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.
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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.