91av

To stand Disraeli’s aphorism on its head: there are truths, home truths
– and one statistician has been telling them. He is Claus Moser, Warden
of Wadham College, Oxford, and our reward for his candour is another chance
to sort out the great English education muddle through yet another enquiry
– this time, via the National Commission on Education.

It is plausible to call it the Moser Commission, so much is it his child,
but he would almost certainly shy away from that title and its implications.
The commission is now nationally recognised, and among those endorsing it
are the Prime Minister, the government, the opposition and a host of other
folk, both high and humble, for whom his words were a sounding bell to action.
‘It is,’ says Moser, ‘the most important thing I have ever done in my life.’

It all began just over a year ago at the annual gathering of the British
Association for the Advancement of Science at Swansea, where Moser made
his presidential address at the end of his 12 months in office. He chose
to make his theme our need for an informed society; what emerged, with tremendous
force, was our need to expand and reform our flawed educational system.
The public response to his call was overwhelming. Moser called for a Royal
Commission, an idea swiftly rejected by a government still grappling with
the problems of its own Educational Reform Act. So, in his own words, ‘I
went to Paul Hamlyn and got £1 million for a national commission
of enquiry’.

The Hamlyn Foundation does in fact now finance the national commission,
yet another reflection of the extraordinary response to Moser’s speech.
At his own insistence he is not its chairman though he is, of course, a
member. The chair has gone to Lord Walton, the distinguished neurologist.
‘I did not think that the head of an Oxford college should preside over
a commission enquiring into the state of education and training as a whole,’
says Moser.

His commission is now complete and in business: it includes Helena Kennedy
QC; Peter Wickens of Nissan; John Cassels, formerly director of the National
Economic Development Office; John Raisman of British Telecom; and Courtaulds
director of research David Giachardi. The education profession is well-represented
by teachers and professors. It has the stature if not the name of a Royal
Commission.

‘How is it,’ Moser asked when we met at his college, ‘that the British
have the finest education, the finest schools, the finest universities –
you’re sitting in one – in the world, but only for about 10 per cent of
our children?’ How was it, I wondered, that such an establishment figure
(former vice chairman of bankers N. M. Rothschild, former chairman of the
Royal Opera House, chancellor of Keele University and nonexecutive director
of The Economist) should emerge on the national scene making such radical
propositions?

Moser is a man with a public service mission, although life began comfortably
for him in Berlin in 1922; his father owned a bank. But with the death of
the Weimar Republic and the rise of Hitler he had to quit Germany with his
family when he was 13. They settled in London, and perhaps some of this
experience stirred in him the passion for social justice which he carries
to this day.

Life was safer but less affluent in London, although the family was
still comfortable enough to send Claus to a public school (Frensham Heights),
where he got a decent school certificate (the forerunner to O levels) spanning
maths to music. The whole family was musical and Claus decided to be ‘the
best pianist in the world. But I was told by teachers that I was not good
enough to be one of the very top ten’.

Nobody thought of an academic career at the time; his father suggested
the hotel business, so that he would at least always have music playing
in the background. Eventually he sent Claus to the London School of Economics
instead, to get some experience of business life, as he thought. It was
there that Moser made his crucial first turning in life: he now knew he
had a passion for statistics, especially the use of statistics which throw
light on the workings of society.

For a short time he was interned (in 1940) because of his German background.
But that was only a minor hiccup in his life and proved a useful interlude
– one of the inmates ran a very effective maths course which he attended.
Freed after a few months, Moser went back to the LSE to take his degree.

After graduating he went to the RAF recruiting office in the Euston
Road to volunteer for aircrew. Luckily for him, his German background saved
him from the most perilous job in the war. He recounts his meeting with
the recruiting sergeant: ‘ ‘I have just got the best degree in the University
of London this year in statistics.’ The sergeant said, ‘Just what we need;
we’ll recruit you as a flight mechanic,’ and I walked out thrilled that
they wanted people like me. I learned later that flight mechanics are roughly
the people who clean out aeroplanes, the lowest of the low.’

Reaching the heights of leading aircraftman, Moser decided to apply
for a commission, but once again his German background blocked the way upward.
After about two years, however, he was transferred to the unit in Bomber
Command which researched the bombing of Germany. ‘I was used more as an
interpreter. We went over to towns such as Cologne to study the effects
of our bombing.’

The passion for statistics – especially social statistics – led at the
end of his RAF service to the post of assistant lecturer at the LSE in 1946,
then lecturer in 1949, reader in 1955 and professor of social statistics
in 1961.

‘I have always had this passion for knowing what is happening in society.
Social statistics is a science and it is central to science. If you want
to know what is happening to poverty in the country you have to know first
how to define poverty, what are the best ways of measuring it? I have played
quite a part in the indicators of poverty, of crime, of housing. It is the
statistician’s skill to decide on the indicators and then go out and measure
them through surveys.’

Moser’s origins continued to restrict him to the foothills of the English
establishment. In 1955, when he was entitled to a sabbatical from the LSE
and wanted to work in the Central Statistical Office, his German background
forbade it. He had the sweetest revenge on this sort of nonsense in 1967,
however. The prime minister, Harold Wilson, asked him to become director
of the Central Statistical Office and head of the Government Statistical
Service, the twin peaks of the government’s statistical operations. The
nationality problem was simply brushed aside.

Moser held this job for 11 years and worked, he says, very happily under
three prime ministers – Wilson, Edward Heath and Jim Callaghan. Only once
did he ever encounter an attempt to bend the rules when Wilson, during an
election campaign, asked him to defer the inclusion of some expensive aeroplanes
in the import figures. The prime minister lost.

Before becoming a top civil servant, Moser experienced a revelation
which was to profoundly influence his views on life and education. In 1961
he become a member of the Robbins committee – the committee on higher education
which was to blow sky-high the elitist proposition that at most only 3 or
4 per cent of each age group could be admitted to university. (In practice
this meant that universities were the property of the well-off, save for
the occasional scholarship boy or girl.) The central finding of the committee
was that Britain could no longer afford to admit so few young people to
higher education; and that there was a pool of ability available for a greatly
expanded university system.

‘The point about the pool of ability was that when the Robbins committee
got going 30 years ago the big question was whether the universities should
expand. A lot of people said ‘God forbid’ – the ‘more means worse’ argument.
The other view was that of course they should expand – there were thousands,
perhaps millions who were capable of benefiting but who were not getting
higher education.

‘The most important study we did on the research side of the Robbins
committee was the pool of ability study. It was a rather sophisticated survey
to try to discover whether, particularly in the poorer sections of society,
there were lots of children with abilities, measured in various ways, just
as good as those that were making it to uni-versity. The results were startling
– there was without doubt a vast untapped pool of ability, expansion would
be justi-fied and could, if carefully brought about, be done without lowering
²õ³Ù²¹²Ô»å²¹°ù»å²õ.’

The committee reported to the government in 1964. It certainly said
what the middle class wanted to hear; and for the prime minister, Alexander
Douglas-Home, it was an election year, so he had to listen.

The Robbins report was accepted and today both the new and the expanded
universities are a memorial to Lord Robbins and his committee’s indefatigable
statistician, Moser, who made the pool of ability argument respectable in
Whitehall and elsewhere. On this achievement alone he is one of the more
important architects of our society since the 1960s. Will he imprint the
new commission with new insights?

‘I am just one member; it is up to Lord Walton to decide what it is
going to study and how it is going to study it. All I can talk about is
what hopes led me to press for such a commission. The pool of ability study
led the Robbins committee to go for big expansion. My disappointment with
what has happened in the last 30 years is that even now only 15 per cent
of an age group get any kind of higher education, and only about 7 or 8
per cent of that is in the universities.

‘I long for the day when we have really moved much closer to the American
kind of mass higher education system. Now if people really need convincing
of that I would – supposing I wanted to persuade the commission to argue
the case for much higher access, and suppose the commission were to say
‘We’re not convinced’, I would say ‘Let’s try another ability study’ and
that should convince us one way or the other. If it shows that there isn’t
much untapped ability I’d be very surprised – but I hope I’d be a good enough
social scientist to trust the facts.’

How is it possible, if IQ tests are no longer so solemnly trusted, to
assess ability or talent? ‘I think one would have to rely more on appraisal
of children in primary and secondary schools, and also how they perform
in the United States, in Germany, in France – that would provide important
indirect evidence,’ Moser says. ‘But I think this may no longer be a real
hurdle in our thinking. A lot of people on all parts of the political spectrum
and ranges of view are convinced that more people should have more access
to more education.’

Moser inclines to the opinion that the argument will no longer revolve
around whether there is enough ability about, as was the case in the 1960s;
instead, the central question will increasingly be whether we have the right
system for able and motivated children to go beyond 16 and 17 in some kind
of further education – whether the universities, polytechnics, and further
education for mature students exist. ‘Have we got enough facilities available
for people with different kinds of ability – I think that’s the more interesting
argument now,’ he says.

Moser’s vision of education goes much wider than academic instruction
within traditional institutions. ‘I hope that we will increasingly talk
of education and training as one world. I would start in Whitehall – we
must be the only advanced country in which education and training are dealt
with by different ministries. I’d start there and I’d move the terrible
barriers we have in this country – for which industrialists are largely
to blame – so that people go back into education and training, doing classroom
work or vocational training and either the government or the country pays.’

He is quick to point out that a cutoff point at 16 is a peculiarity
of the English education system: ‘If we had the German system, if a boy
or girl has had enough of school at 16, all right, he or she gets a job
but compulsorily goes one or two days a week to some kind of further education
or sixth-form college. He or she may do some more maths, a bit more vocational
training – it doesn’t matter what, each of us has different abilities, different
talents and different desires. The main thing,’ he emphasises, ‘is not to
have this cut-off from school at 16 when work starts, and this awful business
of sheep and goats, who is regarded as good enough to go on to academic
study while the rest go to work, or worse still, to unemployment.’

The implications, he believes, are far-reaching. ‘Why is it that in
England, despite report after report going back to the 1940s and beyond,
we retained an inadequate education system, we retained this separation
between education and training and we retained this enormous separation
between public schools and the rest? This is one of the really interesting
things for the commission to tackle if it wishes. One answer is undoubtedly
the English class system. We have gone through decades and back to the last
century being remarkably successful in educating the top 10 per cent, but
we haven’t worried too much about the other 80 to 90 per cent – the barriers
are very, very considerable. This applies only in England; the Scots system
is different and better, and the Welsh are not quite so bad.

‘My greatest dream for the impact of the National Education Commission
is that it will lead to a major change in public attitudes which will in
turn influence government action which will force us to raise the quality
of the 80 to 90 per cent of the rest of the system. It is a question of
money and determination. It can’t happen all at once – it will take some
decades – but my hope is that it will bring about a change in attitudes.’

Moser has no illusions about the strengths of the class system and the
moats that have been carefully dug around the castle of privilege, but he
does believe that things can and will change. He is candid about the means
to his ends. ‘I believe in public expenditure. One of the tragedies of recent
years is that our social infrastructure has been allowed to run down – education,
health, roads – even the public lavatories. It will mean higher taxation.
We need to spend more, above all, on the schools. I get very fed up with
politicians who say money isn’t everything – it may not be, but it’s a very
good starting point. Marilyn Monroe said, ‘I’ve been rich, I’ve been poor.
Rich is better.’

Moser believes there are two main priorities for his commission: the
16-plus age group and the teachers. ‘We must turn the teaching profession
into a prestige profession again. There’s got to be more monitoring and
less patience with poor teachers, but most of them are marvellously devoted
and dedicated. Lots are leaving the profession and so money, promotion and
career prospects all have to be improved. Teachers are the biggest single
public sec-tor group and the public expenditure needed has got to be faced.

‘Of all the facts that shocked me when I was working on my Swansea speech,
the one that shocked me most was that one in seven children leave primary
school unable to read or write. This in 1991 in one of the richest countries
in the world. It is astonishing and shocking, we shall surely have to look
at primary education as well – I can’t see how we can ignore it.

‘There’s another absolutely fundamental point that faces us all as a
nation: why is it that we as parents and our children aren’t more determined
to acquire absolutely fundamental skills at school? Why are they cynical,
why isn’t there, as there is in most advanced countries, a feeling on the
part of parents that education is the most important thing they must ensure
for their children? Why is it that so many children feel it doesn’t pay
to stay at school? One reason is that it probably doesn’t pay – this goes
back to industry and employers. In most advanced European countries the
more education you’ve had, roughly speaking, the more your salary is increased
when you go back to work. All the research into this has been done, the
facts are known.’

Clearly the National Commission will not lack the sort of piercing questions
that expose the bedrock of the English social system. Claus Moser has been
carried along for a year on a tide which has scooped up both John Major
and Neil Kinnock. He has had the intellect to ride the waves of public debate,
the contacts to provide the money and the moral and social passion to provide
the energy and isolate the issues. Facing two years’ hard labour on what
I shall call the Moser Commission he says: ‘Education costs money, but then
so does ignorance: we cannot go on as we are.

* * *

Twenty years on: a vision of education

National Commission on Education has recently set out a series of key
issues and targets which it wishes to see attained. Its vision for 2010
includes the following:

People of all ages will have the entitlement, opportunity and desire
for learning.

All that is excellent in the values and aspirations of Britain . . .
will be reflected in the teaching and ethos of schools and colleges.

The British workforce will have the knowledge and competence to compete
in European and world markets, producing the high value-added goods and
services appropriate to an advanced economy.

A marked and widespread rise in the achievement of students at all stages.

The UK to move to the top in international comparisons of performance
in education and training.

A transformation in the public esteem given to teachers.

Among questions to be tackled:

Why a quarter of all pupils are hostile to school.

Whether there is a strong case for universal nursery education.

How continuing education and training can be ensured for all at work.

The commission has invited some 1000 organisations and individuals to
give their views on the proposals.

Glyn Jones is a science writer and film-maker based in Wiltshire.