Politics, politicians and English comprehensive schools

Abstract

Very few English secondary schools now include ‘Comprehensive’ in their titles, and political enthusiasm for comprehensive schools is hard to detect. According to David Skelton of Policy Exchange, politicians, like anthropologists, have often ‘investigated them, read thoroughly about them and even visited them, but they don’t really understand them’. Drawing on a variety of source materials, this article discusses the early comprehensive schools movement, the period of intensive circulars and legislation in the 1960s and 1970s and the subsequent waning of interest in comprehensive schools as a policy topic. At the heart of the discussion is a focus on politics and politicians at both the national and local levels, with close reference to some key personalities of the post-war period. It is argued that the story of comprehensive schooling in England needs more balance and that we should look to the present generation of politicians and historians to provide this.