Moderate progressives—one step forward and two steps back

Mr Crosland's White Paper removes any doubt that the Government means business about the binary policy for higher education. In his statement to the ATTI Conference, the Secretary of State not only defended his policy, on the grounds of maintaining the FE system as a comprehensive one incorporating a wide range of courses and types of student, but had the temerity to extend his concept to the 16–18 age group. His 1965 circular on comprehensive secondary school reorganization made little more than passing reference to the significance of the colleges of further education in this problem and the Mumford solution (all 16–18 pupils, full‐time and part‐time, in junior colleges) was not among the schemes listed as acceptable. His suggestion at Torquay that young people should help to solve the school/college problem by “voting with their feet” generously corrected this omission and could create a furore of which the present binary controversy would appear the mere curtain‐raiser.