Minister of Agriculture calls for 100,000 older schoolboys and girls to help in fields.

1946 90 per cent of university places reserved for men of HM Forces.

BBC Third Programme starts.

Family allowance, free school milk introduced, free dinners postponed.

1947 Leaving age raised to 15 in England and Scotland, despite labour shortage.

East Sutton Park, near Maidstone, first open Borstal for girls.

Secondary Schools Examination Council recommends General Certificate of Education at O, A and S-level.

1948 Only 1 per cent of two to five-year-olds in nursery schools. Five-year plan to train 96,000 teachers, 60,000 of them women, to reduce secondary classes to 30 and primary to 40 by 1951.

400,000 extra pupils result from raising leaving age to 15.

1949 Ronald Ridout publishes “English Today 1-5”.

Conservative Teachers’ Association asks Government to act on teachers alleged to be spreading Communist propaganda.

Clothes rationing ends.

1950 Parliament discusses breakdown of school dental service.

Schools (Scotland) Code reduces maximum primary class size to 45 from 50.

1951 O and A-levels are introduced.

Bristol University bans knitting in lectures.

The TES goes up to 4d. First increase since 1923.

1952 Report by Professor Philip Vernon finds coaching in intelligence tests raises IQ.

Survey finds almost 90 per cent of teachers see corporal punishment as a necessity.

First British atom bomb.

BBC launches pilot schools television scheme.

1953 Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.

Middlesex education committee bans known communists and fascists from headships.

Labour manifesto, “Challenge to Britain”, proposes abolition of selection at 11.

Lord Chief Justice rules headmistress within rights to refuse admittance to pupil wearing “slacks”.

Edinburgh Corporation builds primary school almost entirely of plastic.

Morris report underlines shortage of science teachers.

1954 Roger Bannister runs mile in 3 mins 59.4 secs.

11-plus said to be wrongly allocating 1 in 3 pupils.

US Supreme Court declares racial segregation in education unlawful.

Student teacher sued by LCC for buying tennis dress and racket out of pound;250 grant.

1955 LCC removes last gas lamps from its schools.

Harmful Publications Bill to suppress horror comics.

Sir Richard Acland, who resigned from Parliament over the British hydrogen bomb, joins Wandsworth grammar to teach maths and science.

1956 National Federation of PTAs inaugurated.

11 local authorities spend less than 4s a year on primary books.

5,455 out of 250,000 LCC primary pupils are immigrants; 57 nationalities, mostly Cypriots, Indians, Pakistanis, Poles, Italians and West Indians.

Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme for boys launched (girls’ begins in 1958).

1957 Price of school dinners go up to 1s.

Associated Rediffusion starts Britain’s first school TV programmes in May: BBC starts schools broadcasts in September.

Little Rock, Arkansas, refuses high school entry to black children.

Prince Charles at Cheam school.

Asian flu epidemic. First Sputnik.

1958 Brighton probation officer blames coffee bars for “unprecedented rise” in juvenile delinquency.

Hertfordshire criticised for flatness of school roofs.

CND founded.

First aided comprehensive school for Jewish children opens in London.