The secondary school building programmes of the post-war period defined the education system outlined in the 1944 Education Act. The three types of secondary school catered for three types of child: The grammar school for the academic, the technical school for the technically adept and the secondary modern for the majority who were deemed to be vocational, concrete learners in preparation for the ‘real’ world. The grammar school buildings had their architectural traditions already laid out for them as a development of public schools and the technical schools also had the traditions of the mechanics institutes and colleges on which to build, but the secondary modern school had no antecedents except the senior elementary schools. The purpose of the institution of the tripartite system of education was to eliminate the elementary stigma from the public imagination, however, so the architects of the secondary modern had to forge a new material expression of its purpose and function. This resulted in an ad hoc, multifarious amalgam of interpretations as the Government’s guidance about the purpose and aim of secondary modern schools was vague and elusive. The politics of place immediately interfered with the building of these schools and this paper shows how an examination of the secondary school buildings of the period 1944-1977 (i.e. between the major education acts) not only worked to shape citizens but also how the school buildings were altered, expanded and changed tells us how those within the education system (the education authorities, the teachers and the pupils) actively shaped their environment reflecting the differing purposes of education. Thus, the secondary school is recast as a site of power and resistance. The reading of the school space as a text has been indirectly, and in many cases inaccurately, used to show how architects interpreted educational policies, research and theories; yet the practical, economic and material constraints show how this approach to school buildings has been overstated. Teaching and learning had to adapt to the limitations of the school building rather than the building encapsulating an agreed educational approach. Issues of gender, social class, discipline and the hierarchy of knowledge are concretised in the school building. The agency and meanings associated with these institutions imply a social choreography but this was interactive not simply imposed. Thus, those who used the buildings changed them by dancing to a different tune.

The paper takes the form of a secondary school building; a virtual tour of the spaces in the school, beginning with the entrance, reception and assembly hall, where the school represented itself to its community. The space provided for dining shows the significance of food, noise, mess and waste and the impact these have on expectation, behaviour and civility. The gymnasium during this period is increasingly cast as a feminine, ordered space, the playing field developed as a masculine, ordered space and the playground can be seen as a disordered space. The role of gender and discipline come to the fore in these spaces. The classroom as an academic space holds a more central position in the secondary school than the practical rooms that are physically marginalized as they are perceived to be inferior in the curriculum. The secondary school building is a divisive place both temporally and socially. There are periods of flow, via the corridors, and stagnation. The opposing issues of discipline/indiscipline; order/disorder and visibility/hidden zones are explored throughout. The methods used were both empirical and material. A survey was conducted of all the secondary schools built between 1944 and 1977 by Lancashire Education Authority. Original plans for almost all the schools were kept on microfilm at County Hall, Preston. This survey provided statistical information about the characteristics of the different types of secondary school in one county. Case studies of eighteen secondary schools were chosen and their records (where they survived data protection), plans, minutes of meetings and head teachers’ reports, inspection reports, school magazines, interviews with longest serving teachers and county or borough records were searched out and absorbed. All the secondary schools in Burnley, Lancashire, were compared to all the secondary schools in Wokingham, Berkshire, where the Ministry of Education designed and built the first purpose-built secondary modern school, St. Crispin’s. Special permission to view closed access documents was granted by both Berkshire and Lancashire county councils, archivists, records offices and planning departments. Photographic archeology of the buildings as they currently are was another way of showing how the schools were seen as organic places where layers of building led to shanty towns of wasted time and wasted space. Their modernity is questioned yet how each school developed illustrated how the demand for change in education was not imposed from above but demanded from below. The view of school building has suffered from an overly optimistic handling and schools have escaped the severe criticism that most other modern buildings have endured. This is because secondary school provided a shared cultural experience and the school was more than prefabricated concrete and paneling.

In conclusion, secondary schools built between 1944 and 1977 show how the intention of the education reforms after 1944 were limited by material and economic constraints imposed on architects and local education authorities. While all the case study schools were different in appearance, construction and internal organization, the secondary school became a universally recognizable building type. The different types of secondary school were designed differently by architects who brought their own school experiences and expectations to the drawing board. Secondary modern schools were smaller than grammar schools which can be explained by the fact that grammar schools were built to cater for a full five or seven year course to GCE O-level or A-level, but this difference meant that the grammar school buildings were more durable when secondary schools were reorganized for comprehensive education. Thus, grammar and technical schools did not require as many temporary-made-permanent extensions over the period, retaining the original shape of the school and, of course, the reputation in the local area. The expansion of education using add-on huts and blocks led to shanty town schools that limited the education it was possible to deliver in those environments which effectively instituted built inferiority. This had a significant and detrimental effect upon the way the schools were viewed by the pupils, the teachers and the community. Thus, the material environment of the school – the buildings – can be said to be a major factor in the development of the modern school as ‘inferior.’ The use of shared and multi-purpose space in secondary school buildings was also found to be more frequent in secondary modern schools than in grammar or technical schools. The assembly hall, gymnasium and dining hall had specific purposes that became confused when they were shared spaces in schools. In Lancashire, over half of all the secondary modern schools built during this period had a shared assembly and dining hall. Only one fifth of grammar and technical schools in Lancashire had this shared function. Although the case studies in Wokingham sis not have this marked difference, the elimination of multi-purpose space can be seen in the schools’ extensions over the period showing that this use of space clearly became problematic for the schools in use. The findings criticize educational research for their application of micro studies to whole education systems without recourse to the material environment of schools. The optimistic architectural studies of the buildings lack the experiences of these schools from the perspective of their users. Agency and meaning in the wider context of political, economic and social factors provide a different view of the secondary school where people, place and purpose are shaped as well as shaping forces. The tripartite system of education was built and there were inequalities in the buildings of that system, but the buildings display how these were changed over the period so that the failure of that system was evident in the material form and functions of the schools long before this was legislated for by central government.