TWO SCHOOLS
OR
ONE? AN EMPIRICAL
STUDY
IN ENGLAND
GAJENDRA
K.
VERMA
University
of
East
Anglia
Norwich, England
The comprehensive school of today in British society has passed through
different phases, and
its
introduction has led to a radical change in the whole struc-
ture of secondary education. The idea
of
the comprehensive school emerged during
the postwar years as an educational agency designed to carry out the functions of
all types of school at the secondary level and to bring forth within itself the variety
of
innovations required for the needs of various personalities.
It
caters to virtually
the whole ability range and seeks to provide for all the children in a given area a
secondary education suited to their diverse aims, interests, abilities and aptitudes.
The supporters of this system claim that morale, interests and sense of belonging all
are enhanced in the academically less able pupils in a comprehensive school, without
a
decrement in the aspirations and standards of the able pupils.
Several social and political factors helped to shape secondary education.
It
also
may be said that educational considerations, the changing structure of society,
and the need of the individual and of the country played a large part in promoting
the concept of the comprehensive school on a national basis. Opinions of various
British psychologists, represented in the British Psychological Society’s publication
Secondary school selection
(Vernon,
1957),
gave tremendous impetus to this move-
ment.
Although the question of comprehensive education has been discussed widely
during the last
20
years, very little controlled research has been carried out in this
field. In this country the debate about comprehensive schools
is
rather more
philosophical than based upon sound research. In contrast, Sweden introduced
comprehensive schools after much research and planning. The work of Hush of the
University of Stockholm (Hush,
1960;
Hus6n
&
Henrysson,
1959;
Hush
&
Svensson,
1960)
gave considerable stimulus to these developments. They have shown that
able pupils are not handicapped by being taught in unstreamed classes.
One of the earliest studies in England was made by Hackman
(1957),
who found
that some pupils who ranked low at the entry examination for secondary education
made considerable progress later, while others who ranked high failed to justify their
initial high ranking.
A
year later an important study by Miller
(1958)
showed that
comprehensive school pupils had a homogeneous attitude toward society at large
and displayed
a
higher sense of purpose. Other studies by James
(1960),
Dixon
(1962),
Neal
(1965)
and Thompson
(1965)
indicated that comprehensive schools
are
effective with regard to certain educational, social and emotional objectives. The
results of these studies cautiously support the comprehensive system.
Research in the field of comprehensive education still is rudimentary and has
led the present study to consider whether under a single roof higher- and lower-
stream pupils (higher- and lower-ability groups) come to have similar patterns of
motivational, attitudinal, and personality characteristics.
If
the results show that
the two groups have similar patterns on certain nonintellectual test scores, it might
be said that the comprehensive system closes the gap between “grammar” (higher-
ability) and “modern” (lower-ability) pupils (Pedley,
1956;
Lady Simon,
1948).
It
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