Secondary modern schools were correspondingly neglected, giving them the appearance of being 'sink schools'. Although explicitly not presented as such, the secondary modern was widely perceived as the bottom tier of the tripartite system. They suffered from underinvestment and poor reputations, in spite of educating around 70% of the UK's school children. The Newsom Report of 1963, looking at the education of average and below average children, found that secondary moderns in slum areas of London left fifteen-year-olds sitting on primary school furniture and faced teachers changing as often as once a term.