A secondary modern school is a type of secondary school that existed throughout England, Wales and Northern Ireland from 1944 until the 1970s under the Tripartite System. Schools of this type continue in Northern Ireland, where they are usually referred to as secondary schools, and in areas of England, such as Buckinghamshire (where they are referred to as community schools), Lincolnshire and Wirral, (where they are called high schools).[1]
Secondary modern schools were designed for the majority of pupils between 11 and 15; those who achieved the highest scores in the 11-plus were allowed to go to a selective grammar school which offered education beyond 15. From 1965 onwards, secondary moderns were replaced in most of the UK by the comprehensive school system.
Origins
The tripartite system of streaming children of presumed different intellectual ability into different schools has its origin in the interwar period. Three levels of secondary school emerged in England and Wales: academic grammar schools for pupils deemed likely to go on to study at university; central schools which provided artisan and trade training, as well as domestic skills for girls; and secondary schools which provided a basic secondary education.
Educational practice in the 1940s developed this system so that children were tested and streamed into the renamed grammar, technical and secondary modern schools at the age of eleven. In practice, few technical schools were created, and most technical and central schools, such as Frank Montgomery School in Kent, became secondary modern schools. As a result, the tripartite system was in effect a bipartite system in which children who passed the eleven-plus examination were sent to grammar schools and those who failed the test went to secondary modern schools.
At a secondary modern school, pupils would receive training in a wide range of simple, practical skills. The purpose of this education was to mainly focus on training in basic subjects, such as arithmetic, mechanical skills such as woodworking and domestic skills, such as cookery. In an age before the advent of the National Curriculum, the specific subjects taught were chosen by the individual schools, but the curriculum at the Frank Montgomery School in Kent was stated as including "practical education, such as cookery, laundry, gardening, woodwork, metalwork and practical geography".[2]
The first secondary moderns were created by converting about 1,200 elementary schools,[3]:125 as well as central schools, which previously had offered a continuation of primary education to the age of 14, into separate institutions. Many more were built between the end of World War II and 1965, in an effort to provide universal secondary education.
Until the raising of statutory school leaving age in 1972, pupils could leave school at 15, at the end of the fourth form (year 10). This left a demotivated rump of 14–15-year-olds who did not want to be there, and had no intention of taking a school-leaving exam at 16.[4]
Tripartite system
The eleven-plus exam was employed to stream children into grammar schools, technical schools (which existed only in some regions) and secondary modern schools. Claims that the 11-plus was biased in favour of middle-class children remain controversial. However, strong evidence exists that the outcome of streaming was that, overwhelmingly, grammar schools were attended by middle-class children while secondary modern schools were attended by working-class children.[5][6][7]:194–195
The most academically able of students in secondary modern schools found that their potential progression to university and advanced post-secondary studies was constrained by limitations within their schools, the wider educational system and access to higher external examinations.[5][8]
The 'baby boomer' generation was particularly affected during the period 1957 to 1970 because grammar-school places had not been sufficiently increased to accommodate the large bulge in student numbers which entered secondary schools during this period.[5][8] As a result, cut-off standards on the 11-plus for entry into grammar schools rose and many students who would, in earlier years, have been streamed into grammar schools were instead sent to secondary modern schools.[5]
Although parity of esteem between this and the other sections of the tripartite system had been planned, in practice the secondary modern came to be seen as the school for failures. Those who had "failed" their 11-plus were sent there to learn rudimentary skills before advancing to factory or menial jobs. Secondary moderns prepared students for the CSE examination, rather than the more prestigious O Level, and although teaching for the latter was established in later years, fewer than one in ten students participated. Secondary moderns did not offer schooling for the A Level, and in 1963, for instance, only 318 former secondary-modern pupils sat A levels. None went on to university.
Grammar schools were generally funded at a higher per-student level than secondary modern schools.[9] Secondary moderns were generally deprived of both resources and good teachers.[10] The Newsom Report of 1963 reported on education for these children, and found that in some schools in slum areas of London 15-year-old pupils were sitting on furniture intended for primary schools. Staff turnover was high and continuity in teaching minimal. Not all secondary moderns were as bad, but they did generally suffer from neglect by authorities.
The interaction of the outcome of 11-plus streaming (middle class into grammar schools and working class into secondary modern schools) and better funding of grammar schools produced the result that middle-class children experienced better resourced schools offering superior future educational and vocational options, while working-class children experienced comparatively inferior schools offering more limited prospects for educational and vocational progress. This reinforced class divisions in subsequent vocational achievement and earning potential.[11]
Criticisms
Although most students sent to secondary modern schools experienced the negative consequences of lower per-student funding than that enjoyed by grammar-school students, there existed a segment of the population of students in secondary modern schools that was particularly disadvantaged in the extent to which their schools could equip them to reach their full educational potential. This group consisted of the most academically able of students within the secondary modern system. The capacity of secondary modern schools to offer the best possible education to these students was limited by several factors:
Secondary modern schools were less disposed than grammar schools to promote school cultures favouring academic achievement. In their original conception secondary modern schools 'were to be shielded from the stultifying effects of external examinations'[12] with students having no access to GCE O Levels or other external examinations. Even though, during the 1950s, some secondary modern schools started to prepare their higher level students for GCE O Levels, the schools retained cultures which were more relaxed with respect to academic achievement than those fostered by grammar schools.
Secondary modern schools were far less inclined than grammar schools to encourage aspirations of student progression to advanced post-secondary and university education. While some secondary modern schools hoped that a proportion of students in their top classes might obtain reasonable results in GCE O Levels, there was rarely, if ever, a notion that a student might progress to A Levels. Further, for a student to profess a desire to undertake university studies would have been considered unrealistic and pretentious.[citation needed]
Secondary modern schools provided limited access to GCE O Levels and no access to GCE A Levels.
Inadequate provision was made for secondary modern students who performed well in GCE O Levels to articulate their studies to A Levels. During the 1950s and early 1960s, grammar schools would commonly not accept entry by secondary modern students who had done well in O Levels and who wished to study for A Levels.[5][7]:194–195 Such students had to leave the school system and enrol at post-secondary institutions (generally for part-time, evening study). Accordingly, once a student had been streamed into a secondary modern school, irrespective of the student's level of success in GCE O Levels, the student faced enormous challenges in attempting to progress to GCE A Levels and beyond to university. There is limited information available as to why the Tripartite System showed inflexibility in this respect. There is also limited information as to how many secondary modern students, who performed well in GCE O Levels, were subsequently frustrated in attempting to progress to A Levels and beyond.
One writer on the experience of being an academically able pupil in a secondary modern school, Michael Paraskos, claimed 'You knew you were a failure from day one. Because they told you! So they weren't pleasant places to be if you were into art, or books, or anything like that'.[13] Paraskos also claimed in The Guardian that those who attend secondary modern schools 'are condemned to a lifetime of social exclusion and crippling self-doubt.'[14]
According to Anthony Sampson, in his book Anatomy of Britain (1965), there were structural problems within the testing process that underpinned the eleven plus which meant it tended to result in secondary modern schools being overwhelmingly dominated by the children of poor and working-class parents, while grammar schools were dominated by the children of wealthier middle-class parents.[7]:195
In the 1960s there was increasing criticism of the limitations imposed on students within secondary modern schools flowing from political pressure from increasing numbers of middle-class parents of 'baby boomer' children who did not obtain admission to grammar schools.[8] and evidence that students from secondary modern schools who took GCE O Levels were increasingly achieving results comparable to those being achieved by students from grammar schools (a remarkable finding given the disadvantages, discussed above, of secondary modern schools compared to grammar schools)[8][15]
Movement towards a comprehensive system
Further, the failure of secondary modern schools generally to equip the 'submerged three quarters' of British schoolchildren to realise their full potential led to calls for reform. Experiments with comprehensive schools began in the 1950s, hoping to provide an education that would offer greater opportunities for those who did not enter grammar schools. Several counties, such as Leicestershire, eliminated their secondary moderns altogether. In 1965, the Labour government issued Circular 10/65, implementing the Comprehensive System. By 1976, with the exception of a few regions, such as Kent, Dorset, Buckinghamshire, Stoke, Slough, the Wirral and Ripon, secondary modern schools had been formally phased out all throughout the UK except Northern Ireland.
In counties still operating a selective system, as of 2015[update] there were 130 schools fulfilling the role of the secondary modern by taking those pupils who do not get into grammar schools.[16] These schools may be known colloquially (though not officially) as high schools (Medway and Trafford), upper schools (Buckinghamshire), all-ability or non-selective schools.
The term secondary modern has completely disappeared in the naming of schools, although in 2013 the National Association of Secondary Moderns was founded by Ian Widdows, former Headteacher at the Giles Academy in Boston, Lincolnshire.[17] The organisation represents non-selective schools in selective areas[16] and has organised a number of national conferences since it was founded, such as one in April 2016 addressed by Shadow Secretary of State for Education Lucy Powell, Tim Leunig from the Department for Education, and National Schools Commissioner Sir David Carter, among others.[18][19]
Ofsted continues to judge secondary moderns in the same way it judges grammar schools, expecting them to show the same academic achievement as schools that have had the top ability quartile removed. Ofsted admits it does not have a record of the number of secondary moderns and that its inspectors have received no training on how to assess them. They are preventing from awarding the highest grades to a school as that would require the data to take into account the differing intakes.[18]
In 2016, the Government introduced Progress 8 as a headline method to judge secondary schools, in which the sum of all the pupils' GCSE achievements was compared with the predicted grades, in order to expose "coasting" schools. Each grade achieved was worth one point. In 2017 for one year, they modified the method so a low grade was worth 0.5 and the top grades received 1.5, thus weighting the benchmark towards the most able. This disproportionately affected schools only serving the three less-able quartiles. Frank Norris, director of the Co-operative Academies Trust that runs eight academies, believes the changes will advantage high-achievers. "The proposed changes are based on the flawed thinking that it is much harder for a student to move from a grade B to an A rather than from grade G to F," he said. "They are probably discriminatory because they imply it is less important and worthwhile for lower-attaining students to achieve as well as they can."[18]
The General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) is an academic qualification in a range of subjects taken in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, having been introduced in September 1986 and its first exams taken in 1988. State schools in Scotland use the Scottish Qualifications Certificate instead. However private schools in Scotland often choose to follow the English GCSE system.
A grammar school is one of several different types of school in the history of education in the United Kingdom and other English-speaking countries, originally a school teaching Latin, but more recently an academically oriented secondary school.
In the education systems of England, Northern Ireland, Wales, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and some other Commonwealth countries, sixth form represents the final two years of secondary education, ages 16 to 18. Pupils typically prepare for A-level or equivalent examinations like the International Baccalaureate or Cambridge Pre-U. In England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, the term Key Stage 5 has the same meaning. It only refers to academic education and not to vocational education.
The General Certificate of Education (GCE) is a subject-specific family of academic qualifications used in awarding bodies in England, Wales, Northern Ireland, Crown dependencies and a few Commonwealth countries. For some time, the Scottish education system has been different from those in the other countries of the United Kingdom.
The eleven-plus (11+) is a standardised examination administered to some students in England and Northern Ireland in their last year of primary education, which governs admission to grammar schools and other secondary schools which use academic selection. The name derives from the age group for secondary entry: 11–12 years.
The Tripartite System was the arrangement of state-funded secondary education between 1945 and the 1970s in England and Wales, and from 1947 to 2009 in Northern Ireland. It was an administrative implementation of the Education Act 1944 and the Education Act 1947.
The Certificate of Secondary Education (CSE) was a subject-specific qualification family awarded in both academic and vocational fields in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. CSE examinations were held in the years 1965 to 1987. This qualification should not be confused with the Indian Certificate of Secondary Education which is a school-leaving qualification in India. Also, in some African and former British colonial countries there is a qualification named the Certificate of Secondary Education based on the original and former British variant. Also, the CSE should not be confused with the African qualification CSEE.
The grammar schools debate is a debate about the advantages and disadvantages of the existence of grammar schools in the United Kingdom. Grammar schools are state schools which select their pupils on the basis of academic ability, with pupils sitting an exam in the last year of primary school to determine whether or not they gain a place. The debate on selective education has been widened by measures which allow a proportion of students to be chosen based on their "aptitude" for a particular subject.
Secondary technical schools, referred to colloquially as secondary techs or simply techs, were a type of secondary school in England and Wales that existed in the mid-20th century under the Tripartite System of education. Few were built; their main interest is theoretical.
A selective school is a school that admits students on the basis of some sort of selection criteria, usually academic. The term may have different connotations in different systems and is the opposite of a comprehensive school, which accepts all students, regardless of aptitude.
Educational stages are subdivisions of formal learning, typically covering early childhood education, primary education, secondary education and tertiary education. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) recognizes nine levels of education in its International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) system. UNESCO's International Bureau of Education maintains a database of country-specific education systems and their stages. Some countries divide levels of study into grades or forms for school children in the same year.
Lincolnshire is one of the few counties within the UK that still uses the eleven-plus to decide who may attend grammar school, in common with Buckinghamshire and Kent.
The A-level is a subject-based qualification conferred as part of the General Certificate of Education, as well as a school leaving qualification offered by the educational bodies in the United Kingdom and the educational authorities of British Crown dependencies to students completing secondary or pre-university education. They were introduced in England and Wales in 1951 to replace the Higher School Certificate. The A-level permits students to have potential access to a chosen university they applied to with UCAS points. They could be accepted into it should they meet the requirements of the university.
King Edward VI Academy is a coeducational bi-lateral secondary school and sixth form with academy status, located in Spilsby, Lincolnshire, England, for children between the ages of eleven and eighteen.
Secondary education in Singapore is largely public, and is compulsory until a child has reached 16 years of age. At the end of public primary education, Singapore students take the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) and are placed into the different streams and secondary schools based on their results. There are three main public secondary education streams: Express (E)(Currently known as G3), Normal (Academic), and Normal (Technical), with special and private education courses also being available. The Express stream has a more stringent cut-off than the Normal (Academic) stream, which is in turn more selective than the Normal (Technical) stream. Secondary students can move between streams based on their academic performance.
The General Certificate of Education (GCE) Ordinary Level, also called the O-level or O level, was a subject-based academic qualification. Introduced in 1951 as a replacement for the 16+ School Certificate (SC), the O-level would act as a pathway to the new, more in-depth and academically rigorous A-level, in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Later, the complementary and more vocational Certificate of Secondary Education (CSE) was added to broaden the subjects available and offer qualifications in non-academic subjects.
The Frank Montgomery School was a mixed-gender secondary modern school in the village of Sturry near Canterbury in east Kent. It was founded in 1935 and closed in 2007, when the site and school roll was taken over by Spires Academy.
The Singapore-Cambridge General Certificate of Education Normal Level examination is a national examination held annually in Singapore. It is taken after four years in the Normal (Academic) or Normal (Technical) stream. For subjects examined in English and foreign languages, the examining authority are the University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate. For localised language subjects, the examining authority is the Ministry of Education (MOE).
Wednesfield Grammar School was a grammar school in Wednesfield in the West Midlands of England. It opened on the Wednesfield site in 1960; and merged with March End Secondary Modern in 1969 to form Wednesfield High School.
↑ Judge, Harry (1967). A Short History of Education. Routledge. Between 1945 and 1951, around 1,200 elementary schools were converted to secondary modern schools in England and Wales
↑ Partridge, John (1965). Life in a Secondary Modern School. Pelican. pp.91–98.
1 2 3 4 Ford, J., 'Social Class and the Comprehensive School', Volume 233, Routeledge and Kegan Paul 2006, pp. 4–16. 29 January 1998 | ISBN0415177723 | ISBN978-0415177726
↑ Brooks, V., 'Role of External Examinations in the Making of Secondary Modern Schools in England 1945–65', 2008, doi:10.1080/00467600600909892
↑ Newsom, J., 'Half our future', A report of the Central Advisory Council for Education, London: HM Stationery Office, 1963
↑ Hart, R.A., Moro M., Roberts J.E., 'Date of birth, family background, and the 11 plus exam: short- and long-term consequences of the 1944 secondary education reforms in England and Wales', Stirling Economics Discussion Paper 2012-10 May 2012 pp. 24–25. "Working Papers". Archived from the original on 5 July 2011. Retrieved 19 February 2013.
↑ Ministry of Education, New Secondary Education, 4, p.46
↑ "Letters". The Guardian. London. 20 October 2015.
↑ Gillard, D., 'Us and Them: a history of pupil grouping policies in England's schools', (2008) (see the section '1945-1960: Doubts and concerns') www.educationengland.org.uk/articles/27grouping.html
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