School Without Ties

Britain's famous old public schools have long given their graduates a first-class education as well as an old school tie. The trouble is that there are just not enough Etons, Harrows and Winchesters within the reach of the boys who could benefit from them. In 1944, Parliament put a clause in its new Education Act urging Britain's towns and counties to get busy and set up tax-supported boarding schools of their own.

The county of Surrey, near London, was the first to take Parliament up. The county council went shopping for a suitable location, four years ago chose Ottershaw, an imposing Italianate country house with formal gardens, fishing ponds and a wooded 160-acre park. The council hired Arthur Edward Foot, a onetime assistant master at Eton, to supervise remodeling and act as headmaster. A year and a half ago, Foot and nine assistant masters opened Ottershaw School to its first 70 students.

For All Comers. Ottershaw's students came from all income levels. (Some parents could afford the full tuition and boarding fees; others were unable to pay anything at all.) Dockers' sons and farmers' sons from three-R grade schools were mixed in with middle-class youngsters who had been learning Latin since they were seven. To provide for all comers, Foot and the council set a scale of boarding fees that varies from -L-110 to nothing, depending on family income, a curriculum with choices ranging from the classics to courses in science and vocational training. For each boy the county pays -L-50 tuition.

Most of Ottershaw's first crop of students had little idea of boarding-school discipline. From magazines and British comic books they had definite ideas of what they should be up to: they were all set for dormitory raids, pillow fights and secret midnight feasts. Foot's solution of the discipline problem: a student council made up of elected representatives from each class, supplemented later by the venerable system of student prefects. To level off social differences, he required all boys to do their share of tidying up, put a half-crown (35-c-) ceiling on weekly spending money. "We don't want any feeling of sheep and goats," said Foot. He settled on a school uniform of grey flannels and blue blazer, but avoided one public-school stereotype by deciding to do without an Ottershaw tie. Haircuts, laundry and soap were included without extra charge.

Busy Bulldozers. So far, thought Surrey, the Ottershaw experiment was working pretty well. Enrollment had jumped to 120, and there were twelve applicants for every vacancy. Last month onetime Rugby Headmaster Percy H. B. Lyon called on Parliament to establish 300 new schools along similar lines. A more practical tribute came from the Labor Government itself. Though recently the government had been obliged to order cutbacks in new construction, including school building, it had given Ottershaw the green light. Bulldozers and construction crews were busy last week on the foundations for a new wing to house 60 more Ottershavians next year.

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