Progressives Available to Purchase

Educational pressure groups, in the form of national bodies pushing a particular view which has nothing directly to do with politics, religion or trades unionism, seem to be a new phenomenon in Britain. Their arrival has to do with the peculiar federal structure of our education system, its increasing diversity, the increasing interest that individuals and groups of all sorts are taking in it, the recognition that it is crucially linked to both personal belief and group ideology, and its long march of cost. In this perspective such varied bodies as the Comprehensive Schools Committee, the Careers Research Advisory Centre, the Society of Teachers Opposed to Physical Punishment, and the Advisory Centre for Education, may each give an insight into causes and effects.