.0%

Three of the remaining schools provide totals of 37.5% while the other school gives35.0% for these areas of work.

The general change in rhetoric was not therefore a consequence of commonmaterial circumstances experienced in the schools. Yarrowfield staff appeared proudof the way they had maintained sets, and this was the school where setting for sciencewas a matter of policy. Thistlebank still had considerably more scope than most tocontinue with specialisation and setting. In the school with rising rolls, there wasscope for appointing new specialists as numbers increased. However, local authorityinspectors were encouraging moves towards class-based teaching and new headswere being appointed on a 'generalist' mandate. By the late spring, teachers in staffrooms were debating the relative merits of setting versus mixed-ability groups.Where material constraints or the destabilising effects of staff reductions were notobvious reasons, the reasons were located in the teachers' perspectives at the level ofthe pupils. Here it became the question of social control of pupils through the'stabilising' influence of the class teacher who really 'knew' her class which provideda useful rationale fitting both bureaucratic requirements and individual teacherperspectives. The possibility of tighter social control over pupils through moreintimate knowledge of individual children is obviously attractive to teachers whoare dependent upon effective classroom control to be able to teach at all. It alsooffers scope to teachers who perceive their work in terms of an extension of

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socialisation processes begun in the home. At the same time, the teacher is in acrucial bureaucratic role where surveillance over family 'problems' can usefullyserve as a mechanism of bureaucratic control. It is worth noting that the move backto mixed ability grouping is more widespread than in the six schools (Reid et ai,1981).

To summarise, then, we make three observations about changes in curriculaorganisation in middle schools since their inception.

(1) The early patterns of organisation (and hence interaction) in these middleschools were twice disrupted in major ways, by policy changes which effectivelydestroyed the Plowden model.

(2) The first major intervention followed the Great Debate. It served to modifypatterns of mixed ability work and subject integration, through pressuresgenerated by economic cuts and examination-oriented priorities related to thecall for higher 'standards'. Measures taken broadly restored the 'banding' effectsof the old tripartite system (although the Plowden rhetoric was developed andmaintained in the mixed-ability work which remained).

(3) The second major intervention followed more severe economic cuts of 1980which affected staffing levels in mid-year. The consequence was a changingperception of mixed-ability work as a form of organisation where social 'stabil-ity' and important processes of differentiation in the 'basics' might be effected.In both of these aspects the teacher is an essential link in a bureaucratic controlprocess which increasingly demands measurable outcomes.

To go thus far, however, is to go beyond the evidence of how the restructuredrelationships might yet work out in practice. For teachers and pupils operate in theface to face interpersonal contact which is not readily structured into rule-boundsystems without negotiation and compromise. There was evidence of contradictionand conflict within the process of changing curricula organisation, which must beleft in obeyance for the present. Furthermore, the 'free market' element of parental'choice', which was an essential element in the pressures to provide measurable andmeasured outcomes is little more than an illusion for most parents. The 1980Education Act permits no more than parental expression of a 'preference'. As thelocal authority is setting limits to the size of schools, and as transportation of pupilsto anywhere other than their nearest schools provides a considerable barrier to'choice', we may yet see the rhetoric turned against the policy makers at county andgovernment level. Teacher perception of parental power is subject to change.

Nonetheless, there can be little doubt that the bureaucratic hand of the Depart-ment of Education and Science has already reached deep into schools in ways whichplace a new premium on 'efficiency' in terms of measurable outcomes, and thusundermine aspects of teacher-pupil relations. Salter & Tapper (1981) have arguedthat the Department's power to interpret "social and political pressures... in wayswhich suit its own bureaucratic ambitions" have encouraged these developmentsand turned the DES "from blushing handmaiden to prima donna" (pp. 92-93).Such a view avoids attempting to connect any particular effects of the currentinternational crisis of capitalism, with the growing internationally observable tendenciesto tighten state controls over all interpersonal relationships by formalising themthrough contract and law. Whilst the economic rhetoric supports the 'freedom of themarket', the law as a political instrument undermines possibilities for collective socialresponse by individualising responsibility. Unable to control the market the stateextends its bureaucratic apparatuses into regulating the private relationships of civil

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society. Thus it may re-establish by formal bureaucratic controls the informalmechanisms of social control destroyed by uncontrollable market forces. We lookbriefly now at the case for viewing the general increase in bureaucratic controls,which has re-structured schooling relationships, as a particular form of responserelated to the current economic crisis in late twentieth century capitalism.

Bureaucracy and the 'Free Market': a crisis of expectations

There have been a number of attempts to explain why the Great Debate took placewhen it did, and the subsequent course of events. We cannot go into them all here,but we can note that they include the view of teachers that it was all a cover-up forthe cuts (Ginsburg et ai, 1977). Other suggestions came from Grace (1978) that itrelated to the Black Paper writers' fear of anarchy, and from various sources, theidea that Callaghan was pursuing a course set in motion by the Tories and stealingtheir electoral clothes (e.g. David, 1980; CCCS, 1981). Salter & Tapper (1981)suggest that the whole affair was organised by the DES in pursuit of its bureaucraticambitions, a process which "illustrates particular aspects of the political logicbehind DES development" (p. 190). We suggest here, however, that the connectionbetween the economy and the DES is at its strongest through the Department'saccountability to the State as an institution for the efficient production of manpower.In other words, both the crucial task and the crucial failure of the DES lies in theimperative laid upon it to predict the kinds of skills, knowledge and disposition theeconomy will require from the next generation of school leavers, and to providethose qualities in suitable quantities, in ways which are generally perceived aslegitimate in terms of personal choice. Given the economic recession of the early1970s, we suggest that a more perceptive view of the reasons for the Great Debatewas put to a conference of local authority advisers by William Taylor in September1980. He first quoted an OECD Report of 1976:

The disillusion which is felt by many leavers from all branches ofeducation is mainly due to the fact that the accepted relationship of levelof education and level of job has become much looser. The 'implicitcontract' is being broken and the guarantee provided by credentials intime of scarcity of education is no longer valid . . .

Taylor then made the point:

Enhanced quality of life expectations and the problem of 'ungovernability'that arises from what are seen as the denial of entitlements, has empha-sised the role of the school as an agent of political socialisation, especiallyin relation to subsequent democratic participation, both as citizen andworker...

Thus the OECD statement sets out a legitimating framework for a less expensive,more 'basic' educational provision. The implications support an interpretation ofthe Great Debate as a reactive response to a developing crisis of expectationsinherent in the expensive 'Western model' of education. These expectations couldnot be met within the structural limitations of the existing economic and politicalorder. It was therefore necessary to intervene administratively and through a processof redefinition (Donald, 1979), to restructure the system both to make it economi-cally more efficient and to re-establish those relations of authority and hierarchywhich would put teachers and pupils back 'in their place'. In other words, the Great

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Debate represented a government initiative in the attempt to bring together againthe academic and the socio-political aspects of schooling, so that the aspirations ofindividuals would be under control and more readily aligned with the economic'realities'. The 'economic realities', however, are themselves a product of theactivities of state governments working in the international context of anarchic andcompeting capitalist finance. In broad terms the problem for state governments is tomaintain the social and political conditions under which international capital canfunction, whilst maintaining a governmental process which is acknowledged to belegitimate by its citizens. Given the instability of international capitalist movements,and the mediating role of the state, the inherent economic fluctuations and thetendency to crisis drive policy makers into creating a state apparatus which assumesever tighter control over civil society.

The growth in control, however, demands legitimation, in the sense that peoplehave expectations of equal exchange and assume that what they are being requiredto do will ultimately bring its due reward. At its most obvious this is apparent in thegenerally available rhetoric of 'jam tomorrow'. It is these implied 'guarantees' and'implicit contracts' to which the OECD Report refers. Yet these 'guarantees' aresimply not available in the context of competing capitalist interests. The currentresponse from the state is one which ignores the importance of legitimating itspolicies in terms of expectations and relies instead upon tightening control and'market forces'.

More theoretically we can draw on Legitimation Crisis (Habermas, 1976) in orderto locate the fundamental contradiction of capitalism in the necessity for wealth tobe socially produced, whilst being privately appropriated. Under the bureaucraciesof advanced capitalism, goal-seeking behaviour is predominantly orientated towardsthe control of nature for private profit. Work which is technically paced andcontrolled on an individualised basis, helps to sustain the illusion of individual, self-interested workers who earn, individually, their due return on their labour. How-ever, Habermas makes the claim that motivation to work is not inherently anindividual characteristic. Rather motivation depends upon ego and group identitieswhich must be socially negotiated through interaction. It is through processes ofinteraction that meaning and hence purposes are generated. Given the generaltendency for social relations to break down into atomised individuals undertechnically paced individualised work processes, 'meaning' becomes a scarce com-modity appropriated at a rhetorical level by management interests but no longergenerated in interaction. Its value as a motivating force is replaced by consumervalues. This forces up the demand for valued commodities and creates a crisis ofexpectations which cannot be met within the limits of the economic and politicalsystems (Habermas, 1976, p. 93).

From the perspective of management, the situation creates not only an economiccrisis, but also a crisis of legitimation. The problem is to sustain motivation at thesame time as removing the carrot. In Habermas' view this means that (failingradical changes in the class structure), political decisions have to be taken from aposition which does not require justification in normative terms. For Habermas, theuse of such a way out of the crisis was not likely to be successful, and Salter &Tapper (1981, p. 93) note that the DES was aware of the problem of legitimacy butwas 'not good' at dealing with it. In fact, Habermas has consistently attacked thesystems' theoretical view put forward by Luhman (Habermas, 1976, pp. 130-137)that legitimacy could be vested in the law alone.

Yet what we have witnessed in the last few years suggests that both economic

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retrenchment and changes in structures of authority and power have been accom-plished in relation to middle schools without any real attempts at normative ormoral justification. The ideology has rested on the democratic 'right' of the electedto 'govern' in spite of protest (Wallace et at, 1982), an ill-defined idea of 'standards',and the market forces of a dubious parental choice. The requirements of theeconomic system have been offered as sufficient reason for direct political involve-ment. Teachers, moreover, have yielded any claims to the 'unique identity' of theirinstitutions, by abandoning the rationale which originally established the principlesupon which they might have built more progressive practices. In succumbing to thepressures for 'basic' curricula and more and more testing, they are aligning theirprogrammes with a curriculum which makes any institutional identity irrelevant. Itthen no longer matters at what age pupils transfer, because if the 'core curriculum'of basic, standardised skills becomes a standardised reality, the identity is trans-ferred to the atomised individual graded by level of progress and application to task.

In practice, of course, the 'core curriculum' of standardised, prepackaged, indivi-dualised, goal-seeking content does not yet exist in precise, identifiable form. Itsprecursors in graded comprehension exercises and page after worksheet page ofarithmetical practice, certainly do. Yet teacher after teacher also complained thatpupils were not well motivated in lessons on the 'basics', and that they needed awider curriculum for motivation and interest.

We cannot deal here with these contradictory forces, but it must be recognisedthat the outcomes of the bureaucratic interventions cannot be predetermined. If theshift away from the rhetoric of the middle school 'identity' and on to the curriculumhas opened up the boundaries of individual schools to intervention by the bureau-cratic machine, it has also opened them up to parental involvement and concern.The contradictions have yet to be identified, but the question marks over schoolingmay now need locating in the tensions between parental and bureaucratic pressures.These are not necessarily as readily aligned as the rhetoric of consumer choice wouldassume, nor as some teachers appeared to believe. It is teachers who must now findnew purposes through which they can mediate the tensions. As they respond to theinstrumental demands of the bureaucracy, they must also interact with children andparents in an interpersonal context which offers expectations for the society of thefuture. The current rhetoric is already meaningless.

Acknowledgements

Gwen Wallace wishes to acknowledge the support of the SSRC in providing themoney for the fieldwork, and the help and supervision of Henry Miller in carrying itout.

Correspondence: Gwen Wallace, Matlock College of Higher Education, Matlock,Derbyshire DE4 3FW, England.

NOTE

[1] Figures announced in the House of Commons, 5th February 1981, by the Junior Minister ofEducation, the Rt Hon. Neil Macfarlane.

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middle schools: the heart of schools in crisis

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