ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the nature of the newly established comprehensive schools and their student bodies. It considers whether these newly introduced ways of organising secondary education reflected some of the same kinds of student separation found in the selective system. The chapter shows that the change went more smoothly and was more complete in some places than others. It investigates whether these structural variations affected student achievements in the same way as had occurred in the selective system. The chapter reviews a number of school characteristics that differentiated grammar, secondary modern, and comprehensive schools. It also examines the kinds of comprehensives to see if there was any evidence of continuity in school characteristics from the selective to the comprehensive systems. The Local Education Authorities may have been selective in the assignment of students to the various kinds of comprehensives, but a potentially more important question is whether these comprehensives offered different educational programmes.
