ABSTRACT
This school, like the previous one, is located on the outskirts of a large conurbation and has over a thousand pupils, of which about 10 per cent are coloured. Here similarities tend to fall away. It is a comprehensive school but has passed through the phase of being a secondary modern. The original building on the site began as a central high school in the 1930s. By becoming officially a comprehensive school in the mid-1950s it seems to have lost something of its earlier academic status. For ten years it functioned as a secondary modern school, despite the label. Only since 1967 has it begun to fulfil the comprehensive intention. Two further buildings erected on the site in the early 1960s have increased the facilities offered by the school. It takes both boys and girls and had at the time of the experiment developed a sixth form of approaching ninety students. The school as a unit is embedded in an extensive complex of prewar council estate development on garden city principles with some private housing. Smaller developments and in-filling has occurred since the war. Inevitably, amenities are limited, shop footage, for example, being dependent upon the size of the various estates. For adults public houses strategically placed and social clubs offer some sort of community focus. A number of youth clubs attempt to meet the needs of the youngsters. There is a reasonably good transport service allowing quick access to the inner city and readily available amenities. From what has been said, it would seem reasonable to suggest that the school intake reflects a wide variety of parental backgrounds. Again, the coloured intake is less homogeneous than in the case of school A. It includes pupils of West Indian, African and Chinese origin as well as Asians. Quite a number are British by birth.
