James Tooley

E.G. West showed a way for ‘free schools’ to be truly free

Nicky Morgan, Secretary of State for Education, has announced the closure of the Durham Free School, following scandalously one-sided Ofsted reporting about the school.  Closure would lead to less choice for parents in disadvantaged ex-mining villages here in the north-east. Local Labour MP, Mrs Blackman-Woods, says that there are surplus places available, so no free schools are required. There are surplus places, but only in schools that are perceived by poor parents as undesirable, low in academic standards and rife with bullying. There are great schools in Durham too, but these are oversubscribed. ‘Distance-based’ admissions criteria mean they’re accessible mainly to the sons and daughters of those in the best postcodes, academics, doctors and the like. That’s why parents from former mining villages helped create the Durham Free School, to give them a better choice. Closing it down would be very unjust to disadvantaged communities in this part of England. But is this the only way we can organize educational provision? Enter E.G. West. Exactly 50 years ago, Professor Edwin George West wrote his seminal work, Education and the State, while he was based, as it happens, in the north-east of England, at Newcastle University. He asked the historical question, did we need government to provide education for ordinary people? Going back to original sources West showed that before the main government intervention in 1870 the vast majority of children were in school. One contemporaneous source, the Newcastle Commission of 1861, showed that 95.5 per cent of children were in school for an average of 5.7 years. Some were in church and philanthropic schools. But many of the poor were in what were disparagingly called ‘dame’ schools.  Often run by a local woman – a ‘dame’ – these were low-cost private schools catering for the poor in Victorian England and Wales. Then as now, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate didn’t like poor people taking the initiative to help themselves.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in