The comprehensive principle

It is unfortunate that the term comprehensive education has become a synonym in Britain for a particular type of secondary system. Depending on one's evaluation of conflicting reports and evidence, pupils under this system are either reduced to the lowest common denominator, or allowed to rise to otherwise unattainable standards. Hence the system is viewed as producing either educational morons or academically liberated individualists. The truth of the situation probably lies somewhere between these two extremes.