Promoting Comprehensive Education in the 21st Century
Edited by Clyde Chitty and Brian Simon
Trentham Books pound;13.95
TES Direct pound;13.45 (020 8324 5119, 99p pamp;p per order)

It wasn’t only teachers who were outraged earlier this year by Labour spin doctor Alastair Campbell’s calculated put-down about “bog-standard” comprehensive schools. For many supporters of the comprehensive movement, inclined until then to give New Labour at least the benefit of growing doubt, the comment was a turning point.

Hence this volume, seen by its authors as the opening of a nationwide campaign for a return to principled and equitable public education. Hence, too, Steve Bell’s cover drawing of two adjacent toilet cubicles, one restricted (access by swipe card only) to “special students” and one, emphatically bog-standard, for standard students.

A longer version of this review appears in this week’s TES