A year seems to go very quickly when working and campaigning for education. Looking back, I feel 2024 proved a funny old year for Comprehensive Future. In spite of a resounding Labour win at the General Election – the party we all associate with the comprehensive movement – many Labour MPs proved surprisingly reluctant to publicly support our work. Nonetheless, we have continued with our political lobbying and are delighted to have found some very supportive allies in the Lords. We will use 2025 to actively work on growing support from MPs in the Commons.
Although vague on the details, the new Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill which came out at the very end of 2024, suggests Labour is making tentative moves towards making school admission fairer. By giving more oversight of school admissions to Local Authorities, it promises to reduce the power held by academies, some which have found ingenious ways to covertly select pupils in their quest for league table success.
The Bill has been criticised for being nothing more than re-hash of previous legislation with few new ideas. We are disappointed in its failure to tackle the unfairness of 11-plus admissions. However, there may be a chance that we can table amendments. If we are able to get the necessary support from allies in the Lords, for example, we may be able to highlight the unfairness of schools being allowed to use an 11-plus test for admissions.
As a supporter, you will know that we are always looking for new ways to make MPs and members of the public understand why we campaign to end the 11-plus. We are very pleased with the progress we have made in our campaign to obtain evidence for the damaging and long-term impact of the 11-plus on children’s mental health and wellbeing. A new area, for Comprehensive Future, we strongly believe that evidence of the damaging effect of the 11-plus on children’s wellbeing and mental health cannot be dismissed.
We are hopeful that the findings of our two university based research projects will finally persuade enough MPs that the time has come to end selection. We are especially keen to reach those MPs who represent constituencies with grammar schools. It is these areas where the impact of the impact of the 11-plus is felt not only by children who sit the test, but also every child educated in a non-selective school who intake is affects by a local grammar school and its selective practices.
I’m very proud to say Comprehensive Future made a lot of headway with the two research initiatives announced at the end of 2023. Based in the psychology of education departments of Manchester University and King’s College, London, both projects seek to produce new evidence on the impact of the 11-plus on children and their families. The first of these research projects is supervised by Educational Psychologist Professor Kevin Woods at Manchester University. Comprehensive Future is named as the commissioner of the research and the project will examine children’s experiences of both of children who pass and who fail the 11-plus, and the wider impact of the test, as perceived by their families.
Our second research project is being overseen by educational psychologist Dr Maria Livanou of King’s. Involving a series of focus groups with children, parents and teachers, it has been examining children’s experiences of school transitions, including those where the 11-plus plays a key role. Interim findings were presented at a daytime webinar held last month hosted by Maudsley Learning, a platform for mental health practitioners. Comprehensive Future’s presentation presented statistics on the impact of academic selection on non-selective schools, as well as anecdotal evidence of the harm the 11-plus causes children as described by parents and teachers, sourced from our 11+ Anonymous website.
Dr Livanou’s research is ongoing and we are hopeful the findings on transitions involving an 11-plus might indicate the need for a dedicated research project.
Other successes in 2024 include Comprehensive Future’s in-person interview between Vice Chair Melissa Benn and Daniel Kebede just after he’d been elected General Secretary of the NEU.
The event was a great success, not least because of Melissa’s gift as an interviewer to combine the chatty with the gently probing. Daniel rightly points out that he is GS of an inclusive union with teachers who work in a range of schools. Nonetheless, he made no bones about the problems caused by the 11-plus describing the ‘siphoning off’ of young people at a very young age into successes and failures as a practice which ‘entrenches inequality’.
The decline in education journalism has made it harder and harder to attract media interest in any story focused on the 11-plus. Nonetheless, Comprehensive Future’s research into a racket involving grammar schools selling mock 11-plus papers to anxious parents created quite a stir. Both Schools Week and the Guardian dedicated substantial column inches the story.
The Guardian also ran a great piece based on committee member James Coombe’s tribunal win. It was major success for James and meant Lincolnshire can no longer refuse to share data on its annual 11-plus results. We believe this must set a precedent for other selective areas. As we have long argued, if LAs and grammar schools have nothing to hide about their 11-plus results and how selection is organised, then they have nothing to fear by making the data public.
Our grassroots campaign group TUFFT, Time’s Up for the Test, has had a successful year resulting in the formation of a new local campaign group in Kent. We owe many thanks to TUFTT members who have handed worked tirelessly, handing out flyers to shoppers in all weathers. Their inspired social media campaign included a mock 11-plus – I definitely needed a tutor for question no. 3!
To conclude, I want to express my warmest thanks to Comprehensive Future’s Vice Chairs Melissa and John, our money juggling wizard, Alexa, our Treasurer, and to the great team who make up Comprehensive Future’s steering committee. As always, however, I reserve my very special thanks for Jo, our inspirational Campaign Officer, whose outstanding hard work make all we do possible.
Thank you very much, to all of you who follow our campaign, for your continued support.