COVENTRY

Coventry's social composition makes the LEA's problems several degrees simpler than those in the older, more complex industrial conurbations. The spectre of Plowden priority areas is kept at bay by the overall prosperity of the city. The few remaining slums are disappearing, and it is very rare to find heads describing more than one or two of the children in a school as materially deprived. There are problem schools whose intake is largely from areas where the parents are educationally deprived — notably the immigrant sectors. But where there is enough money the chances of improvement are never completely out of reach, and among the immigrants in particular the parents' lack of education does not blind them to the need for their children to take the opportunities available. In a truncated society without a noticeable upper middle class, the LEA is also freed from competition with a large private sector. There are more private primary schools that secondary but most of these children will be fed into the authority's secondary schools.