Effective Comprehensive Education

Comprehensive education today is the culmination of that drive for secondary education for all — that has occupied the whole of the twentieth century in the same way elementary education for all occupied the nineteenth. In short, studying comprehensive education school by school, but excluding the education system in which schools and colleges are embedded (and ultimately the social and political system in which education itself functions), severely limits access to strategies for improvement. As well as showing that some 'balance' of intakes is required in an effective comprehensive system, our research of the picture as a whole also showed the importance of having a social mix. What it shows is that high standing in the league tables is not required for a school to achieve the degree of success, for the schools are divided between those with predominantly middle class intakes and those with predominantly working class intakes.