Assess The View That The Comprehensive System, By Replacing The Tripartite System, Provided Greater Equality Of Opportunity For All Pupils.

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Assess The View That The Comprehensive System, By Replacing The Tripartite System, Provided Greater Equality Of Opportunity For All Pupils.

The comprehensive system was brought in after criticisms of the Tripartite system were made. In this essay I am going to discuss the criticisms that were made about the Tripartite system and how the Comprehensive system attempted to overcome these problems. I will also outline the problems that the Comprehensive system encountered.

The 11-plus was unreliable in saying how clever a pupil was at the early age of 11. It became increasingly clear that a young person's educational future could not be predicted by an IQ test at 11. When secondary modern pupils were finally allowed to take GCE O levels, some were getting better results than many grammar school pupils.

In practice, many intelligent students failed the 11-plus and many less intelligent passed. One of the main reasons for this was that many less intelligent middle-class children got more family support for their school work (e.g. a quiet room to do homework in) whereas many intelligent working class children, lacking such support, lost interest in school and left as soon as they could.
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Because of this, the Tripartite system came to be seen by many as socially divisive. Most upper and middle-class children (even those of average intelligence) went to private and grammer schools whilst most working-class children (including many of high intelligence) went to secondary modern schools and left at 15 with few, if any qualifications. This reflected and helped to continue the class divisions in British society.

The selection process involved was unfair and wasteful on the students. Selecting pupils at age 11 was unfair because it denied many the opportunity of continuing their education beyond 15. It was ...

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