ABSTRACT
Alec Clegg, in the quotation above, puts the case for thinking, or in many cases, re-thinking the total environment and philosophy necessary to get good results from the least academic in our secondary schools. By good results I do not mean good ‘O’ levels or C.S.E. results but stable, confident, fully developed human beings. I believe that in order to do this it is necessary to work towards complete non-streaming in schools. To bring about, by care and encouragement, the conviction within each child that he is an individual that counts, we need to set up situations whereby he experiences success and knows that he matters. This cannot be done by streaming, setting, banding, or any other system which, however, it is wrapped up, sorts children out into groups of those who are expected to be successful and those who are not. Having said this, however, I recognise that teachers, however much they may believe in this philosophy, cannot go into an established school and put into effective action a system that will bring this about. Quite often they can only fit into whichever system is in operation and get the best possible out of that situation. Some teachers, too, have an equally strong belief in ‘special classes’ and a highly structured system for the learning of basic skills. Whichever system one favours it is important that those who play a leading part are committed to their system. For these reasons this section of the book deals with various types of organisation, all of them in practice at the present time, and, within the organisation of their schools, working well. I have not attempted to compare the various systems or to offer any judgment. The reason for including them is so that the individual reader may make an evaluation himself and perhaps make use of whichever parts he feels will prove most useful in the situation in which he finds himself.
