William Tyndale School
is a primary school in Islington, North London, an academy that was rated
‘outstanding’ by OFSTED in 2013. It might now be a beacon of success, the kind
of school an education secretary likes to brag about, but forty years ago, it was a very
different story. Then, the junior school was known as the school that had lost
control of its pupils; a ‘scandal’; an establishment in which left-wing
ideology had destroyed the educational prospects of its pupils. Things were so
bad at William Tyndale that the Inner London Education Authority ordered an
inquiry into the running of the school, chaired by Robin Auld, QC, whose report
was eventually published in July 1976. Ever since, William Tyndale has become a
symbol of everything that was wrong with a progressive approach to education.
What happened at
William Tyndale in the seventies? How did it acquire this reputation? And what
lessons (if any) can be learned? There are three published accounts of the
events of 1974-5 at the school: the official report by Auld; Collapse of a School or a System? by TES
journalists John Gretton and Mark Jackson; and The Teachers’ Story, co-authored by four of the eight teachers
whose work was at the centre of the story. I have read each of these, as well
as a few other articles available on the web (including this piece by Kathryn
Riley – apparently from a book, although I can find no record of it – and this,
by Gerald Haigh from 2008). Auld’s report is the most detailed account,
although written in the judgmental tone presumably reserved for such inquiries.
Gretton and Jackson wrote an interesting analysis of the affair from the point
of view of its impact on the education system as a whole. Ellis’ book (I will
refer to Ellis as the author of The
Teachers’ Story merely for simplicity – it is clearly the joint work of
four people) is the only one to give any real insight into the thinking behind
the actions of the staff, which makes it a very interesting read.
Unfortunately, we have no insight into the thinking of Annie Walker and
probably never will have. Nevertheless, what we do have enables us to form some
sort of opinion of the events of forty years ago. And we should. If William
Tyndale Junior School is going to continue to be used as a shortcut term for a
failed progressive ideology, we should at least be able to examine what that
ideology was and the nature of its failures.
So
here we go. This is a fairly in-depth account of events, for which I make no apologies. Nowhere else on the internet will you find so much detail and, if you're interested in what happened, it will save you having to track down out-of-print books to wade through. If you're not interested, please don't feel obliged to read on - come back next month when I shall be looking more generally at progressive education.
In January 1974, Terry
Ellis took up the post of headteacher at the school. William Tyndale had been
without a head since the previous summer, when Alan Head had retired. Mrs Irene
Chowles stood in during the autumn term, before Mr Ellis’ appointment. The
school Ellis took over was not particularly remarkable in any way, being fairly
typical of schools in the area. Alan Head had not been a very consultative
headteacher, which had led to some discontent amongst the staff. Under Chowles,
the school had carried on but not significantly improved in any respect. Ellis
had a different approach, a far more inclusive one, which led to long
discussions and democratic decision-making in staff meetings. Increasingly
under Ellis’ tenure, the staff were happier with their working conditions. As
usual in situations like this, staff that were not so happy found employment elsewhere.
Irene Chowles was not happy, but chose to stay. Annie Walker, a part-time
teacher who took a ‘remedial reading’ class (what would be called an
‘intervention’ today and would almost certainly be run by a low-paid Teaching
Assistant), was not happy and chose to object. It was the manner in which she
did so, and the nature of her objections, that determined the course of the
Tyndale affair.
Ellis’ co-operative
approach was not confined to the staff. The teachers decided between them to
take a similar approach with the children. The thinking behind this decision
was that, although schools should cater for all children, in practice what
happened was some were catered for better than others. In most schools, said
the staff – progressive or otherwise – the normal method is to push the bright
children into achieving more and to merely cope with those who show problems.
Ellis and his team wanted to focus instead on those suffering social
deprivation and low self-esteem, the ‘casualties of inner-city stress’. They
saw these children as having the most pressing needs, and they set out to meet
their needs first, rather than the high achievers (who also tended to be from
middle-class backgrounds).
The way they did this
was to give children as much choice and responsibility as they could, to
encourage and enable them to think for themselves and to develop inner
discipline, rather than be subject to the discipline of teachers. Children were
allowed to come in before school started and to stay at the end of the day; to
go out or stay in as they chose at playtimes; to no longer have activities
segregated by gender, such as football for boys or needlework for girls. These
are good, progressive attitudes, at least some of which would be considered
automatic considerations today. Rules were reduced to a minimum and children
were expected to show responsibility as well as to exercise their rights.
Instead of compulsory lessons, a wide range of activities was offered, both
academic and non-academic, from which children were free to choose.
It should be stressed
that not all of this was offered at once, or to all children. At first, the
free-choice system was available only to one class (the eldest children),
introduced by its most enthusiastic exponent amongst the teachers, Brian
Haddow. This was introduced during the spring and summer terms of 1974. In the
following autumn, the free-choice approach was used with two out of the four
year groups in the school.
One new approach that
was used throughout the school, however, was a group reading scheme designed to
help children catch up with their reading. Previously, Mrs Annie Walker had
been responsible for providing remedial reading to around eighty children in
small groups. The new scheme had all staff taking a group at the same time each
day. Naturally, such an enormous undertaking had its teething problems and it
did not work well. However, Mrs Walker had little patience with the idea. She
was against it from the start, it seems, but felt her views were ignored. Frustrated
by this, she very quickly decided the idea was a failure, along with the whole
‘free choice’ system, and wrote her views down in a commentary to share with
staff in May 1974.
This commentary not
only attacked the progressive methods Ellis and others were so keen on, but
blamed the ‘free choice’ system for a breakdown of discipline and poor
behaviour amongst the children. In this, although she might not have known it,
Walker had an ally in Brenda Hart, the head of the infants school, who
considered the behaviour of the junior school pupils to have rapidly
deteriorated in the summer term of 1974, something she later complained about
to the Inner London Education Authority (ILEA). At that time, all schools in
London were under the control of ILEA.
When her commentary did
not have the desired effect upon her colleagues – serving only to isolate her
from them – Walker approached the district inspector (Donald Rice) and the
chairman of the school managers (Stella Burnett) with her complaints. Rebuffed
by them both, she then began making contact with some of the parents and
prepared another paper, this one a longer and more detailed criticism of the
school, that became known as the Black Paper. Walker’s Black Paper detailed her
criticisms of the ‘free choice’ method and, in its first draft at least,
contained a paragraph suggesting that this method was part of an attempt to
foment revolutionary ideas amongst working-class pupils. In her commentary,
Walker had suggested there were ‘half-baked ideas about education’ to blame;
now she was on the verge of linking revolutionary educational ideas with
revolutionary political ones.
According to The Teachers’ Story, Walker was later
presented in the media as a concerned woman, neither a traditionalist nor a
progressive in education. Indeed, she claimed to know little about the theories
of the Black Papers. However, she did secretly correspond with Rhodes Boyson,
an enthusiastic supporter of Black Paper ideology. The actual Black Papers were
a series of pamphlets written in the sixties and seventies in response to the
Plowden report and very much opposed to the progressive movement within
education. Ellis characterises the Black Papers as nostalgic for a supposed
‘golden age’ of the past, possibly Victorian, and viewing education as a way of
imbuing children with a competitive spirit in order to help support the western
capitalist system. In this view, Black Paper thinking was very much the
opposite from the co-operative progressive ideology favoured by Ellis.
Ellis also suggests,
however, that the crisis at Tyndale was not a simple matter of traditionalism
versus progressivism. Indeed, he is scathing about some aspects of so-called
progressive education, which had failed to change the nature of schools from what
they had always been: a means of social control. Following progressive methods,
teachers were perhaps no longer strict parents, but ‘occasionally severe aunts
or uncles’ instead. At William Tyndale, the staff wanted to change the dynamic
of the teacher-pupil relationship altogether, to allow pupils to develop inner
discipline and an understanding of their rights. This was what led to the ‘free
choice’ method, the freedom to come and go and the relaxation of rules. While
not condoning dangerous behaviour, the teachers did not want to be moralistic
over children’s conduct. They wanted to teach the children to think for
themselves.
Another important
aspect of the Tyndale approach was the valuing of play. Any good Early Years
teacher today knows that children learn best through play, and child-led
activities, in which pupils determine what activities they do and how they do
them, is a staple of progressive ideology. Ellis and his staff not only
believed that formal skills could be learned through the playing of games, but
that understanding how to make good use of leisure time was itself an important
part of education, usually overlooked. Not all that is of value is academic,
they said – something a great many teachers would agree with today – and not
all children are suited to academic study – something else now widely
considered true.
It was later said that
the sharp fall in the roll of William Tyndale was due to this ‘extreme’
approach to education; that is a matter that shall be looked at below. It is
certainly true that many parents struggled to understand the thinking behind
Ellis’ reforms. The attitude towards parents in The Teachers’ Story is that the staff did try to include and inform
them of their plans, but that their focus was on the children and they were the
ones the staff felt accountable to, rather than the parents. In today’s era of
parent power, this might seem rather strange, but in the seventies parents did
not expect to be so well informed about what went on in schools, and how and
what the children were taught was very much up to the teachers – not the
government, not the school’s managers, and certainly not the parents.
It is not true, though,
that the school did not always communicate effectively with its parents. In
fact, Ellis and his staff did hold many meetings and actively encouraged
parents to come into the school to see how it worked for themselves. However,
there were limits. It should be remembered that the focus was on the most
socially and emotionally deprived children and it was the parents of those
children Ellis particularly wanted to reach. He eschewed the idea of a PTA
because, according to The Teachers’ Story,
Plowden had found that a smaller proportion of manual workers attended PTA
meetings than other meetings. (Many teachers today might be aware of how, even
in areas of high working-class population, the PTA and governing bodies tend to
be dominated by middle-class parents.) Ellis sought other ways to attract
parents: open evenings, a parents’ room that was planned for the school,
special meetings to introduce new ideas. However, the bottom line seemed to be
that if the free choice pupils were given did not please the parents, that was
too bad for the parents. The teachers saw themselves as taking the children’s
side in this; not all the parents agreed.
It is tempting today to
side with the parents. Few teachers would be brave enough now to take a stance
against a parent in the way Ellis seems to have done. However, in the defence
of the teachers, they do make a good point in their book: some parents, they
say, advocate hitting their children to instil discipline. A teacher could not
possibly condone that behaviour and the implication is that, by extension,
parents did not always know what was best for their children. The counter to
this might be that nor do teachers necessarily know what is best. However,
clearly Ellis and his staff were trying to give children the space to find out
for themselves. This stance can be agreed with or disagreed with, but in either
case, it is a valid progressive attitude.
Returning to Walker,
she showed her Black Paper in draft form to one of the school managers, Mrs
Gittings and to parents following a meeting at the school in June 1974 (the
meeting was not about ‘problems’ at Tyndale, but to ask parents for their
support in an ongoing campaign by London teachers for an increase in the London
Allowance, a campaign that included strike action as part of its method). The
day before this meeting, Walker had an informal meeting of her own with a group
of parents at the school gate. The next day, the London Allowance meeting was
disrupted by parents, hostile to the methods of the school, some of them
shouting abuse at Ellis and his staff. As a result, another meeting was
arranged for July 9th to explain the new approach to parents. At
this meeting, Walker put copies of her finished Black Paper on the chairs,
claiming it represented views of parents. She also spoke during the meeting,
disassociating herself from the rest of the staff and attacking the ‘free
choice’ method, in what Auld describes as ‘extreme terms’ and with ‘personal
criticisms’ of Ellis and, by implication, Haddow.
It can be seen from
this that the first many parents knew of the new approach was through the
critical reports given by Walker. It was the opinion of the staff throughout
the crisis that it was Walker who stirred up the parents against the school,
rather than the parents deciding for themselves they did not like the new
approach. It is impossible to know the truth of the matter now, but what is
known is that no letters of complaint were received from parents until July
1974, and then there were five, three of which were from parents in the infants
school (and one of these expressed sympathy for the situation) and two critical
ones from junior school parents. At the end of the summer term, there was what
Auld calls a ‘sharp fall’ in the school roll. Seventeen children left and
twenty-one did not transfer from the infants. Again, whether this is because of
the school, or a result of bad feeling stirred up by Walker, is a matter of
opinion.
Inspector Rice wrote a
report on the school just before the July meeting, in which he recommended the
appointment of extra staff (specifically a psychotherapist to meet the needs of
children with mental health problems) and extra money for equipment. He did not
seem to think there was a problem in the way the school was being run. Ellis
told parents in the July meeting that staff shortage was a problem and Rice
supported Ellis when managers Gittings, Dewhurst, Fairweather and Burnett
shared their concerns with him (particularly the falling roll) in a meeting on
July 23rd. Rice argued that Ellis deserved more time to prove
himself and the summer term ended thus: no action was taken against Annie
Walker for her actions; some, at least, of the managers and parents were
expressing concerns about Ellis and the way the school was run; but Ellis was
supported by Rice and the ILEA.
During the autumn term,
the situation became more strained, with Ellis and his staff feeling
increasingly under pressure. In The
Teachers’ Story, this is clearly shown to be partly as a result of
different accounts being given of what was decided on July 23rd. Burnett
gave one version of events, Fairweather another; and in Fairweather’s,
according to The Teacher’s Story, at
the meeting had been discussed the possibility of Ellis’ removal, the closure
of the school if the roll continued to fall, the possibility of leaks to the
press in order to stir up trouble for the school, and the possibility of a spy
being appointed to the staff in order to feedback about teachers’ activities.
It seemed that Ellis had until the end of the autumn term to prove himself or
he would be ousted. According to Auld, the teachers reacted in a way that was
immature, aggressive and irresponsible: they issued a series of statements demanding
support from the managers. Despite earning Auld’s disapproval later for doing
so, the managers did eventually issue a statement of support, which was given
in October via a letter to parents.
Otherwise, the
situation seemed to settle down. The staff used this term to extend the ‘free
choice’ method to two year groups and to plan changes to the use of rooms
within the school. There were also some changes to staff, with two teachers
leaving and two new ones arriving who were more in agreement with the new
approach of the school. Meanwhile, Brenda Hart was increasingly concerned over
the behaviour of the junior school children and the impact of this on the
infant school.
The spring term of 1975
was still more settled. Although the co-operative teaching programme still had
difficulties (possibly due to the staff taking longer than anticipated to
manage it well), the formation of a steel band was proving a success with some
of the more difficult and troublesome pupils and the appointment of a
teacher/psychotherapist (Mrs Arnold) to work with groups of ‘disturbed’
children was also a positive development.
The managers were still
unhappy, however, and a new appointment amongst them, Mrs Elizabeth Hoodless,
began to make her presence felt. Mrs Hoodless was an experienced manager and
governor and both she and her husband were active members of the labour party.
Indeed, Donald Hoodless was Deputy Leader of Islington Borough Council and an
Additional Member of the Greater London Council (GLC). Hoodless, Gittings, Fairweather
and Dewhurst decided to bypass Rice and approach the ILEA themselves. Hoodless
even discussed amalgamating the Infant and Junior schools under Hart with an ILEA
inspector, named Truman. In his report, Auld speculates that Hoodless was
recruited to the managing body specifically because of her political
connections. She certainly appeared to use her husband’s position to gain
access to Hinds. Hinds met with the four managers in February of 1975, as a
result of which he commissioned a new report from Inspector Rice. Rice had
already written one report on the school (in July 1974, see above), which Hinds
had apparently not seen. This new report, which was completed in March 1975,
mentioned the well-being of the children in a positive light and noted progress
that had been made in reading. Although there were aspects of the curriculum
that could be improved (or that were not observed, which is not quite the same
thing) and the general lack of confidence in the school was noted, Rice
concluded that no drastic action was called for, contrary to the hopes of the
managers.
Despite the conclusion
of the report, the managers continued to insist Hinds should take action.
Extraordinarily, he discussed with three of them (Fairweather, Gittings and
Hoodless) further actions they might take, including the circulation of a
petition. Hinds agreed that a petition might be appropriate, much to the disapproval
of Auld in his report. Hinds also subsequently asked the Education Officer to
consider the amalgamation of the infant and junior schools. The result of this
consideration was that a reorganization might be justified due to the falling
rolls of both schools, but that it would represent problems if both headships
were occupied. It might be inferred from this that Ellis was seen as an
obstacle to amalgamation, although Auld does not state that outright.
Shortly after meeting
with Hinds, Hoodless started a petition calling for the ILEA to take urgent
steps to restore confidence in the school, following concerns about the quality
of education and the falling roll. It did not mention amalgamation.
Amalgamation was the agreed aim of a Labour Party resolution passed on 26th
March 1975, however. The petition was circulated amongst Labour Party members
and governors at other schools, but not amongst parents at William Tyndale and
certainly not shown to staff. The petition eventually attracted 198 signatures.
Despite the attempt to
keep it from the staff, Ellis and the other teachers did learn of the
petition’s existence, in April. During the summer term, the school continued to
improve: the sanctuary, which was Mrs Arnold’s therapy room, and the steel band
were going from strength to strength and there were a number of events
organised for the benefit of the parents and wider community. The roll was
still falling, albeit only by a few, and the managers continued their campaign
for the authority to step in. Whereas it seems that the managers blamed the
staff for the falling roll, the staff blamed what they called ‘outside
organized interference’, by which was meant not only Annie Walker’s Black Paper,
but the subsequent behaviour of the managers as well.
During this term, the relationship
between managers and staff deteriorated beyond repair. The staff made their own
appeals to the inspectors and ILEA to investigate the cause of the falling
roll. They used NUT support to get other schools to refuse admission to pupils
leaving William Tyndale (contrary to the rights of the parents, it has to be
said) and refused to allow managers into classrooms, citing harassment.
One manager, Mabey,
responded by demanding access to classrooms. He was refused by Ellis, and both
men wrote letters of complaint about the other to Hinds. The next move was for
the managers to contact the national press, and stories began to appear in newspapers
that put the school in a bad light. The first of these, in The Times on July 2nd,
was written as if an attack on the managers was taking place, and appeared on
the very day that Hinds chaired a meeting between staff and managers to try to
find a resolution. Needless to say, none was found. The managers called for an
inspection (by HMI, not ILEA), but the staff rightly cited Rice’s opinion that
this was not necessary. Hinds suggested to the staff that an inspection could
include an inspection of the managers’ conduct, but the staff rejected this
offer and called instead for an inquiry into management. The result was that
ILEA decided to hold its own inspection and inquiry.
During the events of
1975 that we have looked at so far, it is clear that both the managers and the
teachers behaved in ways they should not have done. The teachers should not have asked other schools to refuse
children who were taken out of Tyndale, certainly; but the managers, having
been reassured by Hinds and Rice that no further action was needed at the
school, had no need to start a petition against the teachers with the clear
(though not stated) aim of removing Ellis from his post. This was far beyond
the remit of their role and, together with the probability that Hoodless was
recruited to the cause because of her political connections, puts the managers
in a very bad light.
Unfortunately, things
were only to get worse. In the autumn term of 1975, when the free choice
approach was extended to the whole school, the inspection was due to begin. The
staff, believing the public perception of the school could only be harmed by
the inspection, decided not to co-operate and, when the inspectors arrived on
22nd September, they found the school shut. The teachers were on
strike, with the exception of Mrs Chowles and Mrs Arnold (the
teacher/therapist). Extraordinarily, the inspection went ahead with the
inspectors doubling as teachers. Not surprisingly, the lead inspector (Mr Pape)
said that the ensuing report should lead to no final conclusions being drawn.
(It should be noted here that a second inspection was later carried out, after
the staff returned to work. Both reports are critical of the state of the
school, the curriculum and the behaviour of the pupils. However, due to the
strike and some children being kept off school when the teachers returned, it
was almost two different cohorts of children that were observed. It should also
be noted that in this second inspection, the inspectors were not able to
establish any firm conclusion about the academic standards of the pupils and
that Mr Birchenough, whose signature is on both reports as Chief Inspector,
says the inspectors cannot offer a final judgement on the school.)
During the first
inspection, the striking teachers ran an alternative school, the Gaskin Street
Chapel School, attended by the children of those parents loyal to the staff.
Meanwhile, the managers put in a formal complaint to ILEA about the striking
teachers, a complaint which also made its way into The Guardian newspaper. The first inspection report was also
released to the press, who used its incomplete observations to lambast the
school. The Evening News ran with the
headline, ‘SCHOOL OF SHAME’, which is fairly typical of the tenor of the
reports.
Not content with
smearing the school in this way, the managers sought to prevent the eventual
return of the teachers. Despite this, the teachers did return, knowing that
co-operation with the inspectors was the only way to get an inquiry, at which
the behaviour of the managers would be investigated. According to Ellis, the
staff had to be escorted by police into the school, through a crowd of hostile
parents and reporters. He describes it as the most harrowing day in the whole
affair, which is saying something, given the preceding events.
After the second
inspection, with its inconclusive report, came the inquiry. In the conclusion
to his report, Auld hands out blame to pretty much everyone, with the important
exceptions of Chowles (the Deputy Head, whose forbearance he admires) and Hart
(the head of the infants school, together with her staff). For the others, the
blame was doled out as follows:
The authority (ILEA) is
to blame because, if a school is struggling, it is up to the authority to
intervene – and ILEA did not, or at least did not do so in time.
The managers are to
blame because, although there concerns were genuine, they did not follow the correct
procedure in expressing them.
The staff are to blame
for creating the situation in the first place and for their attitude towards
the managers (which Auld finds ‘wholly indefensible’) and the authority.
Finally, Walker is to
blame for her ‘political’ accusations against Haddow and the manner in which
she went about sharing her concerns about the school.
How justified was Auld
in his conclusions? A reading of the report indicates a thorough justification,
as long as one accepts the underlying assumptions made by Robin Auld, QC. The
first of these is that the situation in the school was one that justified
Walker’s initial concerns, if not the manner in which she expressed them. What
were these concerns? Much of Walker’s commentary and Black Paper focus on the
‘free choice’ method and her dislike of this approach. Her objections are
theoretical in their nature; hers is an attack on the ideology behind the
approach, which is beyond Auld’s remit to comment on. Furthermore, her attacks
were launched before the ‘free choice’ method had had a chance to establish
itself and when the reading groups scheme was also faltering. A proper response
– the response taken by ILEA, indeed – was to give Ellis more time. This did
not happen. Walker was free to disagree with Ellis’ approach, but that does not
make it a bad approach; she could say it did not work, but not after such a
short period of time. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that Walker was not
justified in her concerns at all, and this seems to be the response of ILEA at
the time, though not Auld.
Unfortunately, the
manner in which Walker pursued her case had a detrimental effect upon the
school. It was only after she distributed her Black Paper, held informal
meetings with parents and at least one manager (Gittings), that parental
complaints came in (and then, only a total of five) and the school roll started
to fall. The staff always maintained that the fall of the roll was due to the
rumours started by the Black Paper (as well as other factors, such as the
general population decline and parents moving out of Islington, which did also
happen). The real reasons why the roll fell cannot now be firmly established
and were never investigated at the time, despite the staff’s insistence.
The other ‘evidence’
that the school was not functioning well came from the managers, although their
opinion is also based partly on Walker, along with their own knowledge of the
school and the occasional visit. Again,
Auld accepts their concerns, even though ILEA did not – and their judgement was
based on two reports by Inspector Rice. In addition, Dr Birchenough (Chief
Inspector) and Mr Pape (a very experienced inspector) also advised against
carrying out a full inspection of the junior school. Nevertheless, Auld
considers Hinds made an ‘error of judgment’ in not intervening sooner. He
clearly finds the position of the managers (or at least the four who visited
Hinds in February 1975) a sympathetic one. The managers themselves were in no
mood to be sympathetic towards the staff, however.
Why were the managers
so opposed to Ellis and his staff? Apart from the falling roll (discussed
above), the only reason is the progressive ideology at work in the school. In The
Teachers’ Story, the staff are quite open about the success of the free
choice method with the children it was aimed at – the socially and emotionally
deprived – and with the more middle-class children, but not with those
in-between. The parents who withdrew their children, however, seemed to be mostly
the middle-classes, possibly angered by what they saw as Ellis’
anti-middle-class attitude. Certainly, the teachers felt that the attitude of
the parents against the free choice system made it harder for the system to
work. As for the other parents, Jill Tweedie wrote an article for The Guardian in which two working-class
parents apparently speak for the majority in criticising the school, but not
all parents were critical: there was a support group for the school set up
amongst them for example. Auld acknowledges that Ellis had good relationships
with parents in many ways, but says that when it came to their children’s
education, he was reluctant to listen to their ideas. This brings us to another
assumption behind Auld’s report.
At various points
throughout his lengthy report, Auld says that the teachers did not act in the
interests of the children. At no time, however, does he distinguish between the
interests of the children and those of their parents, and frequently seems to conflate
the two. Ellis and his staff, however, were very particular about addressing
the needs of the children rather than the parents (as discussed above). In
failing to make the distinction that Ellis made, and in failing to even realise
there is a distinction to be made (it is not rejected, just never discussed,
despite its importance to the ethos of the school), Auld perhaps also fails to
understand a key element of progressive education: it is a child-centred, not a
parent-centred approach. Some parents might have been shocked by Ellis’
methods, but, as Ellis says, ‘because a school is “unpopular”, it does not mean
it is bad’. There is clear evidence that innovations such as Mrs Arnold’s
sanctuary and the establishment of the steel pan band were having a positive
effect. Who knows what Tyndale might have achieved if its methods had been
given a proper chance? It is easy to agree with Auld that the situation was bad
because the parents said so; but it is equally possible to agree with ILEA that
Ellis deserved more time.
Of course, it could be
argued that the school did have more time: Ellis had been in post for nearly
two years when the inquiry began. However, for most of that time (certainly
from July 1974 onwards) the staff had been working under enormous pressure, and
this is another consideration that is overlooked in the report. Teachers
frequently referred to the pressure they were under and Ellis had to take
several periods of time off work due to stress. Yet it does not seem to occur
to Auld that working under such conditions might cause the staff to behave as
they did. The ‘locking in’ of children by preventing transfers to other
schools, the banning of the managers from the classrooms and the strike of 1975
might have been unwise decisions; but they are understandable when considered
in the light of the situation in which the teachers were having to work.
Consider what they had to put up with:
Walker’s commentary and Black Paper, in
which she criticised her colleagues
The way Walker distributed the Black
Paper to parents and used a meeting with parents to openly criticise the school
The involvement of Gittings, a manager,
with the Black Paper at draft stage
The abusive behaviour of some parents at
the meeting on June 13th 1974
The criticisms of staff in the meeting
of July 9th 1974, causing some teachers to walk out
The secret meeting of managers without
notifying Ellis on July 23rd 1974, at which the possibility of Ellis’ removal
was apparently discussed, and about which different accounts and rumours
circulated
The secret correspondence between Walker
and Boyson, revealed later
The lack of action taken against Walker
by ILEA
The apparent reluctance for managers to
express confidence in staff, despite Hinds’ reassurances to them
The secret meeting between Hinds and
four managers, after which he commissioned Rice’s second report
The follow-up meeting with three of the
managers, during which Hinds advised them over starting a petition
The petition itself, which was conducted
in secret and which contained no signatures from parents at the school
The recruiting of Hoodless in order to
exploit her political connections and the subsequent involvement of her husband
The involvement of the local Labour
Party by Hoodless
The discussion between Truman and
Hoodless about amalgamation
The continued pressing by managers for
ILEA involvement despite Rice’s second report recommending no drastic action.
The continued falling roll, part of
which at least was out of the hands of the staff
The apparent harassment of the staff by
the managers
The leaking of material hostile to the
school to the press
The confrontational attitude taken by
managers towards the school after they were banned from the classrooms
The demands for an HMI inspection
The first ILEA inspection and concurrent
strike
The running of an alternative school
during the strike
The second inspection
Such a catalogue of
pressures surely goes some way to explain the siege mentality of the staff during
the 1974-75 academic year and afterwards, and gives a context to the
questionable decisions they made during that time. To expect, at the end of it,
a school functioning in any way at its best would be ridiculous. Even so, the
second inspection report cannot make a final judgement. Even after everything
that was thrown at them, the Tyndale teachers were not condemned. Not yet.
Then came the inquiry.
After several months of witnesses and evidence, Auld retired to write his
report. Following its publication, five managers and Hinds resigned from their
posts; Ellis and Haddow faced disciplinary charges; and William Tyndale junior
and infant schools were combined under the headship of Brenda Hart.
Reading Auld’s report,
it is clear that he considers the system itself to be at fault. Indeed, he
considers that the set-up at the time, with the authority devolving part of its
responsibility to managers, creates a problem: if a headteacher considers his
approach is correct, but managers then complain about him to the authority and in
consequence the authority recommends to the head a different approach, there is
no means to ensure the head follows the authority’s lead. This apparent gap in
the system is expanded upon in Collapse
of a School or a System, the short study of the Tyndale affair by two TES
journalists. In their conclusion, they assert that the main ingredients of the
Tyndale situation were to be found all over the country at that time and that
the pessimism and economic decline of the seventies was making society less
patient with headteachers and more concerned about standards. Kathryn Riley suggests that the Tyndale affair
brought up the issues of who controls schools, how much power a headteacher should
have and what the rights of parents should be. The answer to these questions
was given by James Callaghan in his famous Ruskin speech of 1976, which
suggested that the age of the autonomous teacher was at an end, and indeed it
soon was. Ruskin paved the way for the 1988 Education Act, which ushered in the
national curriculum and, eventually, OFSTED. A school such as William Tyndale,
which sought to give pupils true democratic rights, became what many thought it
should always have been: unthinkable.
Christopher Loft 2015
