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The Crisis
of the Meritocracy Britain’s Transition to Mass Education since the Second World War
Peter
Mandler
Oxford: University
Press, 2020 Hardback. xvi+362
pp. ISBN 978-0198840145. £25 Reviewed by Hugh Clout University College London
Rather than offering
a straightforward account of major changes in secondary and higher education in
twentieth-century Britain, cultural and social historian Peter Mandler focuses
on two guiding concepts, ‘meritocracy’ and ‘democracy’. Drawing on the research
of countless economists, sociologists, education experts and policy makers as
well as historians, and quoting numerous records of public opinion, he sets his
enquiry in a wide-ranging appraisal of how British society has come to change over
the past half century. Educated in both the USA and Great Britain and having
taught at two strikingly different universities (London Guildhall 1991-2001,
and subsequently Cambridge), he is very well equipped to undertake this
exploration. His starting point is the harsh fact that only one fifth of the
relevant cohort went on to secondary school on the eve of World War II, and a
mere 2 per cent attended university at that time. Now all teenagers attend
secondary schools, remain in education or training until aged 18, and virtually
half of those leaving secondary education proceed to university despite the
present high fee regime. How and why this transformation has come about are
Mandler’s central questions. He begins by glancing
back to the early decades of the twentieth century when the school system only offered
‘a minimum competency to the 80 per cent of the population that were expected
to end their education at the elementary level. [This] was not a gateway to
secondary education’ or anything more advanced [1]. Of course, affluent members
of the social elite sent their children to private, fee-paying schools (some of
which, confusingly, are known as ‘public schools’) and these institutions
provided both secondary education and a potential route to university. Mandler
declares that Britain had nothing short of ‘a system of educational apartheid …dominated
by inherited privilege’ that was not greatly affected by legislation which
gradually raised the school leaving age to 14 years by 1921 [1]. Very few
pupils managed to obtain scholarships to proceed to ‘grammar schools’ which
offered academic secondary education. As late as 1939, most British teenagers
experienced only elementary schooling; there was ‘no ladder of opportunity…for
the vast majority’ [1]. But change was imminent. At the end of World War II,
secondary education was made compulsory and by mid-century universities were
slowly beginning to expand. These trends heralded the dawn of the state education
system now in place. The new ‘ladder of
opportunity’ stood on the notion of ‘meritocracy’ that ‘made no assumptions
about who deserved high-status positions in life but argued that to ensure the
best selection (or alternatively a degree of natural justice) everyone ought to
be allowed to compete for them’ [4]. In order to privilege ability over
advantages of birth, this approach required an assessment, or test, that would
be taken by all pupils. A different interpretation came with the notion of
‘democracy’ that embraced a contrasting idea of equality of opportunity based
on the realisation that fundamental social inequalities would be reproduced if
secondary education separated scholarly bright pupils from the rest. Echoing
demands from a nation emerging from war and increasingly aware of divisions in
society, the ‘Butler Act’ of 1944 (named after R.A. Butler, Conservative
President of the Board of Education) required every local authority in England
and Wales to provide secondary education on a meritocratic principle.
Thereafter, all pupils sat the ‘Eleven Plus’ test (at age 11) and their results
determined whether they would attend grammar schools (for academically bright
children), technical schools or secondary modern schools for the rest.
Promotion of Christian education was a central part of the Butler formula, with
religious education and worship being required in all state schools. This tripartite
system served the ‘baby boomers’ born in the latter part of the war and
thereafter, with the national ‘bulge’ of schoolchildren beginning to enter
secondary schools in the middle of the 1950s. At this time, ‘democratic’
arguments spread widely among parents, especially mothers, who opposed the
Eleven Plus and demanded that all children should receive quality education
similar to that provided by grammar schools. Interestingly, one-fifth of local
authorities wished to replace the tripartite system with a single,
comprehensive brand of secondary education. Private, fee-paying schools, of
course, operated their own selection processes in which wealth, family connections
and tradition held important sway. By the mid-1960s, majority public opinion
had shifted toward comprehensive schooling, which was favoured by the Labour
government headed by Harold Wilson. Most local authorities duly followed this
route but a minority continued with grammar schools alongside comprehensives.
The new schools borrowed features from both secondary moderns and grammar
schools, operated internal streaming (known as ‘sets’) that reflected pupils’
varying academic aptitude, and introduced new subjects such as social studies. As the years passed
and the ‘bulge generation’ moved through secondary education, so the ‘trend’
for remaining in advanced education grew. Between 1961 and 1963, a committee
chaired by Lord Lionel Robbins deliberated on the future provision of higher
education. Its findings advocated immediate expansion of undergraduate numbers
according to the ‘Robbins Principle’ that ‘higher education should be made
available for all those who are qualified by ability and attainment to pursue
it and who wish to do so’ [73]. Hence, in the middle 1960s universities, ‘unlike
secondary education, [remained] unassailably to be the province of meritocracy
rather than democracy, of aptitude and ability rather than equal provision or
even popular demand’ [72]. With meritocracy as the guiding notion, it was
assumed that the number of teenagers qualified and wanting to go to university
would continue to grow. In the spirit of the Robbins Report, existing
universities were expanded, seven new ones created, and colleges of advanced
technology were given university status. In later years, this example was
followed by teacher training institutions. As more and more young people
contributed to the trend for higher education, ‘student life, as a traineeship
for middle-class adulthood…was rapidly becoming the norm’ [93]. After two decades of
acceleration, the demand for higher education slowed down in the 1970s in
response to changes in the labour market and the general health of the economy,
as well as the impact of crises of confidence among young people and their parents
who came to question whether acquiring a degree was worth it in the long run.
University expansion was duly constrained and in 1985, Sir Keith Joseph,
Secretary of State for Education and Science, proposed a retrenchment in the
size of the higher education sector, as well as an assessment of the relative
quality of university research. In Mandler’s view, his paper on The Development
of Higher Education into the 1990s was ‘probably the most scorned government
document on education policy of the twentieth century’ [122]. Nonetheless, policy
determined that financial squeeze followed upon financial squeeze, retiring
academics and support staff were not replaced, and university departments were
‘rationalised’. Surprisingly, the
Conservative government switched in the mid-1980s ‘from a policy of restriction
to an unprecedented expansion of higher education’ [10]. By the end of the
decade, the demand for student places had not only recovered but was growing
fast, with ‘new’ students coming ‘from all classes, both genders, [and] all
ethnicities, via Access Courses, the Open University, and further education
colleges, as well as schools’ [135]. Increasingly, university education was seen
not only as a good investment in terms of enhanced life-time earnings but also
as a necessary rite of passage toward meaningful employment. The developing
‘knowledge economy’, enmeshed with the ‘learning society’, helped ‘to restore
confidence in the economic value of education’ [207], and boosted the cultural
expectations surrounding ‘the student experience’. As well as the
question of student numbers, the thorny question of orientating candidates to
specific sectors of scholarship and science required attention both in schools
and universities. During the 1950s and subsequently, scientific subjects were
promoted in secondary schools, with mathematics and physics being favoured for
academically minded boys, and biology for girls. The arts and humanities
remained popular but were sometimes perceived as being less worthwhile. After
taking office in 1979, the Conservative government insisted that it would strive
to achieve maximum value from higher education by steering provision of student
places ‘in the interests of the national economy’ [165]. Sir Keith Joseph
dismissed much of the research output from universities as ‘economically
valueless’ and ‘damaging to the spirit of enterprise’ [166]. Consequently, the
humanities and social sciences came under political attack, while the so-called
STEM subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) were viewed with
increasing favour. Despite this attempt
at manipulation, the trend of student demand in the arts and humanities
remained strong, especially as more women and mature candidates applied to
enter university. Many young people and social scientists argued that a large
proportion of jobs now required a degree as an indicator of competence (through
a kind of educational triage), but not a degree in a specific subject.
Medicine, engineering, dentistry, etc.
were obvious exceptions. Regardless of attempts by successive governments to
shape the configuration of higher education, science graduates as a proportion
of annual totals fell year upon year to reach a low point of 38 per cent in
2012, with a slight increase thereafter. But student choice is a volatile and
seemingly unpredictable matter. Mandler notes that, at the time of writing,
‘the fastest growing subjects are [now] all scientific ones, but social studies
and creative arts continue to grow at higher than average rates, while business
and computer science lag behind. Languages, literature and education, and to a
lesser extent history, have declined’ [178]. Only time will tell whether this
pattern of demand will hold true in the wake of the employment crisis
associated with the Covid 19 pandemic. Peter Mandler declares
that during the decades from mid-century to the 1980s, Britain experienced
something of a ‘golden age of social mobility’, whereby ‘many more people from
less privileged origins were rising into higher-status occupations’ as a
result, in part, of widening opportunities in secondary education and in the
growing university sector [189]. However, rates of upward social mobility began
to slow toward the end of the century despite increasing opportunities for
women associated with their greater educational achievements. Downward social
mobility was also in evidence ‘especially for men, both because occupational
change had slowed and because income inequality was being used by the
privileged to maintain their privilege at the very top’ [200]. The stark
conclusion must be that, despite universal secondary schooling and mass higher
education, a range of factors, ‘often linked to family background, continued to
play the same role they had always done in reproducing the social order – in
effectively maintaining social inequality’ [181]. After a brief
epilogue, the main body of Mandler’s text ends at page 215. The remaining two
fifths of the volume is devoted to an array of supporting material, including
eighteen graphs and diagrams, ninety pages comprising 950 notes (many of which
have multiple components), and a bibliography of more than 700 items. Some
readers may question the precision of the title since the book excludes education
in Scotland and makes only slight reference to the situation in Wales. Others
may have welcomed more frequent references to fee-paying, private schools
operating beyond the state system. Without doubt, all will appreciate Mandler’s
masterly skill in marshalling evidence and developing argument in his
impressive volume that explores a remarkably complex topic and may be seen as a
veritable a tour de force. They may smile at his final remark regarding
the uncertain future of British state education: ‘After all, history is full of
surprises’ [215].
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