Comprehensive Schools

Before the Second World War, secondary education provision was both patchy and expensive. After the war secondary education in England, Wales and Northern Ireland was provided free to at least the age of 14 and managed under the Tripartite System introduced by Conservative secretary of state for education Rab Butler. Children took the eleven plus examination in their last year of primary education and were sent to secondary modern, secondary technical or grammar schools, depending on their perceived ability. In the event technical schools were never widely implemented, and for 20 years there was a virtual bipartite system, with fierce competition for the available grammar school places, which varied between 15% and 25% depending on location.

Controversy around the eleven plus exam combined with increasing dissatisfaction with the education offered by the secondary modern schools led to experiments with comprehensive schools from the early 1950s. In some low-population areas - such as the town of Settle the creation of a tripartite structure was not physically viable and comprehensive schools had been gradually spreading across the country, from Anglesey to the West Riding.

These schools were an obvious alternative to the Tripartite System, and had already proven successful in Sweden and parts of the US. Political and administrative support for general introduction of comprehensive schools was strongest in London: London County Council (LCC) Education Officer Graham Savage, influenced by the US High School system, was a powerful advocate.

The first comprehensive school was Ysgol Gyfun Llangefni in Anglesey in 1954. Other places that experimented with comprehensives included Coventry, Sheffield, Leicestershire, West Riding. In London, the LCC sought to build an entire system of equal-access secondary schools. The first purpose-built comprehensive in the country, Kidbrooke School in Greenwich, was opened in 1954 at a cost of Ð'Ј560,000. The first purpose-built comprehensive school in Wales was Sandfields Comprehensive School which opened in 1958.

These early comprehensives modelled themselves firmly on the grammar school, with teachers in gowns and lessons in a very formal style. The opening of the Risinghill Comprehensive School in Islington in 1960 offered an alternative to this model. Embracing the progressive ideals of sixties education, the school abandoned corporal punishment and brought