The Commission urged that the third-grade schools should be varied in kind. " I t would be wise," they said, " to put no obstacle in the way of a free growth of very various kinds of school."

It would be fascinating to explore what influence this recommendation of three grades of secondary schools has had, directly and indirectly, on educational thinking in this country, right down to the present day. Probably much more than has ever been suspected. Certainly the three grades bear a marked ancestral likeness to the present-day tripartite organisation of secondary education, a likeness heightened by the fact that the Commission estimated that eight out of ten children for whom they thought secondary education should be provided would want no more than third-grade schools.