Private Schools in Ten Countries

Policy and Practice

Geoffrey Walford

• Editore: Routledge
• Anno: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000376876
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Pedagogía
• Categoria: Educación general

First published in 1989, Private Schools in Ten Countries provides a much needed comparative study, examining private schooling in England and Wales, Scotland, the USA, Canada, Australia, France, West Germany, the Netherlands and Japan. The authors, all experts in their field, describe the nature and extent of private schooling in an historical, economic, and social context. They discuss government policy and assess the available evidence on the relationship between attendance at a public school and the maintenance of inequalities in that society.

Unique in its discussion of private schooling in a range of countries this book will enable educationists, politicians and policy makers to look beyond the confines of their own country and to give constructive consideration to the variety of ways in which education can be provided and funded

CHAPTER 1

ENGLAND AND WALES: THE ROLE OF THE PRIVATE SECTOR

Geoff Whitty, Tony Edwards and John Fitz

Private education attracts about half a million children of school age in England and Wales, or about 6.4 per cent of the school population. The sector is much smaller than in most industrial countries, much more selective both academically and socially, and much more closely associated with recruitment to occupational elites. It is hardly associated at all with promoting or maintaining religious and cultural diversity, whereas the debate about private schooling in other countries is often dominated by relationships between church and state, and the defence of the private sector is largely a defence of the right of parents to educate their children within a particular religious tradition (Mason, 1983; Praetz, 1983). Although many English public schools were religious foundations and continue to include a strong Christian tradition among their qualities, most church schools have been incorporated within the state system as a result of the so-called ‘historic compromises’ of 1870, 1902, and 1944. These are the voluntary-aided and voluntary-controlled schools which contain about 17 per cent of secondary pupils. In Australia, on the other hand, all church schools are in a non-government sector which caters for just over a quarter of the school population - about the same proportion as are in English independent and voluntary schools taken together - and pluralist arguments are widely used in its defence. An alliance has developed there between a Catholic hierarchy, anxious to avoid state aid being debated as a sectarian issue, and representatives of elite independent schools (catering as in England for about 6 per cent of secondary pupils), anxious to avoid being isolated as ‘bastions of privilege’ (Edwards et al., 1985). It is exactly that kind of isolation of an ‘elite sector’ which has dominated debate about the private sector in England, both politically and

In this chapter, we describe the structure of the private sector and its social selectiveness. We then describe recent changes in government policy towards it, in the context of increasingly powerful support for the privatizing of educational provision. Before proceeding, we need to clarify how these schools are to be labelled. We have used ‘private’ initially because it is the term included in the title of this collection. The private sector itself prefers the term ‘independent’. Bodies like the Independent Schools’ Information Service (ISIS) consciously strove for a change of name in the 1970s because ‘independence’ had more positive connotations, and made it easier to advance the political arguments against state monopoly and in favour of parental freedom (Howarth, 1972; ISIS, 1974). It is arguable that the Thatcher government has since rehabilitated the term ‘private’ by associating it not with privilege but with greater choice, efficiency, and innovation - although ‘independence’ is also used to contrast favourably with faceless, state-run bureaucratic institutions (Seldon, 1981). Critics wanting to emphasize fee-controlled access prefer such terms as ‘fee-paying’ or ‘commercial’ as well as ‘private’ (Halsey, 1981; Halsey et al., 1984), and may well argue the illogicality of applying ‘independent’ to schools (especially those with charitable status) which are substantially subsidized both directly and indirectly from public funds to the tune of at least £500m per year (Edwards et al., 1985; Pring, 1986, 1987; Walford, 1987). From this ideologically-loaded list of terms, we shall describe the schools as ‘independent’ and the sector as ‘private’ - a compromise which draws attention both to the organizational autonomy of the schools and the financially-selective character of most of their intake. Though it is less used today than in the past, we shall also continue to use the traditional but rather confusing term ‘public schools’ to describe those independent schools which comprise the elite segment of the private sector and which, as we shall see later, were the object of the Public Schools Commission’s first inquiry in 1965-8.

The scope and function of the private sector

The proportion of children attending independent schools increases markedly in the later stages of schooling. Just over 6 per cent of 9-year-olds and about 8 per cent of 14-year-olds are privately educated, compared with 18 per cent of sixth formers in school, while more than a quarter of school leavers with the three passes at GCE Advanced-level (which constitute the main passport to higher education and to high-status occupations) come from the private sector (Halsey et al., 1984; DES 1987a; Welsh Office, 1986). These figures are slightly lower than in the immediate post-war period, but noticeably higher than when the Wilson government established the Public Schools Commission in 1965. At that time, the sector accounted for only 5 per cent of 14-year-olds and 14 per cent of 17-year-olds (compared with 8 per cent and 22 per cent in 1946), and there were still those in the Labour Party who were hopeful that it might in time conveniently wither away. Its declining share of the market, a consequence of minor schools closing rather than of falling rolls in the market-leaders, was attributed to the success of maintained grammar schools in preparing their pupils to compete for university places (including those at Oxford and Cambridge) and for high-status jobs. The increase over the past 20 years partly reflects a middle-class flight from a public sector which had lost the ‘attractions’ of academically-selective schools, as virtually all local education aurhorities (LEAs) reorganized their secondary schools on comprehensive lines. However, it was reinforced by the Labour government’s decision in the mid-1970s to end the direct-grant arrangements which had hitherto allowed some schools to be directly funded by central government and thus independent of LEAs - a decision which led most of those ‘semi-independent’ schools to enter the ‘fully independent’ sector. In the 1980s the trend has been for independent schools to experience a small increase in their actual intakes, but a larger increase in their share of the market as a result of falling rolls in state secondary schools. Thus the 1988 ISIS census showed the fifth successive rise in pupil numbers and the second largest increase.

Within England and Wales, the overall figures hide some important variations. There is an uneven distribution of independent schools as a consequence of decisions made long ago by philanthropic individuals and merchant companies to found ‘free’ grammar schools, and of more recent (mainly Victorian) decisions to transform some of them into boarding schools with national appeal or to found new schools to socialize the children of the new industrial ruling class. The outcome is a concentration of independent grammar schools in some of the great trading cities (London, Bristol, Liverpool, and Manchester), and of boarding schools in the affluent and densely populated south-east of England (Bamford, 1974).

Furthermore, it is important to emphasize how internally differentiated the private sector is, especially as discussion of it has been so largely dominated by the ‘public schools’. As we stated earlier, the term ‘public schools’ is reserved for the elite segment of the private sector. Originally applied to old foundations endowed to provide for ‘poor scholars’, they had become the preserve of the ruling elite by the mid-nineteenth century, offering boarding education and providing the context within which the sons of the new industrial ruling class were socialized into the professions and the style and manners of the gentry. The core of the elite segment identified by the Taunton Commission in 1867, comprised Eton, Harrow, Westminster, Winchester, Charterhouse, Rugby, and Shrewsbury. Even these schools were very different...

Indice dei contenuti

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Contributors
• List of tables
• List of figures
• Introduction: Private schools policy and practice in comparative perspective
• Chapter 1 England and Wales: The role of the private sector
• Chapter 2 Scotland: Changes in government policy towards private schools
• Chapter 3 United States of America: Contours of continuity and controversy in private schools
• Chapter 4 Canada: Private schools
• Chapter 5 Australia: Private schools and public policy
• Chapter 6 France: Catholic schools, class security, and the public sector
• Chapter 7 Federal Republic of Germany: The situation and development of the private school system
• Chapter 8 The Netherlands: Benefits and costs of privatized public services - lessons from the dutch educational system
• Chapter 9 Japan: Private education
• Conclusion
• Index