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track system were of less consequence. Even the historian who has deplored the
failure of the Atlee government to move to a fully comprehensive system has
acknowledged that a key issue prior to the 1944 Act was:
...the fight for a single or common code of regulations for all schools catering
for children over the age of eleven. It is, perhaps, difficult to recognise the
significance of this demand today since it is now, after nearly fifty years, so
much taken for granted.
(Simon 1991: 76)
As an able child of the Manchester working class, Wilkinson was well aware of the
opportunities her grammar school education had opened for her. Privately, she did
indeed have reservations about the divided system:
Although she eventually approved the Ministry Circular (73) commending the
tripartite secondary organisation to local authorities, she railed against it in
her diary. What it meant was: ‘give the real stuff to 25 percent, steer the 75
percent away from the humanities, pure science, even history. ’
(Quoted in Vemon 1982: 222-3)
While Ellen Wilkinson was constrained by political realities, she was not alone in
concentrating on one issue while neglecting other effects of the 1944 Act. The
teaching world was very exercised over two aspects of Regulation 103 concerning
examinations, and seemed to overlook what was the highly significant shift from a
grouped to a single-subject system. Many years later, Denis Lawton commented:
It is interesting to note that most of the controversy about the new structure
concerned the age limit rather than the major departure from the traditional
group certificate.
(Lawton 1980: 96)
The controversial Regulation prevented pupils other than those at grammar schools
from entering examinations before age 17. The new scheme thus at a stroke excluded
all those in the new ‘modem’ schools, who left at 15. Brian Simon, for one,
interpreted this as yet another instance of:
...the highly systematic and determined approach by ministry officials. ...By
erecting this barrier [to equal status for all three types of school] in this manner