Comprehensive System

History

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. Over that 10-year period, many secondary modern schools and grammar schools were amalgamated to form large neighbourhood comprehensives, whilst a number of new schools were built to accommodate a growing school population. In the mid-1970s, the process of comprehensivisation peaked, leaving selective secondary state education (grammar schools, secondary modern schools, 11+) only with a small number of local education authorities.