SELECTION: The Secondary schools

The remnants of selection have some strange mutations within the city's education system. The 11‐plus remains ostensibly because of the four grammar schools (two Roman Catholic, and two girls maintained), and the two direct grant, Henry VIIIth and Bablake, which effectively cream off all but 6 per cent of the 130+ intelligence group. But it also serves to select children from outside the comprehensive catchment areas who would otherwise have to go to secondary modern — a system which is worked for the benefit of the brighter children and as a topping up process for the comprehensives. This in itself turns the comprehensives into a form of selective school and makes a mockery of their raison d'être, although probably a necessary one in terms of the social/intelligence mix.