The 450th anniversary of MGS in 1965 was an excellent opportunity for the School to garner some extra publicity in the press. In December, the Daily Mail published a very interesting interview with Peter Mason. The article is reproduced below:
It is typical of Manchester Grammar School that for its glittering 450th anniversary dinner tomorrow it should produce as one star in a galaxy of guests Sir Herbert Andrew, KCMG, CB, the £8200-a-year Permanent Under-Secretary of State for the Department of Education and Science.
No matter how fiercely battles may rage over State comprehensive education, nor how much love-hate may develop round this champion of the rival ideology, MGS is found - as usual - supplying impartial brain-power at the top.
The record of perhaps the most famous day school in the world as this sort of thing is quite fantastic.
Whether it be a matter of supplying a Lord Chief Justice to the law, an Anglican or Catholic bishop to the churches, a gynaecologist to the Queen, a vice-chancellor at a university, a Lord Mayor to Manchester, a Woolton to the Tories, or a Marks to Marks and Spencer, Manchester Grammar School never failed to deliver the appropriate goods.
There will, naturally, be a great deal of pride in such achievements over the port at Manchester Town Hall tomorrow.
Behind the pride and the glitter, there will also be a great deal of serious thinking about the future of this uniquely successful school and its image in a new world of education.
Mr. Peter Mason, the present High Master, is under no illusions about how many legends and misunderstandings surround Manchester Grammar School.
In particular, that it corners the best young brains in the North-West, forces them through a super-heated battery feeding system and then launches them, as a prestige meritocracy, into the task of knocking other seats of learning into a dunce's hat.
Certain bare statistics might seem to support such a view.
Its prestige is such that 1200 boys a year compete annually for 200 places. Of its 1440 boys, 560 are in the Sixth Form.
Roughly 80% of its boys go on to university (about 40% to Oxford and Cambridge).
More than 90% go to some form of further education. in ten years, 350 boys have won open awards to Oxford and Cambridge and, in the same period, won 103 blues and half-blues.
A more intimate look at the school - physically a not very impressive structure in modern Georgian - blurs any simple image of a paragon factory.
Mr. Mason is most concerned not to be type cast as an arch-foe of all comprehensive schools everywhere.
"We think," he told me, "that socially speaking, we are already about the most comprehensive school in the country.
"We are independent, just as Rugby and Winchester are, but we have a direct grant contract with the Government, in return for which the school provides 25% free places for boys who have done at least two years at a primary school, i.e. not a prep school,
"Additionally, 25% of places can be allocated to about nine local authorities, who mostly seem very pleased to accept.
"In fact, 65% of pupils at Manchester Grammar School are not paid for by their parents and many of the remainder do not pay full fees.
"Even a boy who is a fee payer is eligible for remission of fees by means of a central Government grant on a means test.
"In practice, we have sons of professors and directors working together with sons of artisans, manual workers and unemployed."
Mr. Mason makes it quite clear what the comprehensive argument is about, as far as MGS is concerned.
He believes there are some extremely good comprehensives and he would be happy to see the establishment of more in suitable circumstances, but this does not mean that because one system can be good a different one cannot.
"Society needs the preservation of different points of view in education as in other spheres" he says.
"I do not see how you can improve the political quality of a democracy or the quality of a newspaper until you have a system in which individuals can exercise their own standards.
"It is this idea of discriminating standard-setting that we are most anxious to encourage at MGS.
"We believe in selective methods and our tradition is based on the view that education must be provided to suit the individual boy.
"We say it is dangerous to concentrate on the average at the expense of the best. Our prime job is to adapt our tradition of achievement to the needs of the time, but not to forget our traditions."
The day to day life of the school is again far different from the "brain factory" image.
Simply because the academic quality of the boys is well above average, there is less need - not more - at MGS to embark on stressed courses of certificate winning.
While many grammar schools boast of pupils passing nine or 10 "O" level subjects at one go, MGS does not encourage any boy to sit for more than three to five subjects, the bare minimum demanded for official progress.
This does not mean, however, that his course is restricted to these subjects.
"It means that every effort is made to avoid early specialisation and to treat subjects in more unorthodox and exciting ways.
"As for the social life of the school," says Mr. Mason, "I have spent most of my own life at boarding schools but I have never met a school with more extracurricular life, including music and drama as well as games, and despite the travelling problem inherent in a school which has never been a neighbourhood school".
Is it true that "segregation" of top-class brains in a school like MGS will produce a ruling meritocracy out of touch with the average worked? Mr. Mason thinks not.
"Such dangers are not proven," he says, "and there are a great many arguments of educational efficiency against going the other way. I do not accept that a school like Manchester Grammar School will tend to produce an elite incapable of understanding or leading the ordinary working man because they will not have been educated together.
"Our boys certainly feel that no such cleavage exists. Our new biographical register out next month will show that if the school still provides a high proportion of leading professional men, the successful entry into the decision-making world of business is also quite high.
"What saddens me a bit is that we are not producing enough for the creative professions - music, writing, art, etc.
"But we are just beginning to study the differences between high IQ and high creative ability - they are not the same - and we hope to do better in future in this respect."
Finally, will MGS survive in its present form?
"Changes there will certainly be," says Mr. Mason, "but we shall be surprised if we cannot find a way of preserving our traditions.
"It would be sad, but not ruinous, if a local education authority refused to take places with us as a matter of principle.
Only in the unlikely event of a withdrawal of Government direct grant aid might we have to revise drastically the financing of the school and rely more on fee payers.
Even if such a crisis happened, we should do our utmost under other arrangements to provide up to 25% of free places."
The article also features a brief interview with Eric James, who had moved on from his position as High Master in 1962:
Lord James, a life peer, was a former High Master of Manchester Grammar School before he became Vice-Chancellor of York University. He was appointed one of the first lay members of the Press Council, under its new constitution, in 1963.
"It is a great pleasure to be asked to pay a short tribute to the Manchester Grammar School, at the end of its 450th anniversary year. The satisfaction that I got from my work there sprang, I think, from two main aspects of the School. The first was the quality of my colleagues.
The second was the great social mixture that it represented. To someone coming from Winchester, it was a challenge to make something of Winchester's opportunity open to the boys from the poor home.
Its relation with the State made (and makes) it accessible to any boy whatever his parents' income. The only test for admission is merit.
One has the feeling that much of the talk about 'integrating the public schools into the State system' entirely overlooks the fact that for years schools like MGS have achieved precisely that integration through the direct grant system.
Manchester Grammar School has been accused of being a 'meritocracy'. And what is shameful about that? Why should one have to apologise for providing opportunity, not for class, not for wealth, but for merit?
During my time at the School one felt that one was part of a great enterprise of enlightenment; that one was helping to beidge the barrier between classes by forgetting them in a common enterprise of learning, and that we were showing that the liberties that matter were not incompatible with the State system.
These are the aspects of the School that stand out as I look back on my time at MGS. If they can be preserved and developed, the years to come will be even greater than the past 4 and a 1/2 centuries have been."
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