ABSTRACT
The term ‘sixth form’ is becoming more and more ambiguous, as may be seen from the arguments about whether an ‘open entry’ upper school, accepting all those who elect to remain at school after the age of sixteen, has any right to be called a ‘sixth form college’. The grammar school sixth form between the wars, like much else in the grammar schools, was the result of a determination by devoted teachers to give the able grammar school pupils the advantages that only the public school had been able to give in the past. The increase in numbers would inevitably bring with it profound changes in the abilities and interests of sixth formers and such changes ought to impose changes in the education provided. The concept of the ‘new sixth form’ is of course familiar by now to educational planners.
