rather than slanted submissions based on preconceptions that the Government (and the electorate) have rejected. Second, it is highly damaging, even judged by the narrow criteria of good and impartial administration, for a department to become as closely connected with its clients as the DES was with the teaching unions, in particular the National Union of Teachers (NUT). I saw this in the flesh quite early on when on Saturday 12 September 1970 I was deputed at the last moment, because of the Leila Khalid affair,[14] to deliver Ted Heath’s speech at a Guildhall dinner to celebrate the centenary of the NUT. There were a large number of DES senior civil servants present and it was immediately clear to me that they and the NUT leaders were on the closest of terms. There were all those in-jokes, unstated allusions, and what is now called ‘body language’ which signify not just common courtesy but rather a common sympathy.
My difficulties with the civil service were compounded by the fact that we had been elected in 1970 with a set of education policies which were perhaps less clear than they appeared. During the campaign I had hammered away at seven points:
• a shift of emphasis onto primary schools
• the expansion of nursery education (which fitted in with Keith Joseph’s theme of arresting the ‘cycle of deprivation’)
• in secondary education, the right of local education authorities to decide what was best for their areas, while warning against making ‘irrevocable changes to any good school unless… the alternative is better’
• raising the school leaving age to sixteen
• encouraging direct grant schools and retaining private schools[15]
• expanding higher and further education
• holding an inquiry into teacher training
But those pledges did not reflect a clear philosophy. As I have already indicated, different people and different groups within the Conservative Party favoured very different approaches to education, in particular to secondary education and the grammar schools. On the one hand, there were some Tories who had a commitment to comprehensive education which barely distinguished them from moderate socialists. On the other, the authors of the so-called
GRAMMATICALLY INCORRECT
On that first day at the department I brought with me a list of about fifteen points for action which I had written down over the weekend at Lamberhurst in an old exercise book. After enlarging upon them, I tore out the pages and gave them to Bill Pile. The most immediate action point was the withdrawal of Tony Crosland’s Circular 10/65, under which local authorities were required to submit plans for reorganizing secondary education on completely comprehensive lines, and Circular 10/66, issued the following year, which withheld capital funding from local education authorities that refused to go comprehensive.
The department must have known that this was in our manifesto — they always scrutinize the Opposition parties’ policies during an election campaign. But apparently they thought that the policy could be watered down, or at least its implementation postponed. I, for my part, knew that the pledge to stop pressuring local authorities to go comprehensive was of great importance to our supporters, that any delay would be taken as a sign of weakness, and that it was important to act speedily in order to end uncertainty. Consequently, even before I had given Bill Pile my fifteen points, I had told the press that I would immediately withdraw Labour’s Circulars. I even indicated that this would have happened by the time of the Queen’s Speech. The alarm this provoked seems to have made its way to No. 10, for I was reminded that I should have Cabinet’s agreement to the policy, though of course this was only a formality.
More seriously, I had not understood that the withdrawal of one Circular requires the issue of another. This was a technicality, but it was one which those who disagreed with the-policy inside and outside the department used to maximum effect. My civil servants made no secret of the fact that they considered that a Circular should contain a good deal of material setting out the department’s views on its preferred shape for secondary education in the country as a whole. This might take for ever, and in any event I did not see things that way. The essence of our policy was to encourage variety and choice rather than ‘plan’ the system. Moreover, to the extent that it was necessary to lay down from the centre the criteria by which local authorities’ reorganization proposals would be judged, this could be done now in general terms, with any further elaboration taking place later. It was immensely difficult to persuade them that I was serious. I eventually succeeded by doing an initial draft myself: they quickly decided that cooperation was the better part of valour. And in the end a very short Circular — referred to as Circular 10/70 — was issued on Tuesday 30 June in good time for the Education Debate on the Queen’s Speech on Wednesday 8 July.
I now came under fierce attack from the educational establishment because I had failed to engage in the ‘normal consultation’ which took place before a Circular was issued. I felt no need to apologize. As I put it in my speech in the House, we had after all ‘just completed the biggest consultation of all’, that is a general election. But this carried little weight with those who had spent the last twenty-five years convinced that they knew best. Ted Short, Labour’s Education spokesman, himself a former schoolmaster, even went so far as to suggest that, in protest, teachers should refuse to mark 11-Plus exam papers. A delegation from the NUT came to see me to complain about what I. had done. Significantly, the brunt of their criticism was that I had ‘resigned responsibility for giving shape to education’. If indeed that had been my responsibility, I do not think the NUT would have liked the shape I would have given it.
In fact, the policy which I now pursued was more nuanced than the caricatures it attracted — though a good deal could have been said for the positions caricatured. Circular 10/70 withdrew the relevant Labour Government Circulars and then went on: ‘The Secretary of State will expect educational considerations in general, local needs and wishes in particular and the wise use of resources to be the main principles determining the local pattern.’ It also made it clear that the presumption was basically against upheaval: ‘where a particular pattern of organization is working well and commands general support the Secretary of State does not wish to cause further change without good reason’.
Strange though it may seem, although local education authorities had been used to sending in general plans for reorganization of all the schools under their control, neither these nor the Secretary of State’s comments on them had any legal standing. The law only entered the picture when the notices were issued under Section 13 of the 1944 Education Act. This required local education authorities to give public notice — and notice to the department — of their intention to close or open a school, significantly alter its character, or change the age range of its pupils. Locally, this gave concerned parents, school governors and residents two months in which to object. Nationally, it gave me, as Secretary of State, the opportunity to intervene. It read: ‘Any proposals submitted to the Secretary of State under this section may be approved by him after making such modifications therein, if any, as appear to him desirable.’
The use of these powers to protect particular good schools against sweeping reorganization was not only a departure from Labour policy; it was also a conscious departure from the line taken by Edward Boyle, who had described Section 13 as ‘reserve powers’. But as a lawyer myself and as someone who believed that decisions about changing and closing schools should be sensitive to local opinion, I thought it best to base my policy on the Section 13 powers rather than on exhortation through Circulars. This may sound arbitrary, but in fact I was very conscious that my actions were subject to the scrutiny of the courts and that the grounds on which I could intervene were limited. And by the time I made my speech in the debate I was in a position to spell out more clearly how this general approach would be implemented.
My policy had a further advantage, though it was not one that it would have been politically prudent to
