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A comprehensive school is a state school that does not select its intake on the basis of academic achievement or aptitude. This is in contrast to the selective school system, where admission is restricted on the basis of a selection criteria. The term is commonly used in relation to the United Kingdom, where comprehensive schools were introduced in the late 1960s. It corresponds broadly to the German Gesamtschule and to the high school in the United States and Canada. About 90% of British pupils attend comprehensive schools. Most comprehensives are secondary schools for children between the ages of 11 to at least 19, but in a few areas there are comprehensive middle schools, and in some places the secondary level is divided into two, for students aged 11 to 14 and those aged 14 to 19, roughly corresponding to the US middle school (or junior high school) and high school, respectively. Since a comprehensive school offers a full range of subjects across the academic and vocational spectrum, it is commonly understood that the school will need to be of a large size and to take children from a wide range of abilities. In principle, it was originally conceived as a "neighbourhood" school, which all students in its catchment area were meant to attend, irrespective of ability and without, in most cases, any significant element of parental choice. Further information: Education in Germany
The comprehensive school of Ludwigshafen-Oggersheim Comprehensive schools that offer college preparatory classes Germany has a comprehensive school known as the Gesamtschule. While some German schools such as the Gymnasium and the Realschule have rather strict entrance requirements, the Gesamtschulen do not have such requirements. They offer college preparatory classes for the students who are doing well, general education classes for average students, and remedial courses for those who aren’t doing that well. In most cases students attending a Gesamtschule may graduate with the Hauptschulabschluss, the Realschulabschluss or the Abitur depending on how well they did in school. The percentage of students attending a Gesamtschule varies by Bundesland. In 2007 the State of Brandenburg more than 50% of all students attended a Gesamtschule, while in the State of Bavaria less than 1% did. Starting in 2010/2011 in the German States of Berlin and Hamburg Hauptschulen were merged with Realschulen and Gesamtschulen to form a new type of comprehensive school called Stadtteilschule in Hamburg and Sekundarschule in Berlin (see: Education in Berlin, Education in Hamburg). Germany’s most famous Gesamtschulen are the Helene-Lange-School in Wiesbaden and the Laborschule Bielefeld From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia : Comprehensive schools for secondary education |
