"Where schools in an area are organised on selective lines the overall impact is to depress the educational performance of these communities as a whole"

Jesson looked at selective and non-selective local authorities and found that where schools in an area are organised on selective lines (as in 15 of the 152 local authorities) the overall impact is to depress the educational performance of these communities as a whole. He wrote ‘A government committed to raising standards for all must not exclude from its agenda those currently educated in ‘secondary modern’ schools – these pupils are currently seriously disadvantaged in GCSE performance by the way that their schooling system operates. Maintaining that disadvantage should not be an option’ (vii).

vii Jesson,D (2006) Performance of pupils and schools in selective and non-selective local authorities Centre for Performance Evaluation, University of York in in Hewlett, M, Pring,R and Tulloch M (2006) Comprehensive Education:evolution, achievement and new directions, University of Northampton Press:


Source: Comprehensivefuture.org.uk