A Bradford Apprenticeship

By Donald Naismith

One of the main aims of the governments education policy is to make local education authorities a thing of the past by removing all schools from their control and establishing them as free-standing, self-governing academies. What was once a national service, locally administered is being transformed into a local service, nationally administered.

Donald Naismith argues that there is no inherent contradiction between the governments academy programme and the retention of local authorities; that, on the contrary, the governments school improvement programme would make more headway with local council involvement; and that the new devolution arrangements emerging present an opportunity for a renewed partnership between central government and a revitalised local government which should be taken. Arguments strengthened by the recently announced intention to re-introduce selection.

In his autobiographical sketch Very Near The Line, Donald Naismith described how the policies of the three London boroughs he served as chief education officer, Richmond-upon-Thames, Croydon and Wandsworth, helped to shape and advance Margaret Thatchers education reforms.

In this affectionate tribute to his adopted city, he recalls his Bradford apprenticeship at school and in the citys education department, still powerfully evocative of Bradfords days as an outstanding education pioneer, which helped, in turn, to shape his thinking about the educational issues of the day and establish his belief in local government as an essential and beneficial part of the national system.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Sep 23, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524636104

Donald Naismith

After a distinguished career in education administration, Donald Naismith retired to ' one of most unfashionable and unknown parts of France' where he now lives with his family and which provides the setting for this story. Educated at Belle Vue Boys Grammar School in Bradford in the West Riding of Yorkshire where he grew up and at Clare College, Cambridge where he held an Open Exhibition in History, he was appointed CBE and Chevalier des Palmes Academiques in 1995 for services to education in England and France.'

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Published by AuthorHouse  11/11/2016

ISBN: 978-1-5246-3611-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-3612-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-3610-4 (e)

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CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction

An Offer I Could Not Refuse

1: Bradford’s Legacy

‘A door is open in Bradford for a boy of special ability to pass right through to the universities’

Bradford’s Zeal for Education Continues

Bradford’s Success

2: Schooldays: ‘A Solid Basis Of Life’

Whetley Lane Infants School

Lilycroft Junior School

Belle Vue Boys Grammar School: The Junior Department

3: Specialisation

The Two Cultures

The Croydon Curriculum

Wandsworth’s Specialist Magnet Schools

English

History

4: The Wider World

University? The Sixth Form

Cambridge

Crown Woods School and Inverliever Lodge

5: The Town Hall

Rooms at the Top

Ward v. Bradford Corporation and Others

The Bradford College of Art and Technology

Punch and Judy Politics

The Appointment of Principal

An Offer I Could Not Accept

Postscript: And I Feel Bound To Add

PREFACE

O ne of the main aims of the government’s education policy is to remove all schools from local council control and, in so doing, destroy the carefully balanced distribution of responsibility for the nation’s schools between central government, local government, and the schools themselves, on which the state system has always rested. What was once ‘a national system, locally administered’ is being changed into ‘a local system, nationally administered’. This wholly retrograde development is the culmination of policies unleashed by Margaret Thatcher’s education revolution, intended to reorganise the failing ‘supply-led’ state system, as she saw it, along the lines of the successful ‘demand-led’ independent sector. Local councils, regarded as more concerned with catering to the needs of those who provided the education service than with those who depended on it, pupils, parents and employers, would have no place in the new arrangements she had in mind.

The claim of local government to a major continued role in the national education service is threefold. First, however justified or otherwise Mrs. Thatcher’s views, there is no inconsistency between local government involvement and the greater parental choice and institutional freedom the government rightly wants to see, as one of her own creations, Wandsworth, was to demonstrate.

Second, far from running counter to the academisation programme, on which so much of the school improvement agenda rests, the traditionally diffuse pattern of education administration in this country fits well with the new devolution arrangements now emerging.

And third, local government’s capacity for experimentation and innovation would further enhance the government’s drive for the more dynamic and responsive education service sought. It was, after all, local government which provided Margaret Thatcher with the practical means without which her ideological ambitions could not have been achieved.

In my autobiographical sketch Very Near the Line, I described three of these: Richmond-upon-Thames’ league tables and Croydon’s curriculum and standardised tests: both provided, for the first time, management with tools to see how well or otherwise everyone was doing and parents with the information they needed to exercise a better degree of choice; Wandsworth’s replacement of inner London’s neighbourhood comprehensive system with one based on free-standing and specialist schools which came nearest, at the time, to achieving Mrs. Thatcher’s ideal of a social market solution. Many other authorities made similarly important contributory breakthroughs.

Mrs. Thatcher’s policies would have made more headway if she had harnessed the energies of local government and not spent so much of her own energy trying to obstruct them. The same goes for today’s government.

My belief in the value of local government, which was a guiding force throughout my career, arose from the start in life I would not otherwise have had but for the education I received in my adopted city of Bradford. I was not able to deal with this adequately in Very Near the Line, nor to acknowledge there my indebtedness to the first administrative experience I gained in the city’s education department; hence this supplementary memoir of my Bradford apprenticeship.

For the sake of completeness, I have repeated a description of the city’s pioneering work in the earliest years which was such a powerful influence on my thinking and outlook, and which, in any case, deserves restating and to be remembered as yet another outstanding example of the contribution local authorities can make to the national system if they are enabled to do so.

Donald Naismith

La Cavalie, France

September 2016

INTRODUCTION

An Offer I Could Not Refuse

‘W e are going to offer you a job, Mr. Naismith, but it’s not the one you applied for.’ Without explanation, across the interview table, Leslie Beswick, more consigliere to Bradford’s education department than head of its administrative division, outlined my prospective responsibilities: the school building programme, the maintenance of premises and grounds, lettings, non-teaching staff, the school meals service, the education budget, estimates and expenditure.

This unexpected turn of events put me on the spot. As a schoolteacher seeking a career change into administration, I had no experience of any of these functions, and which I suppose I had always taken for granted. In addition, I was useless when it came to anything to do with figures. The post I had applied for was in the schools division; the advertisement had asked for applicants with teaching experience. And only the day before, one of the grandest personages of the education world, CJ Chenevix-Trench, the county education officer for a large and significant authority, Warwickshire, had offered to hold open a position there more suited to my immediate background if Bradford did not want me.

I had, however, set my heart on following my new career in my adopted city. So, with only a moment’s hesitation, I accepted. It was an offer I could not refuse. Handshakes, the expenses claim form, the customary pleasantries, the ‘let