The middle-school movement experienced the latest in a long line of setbacks last week when education ministers approved plans to reorganise the school system in Exeter.

The Department for Education and Skills gave provisional support for a pound;79 million private finance initiative bid to fund the reorganisation, which will see Exeter children change schools at the age of 11 rather than eight and 12.

Devon County Council has already agreed to turn the city’s first, middle and combined schools into primaries. However, the final decision will be made by the county’s school organisation committee after parents, staff and governors at every school in Exeter have been consulted. Judging by the experience of Wiltshire, there could be stiff opposition to the changes.

A review of the three-tier system in west Salisbury and south-west Wiltshire recently recommended that these areas should adopt the primary and secondary structure used in the rest of the county.

But a clear majority of those responding to the consultation were against the proposals. Bob Wolfson, Wiltshire’s chief education officer, says the county council understands their concerns for pupils already in the system. “However, we have a wider responsibility for the long-term well-being of education in those areas and our analysis is that we can’t go on the way we are,” he says.

“If you’ve got essentially a two-tier system, a small part of which is selective, and you’ve also got five middle schools, of which three have under 300 pupils, it’s a bit of a problem.”

Middle-school supporters argue that pupils who stay in a primary school-type environment until they are 12 or 13 are less likely to become demotivated during the crucial middle years of their education - a problem that Education Secretary Estelle Morris has identified as one of the toughest facing schools.

But even those who believe in the middle-school ideal often recognise that its time may have come and gone.

“I think middle schools do work because they give the child who takes longer to mature more time to do it,” says David Watkins, head of Bignold middle school in Norwich. “But the problem now with key stage 3 is that there is so much emphasis on specialist teaching, and the curriculum is so tight, that it is fair to say that 8-12 middle schools are struggling with that KS3 requirement.”

Middle schools in Norwich are not under threat, although Norfolk County Council has dismantled the three-tier system of first, middle and high schools in some of its smaller towns, and is now reviewing the situation in Great Yarmouth and other areas.

Across the county border, the future of Suffolk’s middle schools looks secure. In the 1980s, Suffolk County Council reviewed the patchwork of three-tier and two-tier systems it was left with after local government reorganisation, and decided to leave well alone.

“There is no difference in outcomes at KS4, whichever system students have gone through, and no further review is planned,” said a spokeswoman for the county council, which has 40 schools catering for pupils aged nine to 13.

The Isle of Wight, another of the dwindling band of authorities with a three-tier school system, also says there is no evidence that dismantling its 16 schools for nine to 13s would improve educational outcomes, which are around the national average.

Where outcomes are below average, the system itself is sometimes blamed. For example, in Devon a commission chaired by Ted Wragg, professor of education at Exeter University, concluded last year that one possible reason why Exeter children were lagging behind those in the rest of the county was that they were changing schools in the middle of KS3. However, the commission’s report acknowledged that “it was difficult to prove a direct cause and effect”. In contrast to the findings of the Exeter commission, a recent study in Northumberland, which has 45 middle schools, found no evidence that a change would lead to improved educational standards.

The case for middle schools could be strengthened if the Government succeeds in creating a coherent 14-19 phase of learning.

John Williams, of the school of education at Sheffield Hallam University, who carried out the Northumberland study, says that would leave 9-13 looking more like a distinct phase, especially if, as David Hargreaves, former chief executive of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority has suggested, KS3 were cut from three to two years. If that happens, adds Dr Williams, authorities with 9-13 middle schools might look even more closely at whether they need to change, as these would then be able to cover the whole of KS3.

There is, it seems, still some hope for the beleaguered middle-school movement.

FROM PLOWDEN TO TODAY

* Middle schools were created in response to the 1968 Plowden report, which recommended that the primary school ethos should be extended into the middle years of schooling.

* The National Middle Schools’ Forum estimates that by their mid-1970s heyday, there were around 630 middle schools in England. Other UK countries have never had middle schools.

* The latest DFES figures show that there are 147 middle schools deemed primaries (most catering for 8 to 12-year-olds) out of a total of 18,069 primary schools, and 316 middle schools deemed secondaries (mainly 9-13 but including some 10-14 schools) out of a total of 3,481 secondaries.