Higher Education in Britain

I. Read the text and define the main idea of it.

IV. Be ready to speak on the topic.

III. Ask questions to the content of the text and give short answers.

II. Make up a vocabulary of new words.

Public Exams

I. Read this text and translate it into Ukrainian.

IV. Make up a brief summary of the text in a written form.

TEXT 4

The organization of the exams which schoolchildren take from the age of about fifteen onwards exemplifies both the lack of uniformity in British education and also the traditional 'hands-off' approach of British governments. First, these exams are not set by the government, but rather by independent examining boards. There are several of these. Everywhere except Scotland (which has its own single board), each school or LEA decides which board's exams its pupils take. Some schools even enter their pupils for the exams of more than one board.

Second, the boards publish a separate syllabus for each subject. There is no unified school-leaving exam or school-leaving certificate. Some boards offer a vast range of subjects. In practice, nearly all pupils do exams in English language, maths and a science subject, and most also do an exam in technology and one in a foreign lan­guage, usually French. Many students take exams in three or more additional subjects.

Third, the exams have nothing to do with school years as such. They are divorced from the school system. There is nothing to stop a sixty-five year-old doing a few of them for fun. In practice, of course, the vast majority of people who do these exams are school pupils, but formally it is individual people who enter for these exams, not pupils in a particular year of school.

An example of the independence of the examining boards is the decision of one of them (the Northern Examinations Board) in 1992 to include certain popular television programmes on their English literature syllabus. This was against the spirit of the government's education policy at that time. The idea of 100,000 schoolchildren settling down to watch the Australian soap opera ‘Neighbours’ as part of their homework made government ministers very angry, but there was nothing they could do to stop it.

V. Make up word-combinations:

1. traditional a) exam

2. government's b) board

3. school-leaving c) approach

4. examining d) exams

5. to do e) policy

TEXT 5

In England and Wales, for those who stay in education and study conventional academic subjects, there is more specialization than there is in most other countries. Typically, a pupil spends a whole two years studying just three subjects, usually related ones, in pre­paration for taking A-level exams, though this is something which might change in the near future.

The independence of Britain's educational institutions is most noticeable in universities. They make their own choices of who to accept on their courses. There is no right of entry to university for anybody. Universities normally select students on the basis of A-level results and an interview. Those with better exam grades are more likely to be accepted. But in principle there is nothing to stop a university accepting a student who has no A-levels at all and con­versely, a student with top grades in several A-levels is not guaranteed a place.

The availability of higher education has increased greatly in the second half of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, finding a university place is not easy. Universities take only the best students. Because of this, and also because of the relatively high degree of personal supervision of students nearly all university students complete their studies – and in a very short time! In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, it is only for modern languages and certain vocational studies that students take more than three years. In Scotland four years is the norm for most subjects.

Another reason for the low drop-out rate is that 'full-time' really means full-time. Students are not supposed to take a job during term time (normally about thirty to thirty-four weeks of the year). Unless their parents are rich, they receive a state grant of money which is intended to cover most of their living expenses during these times. This includes the cost of accommodation. A large proportion of students live 'on campus' (or, in Oxford and Cambridge, 'in college') or in rooms nearby, which tends to mean that the student is surrounded by a university atmosphere.

However, the expansion of higher education is putting a strain on these characteristics. ‘More students’ means more expense for the state. The government's response has been to reduce the amount of the student grant and to encourage a system of 'top-up' loans instead. As a result, many more students cannot afford to live away from home. In the past it was estimated that 80% of all university students were non-local. This percentage is becoming lower and lower. In addition, a large number of students are being forced to ' moonlight ' (that is, do a part-time job secretly). A further result of increased numbers of students without a corresponding increase in budgets is that the student/staff ratio has been getting higher. All of these devel­opments threaten to reduce the traditionally high quality of British university education. They also threaten to reduce its availability to students from low-income families.

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