ABSTRACT
LIKE EVERY other contemporary English educational institution, the Secondary Modern School of today has evolved from ideas and practices whose origins must be sought far back in the past. How far back is anybody’s guess; no one, at least to my knowledge, has yet attempted to explore the beginnings of what we now call secondary modern education. It would be an exciting, though extremely exacting, study. No contribution to it is to be expected from this brief chapter, whose sole purpose is to act as a reminder of the largely unknown and almost wholly unremembered company of teachers and administrators who, over many decades before 1945, pioneered ways and means of educating
ordinary children which are today accepted and admired. The debt the country owes to them should never be forgotten, nor underestimated.
