The Education Act 1944 changed the education system for secondary schools in England and Wales. This Act, commonly named after the Conservative politician Rab Butler, introduced the "Tripartite System" of secondary education and made secondary education free for all pupils. The tripartite system consisted of three different types of secondary school: grammar schools; secondary technical schools; and secondary modern schools. school, see School (disambiguation). ... Wikimedia Commons has media related to: England Travel guide to England from Wikitravel English language English law English (people) List of monarchs of England – Kings of England family tree List of English people Angeln (region in northern Germany, presumably the origin of the Angles for whom England is named) UK... National motto: Cymru am byth (Welsh: Wales for ever) Waless location within the UK Official languages English, Welsh Capital Cardiff Largest city Cardiff First Minister Rhodri Morgan Area  - Total Ranked 3rd UK 20,779 km² Population  - Total (2001)  - Density Ranked 3rd UK 2,903,085 140/km² NUTS 1... The Right Honourable Richard Austen Butler, Baron Butler of Saffron Walden, KG, CH, PC, DL (1902–1982), who invariably signed his name R. A. Butler and was familiarly known as Rab, was a British politician, one of the few to have served in all three posts of Chancellor of the... The Tripartite System, known colloquially as the grammar school system, was the structure by which Britains secondary education was organised between the 1944 Butler Act and 1976. ...

To assess which pupils should attend which school, they took an exam known as the 11 plus. The system was intended to allocate pupils to the schools best suited to their “abilities and aptitudes”, but in practice the number of grammar schools, for the academically inclined, remained unchanged, and few technical schools were ever established. As a result, most pupils went to secondary modern schools, whether they were suitable or not, while most funding went to grammar schools.

The Act renamed the Board of Education as the Ministry of Education, giving it greater powers and a bigger budget; ended fee-paying for state secondary schools; and enforced the division between primary (5-11 years old) and secondary (11-15 years old) that many local authorities had already introduced. It also proposed raising the school-leaving age to 16, a measure that was not followed through until 1972; and provided for community colleges, offering education for both children and adults, a measure that was never followed through except in Cambridgeshire. This Act also introduced compulsory prayer into all state-funded schools on a daily basis - and this clause was amended in 1988, when the prayer was reinforced to be of a Christian message and that it could now take place in classes, rather than the previous system of conducting worship in assemblies.