Raising Cain

An examination of the shifts in educational policy from the fifties to the present day, from the post-war 11-plus exam, through the beginning of the comprehensive era, the transformation of public schools and the progressive educational methods of the 1960s and 1970s to today's market-led system. Includes an interview with Sir Rhodes Boyson who, as a school teacher in the 1950s, was part of a growing number of teachers who disagreed with the inequalities that the eleven-plus examinations fostered. 

As the move towards a fairer comprehensive system gathered momentum, `progressive educational methods' had taken hold by the mid-1960s. Hislop looks at the most notorious example of this in this period when, at the William Tyndale school in Islington, a cadre of six left-wing teachers presided over a junior school which descended into anarchy and scandal through radical teaching methods focusing on `freedom and the individual child'. The ensuing public enquiry resulted in the six teachers losing their jobs.