"Rab" Butler's 1944 Education Act made secondary education universal and free for the first time. It applied some of the educational theories of the time to a new system where all pupils would take a test at the age of eleven which would decide which school they should go to. The act established three types of schools (known as the tripartite system): grammar schools, secondary modern schools and technical schools. In fact very few technical schools were ever built so the system was a two-tier one in most parts of the country.