Schooling in Great Britain.
State Schools.
English children must go to school when they are five, first to infant
schools where they learn the first steps in reading, writing and using
numbers. Young children are divided into two groups according to their
mental abilities. The curriculum for “strong” and “weak” groups is
different, which is the beginning of future education contrasts.
When children leave infant school at the age of seven, they go to junior
schools until they are about eleven years of age. Their school subjects
include English, arithmetic, history, geography, nature study, swimming,
music, art, religious instruction and organized games.
The junior classroom often looks rather like a workshop, especially when
the pupils are working in groups making models or doing other practical
work.
When pupils come to the junior school for the first time, they are still
often divided into three “streams” – А, В and С – on the basis of their
infant-school marks or sometimes after a special test. The brightest
children go to the A-stream and the least gifted to the C-stream.
Towards the end of their fourth year in the junior school, a certain
percentage of English schoolchildren still have to write their Eleven
Plus Examinations, on the results of which they will go the following
September to a secondary school of a certain type. Usually these
examinations should reveal not so much what a child has learned at
school, but his mental ability.
About 5 % of elementary school – leavers in Britain go to secondary
modern schools. Modern schools do not provide complete secondary
education. As the pupils are considered to be interested in “practical”
knowledge only, study programmes are rather limited in comparison with
other secondary schools. Some modern schools do not teach foreign
languages. In modern schools pupils are also streamed according to their
“intelligence”.
The secondary technical school, in spite of its name, is not a
specialized school. It teaches many general subjects. Boys and girls in
technical schools study such practical subjects as woodwork, metalwork,
needlework, shorthand (stenography) and typing. Not more than two
percent of schoolchildren in Britain go to technical schools.
The grammar school is a secondary school taking about 3% of children
offering a full theoretical secondary education including foreign
languages, and students can choose which subjects and languages they
wish to study. In most of them there are food, chemistry and physics
laboratories. The majority (80 or 85%) of grammar school students,
mainly children of poorer families, leave the school after taking a
five-year course. Then they may take the General Certificate of
Secondary Education at the ordinary level. The others continue their
studies for another two or three years to obtain the General Certificate
of Secondary Education at the advanced level, which allows them to enter
university.
The comprehensive school combines in one school the courses of all three
types of secondary schools; so the pupils can study any subject which is
taught in these schools. Their number is growing; there are more than
two thousand of them now. They are of different types; all of them
preserve some form of streaming, but pupils may be moved from one stream
to another. Comprehensive schools take over 90 % of schoolchildren in
Great Britain.
The comprehensive school is the most popular type of school, for it
provides education for children from all strata.
Private Schools
There are many schools in Britain which are not controlled financially
by the state. They are private schools, separate for boys and girls, and
the biggest and most important of them are public schools charging high
fees and training young people for political, diplomatic, military and
religious service.
The doors of Oxford and Cambridge, the best English universities, are
open to the public school – leavers.
Other non-state schools which charge fees are independent and
preparatory schools. Many of the independent schools belong to the
churches. Schools of this type prepare their pupils for public schools.
Some Aspects of British University Life
Of the full-time students now attending English Universities three
quarters are men and one quarter women. Nearly half of them are engaged
in the study of arts subjects such as history, languages, economics or
law, the others are studying pure or applied sciences such as medicine,
dentistry, technology, or agriculture.
The University of London, for instance, includes internal and external
students, the latter coming to London only to sit for their
examinations. Actually most external students at London University are
living in London. The colleges in the University of London are
essentially teaching institutions, providing instruction chiefly by
means of lectures, which are attended mainly by day students. The
colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, however, are essentially residential
institutions and they mainly use a tutorial method which brings the
tutor into close and personal contact with the student. These colleges,
being residential, are necessarily far smaller than most of the colleges
of the University of London.
Education of University standard is also given in other institutions
such as colleges of technology and agricultural colleges, which prepare
their students for degrees or diplomas in their own fields.
The three terms into which the British University year is divided are
roughly eight to ten weeks. Each term is crowded with activity, and the
vacations between the terms – a month at Christmas, a .month at Easter,
and three or four months in summer – are mainly periods of intellectual
digestion and private study.
A person studying for a degree at a British University is called a
graduate.
B. A. or B. Sс. stands for Bachelor of Arts or of Science, the first
degree. M. A. or M. Sс. denotes Master of Arts or of Science. One can
become a B. A. after three years of hard study and an M. A. at the end
of five years.
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