Comprehensive school

Comprehensive schools provide an entitlement curriculum to all children, without selection whether due to financial considerations or attainment.

A consequence of that is a wider ranging curriculum, including practical subjects such as design and technology and vocational learning, which were less common or non-existent in grammar schools.

Providing post-16 education cost-effectively becomes more challenging for smaller comprehensive schools, because of the number of courses needed to cover a broader curriculum with comparatively fewer students.

In addition, government initiatives such as the City Technology Colleges and specialist schools programmes have expanded the comprehensive model.

Nearly 90% of state-funded secondary schools are specialist schools, receiving extra funding to develop one or more subjects (performing arts, business, humanities, art and design, languages, science, mathematics, technology, engineering, sports, etc.)

Maths schools can also be centres of excellence in raising attainment, supporting and influencing the teaching of mathematics in their surrounding area, and are central to their associated universities' widening participation commitments.

[4] On the Isle of Man, (a Crown dependency and not part of the United Kingdom) comprehensive education was also introduced in 1946.

These early comprehensives mostly modelled themselves, in terms of ethos, on the grammar school, with gown-wearing teachers conducting lessons in a very formal style.

Embracing the progressive ideals of 1960s education, such schools typically abandoned corporal punishment and brought in a more liberal attitude to discipline and methods of study.

The largest expansion of comprehensive schools resulted from a policy decision taken in 1965 by Anthony Crosland, Secretary of State for Education in the 1964–1970 Labour government.

The policy decision was implemented by Circular 10/65, a request to local education authorities to plan for conversion.

In 1970, Margaret Thatcher, the Secretary of State for Education in the new Conservative government, ended the compulsion on local authorities to convert.

However, many local authorities were so far down the path that it would have been prohibitively expensive to attempt to reverse the process, and more comprehensive schools were established under Thatcher than any other education secretary.

By 1975, the majority of local authorities in England and Wales had abandoned the 11-Plus examination and moved to a comprehensive system.

In 1976, the future Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan launched what became known as the 'great debate' on the education system.

He went on to list the areas he believed needed closest scrutiny: the case for a core curriculum, the validity and use of informal teaching methods, the role of school inspections, and the future of the examination system.

Government policy is currently promoting 'specialisation' whereby parents choose a secondary school appropriate for their child's interests and skills.

Most initiatives focus on parental choice and information, implementing a quasi-market incentive to encourage better schools.

[6] Experiments have included: Following the advice of Cyril Taylor, former businessman, Conservative politician, and chairman of the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust (SSAT), in the mid-1990s, all parties have backed the creation of specialist schools, which focus on excellence in a particular subject and are theoretically allowed to select up to 10% of their intake.

All maintained schools in England are required to follow the National Curriculum, which is made up of twelve subjects.

[11] The Department for Education has drawn up a list of preferred subjects known as the English Baccalaureate on the results in eight GCSEs including English, mathematics, the sciences (physics, chemistry, biology, computer science), history, geography, and an ancient or modern foreign language.

Schools are also free to include other subjects or topics of their choice in planning and designing their own programme of education.

If registered with a state school, attendance is compulsory beginning with the term following the child's fifth birthday.