* March 23, 1929

It is becoming every year increasingly evident that the secondary schools are not primarily institutions for the training of boys and girls who go on to a university. Since the number of those who proceed to a university is under three per cent of all the boys and girls who pass through secondary schools, one might ask why the universities should be constituted the examining authorities at all...The result is that the pupils of the schools are all regarded as prospective undergraduates; the curriculum partakes of the nature of a preliminary curriculum for the university, and secondary schools have become little more than university preparatory schools.

50 years ago

* March 26, 1954

It would be good for the Ministerto discuss with the London County Council the possibility of a limited comprehensive experiment... It is, of course, an unpleasant thing to require parents, against their will, to offer their children as guinea pigs... If the comprehensive school commends itself to parents - and surely it ought to to do that before it is universally espoused - many parents of able children in the district will be sending their children to Kidbrooke...The Minister ought surely to insist on seeing how one or two of these big schools work, over a generation if need be, before sanctioning others. It is wrong for a local authority to abolish schools that are known to be good until they are absolutely sure that better schools can be put in their place.

25 years ago

An industrial dispute kept The TES out of production from November 30, 1978 to November 16, 1979.