Problems of state schools

 

During the 1970s it was discovered that British system of education underestimated the importance of craft skills and national targets for education. So at that time greater emphasis was made on education and training. Many new colleges of further education were established to provide technical or vocational training. But British education remained too academic for the less able and technical studies remained weak, with the result that a large number of less able pupils leave school without any skill at all. By 1990s nine out of ten West German employees had vocational training qualification while in Britain one out of ten.

Another problem is the continued high drop-out rate at the age of 16 and low level of achievement in mathematics and science among school-leavers. While 80 per cent in Japan stayed on till the age of 18, hardly one third of British pupils did so.

Standards of teaching and learning are not high enough. State-maintained schools have to operate with few resources in more difficult circumstances, with low pay. This resulted in teachers’ flight from the profession. By 1990s there were as many trained teachers not teaching as teachers. The shortage of teachers was great, especially in the subjects of greatest national importance: mathematics and natural sciences. Britain filled the gap by employing unemployed teachers from Germany, Netherlands, Australia and other countries.

The shortfall is not only in the total number of teachers, but also in the inadequate level of qualification of high proportion of primary teachers, particularly in mathematics and science.

Though the expenditure on education increased almost twice compared with middle 1950s it is not enough, because “standards of learning are never improved by poor teachers and there are no cheap high quality routes into teaching”. One cannot but agree with these words of Eric Bolton, England’s chief inspector of schools. 

 

INDEPENDENT SCHOOLS

Independent schools are private schools charging tuition fees and that is why they are “independent” of public funds, “independent” of the state educational system, but they are open to governmental control and inspection. The department of Education has power to require them to remedy any objectionable features in their premises, accommodation or instruction (teaching) and to exclude any person regarded are unsuitable to teach or to be proprietor of a school.

There is a wide range of independent schools covering every group and grade of education. They include nursery schools and kindergartens (taking children of nursery and infant school ages), primary and secondary schools of both day and boarding types.

The most important and expensive of the independent schools are known as public schools, which are private secondary schools taking boys from age of 13 to 18 years, and preparatory schools (colloquially “prep” schools), which are private primary schools preparing pupils for public schools. The term “primary” and “secondary” are not normally applied to these independent schools because the age of transfer from a preparatory school to a public school is 13 or 14 and not 11 as in the state system of primary and secondary education.  

PUBLIC SCHOOLS

 

Public schools form the backbone of the independent sector. With a few exceptions all public schools are single-sex boarding schools, providing residential accommodation for their pupils, though many of them take some day pupils too. A typical public school has about 500 boys but a few have more (e.g. Eton has more than 1100 boys).

Some of the public schools date from the 16^th century or earlier and they form pinnacle of fee-paying education (in the 1990s the average boarding public school-fees were over 7000 pounds annually). Over the several hundred public schools, the most famous are the “Clarendon Nine”. Their status lies in an attractive combination of social superiority and antiquity. These are the oldest and most privileged public schools: Winchester (1382), Eton (1440), St. Paul’s (1509), Shrewsbury (1552), Westminster (1560), the Merchant Tailor’s (1561), Rugby (1567), Harrow (1571) and Charterhouse (1611).

Demand for public school education is now so great that many schools register babies’ names at birth. Eton maintains two lists, one for the children of “old boys”, those who studied there and the other for outsiders. Usually there are three applicants for every vacancy. For example, in 1988 there were 203 names down for only 120 places at Radley School in the year 2000. And it is not surprising that public schools cream off many of the ablest teachers from the state sector and teaching standards are very high and much better than in any other secondary schools.

Public schools admit pupils from private preparatory schools (“preps”) which prepare children for the Common Entrance Examination.

Public schools offer entrance scholarships (from 6 to 10 annually). But the fees remain heavy even for scholarship winners. The competition for those scholarships is very sever, and the syllabuses of the scholarship examinations with their high standard in Latin and other subjects are quite out off keeping with the primary school curriculum.

Independent fee-paying schools were exempted from teaching according to the National Curriculum. 

 

AFTER SIXTEEN

Pupils going to higher education or professional training usually take “A” level examinations in two or three subjects. These require two or more years of study after GCSE, either in the six form of a secondary school, or in a separate six-form college. The “A” level exam is taken at the age 18, and is the main standard for entry to university education and to many forms of professional training. But some pupils want to stay on at school after taking their GCSE, to prepare for a vocational course or for work rather than for “A” level examinations. Then they take CPVE examination, which means the Certificate of Pre-Vocational Education.

 

 

LECTURE 7