In its 1960 Primary and secondary schools in England and Wales the Ministry of Education said this: ‘So far as possible children of the same age are assigned to the same class but, where numbers in an age-group are big enough to make up two or more classes, it is often found in junior schools (but rarely infant schools) that children are classified according to their ability in English and arithmetic. This makes possible the more rapid progress of abler children, and a more encouraging pace (sic) for slower learners.’

This is just dishonest. First of all it suggests logical links, which simply do not exist, between numbers in an age-group and organizational structure. It could be re-written thus: in small primary schools, children of the same age are taught in the same class; the shortage of teachers and of modern school buildings are factors which do indeed see to it that ‘as far as possible children of the same age are assigned to the same class’, but pressure from both teachers and public opinion imposes a maximum of some kind on the size of classes. Where the numbers of children in an age-group exceeds this maximum, they have to be divided into two or more classes.

Secondly it simply ignores the controversies raging over streaming, erects myth into doctrine, and complacently accepts the status quo. It begs every single important question: Does streaming really make possible the more rapid progress of abler children? What kind of progress? Abler in what ways? Are ability or lack of ability in certain skills at the age of seven (demonstrably conditioned by a wide variety of environmental and ‘accidental’ factors) a justifiable criterion for more or less irrevocable selection for different kinds of education, which in turn determine and limit choice of job and career? Is this educational stratification socially acceptable? What is encouraging about the education of lower streams and who is encouraged by it? Certainly not the children.

A full-scale inquiry into streaming in primary schools is now being carried out by the National Foundation for Educational Research, but until its results are published and reveal as they must, finally and officially, the educationally deleterious effect of streaming, only the critics of the system can be relied on to give any kind of accurate description of the structure of the primary school. This has now been done more comprehensively than ever before, though with still inadequate resources, by Brian Jackson.footnote1