ABSTRACT
As early as 1925 support could be found for multilateral schools at a conference of the Assistant Masters Association (AMA); a view strongly supported by their journal, under the editorship of S.B. Lucas, a member of the Labour party’s education committee. 1 Although the Labour party ignored the idea in its pamphlet Labour and Education published in 1933, focussing instead upon raising the school leaving age and the removal of fees in county secondary schools, when the party won control of the London County Council (LCC) for the first time in 1934, Barbara Drake, who alongside R.H. Tawney, was on the education committee of the Council, proposed the introduction of ‘non-selective multiple bias’ schools for London in the following year. 2 In evidence to the Spens Committee, a number of witnesses, especially those representing teacher organisations, such as AMA, the Association of Assistant Mistresses (AAM) and the Association of Headmistresses (AHM), supported the idea of multilateral schooling. 3
