Education in England.

The main division in schooling in England is between state and private education. The private sector includes the public schools and most of the progressive schools - where only the wealthy can afford to send their children. But as the large majority of English children are educated by the state, this article is about state schools.

At the moment, the school system is in a state of confusing change, especially the secondary school system. It used to be simple: from the age of five to 11, a child went to primary school. Then he took an exam called the Eleven Plus (tests in Arithmetic and English and «intelligence tests»). If he passed the Eleven Plus, he went to a grammar school; if he passed but not quite so well, he might go to a technical school; if he failed, he went to a secondary modern.

The results of the Eleven Plus were supposed to be based on the ability of the child; in practice, the exam favoured the middle-class child. The reason was obvious: middle-class parents valued the skills tested in the Eleven Plus and encouraged their children in their studies.

By the early 1950s, the percentage of pupils at grammar schools was as follows: 62% were from families where the father had a professional or managerial job, 12% were from families where the father was a semi-skilled manual worker, 7% were from families where the father was an unskilled worker. (The other 19% did not fit into any of these categories.)

The concept of a comprehensive school gained ground. Comprehensives are schools where pupils of all abilities are educated together. It seemed a good idea; certainly it had been proved that, under the old system, pupils at secondary moderns felt failures and of little value.

But then, in 1970s, a Conservative government took over from the Labour government. One of the first things the new Minister of Education did was to send out a circular slowing down the development of comprehensive schooling; this was done by giving Local Education Authorities the right not to «go comprehensive» if they didn’t want to. The result? A system in which comprehensive schools exist side by side with grammar schools and secondary moderns.

The main reason for this difference in quality is the Burnham Agreement which controls the staffing of schools and the salaries paid to teachers.

The number of staff in a school and the wage they’re paid depends on the number of Burnham units of a school (not, as one might suppose, on the number of pupils). Pupils up to 13 count as 1 1/2 units, pupils of 13-plus count as 2, those of 15-plus as 4, 16-plus as 6 and those of 17-plus as 10. Up to 1973, the majority of pupils in secondary moderns left between the age of 15 and 16; now they have to stay till they’re 16. In grammar schools, all pupils stay to 16 to take «O» level GCE, and over 50% stay on in the sixth form to take «A» levels. As a result grammar schools have many more Burnham units, so are allowed to have more staff and to pay higher salaries. The staff-pupil ratios are about 15% more favourable to grammar schools than to secondary moderns. It’s not surprising that university graduates who choose to teach try to get grammar school jobs; the posts in secondary moderns are left to the graduates of the colleges of education. In this way, the less gifted children have the less qualified teachers and are in larger classes.

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