Independent schools

PROBLEMS OF STATE SCHOOLS

During the 1970s it was discovered that British system of education underestimated the importance of craft skills and national targets for education. So at that time grater emphasis was made on education and training. Many new colleges of further education were established to provide technical or vocational training. But British education remained too academic for the less able and technical studies remained weak, with the result that a large number of less able pupils leave school without any skill at all. By 1990s nine out of ten West German employees had vocational training qualification while in Britain only one in ten.

Another problem is the continued high drop-out rate at the age of 16 and low level of achievement in mathematics and science among school-leavers. While over 80 per cent of pupils in West Germany and the USA and over 90 per cent in Japan stayed on till the age of 18, hardly one third of British pupils did so.

Standards of teaching and learning are not high enough. State-maintained schools have to operate with fewer resources in more difficult circumstances, with low pay. This resulted in teachers' flight from the profession. By 1990 there were as many trained teachers not teaching as teaching. The shortage of teachers was great, especially in the subjects of greatest national importance: maths and science. Britain filled the gap by employing unemployed teachers from Germany, Netherlands, Australia and other countries.

The shortfall is not only in the total number of teachers, but also in the inadequate level of qualification of a high proportion of primary teachers, particularly in science and maths.

Though the expenditure on education increased almost twice compared with middle 1950s it is not enough, because «standards of learning are never improved by poor teachers and there are no cheap high quality routes into teaching*. One can't but agree with these words of Eric Bolton, England's chief inspector of schools.

Independent schools are private schools charging tuition fees arid that is why they are «independent» of public funds, «independent* of the state educational system, but they are open to government control and inspection. The Department of Education has the power to require them to remedy any objectionable features in their premises, accommodation or instruction (teaching) and to exclude any person regarded as unsuitable to teach or to be proprietor of a school.

There is a wide range of independent schools covering every age group and grade of education. They include nursery schools and kindergartens (taking children of nursery and infant school ages), primary and secondary schools of both day and boarding types.

The most important and expensive of the independent schools are known as public schools, Which are private secondary schools taking boys from age of 13 to 18 years, and preparatory schools (colloquially called «prep» schools), which are private Primary schools preparing pupils for public schools. The terms «primary» and «secondary» are not normally applied to these independent schools because the age of transfer from a preparatory school to a public school is 13 or 14 and not 11 as in the state system of primary and secondary education.

Preparatory schools are usually small (for 50-100 children). They prepare the pupils for the Common Entrance Examination, set by independent secondary schools: «prep» schools are situated chiefly in the country or at the seaside resorts. They are much later development than the public schools. Few of them date back further than 1870.

Дата добавления: 2015-05-26