[3] This reasoning had been based on the 1943 Norwood Report, the experiences gained in the 1930s and the skills shortages encountered during the ongoing war.
"the various kinds of technical schools, which were not instituted to satisfy the intellectual needs of an arbitrarily assumed group of children, but to prepare boys and girls for taking up certain crafts – engineering, agriculture and the like.
[4]Local authorities were given a deal of freedom on how this was to be implemented, and while it was easy to create two branches from existing building stock, technical schools often had to be built afresh.
As a result, in most LEA areas, pupils were not selected from the 11-plus as originally proposed, but from a separate, voluntary set of examinations taken at the age of 12 or 13.
[4] These schools were invariably single sex, and usually recruited their entrants from the lower end of the 'selective' band (as measured at the age of 11).
Technical education could be traced back to Mechanics' Institutes founded in the early part of the nineteenth century.
Dartford Technical High School started to offer A-levels in 1964 and a building programme commenced.