ABSTRACT
A community, consumer voice in the use and management of schools was increasingly demanded from the late 1960s,1 and educational pressure groups had an important role to play in achieving it.
But pressure groups, whether for broad comprehensive reform or minority provision, were highly vulnerable to the blandishments of fashion and special pleading – middle class parents, for instance, were often found demanding special treatment for their dyslexic, autistic, or talented child, with Labour politicians, head teachers of state schools or university lecturers of left-wing persuasion among the most unabashed lobbyists. Pressure groups also tended to quarrel amongst themselves.2 Regular palace revolutions occurred at the fountainheads of middle class educational consumerism. The Advisory Centre for Education (ACE) based at Cambridge, for instance, attempted to influence the state school system and promote educational reform.3 But it never really recovered from fundamental errors which accompanied its origins. It had no membership organization. More of its time was spent answering queries about private schools rather than state classrooms; and despite attempts to reach a working class public through education shops in large department stores or at Butlin’s holiday camps it never achieved major influence.4 The Confederation for the Advancement of State Education (CASE) fared slightly better. Recognizing that giving ‘best buys’ and acting as a middle class consumer service as ACE had done was not the best way of helping the community in general, CASE emphasized practical action. It conducted surveys of holiday
play facilities, provision for handicapped children, how to be a school [203] manager, obtain a maintenance allowance or help in a literacy scheme or lobby for comprehensive school reorganization. But there was embittered debate in CASE over the question of private stance and public commitment. Should officials persist in buying private education for their children while working for CASE, the membership asked itself?5
