ABSTRACT
As schools, secondary schools in particular, become larger, more heterogeneous in composition, and offer an increasingly more varied array of courses; close and continuous educational guidance will be needed to ensure that curricula and methods are suited as far as possible to each child's emergent needs. A poor performance in the eleven-plus examination indicates that a child is unlikely to reach a high academic standard in his secondary school course. These two major processes of assessment, one at the end of the primary and the other at the end of the secondary school course, clearly do not provide all the evidence that is needed for the effective guidance of pupils throughout the whole of their school careers. The growing provision of teaching machines, programmed texts and other aids makes it feasible to predict that the traditional forms of class teaching will be largely abandoned to make way for the establishment of adequately equipped 'learning laboratories'.
