Comprehensive education

Abstract

Before commenting at any length upon the practicality of Comprehensive Education, I feel that a brief recapitulation of the Educational scene before and immediately after the last war would 'perhaps be helpful. At the outbreak of war, public education in England had a clear tripartite organisation: Infants, Elementary and Secondary. From the first to the second there was automatic transfer, but parents had a reasonably free choice as between one elementary school and another in their neighbourhood. Entry into the third form of education, however, depended upon what was known as 'The Scholarship Examination'. If a child were successful, the parents were given a short list of secondary schools serving their area, and they were free to state their preference, though this did not necessarily ensure entry to a particular school. That depended on the number of applications as against the number of places available. Hence some secondary schools were able further to select their entrants. This happened at the tender age of eleven years.