ABSTRACT
Recent events have highlighted the need to enhance understanding of the nature and causation of the swing to comprehensive education after 1965 and to bring out clearly its overall significance. After the war the tripartite system was generally imposed, though there were loopholes, London being one, and, as the people have seen, sparsely populated offshore islands and remote country areas. It is the consistent and rapid rise shown which, the people saw in detail in the earlier graphs which accounts for the decline of each of the three specific functional types of school. It is possible, the author think, to argue that the crucial battles on comprehensive education were fought out in the period 1956 to 1963 by which time in essence they had been won, even if the essential administrative actions came later. The process of change itself was highly educative. It made a deep impact on the thinking of a generation of parents and children.
