The British Education System in the 1980s

[VaguelyCreativeName]

Hello everybody,

I've hit a wall in my most recent quest in developing a story in a setting I know nothing about, and now very much need your insight to continue!

The story is set in northern England in the early to mid 1980s, and one of the main conflicts plays out between the dad and his teenage son, on how his education should continue, which is why I have several questions about the British education system at that time:

-How common were grammar schools at that time, and would it have been feasible for a working-class child to attend? Would they even be nominated/encouraged to take the entrance exams? Would the parents have to pay tuition?

-How would other factors besides class affect which secondary school you attended (race, gender)? Would teachers have been more likely to encourage working class boys over girls to try for the entrance exams?

-If you wished to attend university, would it have been required that you attend a grammar school, or could you attain the necessary qualifications at a different school? Were you more/less likely to be accepted depending on the school you attended?

-I've read that the system of secondary modern vs. grammar school had started to be abandoned in favour of 'comprehensive schools' as early as the 1960s, but that changes had been very inconsistent. How widespread would these be by the 1980s, and (how) would class factor into which schools you were likely/eligible to attend?

 

If you know anything at all that might be useful, I would be super grateful if you could help me out!

[nott theodore]

Hi!  I come from the north of England and have family who were working in education at this time, so hopefully I can be of some help with this!

 

Before I start this, I will say that the British education system is very confusing.  It's still very inconsistent across the country - even just within England - and a lot of people who go through it don't tend to be aware of the inconsistencies until they finish school and meet others who went through a completely different system.  So I'm going to respond to this in a slightly different order to your questions, but hopefully I'll cover most of your points anyway.

 

The grammar school system originally worked on the basis that all children would sit the 11-plus exam in their final year of primary school (now called year 6).  About 20% of students were expected to pass the exam and would go onto grammar schools, which were basically designed to offer a more "academic" education to pupils who had passed the exam, and the rest would go to secondary moderns (or, in some areas, there was also the option to go to technical schools).  The idea behind this was that any child, regardless of class, would be able to have access to this sort of education if they proved they had the ability (they could attend the grammar school at no cost to the family as it was part of the state education provision).

 

This system was starting to be phased out in the 1960s, and was officially ended in the early 1970s.  But as you said, the changes were very inconsistent.  Some counties chose to retain the grammar school system, and to this day have children sit the 11-plus exam in their final year of primary school, going to different schools according to the result in the exam.  The counties that have fully retained this system, however, are largely in the south of England (if you consider Lincolnshire to be in the north, then that's the only northern county that still has a proper grammar school system in place; Trafford, in Greater Manchester, also has some grammar schools, but that's not the whole county).

 

By the 1980s, grammar schools weren't very common in the north of England - even now, in the main northern counties (Lancashire, Yorkshire, Cumbria, Northumberland, Durham, Merseyside etc.) the total remaining grammar schools (meaning no fees if the 11-plus is passed) only number about 20, which should give you an idea of how uncommon they are.  The few that do exist are very competitive and difficult to get into, because their intake area is generally much bigger than most state comprehensives and they have a reputation for offering a "better" education to their pupils.  But generally, in the north of England, most schools bearing the name "grammar" either used to be selective and now retain the name as a state comprehensive, or are an independent (private) school.

 

When the grammar system was still in place, grammar schools were generally the only place you could go to do A levels, which at that time were the necessary qualification to go to university.  If you hadn't passed the 11-plus but had obtained the necessary grades at 16 to do A levels, you could move to a grammar school's sixth form (16-18) to do those.  By the 1980s, when most areas had abandoned the grammar school system, pupils from state schools could go to another school's sixth form (generally the former grammars) or a sixth form college to take their A levels which would get them into university.  In the 1980s there were no tuition fees for UK universities, but the average number who attended university was still under 100,000, with fewer women than men (although this gap had started to reduce by the end of the decade), so a university education definitely wasn't the norm at that point - class, race and gender definitely had an impact on that.

 

In theory, because the grammar school system didn't exist across the country in the 1980s, attending a grammar school shouldn't affect your chances of going to university.  But statistics show that even now pupils who've attended grammar schools are more likely to get places at the top universities than those who go to state comprehensives... so there's definitely still major inequalities, which isn't helped by the fact that these schools barely exist in the north of England.  

 

Secondary (state comprehensive) school placements generally depend on where you live/where you go to primary school, as most schools have an intake area for their pupils.  So while class and race don't nominally play a part in which school you go to, they are factors because of the areas that people live in having larger working-class populations, for example, or larger BAME populations.  As the state provides education for everyone, though, gender isn't as much of a factor in what school you go to (though there are still and were quite a lot, in the past, single-sex schools) though it can (and was more likely to in the 1980s) affect what you studied and which directions you were encouraged in (not necessarily officially).  And class and race still play a big role beyond influencing what school someone goes too, of course (as far as tuition for things like the 11-plus are concerned, it's not always necessary but I do know of some people who had tuition before it when they lived in areas with grammar schools - that was obviously only possible because they were from a family with a higher income) but that's a whole host of other issues.

 

I feel like this might have been a really long-winded and complicated explanation, but I hope that at least it's helped answer some of your questions and made the UK education system a bit more understandable