Public school (United Kingdom)

“ The privilege of an almost gratuitous education in 'college' for four years, which will be the case if the Public Schools Bill passes in its present form, is quite sufficient attraction in itself to render it wholly unnecessary to make it imply absolute certainty of further emoluments at the University. ”

“ The normal schools in Great Britain sprang out of an effort to improve the teaching done in the schools of the great charitable public school societies. In 1839 money was granted by the government to be used by them in establishing training colleges. From these are derived a large part of the teachers in the public elementary schools of England to-day. They still remain, as originally, under denominational control. In the United States the first public normal school was established at Lexington, Massachusetts, in 1839. ”

“ Our main intention is not. however, to offer detailed suggestions, but to express our belief that this question of the adaptation of secondary education to modern conditions involves problems that should not be left to individual effort, or even to public legislative control; that it is rather a subject in which die universities of the United Kingdom might be expected to lead the way and exert their powerful influence for the benefit of the nation. ”

“ A few years later, parents were compelled by law to send their children to school; and, very recently, steps have been taken to make the education of a child in the Public Schools nearly as free as in Ontario. Religious tests, too, were done away with, in 1871, in the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Dublin, so that all classes and creeds can attend these great seats of learning and get the advantage of a university education. ”

“ The public school is a most wholesome and hopeful institution. It has an assimilative power possessed by no other institution in our country. Where the children of rich and poor mingle together on the play-ground and in the school-room, there is produced a unity of feeling and a popular love for public institutions that can be brought about in no other way. [Cheers.] ”

“ The whole face of the country is studded with small grammar-schools or foundation-schools, like knots in a network; and these schools, enlarged and reformed, were to be the ordinary training-places of the Middle Class. Where they did not exist, similar schools were to be created by the State—"Royal or Public Schools"—and these, like all the rest, were to be subject to the Minister and to the Provincial Boards. ”

“ It is the force of private voluntary enterprise, that force which has built up the multitude of private schools, academies, and colleges throughout the United States, not always wisely, but always with enthusiasm and wonderful energy.
I am considering what is the best system of organizing the educational work of a nation, not from the political stand-point alone, but from the stand-point of the school-house itself. This work of public education partakes in a peculiar way of the spirit of the human mind in its efforts for culture. The mind must be as free from extraneous control as possible ”

“ Schools will be given a reasonable chance to improve and the support to do so. Yet, if they don't, if they continue to fail, we must give parents and students different options -- a better public school, a private school, tutoring or a charter school. (Applause.) In the end, every child in a bad situation must be given a better choice because, when it comes to our children, failure is simply not an option. ”

“ The bill which the House of Commons has sent to the House of Lords is really of very great interest. The affairs of primary education in Great Britain and Ireland have been somewhat anomalous. About half the children who receive free education attend the board schools, supported by the state and by local taxation, and corresponding pretty closely to our public schools. The voluntary schools, controlled chiefly by the church of England, provide for the other half of the children. ”

“ Education (Scotland) Act 1962 (c. 47) Offences under the following provisions— section 35 (1) (failure by parent to secure regular attendance by his child at a public school) ; section 41 (failure to comply with requirements of school attendance order) ; section 42 (3) (refusal to allow medical officer of appropriate Health Board to examine child) . Section 43 (1) (as amended by Schedule 3 to the Criminal Justice Act 1967) . £10 for a first offence and £20 for a second or subsequent offence. £50. Deer Act 1963 (c. 36) Any offence under the Act. Section 8. ”

“ In other words, he cannot afford to make a single serious experiment. The education given in the Great Public Schools is similarly dominated by the scholarship and entrance examinations held by the Oxford and Cambridge Colleges. The lines on which those examinations are conducted are in the main the lines on which the boys must be educated. It is possible that the Great Public Schools are freer to go their own ways than are the Preparatory Schools; but if they are, they make but little use of their freedom. ”

“ With the forty Queen's Scholars, the boys in these boarding-houses would form a valuable nucleus, of sufficient permanence in itself, round which might cluster an addition of some 150 or 200 more day-boys, whether half-boarders or 'home-boarders'—the class of boys which it is anticipated the throwing open of the competition for Christ Church and Trinity, the definite liberation of the School from the long-pending uncertainty of removal, and the advantages expected to accrue from the final passing of the Public Schools Bill will draw. ”

“ There is no examination for admittance to preparatory schools but some are more popular than others, and unless a boy’s application is entered early in his life, he may have to go elsewhere. The preparatory schools of England are ideal as to arrangement and comfort while the standard of instruction is very good and many boys pass from them having won scholarships at the great public schools. The greatest attention is paid to health, food, sleeping accommodations, physical training, gymnastics, athletics, and games. ”

“ When we pass from the domain of public education to that of private schools a change becomes perceptible. In the public schools there is well-defined gradation into primary, grammar and high schools, the high school generally including four years of well-adjusted work. In the private school there is no responsibility to the state, and each school fixes its own standards. ”

“ There are schools which unite the best qualities of public and private schools, large enough to stimulate and develop energies mental and physical, yet not so framed as to melt all character in one crucible. For instance, there is a school which has at this moment one of the first scholars in Europe for head-master,—a school which has turned out some of the most remarkable men of the rising generation. ”

“ At first begun as free schools, [23] the expansion of effort was more rapid than the income from contributions, and a small tuition fee was in time charged. Pupils were admitted at about the age of seven, and might remain until thirteen or fourteen, though an attendance of two years was considered "abundantly sufficient for any boy." To prepare skilled masters and mistresses for the schools, girls were provided for in many places—training or model schools were organized by both the national societies, and these represent the beginnings of normal-school training in England. ”

“ Thus, in addition to the great educational advantages arising from the numerous well founded and amply endowed educational institutions for the various grades and classes of the British people that have long existed in England and Wales, Scotland and Ireland, we find the government of the United Kingdom aiding elementary instruction to the extent of about $20,000,000 in one year—the combined population being but 34,862,495 souls; the United States, with a larger population, is without the advantages either of such national aid or such endowed schools as those countries possess. ”

“ In England national education has grown out of the conflict of a number of social elements. The sentiment for universal training appeared toward the close of the eighteenth century, but not until 1870 were ‘board schools’ established. In 1899 a central Board of Education was created; and the Act of 1902, while permitting 371 voluntary schools to share in the local rates, unified the system and established secondary education at public expense. During the nineteenth century also the classical and ecclesiastical monopoly in secondary and higher education was largely broken. ”

“ School Sites Act 1841 [2]
1. In the proviso to section 14 of the School Sites Act 1841 for the words from "without" to the end substitute "unless the Secretary of State consents".
School Grants Act 1855 [3]
2. In section 1 of the School Grants Act 1855 for the words from "the consent" to "writing" substitute "the Secretary of State gives his written consent".
Public Records Act (Northern Ireland) 1923 [4]
3.- (1) Section 12 of the Public Records Act (Northern Ireland) 1923 shall be renumbered so as to become section 12 (1) of that Act. ”

“ I am sorry to say the existing system falls far short of it, because the existing system in England is that the Government shall certainly admit its duty to educate the people, but shall not occupy a position that enables it to do it. The initiative is not with the Government. We have in truth no Minister of Education. It is only on the motion of private individuals that the Government can aid a school where it is wanted. All it can do is to follow where private enterprise leads it. Where people are good enough to found schools, Government can assist them ”

“ Oftentimes, at the first, private societies came forward as volunteers in the task of education, but the states early recognized their duty, and usually established schools as soon as they were deemed practicable, either taking over the existing private school or creating one of their own. After a time, as another stage in their development, the schools were made free by express provision, or have become so to all practical purpose. ”

“ But it is possible in most London districts to provide within easy walking distance of every child four or five schools of different types, and the problem becomes that of so choosing a limited number of types as to secure that the degree of 'misfit' between child and curriculum shall be as small as possible. If we treat the general aptitude (or 'cleverness') of the children as differing only by more or less, the problem becomes one of fitting the types of school to a fairly exactly ascertainable polygon of intellectual variation. ”

“ These desirable changes have not taken place in all schools by any means, but the results of their introduction have been so significant that a constantly increasing number of schools are adopting them; and public school education is to mean infinitely more in the future than it has in the past because we are seeing the necessity of looking at things through the eyes of the pupil, and especially from the standpoint of his life outside of and after leaving the school. ”

“ On the other hand, the English boarding-school system, despite all the want of social solidarity, and all the class jealousy and exclusiveness with which it is inevitably associated, has admittedly favoured those ideals of the cultivation of character as distinct from book-learning which give a special value to what is in England called a public school education. ”

“ Certainly it is not well for an American boy to be sent to school in England. Yet granted the strictness with which English parents bring up their children, and the careful watch which is kept on young men at the universities, the public-school system seems to me the best that could possibly be devised. Independence of character and the power of using opportunities are perhaps not to be looked for among English schoolboys; but from their stricter rules they learn obedience and self-restraint, while from the exercise of power the older boys learn to govern justly and with decision. ”

“ The meanly equipped and pretentiously conducted private schools of Great Britain, staffed with ignorant and incapable young men, exist, on the other hand, to witness that public education is no matter to be left to merely commercial enterprise working upon parental ignorance and social prejudice. The necessary condition to the effective development of the New Republic is a universally accessible, spacious, and varied [Pg 268] educational system working in an atmosphere of efficient criticism and general intellectual activity. ”

“ In the year 1842 the house and grounds were taken on a long lease by the National Society, and in 1850 a public meeting was held in London to raise funds for the erection of the present buildings.
The Institution provides for the education, maintenance, and training of more than 100 young women, between the ages of 18 and 25, who purpose to become teachers of National Schools; and, secondly, for the daily instruction of children of the neighbourhood, in four schools. ”

“ I am quite prepared to say further that those youths who pass through the better class of secondary schools are well entitled to make the claims put forward by the fully-fledged public school boy; and the time is certainly not far distant when such pupils will be everywhere freely admitted to the universities and positions under the government, which has hitherto been the case only with scholars from the public schools—of our present public schools, be it noted! ”

“ Without question, the curricula of the public school should be modified so as to meet the needs of all the boys in the community and vocational and industrial training should have larger place in our educational plans. The boy who is to earn his livelihood by his hands and head should receive as much attention and intelligent instruction as the boy who aims at a professional career. However, with all its limitations, the public school is the only institution which has a definite policy in the education of the boy. ”