Public v. "Public"

The proud English "public schools" (English for private schools) have often been criticized; last week they were exposed to one of the bitterest attacks to date. The London County Council, which maintains the largest educational system in Britain (truly public), refused to collaborate in any postwar school plans which so much as recognized the "public" schools as part of the nation's educational system. Cried one Councilman: "We say the ["public"] system is socially unhealthy and . . . excludes the great majority of the population and is specifically designed to uphold the class system and transgresses against all the canons of democracy."

To most U.S. citizens, British schooling means the "public" schools. Yet only about 3% of British people can afford the privilege of "public" schools.

Typical of Britain's really public secondary schools is the Bishopshalt School in Uxbridge, a town on the fringe of greater London. Founded in 1907, the school normally enrolls some 470 boys and girls, aged 11 to 19, drawn from a four-mile radius. The school is set in a park off a quiet country lane--a century-old, red brick manse flanked by a modern wing containing five science laboratories, a domestic science kitchen, a large gymnasium with locker rooms and showers. Near by is a twelve-acre playing field.

Selective Schooling. Two major policies distinguish Bishopshalt School from U.S. high schools:

> Its new pupils each year (about 100) are selected by the headmaster strictly on the basis of entrance examinations and character recommendations from former teachers. All publicly supported English secondary education is selective. In England only one child in seven goes from elementary to secondary school; in Wales, one child in four.

> The school charges fees if the pupil can afford to pay. But all such "county council" schools provide generously for poor children, so that at Bishopshalt School 301 children now pay no fees, 153 pay reduced fees and only 92 the full tuition of some -L-10 a year. (This sum represents only about a third of the cost of educating each child. The rest of the cost is shared equally by the county and the nation.)

When a child is accepted by the school, his parents legally bind themselves not to withdraw him before his 16th birthday. Books and games are provided free, but pupils must buy their own school uniforms. Boys wear grey suits and navy blue caps ringed with the green & red school colors. Girls wear white, square-necked blouses, navy-blue pleated skirts, felt hats. In warm weather they change to green cotton frocks and striped blazers.

Headmaster of Bishopshalt is short, white-haired John Miles, M.A., LL.B. (Cambridge), a tolerant, popular scholar whose only teaching job is religious instruction to the older pupils. The classes are nondoctrinal "on the basis of the Bible" and are not demanded of Catholic and Jewish pupils whose parents object. Miles normally has a staff of some 15 men and 12 women teachers, all of whom must have honors degrees from a major university. Teachers' salaries conform to a national scale: for men, -L-234 ($945) at start, -L-480 ($1,939) maximum.

The pupils are divided into six forms (i.e., grades), and each form is subdivided into A, B and C groups--bright, average, slow. Upon completing the fifth form at about 16, pupils take an examination and may leave school if they wish--75% of Bishopshalt's pupils do. The remaining 25% may choose either 1) a one-year commercial course or 2) a two-year course which readies them for a university.

Discipline and Milk. Bishopshalt's curriculum is much like that of a good U.S. high school. All children must learn French, may add either German or Latin if their teachers think them good linguists. Art is required. So are cooking and sewing for girls, wood and metal work for boys.

Each morning at 8:50 the school assembles for prayers read by the headmaster from a dais behind which hang the school's wartime honor rolls (in the present war 20 old boys have been killed, ten are missing). Lessons start at 9:15. In the school work, each class keeps to its room, the teachers circulate. At 11 studies are interrupted while the pupils drink milk and the teachers retire for coffee and a smoke. At lunchtime over one-third of the children buy a hot lunch at school, a few eat cold box lunches, the rest go home. Classes resume from 2 to 4.

After classes, Bishopshalt bustles like any U.S. school with clubs, sports, publications, dramatics. The children are well-mannered, alert to world affairs. The morning after the Beveridge Report appeared (it makes no provisions for schools), the headmaster was besieged with pupils' requests for copies.

His Majesty's Board. England and Wales have 1,800 secondary schools, more or less like Bishopshalt, enrolling 545,000. Below them are public elementary schools, free and compulsory for all children, not schooled elsewhere, between 5 and 14. Besides the 3,513,000 children in elementary schools, another 1,500,000 attend some 11,000 Voluntary Schools maintained by the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church. These are dwindling.)

Local Education Authorities are largely autonomous, but publicly supported schools in England and Wales are watched over by the national Board of Education. The Board's essential duties are 1) to distribute Parliamentary grants to schools, 2) to make sure the schools keep high standards.

Scotland's school system is independent of the combined English and Welsh system. As in the U.S., secondary education in Scotland is completely free, and it is not distinct from the elementary but develops from it. Like the Welsh, the Scots are hungrier than the English for learning: one Scotsman in 473 goes to a university, one Englishman in 1,018.

Old-School Tie. "Public schools"--for boys--number some 180, of which only 33 are really of "old-school tie" standing. They are wholly supported by fees (-L-120 to -L-250 a year) and endowments. Their curriculum is now very like that of Britain's state schools. The "public" schools' few scholarships are worth only -L-40 to -L-100, so that fees are heavy even for scholarship winners. The "public" schools are thus virtually closed to all but children of well-to-do parents.

The English "public" schools may well survive all attack so long as England goes neither socialist nor broke. Observes a Government educational survey: "Few institutions are so proof against change as foundations supported by endowment, and consequently to a great extent independent alike of external control and popular demand."

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