ABSTRACT
There is no need to dwell on the ways in which the educational climate in the UK has changed so markedly over recent years. The move towards comprehensive schooling and raising of the statutory leaving age to 16 in the late 1960s undoubtedly sparked off public debate about school organization and the curriculum which, until recently, has overshadowed the more private concerns of parents about the quality of schooling received by their children. The decline of selection to grammar schools at age 11, which currently affects about 12 per cent of pupils of this age in England and Wales across 33 LEAs, tended to shift the emphasis at the primary school stage from differentiation into groups towards developing each child as an individual. At the secondary stage the growing influence of external examinations reinforced the belief that children ought to get something tangible out of their school experience.
