This essay is going to analyze the Butler Education Act of 1944. It is going to look at the key features of the act which introduced free secondary education, the affect of the tripartite system and whether it managed to introduce the parity of esteem which it aimed to. It will also investigate whether the Butler Act was a progression in the movement towards the idea of equality for all. The Butler Act, named after the British conservative politician Richard Austen Butler, was introduced in 1944. The Act made secondary education free for all pupils, when previously parents would have to pay if they wanted their children to continue in education. The Act also introduced the tripartite system of secondary education. The tripartite system consisted of three different types of secondary school: grammar schools, technical schools and secondary modern schools. Although the three types of school were separate the aim of the Butler act was that they would all be looked upon equally. The three types of secondary school had very different focuses in terms of education. Grammar schools provided an exclusively academic type of education, secondary modern provided a mix of vocational and academic education and technical provided a largely work focused vocational form of education. The selection of which pupil would go to which type of school was based on an intelligence test, the eleven plus. It was claimed that this test could identify different types of learner and allocate the pupils a school according to which form of secondary education would best suit them. The top fifteen to twenty percent of pupils gained access to grammar schools. The next level down in terms of performance on the intelligence test were sent to either secondary modern schools or technical schools. The tripartite system very quickly disappeared as very few technical schools were ever established. This in effect meant a bipartite state school system developed, those who passed the eleven plus went to...