ABSTRACT
The history of the Education Branch in the British Zone is concerned, much of the running has been made in the meantime by the members of Branch themselves. The British authorities were disturbed, not by the fact that comprehensive schools were being introduced, but by the controversies that the legislation had aroused. The fundamental idea of breaking up Prussia into smaller units was hardly conducive to the planning of a new national comprehensive system of education. The kind of educational reform that was being envisaged by the British was, rather, a political re-education, restoring to Germany principles of democratic thought and practice, and few people at that time would have censured the selective system associated with the 1944 Act as undemocratic. Whatever substance there may be to the theory in the more general assessment of post-war policy, in the particular sphere of education it is difficult to detect any strong political line in the appointments made to the education service.
