page_title: Direct grant grammar school
section_title: Comprehensive reorganisation
hierarchical_section_title: Direct grant grammar school / Comprehensive reorganisation
caption_attribution_description: English: School in Carlton Road
context_page_description: A direct grant grammar school was a type of selective secondary school in England and Wales that existed between 1945 and 1976. One quarter of the places in these schools were directly funded by central government, while the remainder attracted fees, some paid by the Local Education Authority and some by the parents of pupils; the amounts were set according to ability to pay. On average, the schools received just over half of their income from the state.
  The status was introduced by the Education Act 1944 as a modification of an existing direct grant scheme to privately endowed schools. There were 179 direct grant grammar schools, which, together with over 1,200 grammar schools maintained by local authorities, formed the most academic tier of the Tripartite System. They varied greatly in size and composition, but, on average, achieved higher academic results than either maintained grammar schools or independent schools.
  State secondary education was reorganised on comprehensive lines in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The direct grant was phased out from 1975 and the schools were required to choose between becoming maintained comprehensive schools or fully independent schools.
context_section_description: During the post-War period, many parts of the world moved from selective education to comprehensive schools catering for children of all abilities.
  Dissatisfaction with the Tripartite System grew during the 1950s, with concern over the harsh division of the school population at the age of 11, and the loss to the economy of the "submerged three-quarters" in secondary modern schools.
  Experiments with comprehensive schools spread from Anglesey to the Midlands and Yorkshire.
  In 1964, a Labour government was elected promising "to reorganise the State secondary schools on comprehensive lines".
  In the following year, the Department of Education and Science distributed Circular 10/65, requesting that Local Education Authorities prepare plans for such a reorganisation of their schools.
  The Circular also requested consultation between LEAs and direct grant schools on their participation in a comprehensive system.
  For this reason, direct grant schools were excluded from consideration by the Public Schools Commission set up in 1965, even though 152 of them would otherwise have fallen within its remit.
  There was little progress in the local negotiations proposed in the Circular.
  Two Catholic girls' schools, St Anne's Convent School, Southampton and St Anthony's School, Sunderland, converted to a fully comprehensive intake, expanding to over 1000 pupils each.
  A few others proposed minor adjustments, but the vast majority were unchanged.
  In view of this lack of progress, the Public Schools Commission was asked on October 1967 to add direct grant schools to its investigation.
  The Commission, now chaired by David Donnison, issued its second report in 1970, concluding that "Grammar schools of the traditional kind cannot be combined with a comprehensive system of education: we must choose what we want.  Fee-paying is not compatible with comprehensive education."
  They recommended that the schools choose between becoming voluntary aided comprehensives and full independence, but the Conservatives came to power before any action had been taken.
  Meanwhile, a trickle of schools had begun to leave the scheme, starting with Trinity School of John Whitgift, which became independent in 1968, but still had half its places funded by the LEA.
  It was followed in 1970 by Oakham School, which became co-educational in the following year,
  and Queen Victoria High School, which merged with The Cleveland School to form Teesside High School.
  A respite was provided in the early 1970s, when Margaret Thatcher, the Conservative Education Secretary, raised the level of grant, which had been lowered by the Labour government.
caption: St Anne's Convent School became a comprehensive in the 1960s, expanding to the annex on the left.
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