Allen Clarke

Who was Allen Clarke?

Cyril Alfred Allen Clarke was the founding head of Holland Park School, which was the flagship of the comprehensive education ideal. Holland Park School, of which Allen Clarke was the first headmaster, was in the 1960s the most famous of its kind in the UK. Founded in 1958, it was dubbed the "socialist Eton" and was the showcase comprehensive school of state education, which aimed to rectify the divisive damage caused by a system that had virtually typecast children as educable or not by the age of 11.