The maintenance of such a curriculum has been a major function of the examination system at 16, which was originally designed as a preparation for the post-16 courses leading to A-level. It is taken in single subjects, usually not more than three. These three subjects, studied in depth, in turn constituted a preparation for the single or double subject honors degrees at university. In this way the shape of the curriculum for the majority has been determined by the needs of the minority aspiring to a university place. Alongside «A» Levels, there have been, more recently, «AS» (Advanced Supplementary) Level examinations. These are worth half an «A» Level and they enable very bright students to broaden their educational experience with a «contrasting» subject (for example, the science specialist might study a foreign language).
The present «A» and «AS» Level system, however, is thought to be in need of reform. First, it limits choice of subjects at 16 and 17 years, a time, when a more general education should be encouraged. Second, approximately 30% of students either drop out or fail - a mass failure rate amongst a group of young people from the top 30% of academic achievement who find that after two years they have no qualification. Third, the concentration on academic success thus conceived has little room for the vocationally relevant skills and personal qualities stressed by those employers who are critics of the education system. Fourth, there are over 600 «A» Level syllabuses from eight independent examination boards often with overlapping titles and content, making comparability of standards between Boards difficult.
The private sector
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y 1997 8 per cent of the school population attended independent fee-paying schools, compared with under 6 per cent in 1979, and only 5 per cent in 1976. By the year 2000 the proportion may rise to almost 9 per cent, nearly back to the level in 1947 of 10 per cent. The recovery of private education in Britain is partly due to middle-class fears concerning comprehensive schools, but also to the mediocre quality possible in the state sector after decades of inadequate funding.
Although the percentage of those privately educated may be a small fraction of the total, its importance is disproportionate to its size, for this 8 per cent accounts for 23 per cent of all those passing A levels, and over 25 per cent of those gaining entry to university. Nearly 65 per cent of pupils leave fee-paying schools with one or more A levels, compared with only 14 per cent from comprehensives. Tellingly, this 8 per cent also accounts for 68 per cent of those gaining the highest grade in GCSE Physics. During the 1980s pupils at independent schools showed greater improvement in their examination results than those at state schools. In later life, those educated at fee-paying schools dominate the sources of state power and authority in government, law, the armed forces and finance.
The 'public' (in fact private, fee-paying) schools form the backbone of the independent sector. Of the several hundred public schools, the most famous are the 'Clarendon Nine', so named after a commission of inquiry into education in 1861. Their status lies in a fatally attractive combination of social superiority and antiquity, as the dates of their foundation indicate: Winchester (1382), Eton (1440), St Paul's (1509), Shrewsbury (1552), Westminster (1560), The Merchant Taylors' (1561), Rugby (1567), Harrow (1571) and Charterhouse (1611).
The golden age of the public schools, however, was the late nineteenth century, when most were founded. They were vital to the establishment of a particular set of values in the dominant professional middle classes. These values were reflected in the novel Tom Brown's Schooldays by Thomas Hughes, written in tribute to his own happy time at Rugby School. Its emphasis is on the making of gentlemen to enter one of the professions: law, medicine, the Church, the Civil Service or the colonial service. The concept of 'service', even if it only involved entering a profitable profession, was central to the public school ethos. A career in commerce, or 'mere money making' as it is referred to in Tom Brown's Schooldays, was not to be considered. As a result of such values, the public school system was traditional in its view of learning and deeply resistant to science and technology. Most public schools were located in the 'timeless' countryside, away from the vulgarity of industrial cities.
After 1945, when state-funded grammar schools were demonstrating equal or greater academic excellence, the public schools began to modernise themselves. During the 1970s most of them abolished beating and 'fagging', the system whereby new boys carried out menial tasks for senior boys, and many introduced girls into the sixth form, as a civilising influence. They made particular efforts to improve their academic and scientific quality. Traditionally boarding public schools were more popular, but since the 1970s there has been a progressive shift of balance in favour of day schools. Today only 16 per cent of pupils in private education attend boarding schools, and the number of boarders declines on average by 3 per cent each year.
Demand for public school education is now so great that many schools register pupils' names at birth. Eton maintains two lists, one for the children of 'old boys' and the other for outsiders. There are three applicants for every vacancy. Several other schools have two applicants for each vacancy, but they are careful not to expand to meet demand. In the words of one academic, 'Schools at the top of the system have a vested interest in being elitist. They would lose that characteristic if they expanded. To some extent they pride themselves on the length of their waiting lists.' This rush to private education is despite the steep rise in fees, 31 per cent between 1985 and 1988, and over 50 per cent between 1990 and 1997 when the average annual day fees were Ј5,700 and boarding fees double that figure. Sixty per cent of parents would probably send their children to fee-paying schools if they could afford to.
In order to obtain a place at a public school, children must take a competitive examination, called 'Common Entrance'. In order to pass it, most children destined for a public school education attend a preparatory (or 'prep') school until the age of 13.
Independent schools remain politically controversial. The Conservative Party believes in the fundamental freedom of parents to choose the best education for their children. The Labour Party disagrees, arguing that in reality only the wealthier citizens have this freedom of choice. In the words of Hugh Gaitskell, the Labour leader in 1953, 'We really cannot go on with a system in which wealthy parents are able to buy what they and most people believe to be a better education for their children. The system is wrong and must be changed.' But since then no Labour government has dared to abolish them.
There can be no doubt that a better academic education can be obtained in some of the public schools. In 1993 92 of the 100 schools with the best A-level results were fee-paying. But the argument that parents will not wish to pay once state schools offer equally good education is misleading, because independent schools offer social status also. Unfortunately education depends not only on quality schools but also on the home environment. The background from which pupils come greatly affects the encouragement they receive to study. Middle-class parents are likely to be better able, and more concerned, to support their children's study than low-income parents who themselves feel they failed at school. State-maintained schools must operate with fewer resources, and in more difficult circumstances, particularly in low-income areas. In addition, the public school system creams off many of the ablest teachers from the state sector.
The public school system is socially divisive, breeding an atmosphere of elitism and leaving some outside the system feeling socially or intellectually inferior, and in some cases intimidated by the prestige attached to public schools. The system fosters a distinct culture, one based not only upon social superiority but also upon deference. As one leading journalist, Jeremy Paxman, himself an ex-public schoolboy remarked, The purpose of a public school education is to teach you to respect people you don't respect.' In the words of Anthony Sampson, himself an ex-pupil of Westminster, the public school elite 'reinforces and perpetuates a class system whose divisions run through all British institutions, separating language, attitudes and motivations'.
Those who attend these schools continue to dominate the institutions at the heart of the British state, and seem likely to do so for some time to come. At the beginning of the 1990s public schools accounted for 22 out of 24 of the army's top generals, two-thirds of the Bank of England's external directors, 33 out of 39 top English judges, and ambassadors in the 15 most important diplomatic missions abroad. Of the 200 richest people in Britain no fewer than 35 had attended Eton. Eton and Winchester continue to dominate the public school scene, and the wider world beyond. As Sampson asks, 'Can the products of two schools (Winchester and Eton), it might be asked, really effectively represent the other 99.5 per cent of the people in this diverse country who went to neither mediaeval foundation?' The concept of service was once at the heart of the public school ethos, but it is questionable whether it still is. A senior Anglican bishop noted in 1997, 'A headmaster told me recently that the whole concept of service had gone. Now they all want to become merchant bankers and lawyers.'
There are two arguments that qualify the merit of the public schools, apart from the criticism that they are socially divisive. It is inconceivable that the very best intellectual material of the country resides solely among those able to attend such schools. If one accepts that the brightest and best pupils are in fact spread across the social spectrum, one must conclude that an elitist system of education based primarily upon wealth rather than ability must involve enormous wastage. The other serious qualification regards the public school ethos which is so rooted in tradition, authority and a narrow idea of 'gentlemanly' professions. Even a century after it tried to turn its pupils into gentlemen, the public school culture still discourages, possibly unconsciously, its pupils from entering industry. 'It is no accident,' Sampson comments, 'that most formidable industrialists in Britain come from right outside the public school system, and many from right outside Britain.'
Britain will be unable to harness its real intellectual potential until it can break loose from a divisive culture that should belong in the past, and can create its future elite from the nation's schoolchildren as a whole. In 1996 a radical Conservative politician argued for turning public schools into centres of excellence which would admit children solely on ability, regardless of wealth or social background, with the help of government funding. It would be a way of using the best of the private sector for the nation as a whole. It is just such an idea that Labour might find attractive, if it is able to tackle the more widespread and fundamental shortcomings of the state education system.