ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the secondary education and, in particular, about the way it can be extended to all pupils in comprehensive schools. It recognise that the development of comprehensive education upwards from 11 is the major educational advance and looks back on the first stage in the evolution of the comprehensive school and see what can be learnt from a decade of intensive growth. The political force of the ideal is such that, given the economic means, the dream was bound to be realised in the end; and the most likely explanation of the present feeling that the dream has gone a little sour is simply the harsher financial climate. The chapter looks at the origins of the general movement in the late 1950s towards comprehensive local systems, leading to ten years of considerable growth from 1964 which coincided with a great expansion in curriculum studies, partly as a theoretical activity but with curriculum development as its practical arm.
