November 5, 1927

A warm welcome will be given by teachers, magistrates and social workers to the new Child Guidance Council which has just been formed in London to advance the treatment of difficult, delinquent, or maladjusted children throughout Great Britain by careful study of each individual case in clinics staffed by psychiatrists, psychologists, and specially trained social workers. These clinics in America have already proved of definite value.

50 years ago

November 7, 1952

“Top of the Form” has returned to the radio programmes. This popular quiz sets a school of boys against girls. This is a major change. Boys might take on girls hitherto at a game of left-handed cricket and rounders with proper sanctions. In the stern business, however, of school rivalries, the two were kept apart. A simple code of conventions kept boys from the rigours of netball and the girls could save their hooking for some other game than rugby. Schools, in short, could fairly expect that the battle of the sexes would not be won and lost on their playing fields. Now the barriers are down and anything may happen.

25 years ago

November 4, 1977

Mrs Caroline Benn and her friends in the Labour Party are campaigning against the proposed clauses strengthening parents’ rights to a choice of schools. They may have some logic on their side. Parental choice has never been a reality for more than an energetic minority of parents, and would, if practised untrammelled by all, cause major nightmares for administrators. But Mrs Williams is the shrewder politician. Nonsense it may be, but the Conservatives see the slogan of more parental choice as a vote-puller. And to be seen to curtail even such choice as now exists would be to play into their hands.