The discussion at the conference in London of the Association for Education in Industry and Commerce shows that there is still much need to bring educationists and industrialists to a common point of view. Businessmen frequently complain that children on their emergence from school at the age of 14 are not sufficiently educated to work in the office or workshop.

While there is much common ground in demanding general intelligence and a sense of discipline in school-leavers, yet some of the speakers asserted that educationists regard the boy of 14 or 15 as a finished product. Now that is exactly what the modern educationist does not think.

50 years ago July 11, 1952

On July 4 MISS MARGHANITA LASKI (in the Daily Herald) instructed HER MAJESTY on how to educate her children. It would, for instance, be “tremendous and exciting” if they were sent to secondary modern schools.

“It would,” says MISS LASKI, “dispose of people’s uncomfortable feeling that the clever children who go to grammar schools are in some way ‘better’

than those who don’t.”

25 years ago July 8, 1977

Not until the memoires come to be written shall we know exactly how the battle went, but it is believed that the Prime Minister is taking an active part in getting the Green Paper shortened.

Mr Callaghan is nothing if not politically astute. It was his decision to pick up the education issue. He saw the need to cut the Conservatives off before they could fully exploit public anxiety about “standards”, and also appreciated the value of a diversionary discussion of education when the rest of the news on the home political front was gloomy.