Today we split into two groups again, one to do research and the other to script the next meeting scene. I did some research and found some information about the Tripartite System of education.
Wikipedia (The Tripartite System of Education):
The Tripartite System was the arrangement of state-funded secondary education between 1945 and the 1970's in England and Wales, and from 1947 to 2009 in Northern Ireland. It was an administrative implementation of the Education Act 1944 and the Education Act (Northern Ireland) 1947.
State funded secondary education was to be arranged into a structure containing three types of school, namely: grammar school, secondary technical school (sometimes described as "Technical Grammar" schools) and secondary modern school. Not all education authorities implemented the tripartite system. Many authorities maintained only two types of secondary school, the grammar and the secondary modern.
Pupils were allocated to their respective types of school according to their performance in the Eleven Plus examination. It was the prevalent system under the Conservative governments of the 1951 to 1964 period, but was actively discouraged by the Labour government after 1965. It was formally abolished in England and Wales in 1976, giving way to the Comprehensive System. However, elements of similar systems persist in several English counties such as Kent which maintains the grammar school system alongside comprehensive schools. The system's merits and demerits, in particular the need and selection for grammar schools, were contentious issue at the time and remain so.
Wikipedia (Opposition to the Tripartite System):
In 1958 the sociologist Michael Young published a book entitled The Rise of the Meritocracy. A mock-historical account of British education viewed from the year 2033, it satirised the beliefs of those who supported the Tripartite System. Young argued that grammar schools were instituting a new elite, the meritocracy, and building an underclass to match. If allowed to continue, selective education would lead to renewed inequality and eventually revolution.
This reflected a growing dissatisfaction on the left with the results of the Tripartite System. Whereas the previous generation of Labour politicians had focused on the social mobility afforded to those who passed their eleven plus, now concern became focused upon those who were sent to secondary moderns. Once the Tripartite System had been implemented, the middle classes were found to be much more likely to win places at grammar schools. It was feared that society was being divided into a well-educated middle class elite and a working class trapped in the Modern schools, or "eggheads and serfs". To some on the left, such as Graham Savage of the LCC, it became an article of faith that the only way to bring about equality was by putting everyone through the same schools.
In July 1958 the Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell formally abandoned the Tripartite system, calling for "grammar-school education for all". The party's fiercest opponent of the Grammar school was Gaitskell's protégé, Anthony Crosland.
Experiments with comprehensive schools had begun in 1949, and had taken hold in a few places in the UK. Anglesey, London, Coventry, the West Riding and Leicestershire had all abolished the Tripartite System in the 50's and early 60's, for a variety of reasons. They offered an alternative to the existing system which was seized upon by its opponents. Comprehensives were held up as less divisive, and pupils were said to benefit from the abolition of selection.
Paradoxically, at the same time as Labour was attacking the Tripartite System for its inequalities, some in the middle class were increasingly upset at the social mobility it fostered. As educational testing became more exact and subject to less class bias, an increasing proportion of middle class children were being sent to secondary moderns. The Tripartite System fell victim to its own elitism, as the traditional supporters of the grammar schools began to worry about their own children's educational future.
From this research I thought we could do a monologue led piece, where we have a couple of monologues to show the unfairness of the system. We could do a few made up scenario's of how each of us was brought up and how the system worked/didn't work for us. We could do some from a child's point of view, i.e. Starting school knowing ABC's and how to count + not a lot of help from home, knowing nothing + no help, knowing nothing + the best help money could buy, we could also do some from a parents point of view. Like a parent who gave them everything they could and they are successful children or not successful as some cases were or a parent who left it solely to the school and gave no additional help.
The other group from today attempted to start a script for the next scene, however they were struggling on where to go with the scene because we haven't planned on where we want our performance to go yet, so I think that until we have an idea of the parts we want to happen between the meeting scenes we can't properly write them as we lack a direction for the scenes to travel. For next lesson I think we need to have ideas on where to go next and start work on one of them. I feel that since we went to the past before I feel we should go to the future next and show what could happen if nothing is changed.
Link to my other Tripartite System research (here)
No comments:
Post a Comment