Curriculum Placement in Comprehensive Schools

Abstract

With the advent of comprehensive secondary schools it would appear that the curricular differentiation of English secondary school pupils is decreasingly based on early selection or the use of the relatively simple set of criteria represented by 11 + test procedures. Instead it seems that the allocation of pupils to routes of distinctive curricular content and of different academic levels occurs later and is the outcome of a complex interaction between the elective choices of pupils and parents and the advice or guidance of teachers. Ostensibly the transition between the third year and the fourth years of secondary school is the most important point at which these processes occur. American researchers have produced a body of knowledge on curriculum placement in US high schools. Cicourel & Kitsuse (1963) claimed that curriculum placement in 'Lakeshore High School' was a function not only of ability and attainment but also of ascribed characteristics related to social class, and they explained these features as a consequence of the organisational procedures of counselling personnel. More recently, an extensive literature has developed which examines the effect of variables such as social class, ability, attainment, sex and student and parental expectations on placement in 'college' and 'non-college' high school tracks (e.g. Alexander & Eckland, 1975; Alexander & McDill, 1976; Rehberg & Hotchkiss, 1972; Sewell & Shah, 1967, 1968; Sewell, Hauser & Featherman, 1976). While these American studies cannot be translated exactly into a British context and while one must have some additional reservations about some of them, they suggest in general terms a strategy which may be illuminating in studying curriculum placement in British schools. They also suggest some of the hypotheses which may be tested, in particular the limitations on explaining placement in terms of ability and achievement (Alexander, Cook & McDill, 1978) and the possible effects of sex (Alexander & Eckland, 1975) and of social class (Alexander & McDill, 1976) on levels of placement. British research in this field has tended to be ethnographic and descriptive. In general terms, some studies have focused on curricular arrangements and