Change in the Education System in England and Wales since the Second World War Part 2:The Developing Pattern 1950s and 1960s

Change in the Education System in England and Wales Part 2:The Developing Pattern - 1950s and 1960s focuses on issues of decentralisation of systems and levels of provision arising around, from, and subsequent to the 1944 Education Act. The crystallisation of issues surrounding Political and Professional Attitudes; the Eleven Plus; Secondary Modern Schools (with a concentration on the West Riding County Council) and the Persistence of Inequality of Opportunity are described and assessed. This is a reflective evaluation of the 1950s and 1960s based on an understanding of the difficulties experienced by both professionals and politicians involved in fashioning the reorganisation of secondary education. The context is the basis for the thrust of the article’s argument that what was being negotiated was the relationship between central and local government and between local government and localities