in Britain is partly due to middle-class fears concerning comprehensive
schools, but also to the mediocre quality possible in the state sector
after decades of inadequate funding.
Although the percentage of those privately educated may be a small
fraction of the total, its importance is disproportionate to its size, for
this 8 per cent accounts for 23 per cent of all those passing A levels, and
over 25 per cent of those gaining entry to university. Nearly 65 per cent
of pupils leave fee-paying schools with one or more A levels, compared with
only 14 per cent from comprehensives. Tellingly, this 8 per cent also
accounts for 68 per cent of those gaining the highest grade in GCSE
Physics. During the 1980s pupils at independent schools showed greater
improvement in their examination results than those at state schools. In
later life, those educated at fee-paying schools dominate the sources of
state power and authority in government, law, the armed forces and finance.
The 'public' (in fact private, fee-paying) schools form the backbone
of the independent sector. Of the several hundred public schools, the most
famous are the 'Clarendon Nine', so named after a commission of inquiry
into education in 1861. Their status lies in a fatally attractive
combination of social superiority and antiquity, as the dates of their
foundation indicate: Winchester (1382), Eton (1440), St Paul's (1509),
Shrewsbury (1552), Westminster (1560), The Merchant Taylors' (1561), Rugby
(1567), Harrow (1571) and Charterhouse (1611).
The golden age of the public schools, however, was the late nineteenth
century, when most were founded. They were vital to the establishment of a
particular set of values in the dominant professional middle classes. These
values were reflected in the novel Tom Brown's Schooldays by Thomas Hughes,
written in tribute to his own happy time at Rugby School. Its emphasis is
on the making of gentlemen to enter one of the professions: law, medicine,
the Church, the Civil Service or the colonial service. The concept of
'service', even if it only involved entering a profitable profession, was
central to the public school ethos. A career in commerce, or 'mere money
making' as it is referred to in Tom Brown's Schooldays, was not to be
considered. As a result of such values, the public school system was
traditional in its view of learning and deeply resistant to science and
technology. Most public schools were located in the 'timeless' countryside,
away from the vulgarity of industrial cities.
After 1945, when state-funded grammar schools were demonstrating equal
or greater academic excellence, the public schools began to modernise
themselves. During the 1970s most of them abolished beating and 'fagging',
the system whereby new boys carried out menial tasks for senior boys, and
many introduced girls into the sixth form, as a civilising influence. They
made particular efforts to improve their academic and scientific quality.
Traditionally boarding public schools were more popular, but since the
1970s there has been a progressive shift of balance in favour of day
schools. Today only 16 per cent of pupils in private education attend
boarding schools, and the number of boarders declines on average by 3 per
cent each year.
Demand for public school education is now so great that many schools
register pupils' names at birth. Eton maintains two lists, one for the
children of 'old boys' and the other for outsiders. There are three
applicants for every vacancy. Several other schools have two applicants for
each vacancy, but they are careful not to expand to meet demand. In the
words of one academic, 'Schools at the top of the system have a vested
interest in being elitist. They would lose that characteristic if they
expanded. To some extent they pride themselves on the length of their
waiting lists.' This rush to private education is despite the steep rise in
fees, 31 per cent between 1985 and 1988, and over 50 per cent between 1990
and 1997 when the average annual day fees were Ј5,700 and boarding fees
double that figure. Sixty per cent of parents would probably send their
children to fee-paying schools if they could afford to.
In order to obtain a place at a public school, children must take a
competitive examination, called 'Common Entrance'. In order to pass it,
most children destined for a public school education attend a preparatory
(or 'prep') school until the age of 13.
Independent schools remain politically controversial. The Conservative
Party believes in the fundamental freedom of parents to choose the best
education for their children. The Labour Party disagrees, arguing that in
reality only the wealthier citizens have this freedom of choice. In the
words of Hugh Gaitskell, the Labour leader in 1953, 'We really cannot go on
with a system in which wealthy parents are able to buy what they and most
people believe to be a better education for their children. The system is
wrong and must be changed.' But since then no Labour government has dared
to abolish them.
There can be no doubt that a better academic education can be obtained
in some of the public schools. In 1993 92 of the 100 schools with the best
A-level results were fee-paying. But the argument that parents will not
wish to pay once state schools offer equally good education is misleading,
because independent schools offer social status also. Unfortunately
education depends not only on quality schools but also on the home
environment. The background from which pupils come greatly affects the
encouragement they receive to study. Middle-class parents are likely to be
better able, and more concerned, to support their children's study than low-
income parents who themselves feel they failed at school. State-maintained
schools must operate with fewer resources, and in more difficult
circumstances, particularly in low-income areas. In addition, the public
school system creams off many of the ablest teachers from the state sector.
The public school system is socially divisive, breeding an atmosphere
of elitism and leaving some outside the system feeling socially or
intellectually inferior, and in some cases intimidated by the prestige
attached to public schools. The system fosters a distinct culture, one
based not only upon social superiority but also upon deference. As one
leading journalist, Jeremy Paxman, himself an ex-public schoolboy remarked,
The purpose of a public school education is to teach you to respect people
you don't respect.' In the words of Anthony Sampson, himself an ex-pupil of
Westminster, the public school elite 'reinforces and perpetuates a class
system whose divisions run through all British institutions, separating
language, attitudes and motivations'.
Those who attend these schools continue to dominate the institutions
at the heart of the British state, and seem likely to do so for some time
to come. At the beginning of the 1990s public schools accounted for 22 out
of 24 of the army's top generals, two-thirds of the Bank of England's
external directors, 33 out of 39 top English judges, and ambassadors in the
15 most important diplomatic missions abroad. Of the 200 richest people in
Britain no fewer than 35 had attended Eton. Eton and Winchester continue to
dominate the public school scene, and the wider world beyond. As Sampson
asks, 'Can the products of two schools (Winchester and Eton), it might be
asked, really effectively represent the other 99.5 per cent of the people
in this diverse country who went to neither mediaeval foundation?' The
concept of service was once at the heart of the public school ethos, but it
is questionable whether it still is. A senior Anglican bishop noted in
1997, 'A headmaster told me recently that the whole concept of service had
gone. Now they all want to become merchant bankers and lawyers.'
There are two arguments that qualify the merit of the public schools,
apart from the criticism that they are socially divisive. It is
inconceivable that the very best intellectual material of the country
resides solely among those able to attend such schools. If one accepts that
the brightest and best pupils are in fact spread across the social
spectrum, one must conclude that an elitist system of education based
primarily upon wealth rather than ability must involve enormous wastage.
The other serious qualification regards the public school ethos which is so
rooted in tradition, authority and a narrow idea of 'gentlemanly'
professions. Even a century after it tried to turn its pupils into
gentlemen, the public school culture still discourages, possibly
unconsciously, its pupils from entering industry. 'It is no accident,'
Sampson comments, 'that most formidable industrialists in Britain come from
right outside the public school system, and many from right outside
Britain.'
Britain will be unable to harness its real intellectual potential
until it can break loose from a divisive culture that should belong in the
past, and can create its future elite from the nation's schoolchildren as a
whole. In 1996 a radical Conservative politician argued for turning public
schools into centres of excellence which would admit children solely on
ability, regardless of wealth or social background, with the help of
government funding. It would be a way of using the best of the private
sector for the nation as a whole. It is just such an idea that Labour might
find attractive, if it is able to tackle the more widespread and
fundamental shortcomings of the state education system.
Further and higher education
«P
reparation for adult life» includes training in the skills required for a
job. These skills can be pitched at different levels - highly job-specific
and not requiring much thought in their application, or «generalisable» and
applicable to different kinds of employment.
Vocational courses are concerned with the teaching of job-related
skills, whether specific or generalisable. They can be based in industry,
and «open learning» techniques make this increasingly likely, although in
the past, they have normally been taught in colleges of further education,
with students given day release from work. Vocational training has not been
an activity for schools. But some critics think that schools should provide
it for non-academic pupils. One major initiative back in 1982, was the
Technical and Vocational Education Initiative (TVEI) in which schools
received money if they were able to build into the curriculum vocationally-
related content ant activities - more technology, business studies,
industry related work and visits, etc. But all this got lost in 1988 with
the imposition of a National Curriculum was reformed, providing
opportunities for vocational studies to be introduced at 14.
But the real changes in vocational training were to be seen outside
the schools. The curriculum in colleges of further education has been
closely determined by vocational examination bodies which decide what the
student should be able to do in order to receive a qualification as, for
example, a plumber or a hairdresser. These qualifications were pitched at
different levels - from relatively low-skilled operative to higher-skilled
craft and technician. Obtaining these qualifications often required an
apprenticeship, with day release in a college of further education for more
theoretical study.
Vocational training always has had a relatively low status in
Britain. The «practical» and the «vocational» have seldom given access to
university or to the prestigious and professional jobs.
Further education has traditionally been characterised by part-time
vocational courses for those who leave school at the age of 16 but need to
acquire a skill, be that in the manual, technical or clerical field. In
all, about three million students enrol each year in part-time courses at
further education (FE) colleges, some released by their employers and a
greater number unemployed. In addition there have always been a much
smaller proportion in full-time training. In 1985 this figure was a meagre
400,000, but by 1995 this had doubled. Given Labour's emphasis on improving
the skills level of all school-leavers, this expansion will continue.
Vocational training, most of which is conducted at the country's 550
further education colleges is bound to be an important component.
Higher education has also undergone a massive expansion. In 1985 only
573,000, 16 per cent of young people, were enrolled in full-time higher
education. Ten years later the number was 1,150,000, no less than 30 per
cent of their age group.
This massive expansion was achieved by greatly enlarging access to
undergraduate courses, but also by authorising the old polytechnics to
grant their own degree awards, and also to rename themselves as
universities. Thus there are today 90 universities, compared with 47 in
1990, and only seventeen in 1945. They fall into five broad categories: the
medieval English foundations, the medieval Scottish ones, the nineteenth-
century 'redbrick' ones, the twentieth-century 'plate-glass' ones, and
finally the previous polytechnics. They are all private institutions,
receiving direct grants from central government.
Oxford and Cambridge, founded in the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries respectively, are easily the most famous of Britain's
universities. Today 'Oxbridge', as the two together are known, educate less
than one-twentieth of Britain's total university student population. But
they continue to attract many of the best brains and to mesmerise an even
greater number, partly on account of their prestige, but also on account of
the seductive beauty of many of their buildings and surroundings.
Both universities grew gradually, as federations of independent
colleges, most of which were founded in the fourteenth, fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries. In both universities, however, new colleges are
periodically established, for example Green College, Oxford (1979) and
Robinson College, Cambridge (1977).
In the nineteenth century more universities were established to
respond to the greatly increased demand for educated people as a result of
the Industrial Revolution and the expansion of Britain's overseas empire.
Many of these were sited in the industrial centres, for example Birmingham,
Manchester, Nottingham, Newcastle, Liverpool and Bristol.
With the expansion of higher education in the 1960s 'plate-glass'
universities were established, some named after counties or regions rather
than old cities, for example Sussex, Kent, East Anglia and Strathclyde.
Over 50 polytechnics and similar higher education institutes acquired
university status in 1992. There is also a highly successful Open
University, which provides every person in Britain with the opportunity to
study for a degree, without leaving their home. It is particularly designed
for adults who missed the opportunity for higher education earlier in life.
It conducts learning through correspondence, radio and television, and also
through local study centres.
University examinations are for Bachelor of Arts, or of Science (BA or
BSc) on completion of the undergraduate course, and Master of Arts or of
Science (MA or MSc) on completion of postgraduate work, usually a one- or
two-year course involving some original research. Some students continue to
complete a three-year perio of original research for the degree of Doctor
of Philosophy (PhD). The bachelor degree is normal classed, with about 5
per cent normally gaining First, about 30 per cent gaining an Upper Seconi
or 2.1, perhaps 40 per cent gaining a Lower Second, or 2.2, and the balance
getting either i Third, a Pass or failing. Approximately 15 per cei fail to
complete their degree course.
In addition there are a large number of specialis higher education
institutions in the realm of the performing and visual arts. For example,
there a four leading conservatories: the Royal Academy Music, the Royal
College of Music, Trinity College of Music and the Royal Northern College
of Music.
There are a large number of art colleges, of whi the most famous is
the Royal College of Art, where both Henry Moore and David Hockney once
studied. Other colleges cater for dance, film-making and other specialist
areas in arts.
In spite of the high fees, Britain's universities, Fl colleges and
English language schools host a number of foreign students, in 1996 there
were fewer than 158,000.
Female undergraduates have greatly increased proportionately in recent
years. In the mid-1960 they were only 28 per cent of the intake, became 41
per cent by the early 1980s, and were 51 per cent by 1996. There is still
an unfortunate separation of the sexes in fields of chosen study, arising
from occupational tradition and social expectations. Caring for others is
still a 'proper' career for women; building bridges, it seems, is not.
Unless one believes women's brains are better geared to nursing and other
forms of caring and men's to bridge-building, one must conclude that social
expectations still hinder women and men from realising their potential.
Students from poorer backgrounds are seriously underrepresented in higher
education. Although more in social categories C, D and E are now enrolled,
it is the more prosperous social categories A and B which have benefited
most from university expansion. For Labour there are two issues here:
equality of opportunity, and maximising all of society's intellectual
potential.
Ethnic minorities' representation is growing: 1 3 per cent in 1996
compared with only 10.7 per cent in 1990. It is noteworthy that their
university representation exceeds their proportion within the whole
population, a measure of their commitment to higher education.
In 1988 a new funding body, the University Funding Council, was
established, with power to require universities to produce a certain number
of qualified people in specific fields. It is under the UFC's watchful eye
that the universities have been forced to double their student intake, and
each university department is assessed on its performance and quality. The
fear, of course, is that the greatly increased quantity of students that
universities must now take might lead to a loss of academic quality.
Expansion has led to a growing funding gap. Universities have been
forced to seek sponsorship from the commercial world, wealthy patrons and
also from their alumni. The Conservative Party also decided to reduce
maintenance grants but to offer students loans in order to finance their
studies. However, the funding gap has continued to grow and Labour shocked
many who had voted for it by introducing tuition fees at 1,000 pounds per
annum in 1998. Although poorer students were to be exempted it was feared
that, even with student loans, up to 10 per cent of those planning to go to
university would abandon the idea. One effect of the financial burden is
that more students are living at home while continuing their studies: about
50 per cent at the ex-polytechnics, but only 15 per cent at the older
universities.
Today many university science and technology departments, for example
at Oxford, Cambridge, Manchester, Imperial College London, and Strathclyde,
are among the best in Europe. The concern is whether they will continue to
be so in the future. Academics' pay has fallen so far behinc other
professions and behind academic salaries elsewhere, that many of the best
brains have gon< abroad. Adequate pay and sufficient research funding to
keep the best in Britain remains a majo challenge.
As with the schools system, so also with higher education: there is a
real problem about the exclusivity of Britain's two oldest universities.
While Oxbridge is no longer the preserve of a social elite it retains its
exclusive, narrow and spell-binding culture. Together with the public
school system, it creates a narrow social and intellectual channel from
which the nation's leaders are almost exclusively drawn. In 1996 few people
were in top jobs in the Civil Service, the armed forces, the law or
finance, who had not been either to a public school or Oxbridge, or to
both.
The problem is not the quality of education offered either in the
independent schools or Oxbridge. The problem is cultural. Can the products
of such exclusive establishments remain closely in touch with the remaining
95 per cent of the population? If the expectation is that Oxbridge,
particularly, will continue to dominate the controlling positions in the
state and economy, is the country ignoring equal talent which does not have
the Oxbridge label? As with the specialisation at the age of 16 for A
levels, the danger is that Britain's governing elite is too narrow, both in
the kind of education and where it was acquired. It is just possible that
the new Labour government, which itself reflects a much wider field of life
experience in Britain, will mark the beginning of significantly fuller
popular participation in the controlling institutions of state.
Present situation
The educational system - its organization, its control, its content -
is changing rapidly to meet the perceived needs of the country - the need
to improve standards and to respond to a rapidly changing and competitive
economy. Those changes might be summarized in the following way.
First, there is much greater central control over what is taught.
Second, what is taught is seen in rather traditional terms - organized in
terms of subjects rather than in response to the learning needs of the
pupils. Third, however, there is an attempt to be responsive to the
economic needs of the country, with an emphasis upon vocational studies and
training. Fourth, there is a rapid expansion of those who stay in education
beyond the compulsory age, making use of the «three-track system» of «A»
Level, GNVQ (General National Vocational Qualifications) and NVQ (National
Vocational Qualifications). Fifth, although the content of education is
centrally controlled, its «delivery» pays homage to the «market» by
encouraging choice between different institutions so that funding follows
popular choice (i.e. the more popular the school with parents, the more
money it gets, thereby providing an incentive to schools and colleges to
improve their performance.
Education under Labour
E
ducation was the central theme of the new Labour government. It promised a
huge range of improvements: high-quality education for all four-year-olds
whose parents wanted it and lower pupil-teacher ratios, in particular that
children up to the age of eight children would never be in classes of over
30 pupils. It also declared that all children at primary school would spend
one hour each day on reading and writing, and another hour each day on
numeracy, the basic skills for all employment. When Labour took office only
57 per cent of children reached national literacy targets by the time they
left primary school, and only 55 per cent reached similar targets in maths.
The government pledged to raise these proportions to 80 per cent and 75 per
cent respectively. It also established a new central authority responsible
for both qualifications and the curriculum, to ensure that these were, in
the government's own words, 'high quality, coherent and flexible'. It
warned that it intended to evolve a single certificate to replace A levels
and vocational qualifications, and possibly to reflect a broad range of
study rather than the narrow specialism of the A-level system. Because 30
per cent of students who started A-level courses failed to acquire one, it
also wanted to create a more flexible system that would allow students
still to attain recognised standards of education and training on the road
to A levels. However, unlike France or Germany, an increasing proportion of
those taking exams at this standard were actually passing.
The government also promised to improve the quality of the teaching staff,
with a mandatory qualification for all newly appointed heads of schools, to
improve teacher training, to establish a General Teaching Council, which
would restore teacher morale and raise standards, and to introduce more
effective means of removing inefficient teachers. It also promised to look
at the growing problem of boys underachieving at school compared with
girls. Finally, Labour asked for its record to be judged at the end of its
first term in office, in 2002.
Questions
1. When do the british start their education?
2. Do you agree that the british education has problems?
3. What were the lacks of British education?
4. Who can study in public schools?
5. Does the word «public» reflect the real principle of that schools?
6. What political acts became a turning point in British education?
7. What is the most well-spread opinion about the vocational courses?
8. What do you think about the quality of higher education in Britain?
9. What are the main principles of the Labour Patry (concerning education)
10. How had the role of parents in the children’s education changed?
11. How did the changing economic and social situation influence the system
of education?
12. What are the most prestigeous schools in Britain?
13. Are there students from other countries in British schools and
universities?
14. Is the nursary school compulsory?
15. How do you think: do the Concervative principles of education differ
from that of Labour?
16. What are the aims of education in Britain today?
17. Did the level of education become higher after the reforms?
18. What is the GCSE?
19. What types of schools does the british system of education includes?
20. Would you like to study in Britain? (Give your argument for or against
it).
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