Elite Education

International perspectives

Claire Maxwell, Peter Aggleton

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317628804
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Elite Education – International Perspectives is the first book to systematically examine elite education in different parts of the world. Authors provide a historical analysis of the emergence of national elite education systems and consider how recent policy and economic developments are changing the configuration of elite trajectories and the social groups benefiting from these.

Through country-level case studies, this book offers readers an in-depth account of elite education systems in the Anglophone world, in Europe and in the emerging financial centres of Africa, Asia and Latin America. A series of commentaries highlight commonalities and differences between elite education systems, and offer insights into broader theoretical issues, with which educationalists, researchers and policy makers are engaging.

With authors including Stephen J. Ball, Donald Broady, Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández, Heinz-Hermann Krüger, Maria Alice Nogueira, Julia Resnik and Agnès van Zanten, t he book offers a benchmark perspective on issues frequently glossed over in comparative education, including the processes by which powerful groups retain privilege and 'elite' status in rapidly changing societies.

Elite Education – International Perspectives will appeal to policy makers and academics in the fields of education and sociology. Simultaneously it will be of special relevance to post-graduates enrolled on courses in the sociology of education, education policy, and education and international development.

Part I Developments in the Anglophone world

England, Scotland, Australia and North America

DOI: 10.4324/9781315755984-2

1 The historical construction of an elite education in England

Claire Maxwell and Peter Aggleton

DOI: 10.4324/9781315755984-3

There exists a handful of schools in England which are nationally (and internationally) believed to be ‘elite’ institutions – because they have a long history of being positioned as such within national discourse, and because their alumni disproportionately occupy positions of power across various occupational sectors – politics, law, the media (Sutton Trust 2012).

Wakeling and Savage (2015), drawing on findings from the analysis of their large-scale data set – the BBC’s Great British Class Survey – suggest that certain schools and universities form part of an ‘elite track’, whereby not only does social class origin strongly influence the probability of attending an elite school, but also it increases the likelihood of going to an elite university and becoming a member of the ‘elite’ social class (a newly developed multi-dimensional social class category in Savage et al. 2013). Such a positive correlation between ‘origin–education–destination pathways’ (Wakeling and Savage 2015, p. 182) is found in many countries, and is a matter that our own more qualitative research has begun to engage with: namely, how does an elite education extend family resources, shaping them into the dispositions that affect longer term outcomes? (Maxwell and Aggleton 2014 a, 2014 b; see also Forbes and Lingard 2015, van Zanten 2015).

In this chapter, however, we offer the beginnings of a historical analysis focusing on how the concept of an ‘elite education’ has been constructed over time. Our goal is to facilitate critical reflection on what an elite education might mean in England today. Of special interest are the ways in which social and economic change, as well as the broader policy context, shape the purpose of an elite education and therefore the way in which some schools become construed as being elite. In thinking about the purpose of an elite education, we will also consider the kinds of knowledges that are valued, the importance placed on schools as spaces that facilitate particular kinds of social mixing and the emphasis placed on the academic credentials that are secured through particular forms of schooling. We will conclude by considering the extent to which an ‘elite education’ is best understood as a meritocratic endeavour or a mechanism for maintaining social advantage and invoking social closure over time.

Before the nineteenth century

In the Middle Ages, the Church was the main provider of education in England and established a number of Grammar Schools. These schools had a vocational purpose – to prepare young men to go on to university and later take up various positions within the Church and the legal profession – the sectors largely responsible for running the country. Although ‘In the Statute of Artificers of 1406,… it was declared that, “every man or woman, of what state or condition that he be, shall be free to set their son or daughter to take learning at any school that pleaseth them within the realm”’ (Flemming Report 1944, p. 7), very few of the ‘labouring’ classes sent their children to school. However, for a few this possibility did exist, and the sons of landowners may have found themselves at the same school as the sons of merchants living in the same town. Among the nobility and aristocracy, both young men and women tended to be educated at home, to receive ‘an education suited to the life they were expected afterwards to lead’ (ibid., p. 7, also Purvis 1991). In a few cases, young noblemen might be educated in the great monasteries of the time.

The second half of the fourteenth century is identified as the time when the concept of the ‘Public School’ first emerged. The Bishop of Winchester established Winchester College in 1382, which for the first time offered ‘[a] close link with a college at one of the Universities [only Oxford and Cambridge universities existed at this time], the communal life of scholars boarding together and drawn from different parts of the country, the charitable intention to aid poor scholars and to provide recruits for the service of the Church, even… provision… for the “sons of noble and influential persons”’ (Flemming Report 1944, p. 7). Thus, 70 ‘poor scholars’ and up to ten young men from the upper classes found themselves being educated together. While the poor scholars were funded via endowments, pupils from the nobility paid for their education. Eton College was founded some 58 years later in 1440. Again, provision was made for 70 poor scholars and 20 sons of noblemen or ‘special friends of the College’ (ibid., p. 8).

However, Winchester and Eton were unusual as educational institutions. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, industrialisation led to the growth of Grammar Schools in the form of local day schools (often wealthy men would endow or establish a local school). Over time, a small number of these schools began to achieve a certain standing in the public eye. Their reputations were enhanced when members of the upper classes identified these schools as institutions worthy of their patronage or when they began to receive public support from high-profile individuals. This led to a process of social differentiation between Grammar Schools (English 1991). The Clarendon Commission of 1861–1864 officially labelled institutions such as Winchester, Eton, Westminster, St. Paul’s, Merchant Taylors’ and Charterhouse as the ‘Great Schools’, a title which many have retained to this day. With some schools introducing provision within their statutes for ‘foreigners’ from the local parish to attend if they paid an appropriate fee (see Harrow for instance), and others (such as Eton) more flexibly interpreting their foundational charters and charging all students for their education in one way or another, education was in fact no longer free for all at many of these schools.

The nineteenth century

Thus, by the beginning of the nineteenth century, there was a growing awareness that particular schools were more elite than others in terms of the social groups they recruited and the public and occupational roles these pupils would take up in the future. Furthermore, debates about the purpose of education began to emphasise the advantages of a ‘public’, as opposed to a ‘home’, education for the sons of the upper classes. Such an education was believed to foster the confidence needed for an individual to take up a future public role, it encouraged competition and contributed to lasting friendships that led the way to ‘worldly humour and advancement’ (Bennett 1787, in Cohen 2004, p. 20). The importance of Thomas Arnold’s developments during his time as Headmaster at Rugby (1828–1842) also did much to stem the kinds of criticisms that had begun to be levelled at grammar schools – poor teaching and living conditions, ill-disciplined young men – through a renewed focus on the formation of a moral (Christian) character and the importance of training the aristocracy to remember their social responsibilities towards the poor (Honey 1977). These kinds of discussions, and broader changes to the social and economic structure of English society at the time, began to embed a trend for the increasing use of ‘public schools’ by the aristocracy, as well as a desire from newly wealthy industrialists to send their sons to such institutions.

The mid- to late-nineteenth century was a critical period for the further development of the concept of an elite education in England. Hitherto, theoretically at least, there had been a largely Church-run provision of ‘free’ education for all (with a number of privately run small schools), with the specific purpose of equipping scholars to go to university and take up positions of authority within the Church and the law. Over time, individual schools emerged as the ‘chosen’ (Karabel 2005) institutions, sometimes because an individual Headmaster might introduce reforms to the education being offered and be seen as a particularly successful leader of the school, or because groups of high-status families might choose to send their sons to a particular school. In these schools, the sons of large landowners and, increasingly, those of wealthy industrialists were predominant (English 1991). Thus, industrialisation, urbanisation, increasing complexity of occupational structure and the instability of the Church as the body ruling the country (Simon 1987), ushered in a new era for the social organisation of schooling, one which remained largely in place until the 1960s. The new economic classes sought to buy social advantage through access to the most highly reputed schools (Fox 1985) and with their increasing political power they were able to push for the purpose and content of educational provision to be reconsidered.

The Clarendon Commission (1861–1864) was launched to examine the operation of, and the quality of educational provision at, the so-called nine Great Schools then considered to be the ‘chief nurseries of our statesmen’ (Public Schools Commission 1864, p. 56). Being so identified further entrenched the standing of these nine as the elite schools of England. One of the recommendations of the Commission was that the selection of scholars to enter these schools should be competitive – which had the effect of raising the academic standards, but also introduced the need for boys who hoped to gain entry to attend preparatory schools beforehand which would specifically prepare them for such an exam (a system which is still largely in place today). Second, while the Commission recommended that the curriculum include the classics, a modern language, the sciences, history and geography, it also gave the governing body of these schools the discretion to decide which subjects to focus on.

Perhaps more crucial for shaping the broader education system in England was the Taunton Commission (1864–1868), which was established to consider all other secondary education provision, except that provided by the ‘Ancient Nine’ (Ringer 1979, p. 208). Education for the ‘labouring classes’, which until then usually consisted only of elementary-level (primary) schooling, was the focus of a third commission – the Newcastle Commission (1858–1861). The Taunton Commission laid the foundations for a tripartite system of secondary school education. First grade schools were (mostly boarding) schools that combined the traditional classical curriculum (Latin and Greek) with some modern studies, and were loosely modelled on the Great Schools. These schools had a leaving age of 18 years and were tasked with getting their (male) pupils into university (Walford 2005). The Commission specified that first grade schools were for the upper middle and professional classes, those with large unearned incomes, professional and business men – including the clergy, doctors, lawyers and the ‘poorer gentry’ (Simon 1987, p. 100). Second and third grade schools, on the other hand, were local day schools, with a leaving age of 16 and 14 years respectively. Second grade schools were for young men preparing for a career in the army, in medicine, engineering, the law and so forth, and were for the sons of the ‘mercantile and trading classes’ (larger shopkeeper, rising businessmen and tenant farmers with a relatively large plot of land). Greek was not taught in these schools, which meant there was no possibility of these young men gaining entry to Oxford and Cambridge universities, but the curriculum included mathematics, science and literature. Meanwhile, third grade schools (for the sons of smaller tenant farmers and those of small tradesmen) introduced elements of Latin, basic mathematics, science, geography and a foreign language. Simon (1987) argues that third grade schools were specifically developed to bind ‘the petty bourgeoisie and the upper working class firmly to their social superiors… so isolating them from the working class with whom in the past they had formed a sometimes powerful and threatening alliance’ (p. 101). Free education was abolished and fees were introduced, proportionate to the grade of school.

These changes were supported by the growing, wealthy middle classes, seeking greater access to schooling that would confer gentlemanly status upon them and a university education. Crucially, they were also encouraged by the gentry and aristocracy who understood the urgent need for reform if they were to try to limit the occupation of these elite institutions by other social groups. In this sense, both dominant social groups and state intervention had created the impetus to put in place provision which caused a differentiation and segmentation of the education system (Simon 1987, van Zanten and Maxwell 2015). In the words of the Taunton Report (1868, p. 93), ‘Education has become more varied and complex… the different classes of society, the different occupations of life, require different teaching’. By the end of the nineteenth century, therefore, England had an overtly class-based, fee-paying education system in place, whereby social mobility was restricted and the curriculum determined...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: elite education – international perspectives
• Part I Developments in the Anglophone world: England, Scotland, Australia and North America
• Part II European perspectives: similarities and differences in Scandinavia, France and Germany
• Part III Emerging financial powers in Latin America, Asia and Africa
• Some final reflections
• Index