ABSTRACT
Having discussed the movement for comprehensive reform, we turn now to an examination of the impact of reorganisation on the schools and schooling of the members of the 1977 sample, the oldest of whom transferred to secondary-school in 1970. Our strategy in this chapter is to compare leavers from two groups of schools: first, from schools which had become fully comprehensive (in a sense that we will explain) by 1970; and second, from all other schools in the sample. The comparison focuses mainly on pupils’ SCE attainment, if any, but is also made in terms of various ‘non-cognitive outcomes’ of schooling, namely truancy, corporal punishment and whether pupils judged their last year at school to have been worthwhile. Important though these may be, they represent, of course, only some of the many criteria of evaluation that might be applied to a reform that we have characterised as essentially polyvalent.
