Development of comprehensive schools.

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Development of comprehensive schools.

Between 1944 and 1970 England operated a system of selective secondary schooling. Analyse the strengths and weaknesses of this system. How far does the evidence from this period persuade you that the country should return to a more selective system in the twenty-first century?

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A brief history of education in England. Strengths and weaknesses of the selective system of secondary education.

The history of organized education in England and Wales begins with the bringing of Christianity to Kent in A.D. 597. As Christianity spread across England a system of ‘grammar’, or general education, and the simpler ‘song’ school was set up in many cathedrals, churches and monasteries. During the Middle Ages the song schools disappeared and were replaced with the reading and writing schools which were preparatory departments for the grammar schools, and were the equivalent of the modern elementary or primary schools. With the rise of the Universities in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries one of the most important functions of the grammar schools became the preparation of its pupils for entry into University. During that time the grammar schools provided education for the able sons of parents of relatively modest means. Almost all grammar schools had free places for ‘poor and indigent’ pupils. Nevertheless education provision for the vast majority of children was very limited. By the end of the eighteenth century the best education available for most of the children were one-day-a-week schools. Such a system was quite inadequate to meet the needs of a country that was fast becoming a great industrial power.

 The first advance towards a statutory system of public education was only made in 1870, in the Elementary Education Act. But only the Education Act of 1902 laid the basis for a national system of secondary education, although this was very limited. The system of elementary schools did not lead into secondary schools but formed a parallel system for the majority of children.

Only the 1944 Educational Act made a provision for statutory secondary education for all. One of the main changes it made was that the system of public education was reorganised in three progressive stages: primary, secondary and further education. The school leaving age was raised to fifteen and later to sixteen. The educational system created by this Act had three main features:

  1. that there should be a division between primary and secondary education at the age of 11;
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  1. that there should be three types of secondary schools designed to meet three different types of children, namely the grammar schools, the secondary technical and the secondary modern schools;
  2. the appropriate school for a child should be determined by tests at 11 years.

In his study ‘Education in the Post-War Years’ (1988) Lowe comments that politicians who were in favour of the tripartite system genuinely believed that such a differentiated secondary system offered the best education to disadvantaged children. They saw the establishment of a universal secondary school system and the raising of the school leaving ...

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