Comprehensive school

A secondary school that admits pupils of different abilities and backgrounds without academic selection. It teaches students of varied attainment together rather than sorting them into selective academic schools.

Education Act 1944: A British law that reorganized education and established free secondary education for all children. Its tripartite system set the selective context that comprehensive reform later challenged.
School admissions: The rules and procedures by which pupils are allocated places at schools. Comprehensive status depends on admission without academic selection.
Social mobility: Movement of individuals or groups between positions in a social hierarchy. Comprehensive education is often judged by whether it widens routes to opportunity.
Selective school: A school that admits pupils according to academic criteria or examination performance. Academic selection is the defining admission practice comprehensive schools reject.
Comprehensive education in England: The development and organization of non-selective secondary education in England. England's uneven conversion from selective schools shaped the model's most prominent case.
Tripartite system: A postwar English system assigning pupils to grammar, technical, or secondary modern schools. Its allocation by ability contrasted with comprehensive admission.
Ability grouping: The practice of assigning pupils to classes or sets according to perceived academic attainment. Schools may group pupils internally even when admissions are non-selective.
Educational inequality: Unequal access to educational resources, experiences, or outcomes among individuals and groups. Non-selective admission does not by itself remove differences in school outcomes.
Secondary modern school: A British secondary school historically intended for pupils who did not gain grammar-school places. It was the principal non-grammar destination in the tripartite system.
Welsh comprehensive schools: Non-selective secondary schools forming the principal state-school model in Wales. Wales adopted comprehensive provision more consistently than England.

Linked from 6 pages