Comprehensive School Movement

The comprehensive school movement refers to the shift, most prominent in the United Kingdom from the 1960s, away from a selective secondary system that separated pupils by examination at age 11 into grammar and secondary modern schools, toward non-selective schools admitting pupils of all abilities from their local area. Championed particularly under the Labour governments of the 1960s and 1970s, it remains a recurring subject of political and educational debate, with a small number of selective grammar schools still operating in parts of England.