Due to this style of teaching it appears that young Britons do not have to work as much as other young Europeans do.
This approach together with lack of centralised power lead to vague aims and to the importance of the school as a community. This is why British schools give such importance to sports, as a way of enhancing the institution’s reputation by the team’s success.
In the second half of the twentieth century some changes took place on British education which showed the increasing egalitarianism in the social process. The once elitist institutions, that set the pattern for years, no longer set the trend and are less elitist.
However, government policies were also changed. At the end of primary school eleven-year-olds would take an exam which decided their future: if they passed they went to a grammar school where they would be taught academic subjects as preparation for university and high-skilled jobs; if they failed they went to a secondary modern, where lessons were more practical and technical. The later were seen as “failures”, and it was noticed that the children who passed the exam were mostly from middle-class families. This system reinforced class distinctions and showed that the proportion of children who went to grammar school varied greatly depending on the area. Since 1965 this exam is not taken anymore, and most children attend the same local school: a comprehensive school. The decision to change this system was up to the LEAs, so it did not happen at the same time all over the country.
The new “comprehensive system” also has its critics. Many thought parents should be given a choice about their children’s school and disliked the uniformity of the education given to teenagers. There is also the feeling that education standards fell during the 1980s and that the average British eleven-year-old is less literate than his or her European counterpart.
As a result, in the late 1980s a national curriculum was introduced, so now there is a set of learning objectives for each year of compulsory school, towards which all state schools are obliged to work. Once again decentralisation persists: in fact, there are three different national curricula, one for England and Wales, another for Scotland and another for Northern Ireland.
Another major change was that now schools could “opt-out” of the control of the LEA and work directly under the control of the appropriate government department.
The introduction of the national curriculum was also intended to emphasise more “the three R’s” (reading, writing and arithmetic) at primary level, and science and technology at higher levels.
Compulsory education in Britain is divided into two different stages: primary education from 5 to 11 and secondary education from 11 to 16. At primary school students are tested in their progress in reading, writing and mathematical skills. Pupils wishing to progress to Secondary Schools, particularly in the independent sector are required to pass an Entrance Examination. Even though education is only compulsory until the age of 16, many secondary schools offer education until the age of 18. Students who complete secondary education may optionally take the examination for the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE). Those students wishing to pursue University studies attend school until the age of 18 and then take the Advanced level public examinations (A level - AS level) in specific courses, which are a prerequisite for entering University.
Both at primary and secondary school there are public and state (or independent) schools. Previously public schools were for boys only, took fee-paying pupils and were boarding schools. Today there are also girl’s public schools, and recently a few schools have started to admit both boys and girls. Many public schools today admit day pupils as well as boarders, there is less emphasis on team sport and more on academic achievement.
Public schools have always been one of the great reinforcements of the class system, but nowadays they have also become manufacturers of examination success. Among the table of the top 1,000 British schools, we notice that occasionally an exceptional school moves up the table, but mainly independent schools maintain their places in the first division. Losing this place means losing applications, fee income and status. Keeping it means having the best teachers, raising fees steadily, selecting their candidates and a growing income from their benefactors.
The private system may well be outperforming the state system, but in the recent years there are a growing number of state schools beginning to place in the same rank as their local private schools. Some comprehensive schools have achieved better A-Level results than many famous private schools. Given that these schools are non-selective, middle-class students, given that these children usually do relatively well, will be doing as well as their peers in a private school. Therefore, middle class parents are beginning to realise that much of private education is a money-making trick.
The independence of Britain’s educational institutions is most noticeable in universities. They choose who to accept in their courses on the basis of the A-level results and an interview. The better the exam grade, the more likely the student is to be accepted.
During the twentieth century university in Great Britain has become available for a greater number of students. Despite this, finding a university place is not easy: universities only take the better students. As such, there is a low ratio of students to staff and students live on campus or nearby, where they are surrounded by a university atmosphere.
However, the great expansion of higher education put a strain on these characteristics. More students means more expense for the state, so grants were cut leaving the students, unable to live away from home, to find part-time jobs at the cost of time to study. Moreover, the budgets did not increase with the number of students; as a result the student/staff ratio doubled from 9-1 ten years ago to 18-1 now. A-level standards have also been dumbing down. These developments not only threaten the traditionally high quality of the British university system, but also reduce its availability to students from low-income families.
A year ago Charles Clarke, the education secretary, made it clear that the 50% target was being quietly dropped and that the important thing was to make university available to academically able young people from all backgrounds. Charles Clarke also admitted that universities cannot flourish without intellectual elitism, elite to which not all can belong.
On January, 2004, the government published the Higher Education bill on student finance. According to this bill, the poorest 30 per cent of full time students will be guaranteed at least £3000 per year to help them through their studies.
As there is no internationally agreed definition of what a university is supposed to do, it is hard to conclude that Britain’s top universities are falling behind their international counterparts. Teaching and the creation of wealth are regarded as part of any definition, but it is difficult to compare Britain’s single-subject approach with other countries’ universities modular education; and British universities still attract outside investment and students. However, the fact is that Britain’s top-level research is diminishing. The number of Nobel prizes in chemistry, physics and medicine has fallen from eleven in the 1960s to two in the 1990s.
To sum up, Britain’s educational system is struggling between egalitarianism and elitism