ABSTRACT
In the post-war period, however, decisions about secondary schooling were taken against the background of the 1944 Education Act which had made its provision an agreed goal for all children up to the age of fifteen and, ultimately sixteen. The Report of the Crowther Committee which had been set up in 1956 to advise the Minister of Education 'on the education of girls and boys between the ages of fifteen and eighteen' was therefore eagerly awaited. Economists and demographers were the people who were accorded 'expert' status, wrote the books, planned education courses and influenced the civil servants in the Ministry of Education who set the long term agendas around which committees and advisory councils worked. The Committee did, however, feel obliged to provide some justification for its central claim that a specialized academic curriculum was right for sixth forms and should be maintained.
