Did you go to a secondary modern school?

• Between 1944 and 1976 the creation of a selective, tiered education system meant that there were supposed to be three types of school for three types of child.

• The Grammar school for the academic, the technical secondary school for the 'industrially' adept and the secondary modern for everyone else.

• The secondary modern school was portrayed as the school for the vocational, practical, concrete learner. These pupils had, by and large, landed in these schools because they had failed the 11+ examination. The secondary modern became seen as the schools for failures. This was unfair and untrue.

• The secondary modern school became a symbol of educational failure and this representation has been engrained in popular culture and in the public imagination...until now!

• My name is Naomi Breen. I am studying for my PhD at Manchester University and my thesis will upturn the common misrepresentations about secondary moderns... But I need your help!

If you went to a secondary modern school in Britain (or any other kind of secondary school) between 1944 and 1976, I would like your opinions, your evidence and to share your experience of this type of school in this period. Contact me or fill in the online questionnaire or both!!