THE CHANGING SCHOOLS

This chapter reviews the pattern of schools in England. There are certain features of schools in England that in varying degrees distinguish them from schools in other countries. They are as follows. Primary and secondary education are compulsory in fact as well as in intention and are provided free in all cases for ten years and for longer for those who elect to remain at school after the minimum leaving age. The school a child attends depends only in part on the neighborhood in which he lives. The school is concerned with far more than the giving of instruction. The teachers in the schools form a highly selected and professionally minded group, drawn almost entirely from the more intelligent and successful pupils in the grammar schools and trained in colleges closely linked with the universities, if not in the universities themselves. Although the school system is national in its main outlines, there are substantial local differences. Thus, some local authorities favor co-educational schools and others single sex schools; it is also very much a matter of local choice whether some form of comprehensive system is adopted; and the chances of a child entering a selective secondary school may be nearly twice as great in one part of the country as another. There is even greater variation in the provision and availability of various forms of further education.