The Government's policy for the future of education in this country was outlined in the White Paper on Educational Reconstruction issued in July 1943. The main framework of that policy has been constructed in the Education Bill now before Parliament, but as indicated in the White Paper, there are certain matters in which it has been found desirable to seek the advice of Committees specially constituted for the purpose. Among these matters is the relation of the Public Schools to the general educational system.

In July 1942 the President set up a Committee under the Chairmanship of Lord Fleming to advise him on means whereby the association between the Public Schools to the general educational system of the country could be developed and extended. The terms of reference covered, not only the Public Schools as generally understood, but a number of Direct Grant and Aided Secondary Schools which have, as one of the conditions of grant, accepted annually a certain minimum percentage of pupils from Public Elementary Schools. The Committee therefore faced a dual problem.

The Committee have now completed their consideration of the terms of reference and have presented their recommendations in a unanimous Report. Those recommendations will require careful and detailed consideration by the Board. In the meantime, the Board have decided to publish the Report which, they feel sure, will command a wide interest. In doing so, they desire to express their indebtedness to the Committee and their Chairman.

July, 1944.

[title page]

BOARD OF EDUCATION

THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS
AND THE GENERAL EDUCATIONAL
SYSTEM

Report of the Committee on Public Schools appointed
by the President of the Board of Education in
July 1942

"Nova et recentia jura vetustate in
consuetudinem vertuntur"
(Tacitus, Hist, IV. 65)

Crown Copyright Reserved

LONDON
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[page ii]

The Hon. Lord Fleming, M.C. (Chairman)
    Senator of the College of Justice in Scotland.
Alderman Sir James Aitken
    Chairman, Lancashire Education Committee.
*Mr. J. G. Barrington-Ward
    Student and Tutor of Christ Church, Oxford.
Mr. A. L. Binns, M.C.
    Education Officer, West Riding of Yorkshire.
Mr. Robert Birley,
    Headmaster of Charterhouse.
Dr. M. Dorothy Brock, O.B.E.
    Headmistress of the Mary Datchelor School for Girls.
†Mr. G. Chester
    General Secretary, National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives.
Mr. Harold Clay
    Acting Assistant Secretary, Transport and General Workers' Union.
‡Mr. G. D. H. Cole
    Chairman of the Nuffield College Social Reconstruction Survey.
Sir Edward Crowe, K.C.M.G.
    Governor of the Harpur Trust, Bedford.
Professor W. J. Gruffydd, M.P.
    University of Wales.
Mr. M. L. Jacks
    Director of Oxford University Department of Education.
The Rt. Rev. and Rt. Hon. the Lord Bishop of London.
§Mr. A. C. Macdiarmid
    Chairman and Managing Director of Stewarts and Lloyds.
Mr. A. E. Nichols, M.C.
    Headmaster of Hele's School, Exeter.
Mr. H. N. Penlington
    Treasurer of the National Union of Teachers.
Dr. A. W. Pickard-Cambridge
    Late Vice-Chancellor of Sheffield University.
Sir Ernest Pooley, K.C.V.O.
    Clerk to the Drapers' Company.
Mr. C. L. Reynolds
    Headmaster of Nottingham High School.
Miss E. M. Tanner
    Headmistress of Roedean School.

Assessors appointed by the Board of Education:
Mr. G. G. Williams
Mr. F. R. G. Duckworth, C.B.E.
Mr. W. J. Williams

Joint Secretaries:
Mr. R. N. Heaton
Mr. P. Wilson

Clerk:
Mr. W. Hall

*Mr. Barrington-Ward joined the Committee on 10th June, 1943.
†Mr. Chester joined the Committee on 10th June, 1943, and resigned on 14th September, 1943, on account of ill-health.
‡Mr. Cole resigned from the Committee on 14th May, 1943, on account of Ill-health.
§Mr. Macdiarmid resigned from the Committee on 1st June, 1943, on account of pressure of business.

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Page

[page iv]

Page

[page 1]

To the Right Hon. R. A. Butler, M.P.,
    President of the Board of Education.

SIR,

You appointed us in July, 1942 with the following terms of reference:-

"To consider means whereby the association between the Public Schools (by which term is meant schools which are in membership of the Governing Bodies' Association or Headmasters' Conference) and the general educational system of the country could be developed and extended; also to consider how far any measures recommended in the case of boys' Public Schools could be applied to comparable schools for girls."

The Committee has sat on 32 days and its Sub-Committees on 23 days. In July, 1943 a Drafting Sub-Committee was appointed, consisting of seven members under the Chairmanship of Dr. Pickard-Cambridge.

A list of the witnesses whom we have consulted, both individuals and associations, is given in Appendix C. We should like to take this opportunity of expressing our thanks and appreciation to all those who have assisted us with oral or written evidence or with information and statistics relating to our enquiry.

We desire to record the debt which we owe to the Secretaries of the Committee. During the past year Mr. R. N. Heaton has had other duties which have prevented him from giving as much time to the work of the Committee as he had previously been able to give, but he has always been ready with valuable help and advice. During this period a greatly increased amount of secretarial work has fallen on Mr. P. Wilson, and we wish to express our warm appreciation of all that he has done for us. To the industry and patience which he has shown, no less than to the lucidity and resourcefulness of his style, the Committee has been greatly indebted throughout the preparation of the Report. We desire also to thank the Clerk, Mr. W. Hall, and his predecessor, Mr. J. Kennedy, for their efficient services to the Committee and their helpfulness in many important respects.

We beg now to present our Report, which is unanimous.

[page 2]

1. Our terms of reference define a Public School as one represented on the Governing Bodies' Association or the Headmasters' Conference, and it is necessary to emphasise, at the outset, the wide difference between this meaning of the term and the popular notion of a Public School. Most people, when they speak of a Public School, mean a Boarding School, and are probably thinking only of a small number of expensive independent Boarding Schools. The Public Schools, according to our terms of reference, consist of 89 independent schools and 99 schools which are aided either by grants from the Board of Education or by the Local Education Authorities. Thus, more than half the Public Schools with which we are concerned already receive aid in some form or other from public funds, and about half are entirely or mainly Day Schools. At some of the latter, the education given is no more expensive than that given at many Aided and Maintained schools outside our terms of reference, and is not appreciably different in quality or kind.

2. We are, then, faced with two problems which we have found to overlap:

The first is that of associating schools which are wholly independent with the general system of grant-aided and publicly controlled schools; this, though mainly a problem of Boarding Schools is not entirely so, since a few of the independent Public Schools are mainly for Day Pupils.

The second is that of extending and developing the association which already exists between a number of grant-aided Public Schools, both Day and Boarding, and the general system of schools which are in an administrative relation with the Local Education Authorities.

4. The question of associating the Public Schools with the general educational system has engaged public interest for considerably longer than the two years during which we have been sitting, but our enquiry is the first systematic attempt made at the request of the Board of Education to formulate concrete proposals for solving the various issues involved. Our Committee was set up in response to a request made to the President of the Board of Education jointly by the Governing Bodies' Association and the Headmasters' Conference, both of which had been considering for some time previously by what means the Schools which they represented could be of service to a wider range of pupils. Both bodies had in mind, primarily, the possibilities of making available a boarding education in suitable cases for pupils whose parents could not afford the whole or even part of the Boarding School fees; but it was their wish that any Committee which was set up should consider

[page 3]

also the future of the Public Day Schools, both the few which are independent of public grant and control, and the very much larger number which are grant-aided by the Board or by the Local Education Authorities. Our terms of reference have enabled us to examine both these questions. The scope of our enquiry was still further extended by an answer given in Parliament by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education indicating that we should not be precluded from considering the circumstances of schools outside our terms of reference so far as they might be relevant to the subject of our enquiry.

5. Before sketching the general design of our Report we must refer to certain suggestions which were made to us by witnesses and which, if we had accepted them, would have determined closely the whole remaining course of our Report and might have made it unnecessary for us to continue our enquiry.

6. The first was made by those who are uncompromisingly hostile to the continued existence of independent Public Schools and who urge that their endowments and premises should be appropriated by public authorities and put to a number of uses quite different from those they now serve, e.g. short term boarding establishments; schools for advanced studies for Secondary School pupils; Youth Centres; Junior Universities; schools of instruction in special subjects like music, art and handicraft; Adult Education Colleges; Training Colleges for Teachers and Youth Leaders; Summer Schools; holiday centres; or Day Schools for their local areas.

7. These are admirable objects and accommodation for carrying them out may well have to be provided in the future. But this is not to say that such accommodation should be secured by destroying schools that are doing good work. In any case the Public Schools could not be appropriated to other purposes without a kind and degree of compulsion which we think would be repugnant to public opinion. They could not very well be singled out for specially unfavourable treatment. If the Public Schools were abolished, it would be necessary also to eliminate all Independent Schools and, even if this far reaching step were taken, it would be impossible, without dictatorial interference with personal freedom, to debar parents from sending their children out of the country (to the continent of Europe or America or the Dominions and Colonies) to be educated, possibly in schools newly established for the purpose. There would be a great demand for private tutors, and the resulting inequalities and abuses would almost certainly compel the extension of the ban on Independent Schools to cover private teaching generally. If, on the other hand, the ban on Independent Schools were not made absolute, it would inevitably happen that new schools would be founded to take the place of the Public Schools which had been destroyed; these new schools would be exclusive to a degree impossible in the Public Schools if their express desire for an extension of their range is fulfilled.

8. Other witnesses, though not those representing the Local Authorities themselves, advocated that the Public Schools should be brought wholly under the control of the Local Education Authorities. This raises the same issue of compulsion as is discussed above. But quite apart from this, we do not think the suggestion well suited to the circumstances of schools most of which draw their pupils from all over the country and from abroad. We think, however, that any national scheme of association ought to offer scope for spontaneous agreements between individual Public Schools and Local Education Authorities, and we recognise that, without the interest and active co-operation of the Local Education Authorities at all stages, no plan is likely to succeed. This is recognised by most of the Public Schools themselves, and we have kept it in mind throughout our enquiry. Hitherto, there has been little contact and some lack

[page 4]

of understanding between the Public Schools and the Local Education Authorities. Obviously, it will take time for the many possibilities of co-operation to come to full fruition. But we are strongly of the opinion that the mutual suspicion that now exists has no sufficient justification, and we think that most of it would be dissipated by such practical opportunities for co-operation as our Schemes would encourage.

9. A third suggestion was made by some who are agreed that it is not practicable to abolish the Public Schools or to absorb them wholly within the system administered by Local Education Authorities but do not think that the Public Schools possess qualities which make their association with the general system worth securing, or do not consider that it would be right to spend public money in any way to enlarge the scope of schools which are more expensive than those which are now within the general system. Their advice is to leave the Public Schools as they are, allowing them to work out their own future without receiving any payments from public funds and without making any contribution, other than a purely voluntary one at their own cost, to the education of pupils whose parents are unable to afford Public and Preparatory School fees. But this would be, not only to abandon the task entrusted to us, but to throw away a unique opportunity for incorporating the Public Schools with their distinctive characteristics into the general system, and of helping to close, in the world of schools, a social breach that follows and aggravates, if it does not actually cause, the much more serious divisions in society at large. We do not believe that the country as a whole would be prepared to allow such a surrender to the difficulties which are unavoidable in associating two systems which for many years have followed separate paths. If the compulsory abolition or absorption of the Public Schools is ruled out, we cannot agree that the only alternative is that nothing should be done at all.

10. To abandon the attempt would be equally unfortunate whether the economic circumstances of the future are such as to favour the survival of Independent Schools with high fees or not. If the Public Schools, with their status and method of entry unaltered, are full and prosperous, there is every danger that they will become more than ever a special preserve. But if, on the other hand, economic conditions are unfavourable to them, there is no reason to suppose that they will quickly disappear. If they are short of pupils, they will last for some time in an atmosphere wholly unconducive to the true educational welfare of the pupils. The result would be an increasing competition for pupils between the various schools and this would be socially and educationally undesirable.

11. We are agreed then, in rejecting the proposal to abolish the Public Schools and we recognise that any changes we recommend for enabling them to be associated with the general system must be accomplished by voluntary means. We are equally agreed that things cannot be left as they are, with the independent Public Schools confined almost exclusively to the children of those able to pay the full fees, with the result that, with their social prestige and their very real educational importance, they are almost entirely outside the public system of education and out of due relation to the nation as a whole.

12. The proposals we advance aim at making possible the voluntary association with the general educational system of all Public Schools, whatever their financial position, without any sacrifice of educational standards or of reasonable freedom in such matters as school government, curriculum, religion, and general educational principle. We are able to put these proposals forward unanimously, in the expectation that, if they are generally accepted, they afford good prospects of closing the gap which still separates the Public Schools from the rest of the educational system. It will be fatal to our schemes,

[page 5]

and most unfortunate for education generally, if any school or group of schools, by standing out, creates among the schools of the country a fresh social distinction which can scarcely fail to be more serious than the old.

13. Our first task, was to examine the history and characteristics of the Public Schools with a view to finding out what contribution of value they might be expected to make to the general system if suitable Schemes of Association could be framed. This is done in Chapters 1 to 4.

14. The historical sketch contained in Chapters 1 to 3 has two main purposes; first, to consider the historical causes for the present relation of the Public Schools to the general system of education and the social factors which have determined the development of these schools; secondly, to examine some of the characteristic features of the independent Public Schools at the present time against this historical background. This led us naturally to consider their special characteristics as schools with a long boarding tradition.

15. Accordingly, in Chapter 4, we set out the characteristics of Day and Boarding Schools with a view to distinguishing the special advantages of a boarding education and deciding the circumstances in which such an education might, with profit to the pupils selected, be made more widely available both within and without the range of schools defined by our terms of reference. Our conclusion is that there are characteristic values both in a Day and in a Boarding education but that the latter should certainly be made more widely available.

16. Our proposed Schemes of Association are set out in Chapter 5 and in this Chapter we also attempt to place our proposals in their proper relation to other educational reforms contained in the present Education Bill.

17. In Chapter 6 we consider further some of the problems connected with the selection of pupils for a Boarding School education.

18. The financial implications of our Schemes are considered in Chapter 7.

19. Chapter 8 is concerned with Girls' Schools in so far as these require separate consideration. But our proposals apply equally to Boys' and Girls' Schools and we have tried throughout the Report to consider both together. Chapter 8 is necessary, however, to establish some points of particular importance to Girls' Schools and to explain the differences between their history and traditions and those of Boys Public Schools, with consequential small differences of emphasis in the applicability of the proposed Schemes to each.

20. Chapter 9 deals with the application of our proposals to Wales.

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21. We do not consider that it is our duty in this Report to give any detailed history of the Public Schools. The Public Schools, as defined in our terms of reference, cover so wide an area of the field of Secondary Education in this country that to do so would entail a survey of the whole story of the rise and development of the English Grammar School. Further, our inquiry has been directed towards a specific end, that of finding means to further the association between the Public Schools and the general system of education. We have, therefore, to consider not so much the history of these schools as the historical causes for their present relationship with that system. Our inquiry has forced us to consider social questions arising out of the present relationship and likely to affect that of the future, and we therefore pay particular attention to the social factors which have determined the development of the schools. We have found also that a number of questions have presented themselves to us for special study, ranging from very general issues, such as the nature and value of education in a boarding school, to such narrower problems as the use to be made of the endowments of the schools. To understand these questions some consideration of the history of the schools is necessary. Finally, the Public Schools, as living organisms, with traditions in many cases lasting for centuries, can hardly be understood at all without some consideration of their past.

22. We have already noted that the definition of the term given in our terms of reference is somewhat wider than that found in common usage. The inclusion of the schools, here defined as Public Schools, in one association, either the Headmasters' Conference or the Governing Bodies' Association, is in itself of significance, and, as we shall show, it reflects factors in the problem of great importance. But the Public Schools, whether thought of as those schools represented on these two bodies or as the more limited number covered by the use of the term in ordinary speech, have a common origin, the Mediaeval Grammar School. In this section of the Report we endeavour to show how it came about that a number of these Grammar Schools came to be separated from the rest, first in public opinion, and then in recent years in their administrative position, remembering throughout that in this country hard and fast lines of distinction will usually be looked for in vain.

23. The Grammar Schools of this country grew up during the Middle Ages as the most important development of the Church's direct concern with Education. As the name shows, they were intended for the study of the first and basic subject of the seven "liberal arts". The education given in a Grammar School led directly to that given at a University. The aim of a Grammar School education was strictly vocational; it was necessary for any one intending to become a clerk, and so to enter, not only the Church, in the hands of which lay much of the normal administration of the country, but also the profession of the Law. It has been computed that there were some 300 Grammar Schools in England in the later Middle Ages. The numbers attending these schools varied greatly. Some had over a hundred pupils, none probably over two hundred, many had thirty to fifty, and a number only four or five.

24. At first sight it would appear that social distinctions played no part in deciding which pupils attended these schools. It is certain that in a mediaeval Grammar School the sons of the local landowners and of the merchants of

[page 7]

the towns might be found together. It must, indeed, be recognised that until late in the Middle Ages the great mass of the population was tied to the soil, often in a servile condition, but this did not mean that peasant boys never attended these schools. The very fact that at Eton it was laid down that the sons of serfs might not be admitted, proves that such boys did sometimes attend the Grammar Schools. (1) It was a normal custom on a Manor for a serf to pay for permission to be granted to his son to do so. (2) There was no social distinction between the village priest and his flock and he would almost certainly have been to a Grammar School. In the Statute of Artificers of 1406, though, as with much mediaeval legislation, it must be taken rather as the expression of a principle to be aimed at than as a definite enactment, 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." (2a) But we cannot suppose that during the Middle Ages more than a small minority of the labouring population of the country received any education at all. Further, it is clear that the sons of the greater landowners did not usually go to Grammar Schools. They would receive their education in the houses of the nobility or the great ecclesiastics, an education suited to the life they were expected afterwards to lead.

25. It is against a background of considerable social diversity that we must consider an educational experiment in the latter half of the fourteenth century, which is usually taken as marking the origin of the Public Schools in this country. In 1382 William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester, founded "a perpetual college of poor scholars clerks by the city of Winchester". The purpose of the College was to provide scholars for his foundation of New College at Oxford. In his foundation charter of Winchester College he noted that there were many poor scholars whose means barely sufficed for them to make the necessary study of grammar. The College was to consist of seventy "poor and needy" scholars who were to live as a community (collegialiter). (3) Further, among the statutes for his foundation are to be found the words:-

"We allow, however, sons of noble and influential persons, special.friends of the said college. to the number of ten to be instructed and informed in grammar within the said college, without charge to the college, so that by occasion thereof prejudice; loss or scandal in no wise arise to the Warden, priests, scholars, clerks or any of the servants of the same." (4)

(1) (Statute III) Heywood and Wright: Statutes of King's College, Cambridge, and Eton College. 480.

(2) H. S. Bennett: Life on the English Manor, 288 ff.

(2a) 7 Henry IV c. 17.

(3) T. F. Kirby: Annals of Winchester, 440 ff.

(4) Ibid, 490.

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the link with the University, the communal life, the association in one school of boys whose education was paid for by the endowment and those sent there by their parents at their own charges, may be seen the essential features of the English Public School, to use the term in its commonly accepted sense. The foundation of Eton College by King Henry VI in 1440 was openly based on that of Winchester. The Statutes stated that the College should consist of a Provost, seventy poor Scholars, ten Priest-Fellows, ten Chaplains, ten Clerks, sixteen Choristers, a Schoolmaster, and Usher, and thirteen poor infirm men. (5) The sons of noblemen and of special friends of the College, up to the number of twenty, were to sleep and board in the College, provided that no expense was incurred for them beyond that of their instruction in Grammar, and others, who were to dine with the Scholars in Hall, were also to be instructed free. (6)

27. None of the provisions in these Statutes has been the subject of greater discussion than those which deal with the financial condition of the scholars. They are described in both William of Wykeham's and Henry VI's Statutes as being "poor and needy" (pauperes et indigentes). (7) The oath taken by every scholar at Winchester on reaching the age of fifteen ran, "I, N., admitted to the College of St. Mary, near Winchester, swear that I have nothing whereby I know that I can spend more than five marks (£3 6s. 8d.) a year." (8)

28. It is impossible satisfactorily to compute the value of money of the fifteenth century in terms of that of the present day. Five marks was the annual salary of the headmaster's assistant at Winchester at the time, so it is clear that the upper limit was not fixed to ensure that the scholars were desperately necessitous cases. On the other hand, it is difficult to suppose that the words were introduced merely as a matter of form. The whole tenor of William of Wykeham's intentions was that boys should be educated for the Church, who otherwise would be lost to its service through the inability of their parents to afford the necessary education. (9)

29. But if it is agreed that the intentions of the mediaeval founders were certainly eleemosynary [charitable], we cannot affirm that it of necessity follows that the strict letter of these intentions should rule the administration of their endowments today. We must recall that the provisions regulating the scholarships of these foundations were reviewed and revised by Parliament during the last

(5) (Statute II) Heywood and Wright: op. cit. 478.

(6) (Statutes XVI, XVIII) Heywood and Wright: op. cit. 531, 2; 534-6.

(7) Kirby: Annals of Winchester, 457. Heywood and Wright: op. cit. 480.

(8) Kirby: op cit. 465. (An oath to the same effect was taken at Eton. Heywood and Wright: op. cit. 489.)

(9) A. F. Leach: History of Winchester College, 92 ff., claims that the phrase, "pauperes et indigentes" was a common form of words, made necessary by legislation of the previous century forbidding the appropriation of churches except for charitable purposes. Without accepting his argument that this common form arose as a result of the Constitutions of the legates, Otto and Ottobon, for which he advances no proof, it may be agreed that the use of the set form of words raises, in itself, a doubt whether they were normally interpreted very literally. Leach is certainly at fault in suggesting that the education of the labouring classes was not thought of in the fourteenth century. He cites a number of instances of boys from landowning families going to Eton as scholars during the fifteenth century. (V.C.H. Buckinghamshire, II, 163.) The Letters Patent of the Foundation of Charterhouse (W. Haig Brown: Charterhouse, Past and Present, 60) refer to the education of "poor children or scholars." The first scholar, James Mullens, the son of a surgeon, was elected in 1613, and the Governors decided in 1621 that he was "to be sent home to his father if it be true that the latter is worth £400 per annum". One of the earliest scholars, Joseph Henshawe, was the son of the Solicitor-General of Ireland, and can hardly have been a poor child. (Marsh and Crisp: Alumni Carthusiani, 1, 2.)

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century. If we wish to suggest changes in the method of entry of the Public Schools, and in particular to make this entry available to a less restricted range of society than is now the case, we must base our reasons for doing so on the present needs of the country, whose children they were founded to educate, rather than on the inevitably uncertain interpretation of phrases in use five or six hundred years ago.

30. It must be remembered, however, that the Colleges of Winchester and Eton were exceptional at the time of their foundation. The great majority of English schoolboys received their education in local day schools. It is not necessary to describe here in any detail the rise of the Grammar Schools and their development until recent times. A number have a history extending back into the Middle Ages, others are closely linked historically with mediaeval origins, many were founded during the sixteenth and the early years of the seventeenth centuries. The years between 1540 and 1620 were a period of great expansion in the commerce and industry of this country, an expansion which may be compared in its nature with that of the period of the Industrial Revolution. It was doubtless this expansion which made necessary the institution of so large a number of local schools that a writer in the year 1577 could say, "There are not many corporate towns now under the Queen's dominion that have not one grammar school, at least with sufficient living for a master and usher appointed to the same". (10) During this period the practice had grown up by which men who had made fortunes out of the new opportunities of the age often used some of their wealth to endow schools for their own neighbourhood, and this meant that no small part of the resources of the nation were returned to it for the education of its future citizens. It is quite impossible to make any distinction during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries between the great majority of those Grammar Schools which were later to develop into Public Schools and the rest. It is clear, however, that Winchester, Eton and Westminster were regarded as holding a special position. Westminster had been refounded by Queen Elizabeth in 1560 after the second dissolution of the monastery to which a school of long standing had been attached. The two earlier foundations and, after 1560, Westminster are cited together in a number of Parliamentary Statutes of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as exceptions from some general enactment affecting the schools generally. (11) There is no doubt, also, that two large day schools in London, St. Paul's, founded by Dean Colet in 1512 and entrusted to the Mercers' Company, and the Merchant Taylors' Company School, founded in 1561, gained a particular standing in popular regard, and the same was true of two distinctly charitable foundations, Christ's Hospital, founded in 1553 as part of an extensive scheme of assistance for the poor and sick of London and under the control of the Corporation of the City of London, and Charterhouse, founded in 1611 by Thomas Sutton, as a Hospital for "poor, aged, maimed, needy or impotent people" and a "free school" for the education of "poor children and scholars". As an example of the extreme variety of organisation to be found in the schools, it may be mentioned that at St. Paul's all the pupils

(10). W. Harrison: A Description of England.

(11) e.g. 27 Henry VIII c. 42. 1 Edward VI c. 14. I Elizabeth c. 21, 14 Charles II c. 4. See also Journals of the House of Commons, II, 827, 830-1, 972; VI, 219. 307. (The exemption accorded to Eton and Winchester in the Acts abolishing First Fruits and tenths and dissolving the Chantries was due to their connection with Colleges at the Universities. They had been similarly exempt from the payment of subsidies in 1496. Leach: History of Winchester College, 261.)

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were day boys and received a free education, except for an entrance fee of fourpence, (12) at Merchant Taylors', one hundred boys were educated free, fifty paid two shillings and twopence a quarter, and a hundred five shillings a quarter; (13) at Christ's Hospital the children were educated and maintained free, though evidence of a lack of means was a requisite for admission; (14) and at Charterhouse, while the foundationers were educated and maintained free, other boys were from the start received at the school as fee-paying pupils.

31. It is no easy task to determine how far boys from different social classes met together either in the schools just referred to or in the ordinary Grammar Schools of the country. At Shrewsbury in the sixteenth century were to be found Sir Philip Sidney and Fulke Greville (later Lord Brooke), though it was founded mainly as a school for the children of the county and county town of Shropshire. (15) At Repton during the seventeenth century there were educated the four sons of the first Earl of Chesterfield, the four sons of Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Ardglass, and also Samuel Shaw, son of the local blacksmith and later Master of Ashby-de-la-Zouche Grammar School, and John Woodward, the son of a local farmer, who was later apprenticed to a London linen draper and was to become Professor of Physics at Gresham College; (16) Richard Neile, who left Westminster in 1580, and rose to be Archbishop of York, was the son of a poor tallow chandler. With him in College was John Aungier, a son of the Treasurer of Gray's Inn, who was reputed to be "very learned and wealthy". Striking evidence may be found in the debate which took place in 1540 on the future of the Grammar School of Canterbury between the Commissioners, headed by Lord Rich, and Archbishop Cranmer. "As for the other, husbandmen's children, they were more meet, they said, for the plough and to be artificers than to occupy the place of the learned sort. So that they wished none else to be put to school but only gentlemen's children". To this Cranmer replied, "Poor men's children are many times endued with more singular gifts of nature, which are also gifts of God, as with eloquence, memory, apt pronunciation, sobriety, and such like, and also commonly more apt to apply their study than is the gentleman's son delicately nurtured". Hereunto it was on the other part replied that, "it was meet for the ploughman's son to go to plough and the artificer's son to apply the trade of his parent's vocation, and the gentleman's children are meet to have the knowledge

(12) There is evidence of non-foundationers at St. Paul's paying fees and boarding with the headmaster, within twenty years of tho foundation of the school. (M. J. F. McDonnell: History of St. Paul's School, 90, 91.)

(13) H. B. Wilson: History of Merchant Taylors' School, 12, 13.

(14) In 1581 mention is made of 64 "Town children" at Christ's Hospital, 25 of whom paid fees, besides the "House children" or foundationers. (E. H. Pearce: Annals of Christ's Hospital, 65, 66.) .

(15) A charter was granted by King Edward VI for the endowment of a Royal Free Grammar School at Shrewsbury from the appropriated tithes of certain prebendal livings, at the petition of "the bailiffs and burgesses and inhabitants of the town of Shrewsbury in the county of Salop as of very many other our subjects of our whole neighbouring country there." The school was not opened until 1562. The ordinances of 1577 gave preference in the election to Scholarships at St. John's College, Cambridge, from the School, first to the natives of Shrewsbury, then to sons of burgesses born in its suburbs, or in the parish of Chirbury, and lastly to all the natives of Shropshire. A scale of admission fees then drawn up gave preferential treatment to natives of Shropshire and the sons of burgesses of Shrewsbury. An Act of 1798 gave the sons of burgesses for the first time the right of free tuition. (Report of Public Schools Commission. I. 303--6 II. 589-604.)

(16) A. Macdonald: Short History of Repton, 111-114. (cf. R. H. Tawney: Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century, 135. "Among the first twenty-two names on the register of Repton there are five gentlemen, four husbandmen, nine yeomen, two websters, or weavers, a carpenter and a tanner.")

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of government and rule in the commonwealth; for we have as much need of ploughmen as of any other state; all sorts of men may not go to school". "I grant", replied the Archbishop, "much of your meaning herein as needful in a commonwealth, but yet to utterly exclude the ploughman's son and the poor man's son from the benefit of learning, as though they were utterly unworthy of having the gifts of the Holy Ghost bestowed upon them as well as upon others is as much as to say that Almighty God should not be at liberty to bestow his great gifts of grace upon any person ... Wherefore if the gentleman's son be apt to learning let him be admitted; if not apt, let the poor man's child being apt enter his room". (17) The discussion proves at least, if proof be needed, that the sons of "gentlemen" and "husbandmen" were used to be educated together. But the essential fact is that the distinctions between the classes were not then as firmly drawn as they were to become in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It must be remembered, too, that the majority of the sons of the nobility were still educated at home or in the families of other nobles. However, if it was decided by their parents to send them to school, there were very few other schools to which they could be sent than those in which they would certainly meet boys drawn from much humbler walks of life. (18)

32. To this rule Eton was undoubtedly to a large extent an exception, and the same was true to a less degree of Winchester and Westminster. This is a factor in the development of the English Public School of considerable importance. Once it became established that there were schools to which the children of the aristocracy would more naturally be sent, a social distinction between the various schools was almost certain to follow. During the second half of the seventeenth century a new factor was introduced. Under Richard Busby, who was Headmaster from 1638 to 1695, Westminster was in a remarkably prosperous condition. Busby was the first headmaster to produce a really

(17) Strype: Memorials of Thomas Cranmer, Book I, Chapter 22. (Compare the Endowment Deed of King's School, Bruton (1519): "The said master for the time being shall freely teach all scholars of men's children as to him resort for learning and none other, indifferently after their capacities, as well the poor man's child as the rich." (Somerset and Dorset Notes and Queries, III, 245.))

(18) A certain amount of information can be obtained from some of the Registers of the Schools. Thus at Rugby between 1695-1699, of the 132 entries recorded, 22 came from Rugby and the immediate neighbourhood, 37 from the neighbouring Midlands and were probably mostly the sons of small farmers, 13 came from more distant parts of England, 8 were the sons of Midland Rectors, 4 the sons of a Precentor of Lincoln Cathedral, 31 were the sons of Esquires, probably considerable farmers, 8 the sons of Baronets and 3 the sons of Peers. (Of 5 there is no information.) (Rugby School Register, I (1675-1849), pp. 10-15.) At Merchant Taylors', out of 244 entries in 1645 and 1646, besides 55 who were sons of Merchant Taylors, 20 were the sons of Cloth-workers, 19 the sons of Gentlemen, 6 the sons of Esquires, 6 the sons of Yeomen, 11 the sons of Merchants, 5 the sons of clergy, and the occupations of the parents of other entries include those of Barber-surgeon, bookseller, blacksmith, labourer, plumber, cook, goldsmith, carpenter, basketmaker, iron monger, baker, poulterer, innkeeper, shoemaker, bricklayer, with sons of one Knight, a Fellow of Winchester College and the Secretary of the East India Company. (C. J. Robinson: Register of the Scholars of Merchant Taylors' School, 1562-1874, I, 166-178.) The first list of Liberty Boys, those elected head into College, on the Dormitory Tablets at Westminster, between about 1610 and 1650, includes the sons of an Earl, a Bishop, the Treasurer of the Middle Temple, a Procurator of the Arches, a London vicar, a Steward of Lord Zouch's estates in Northants, and a "Keeper of the Orchard at Whitehall". The second list, between about 1650 and 1673, includes the son of a Viscount, the grandson of an Earl, and the sons of a Dean of Westminster, an Irish Major, a Collector of Customs at Southampton, two country clergymen, and a London bookseller. (Welch: Alumni Westmonasterienses, 532; Barker and Stenning: Record of Old Westminsters.)

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successful school, in the sense that its pupils seemed to have an advantage over those of other schools in securing posts of distinction in later life. (19) Again, once it came to be felt that the pupils of certain schools enjoyed this advantage, another distinction was certain to be drawn, and the social structure of the country at that time was sure to cause it to coincide with that drawn by the factors of birth and ample means.

33. This is not to say that the ordinary Grammar Schools of the country all presented a dead level of uniformity. Shrewsbury, with 360 boys in 1581, was referred to by Camden in his Britannia in 1582 as "the Grammar School the best filled in all England". In the course of proceedings before the Court of Chancery in 1664, it was stated in evidence of Repton that "this deponent saith and doth verily believe that more gentlemen's sons have had their education there and been sent thence to the universities than hath been from any school in the north of England". (20) At Pocklington Grammar School over a hundred boys were admitted between 1650 and 1652, including members of prominent families in the North of England, such as those of Fairfax and Wilberforce. (21) At Rugby during the headmastership of Holyoake at the end of the seventeenth century there were nearly a hundred pupils, of whom eighty were not local boys. Such facts mean that, at the time, these schools had a reputation far beyond their immediate locality. They were necessarily schools for boarders as well as day boys. But none of them succeeded in building up a reputation that lasted for more than a short time, and it seems usually to have depended almost entirely on the fame of a single headmaster. The numbers at Repton had fallen by 1681 to twenty-eight boys, and in 1705, to "a few ragged children". There were only seventeen boys at Pocklington in 1827. (22) At Rugby the numbers fell to 52 in 1778, and at Shrewsbury when Dr. Butler became Headmaster in 1798 there were only two pupils.

34. Between 1570 and 1700 a number of schemes were advanced to found educational establishments exclusively for the sons of the nobility and the gentry. These "Academies" were often modelled on similar institutions on the continent, such as the Oratorian School at Juilly founded by Louis XIII of France and the Ritterakademien in Germany. It was intended that they should supplement the instruction provided in the ordinary Grammar Schools and Universities with the training deemed necessary for the natural rulers of the community. (23) Some of these projects were supported by very influential men and their complete failure in this country, compared with their popularity in France and Germany, is certainly significant of the strength of the position which the English Grammar Schools had attained. As late as 1730 Roger North, son of the fourth Lord North, who had been educated at Thetford Grammar School in the early years of Charles II's reign, could write in support of "public schools" that there were to be found in them" several ages and conditions, as poor boys and rich". (24)

35. Towards the beginning of the eighteenth century the term, "great school ", came into popular use with reference to a few of the best known Grammar Schools. Daniel Defoe in The Compleat English Gentleman (1728)

(19) Busby claimed to have educated thirteen out of the Bench of Bishops. Thomas Sprat, Bishop of Rochester, is said to have thanked God "that though no Westminster he was a Bishop". (J. Sargeaunt: Annals of Westminster School, 95.)

(20) A. Macdonald: Short History of Repton, 106.

(21) A. F. Leach: Foundation of Pocklington Grammar School. (Transactions of the East Riding Antiquarian Society. V, 93.)

(22) Leach: op. cit. 94.

(23) T. W. Jackson: Dr. Wallis' Letter against Mr. Maidwell, 1700. (Collectanea: First Series. Oxford Historical Society, 1885. 271 ff.)

(24) Roger North: Autobiography (ed. A. Jessopp), 12.

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refers to "the great schools of Eton, Winchester, Westminster, Felsted, Bishop Stortford, Canterbury and others, where the children - nay, the eldest sons - of some of the best families in England have been educated". (25) But the first of the local Grammar Schools to attain a position comparable to that of Eton and Westminster was Harrow. This School had been founded in 1571 by John Lyon "for the perpetual education, teaching and instruction of children and youth of the same parish". The Statutes allowed the Schoolmaster also to "receive over and above the youth of the inhabitants within this parish so many Foreigners as the whole may be well taught and applied and the place can conveniently contain, and of these Foreigners he may take such stipend and wages as he can get", (26) but the number of boys from outside Harrow who attended the school before the eighteenth century was very small. In 1713 James Brydges, Paymaster-General from 1705 to 1713, later Duke of Chandos, became a Governor of the School. He was a notable leader of the Whigs at a time when Eton was suspected for its Jacobite and High Church tendencies, and his patronage began the process of changing Harrow from a local school of no great repute into one of the most famous schools in England.

36. The rise of Harrow School showed that the demand for education not at any Grammar School, but at some particular one, could not be met by the few schools with an older reputation. That the numbers at Eton rose from 207 in 1678 to 378 in 1728 and 522 in 1765 proves the existence of the demand. At the same time we certainly cannot ignore the effect on the schools of successful or of weak Headmasters. The patronage of Chandos might have been of little avail without the work of Brian, Headmaster of Harrow from 1691 to 1731, and especially of Thackeray, Headmaster from 1746 to 1760, and it is significant that the numbers declined steeply during the disastrous headmastership of Cox between 1731 and 1746. In the same way the numbers at Eton fell from 378 to 212 within three years of the appointment of William George. It was the election of an outstanding headmaster, Thomas James, in 1777, which led directly to the rise of Rugby School. (27) He had been a boy at Eton and deliberately introduced its practices into his new school. No other of the Grammar Schools reached a position of comparable distinction before the end of the eighteenth century. But the fact that schools like Harrow and Rugby were meeting a permanent demand is shown by the fact that their popularity was no longer ephemeral, depending on a single headmaster. During the next fifty years the social conditions were such that any school which, for one reason or another, attracted the attention of the more wealthy members of the rising middle classes, no longer satisfied with the education provided at the local Grammar School, would gain a distinctive position. Boys would come to it from more

(25) Defoe: The Compleat English Gentleman (ed, K. Bülbring). 8. Cf. the letter written in 1700 by Dr. John Wallis, of Oxford, opposing a scheme laid before Parliament by Lewis Maidwell to found a "public academy", in which he stated "There is (he says) abroad, in many eminent cities an academy or schola illustris. Very well! Are there not many such at London, and about London? Paul's School, Westminster School, Merchant-Tailors School, that at the Charter-house, and at Christ Church Hospital (to name no more), are scholae illustres (eminent schools) in and about London ... And such scholae illustres there are in many other places of England (as Eaton, Winchester, and elsewhere). Of which promotions the sons of gentlemen are capable, as well as other persons." (Collectanea: First Series. Oxford Historical Society (1885, 324.)

(26) Compare the Statutes of Langport Grammar School (1668), where the Headmaster was not to receive fees for teaching the youths of Langport, but might demand payment from "foreigners". (V. C. H. Somerset, II, 456.) .

(27) In 1780 the Conduit Close Estate, in Gray's Inn Fields which belonged to the school, fell in, causing a very great appreciation in the value of the foundation. Mortgages on this estate had made it possible to construct new buildings for the school shortly before James' headmastership.

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distant parts of the country, and a school previously educating the sons of those living in the neighbourhood, with perhaps a few boarders in the headmaster's house, would find itself transformed into a boarding school with a national reputation.

37. While it is not true to say that education in the Middle Ages was universally free, there is little doubt that it was generally considered to be one of the duties of the Church to provide free education. In practice, fees were often paid by means of offerings to the schoolmaster and in similar unofficial ways. (28) When education in due course came also to be provided through charitable foundations by lay individuals or secular bodies, it was again usual for the founder to have in mind the provision of free education. But there are many exceptions. The accounts of Merton College Grammar School show fees being charged "pro scolagio" between 1277 and 1395. (29) In 1312 it was customary for fees to be paid by pupils at Beverley Grammar School, which was under the control of the Chapter and the Minster. (30) An Ordinance of 1482 allowed the Master of Ipswich Grammar School to receive eightpence a quarter for teaching the son of any burgess of the town. (31) We have noticed that, at Merchant Taylors' School, arrangements were made for three classes of pupils, two of which paid fees. At Harrow John Lyon had stipulated that the education of the parishioners should be free, but that fees should be charged to "foreigners". At Sedbergh Grammar School, founded in 1525, fees could be charged, but only for subjects other than Grammar. (32) A distinction must be drawn, however, between the introduction of fees for the scholars on the foundation and those charged to other boys receiving instruction at the school. In a good many cases it is clear that the latter

(28) According to the Will of John Gardyner, the Founder of Lancaster Royal Grammar School (1472), the Schoolmaster was "to instruct the boys coming there in grammar freely, unless perchance something shall be voluntarily offered by their friends to the said chaplain as recompense." (V. C. H. Lancashire, II, 563.) In a Chancery Suit in 1681, the Headmaster of Sedbergh, Postumus Wharton, was accused of exacting an entrance fee of twenty shillings from each boy, as well as fees of forty shillings annually, twenty shillings at Christmas, and "cockpennies" at Shrovetide. Wharton admitted to the entrance fees as being the "general practice" of his predecessors, to the payment of "cockpennies" as gratuities, for "the same practice at Shrovetide is and long hath been used in most neighbouring Free Schools", and to further gratuities from "some, though very few, particular persons of the wealthiest or ablest parents of quality of boys which were or are taught at the said school." (A. F. Leach: Early Yorkshire Schools. Yorkshire Archaeological Society, XXXIII, 426-8.) The Statutes of Nottingham Grammar School (now Nottingham High School) in 1513 allowed the Schoolmaster and Ushers to accept "potations, cockfighting or drinking" twice in the year only, and other "gifts or avails whereby the Scholars or their friends shall be charged" only "at the pleasure of the friends of the Scholars", but those of Manchester Grammar School in 1525 expressly forbade the Schoolmaster and Usher from accepting "any money or other rewards taking therefor as cockpenny, victor penny, potation penny or any other whatsoever it be". (V. C. H. Nottinghamshire, II, 220; V. C. H. Lancashire, II. 583, 4.) In the foundation deed of the Grammar School at Guildford (1512) it was expressly stated that the schoolmaster was "freely to teach all children being in the said school". In 1608 an entrance fee of 6d. was charged for all town boys and one of 1s. "if of the country or a stranger". (V. C. H. Surrey, II, 165. 170.)

(29) A. F. Leach: Educational Charters, 216-222, 301-305.

(30) A. F. Leach: Memorials Of Beverley Minster: The Chapter Act Book. I, 292, 3. (Surtees Society, XCVIII.) (The Succentor of the Minster demanded that all the Choristers should be admitted free to the Grammar School; the Headmaster claimed that only seven might claim this right. The Chapter held that all might enter free but that the Succentor was not to admit boys to wear the habit in the choir in order that they might defraud the Schoolmaster.)

(31) A. F. Leach: Educational Charters, 422.

(32) Foundation Ordinance of Lupton's Chantry. (A. F. Leach: Early Yorkshire Schools. Yorkshire Archaeological Society, XXXIII, 305.)

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class were always expected to pay. In others the original intention of the founder was soon forgotten. At Eton it was expressly stated by the Statutes that no fees for tuition should be charged even to those who were not scholars. But by the middle of the sixteenth century there is evidence of a Commensal being charged six shillings and fourpence as a "quarters stipend" (33) and in 1617 a Commensal was charged one pound between Lady Day and Midsummer for tuition. (34) During the eighteenth century the Headmaster of Eton received an entrance fee of a guinea from all boys in the school and an "annual gratuity" of four guineas from all those in the Upper School. This payment was quite unofficial and about one-third of the boys did not make it. (35) The explanation for this development, of which similar evidence may be found at other schools, is quite simple. The Grammar Schools were usually instituted as very small foundations. When the numbers rose, the salaries allotted for the Master, and perhaps also an Usher, became quite inadequate. Often it was necessary to employ an additional master, or perhaps more than one, for whose salaries no provision whatever had been made by the foundation. (36)

38. One example may be given which shows clearly how fees came to be introduced at a Grammar School during the seventeenth century and the social implications of this step. The Grammar School at Bury St. Edmunds had been refounded in 1550 as a Free School, and it was then laid down in the Statutes that the education should be free for all boys, whether living in the town or coming from outside. From the earliest years of the new foundation a number of boys came to the school from some way off and must have lived in the town as boarders. A school list of 1656 shows that there were then 86 boys in the school, and of these 26 came from Bury, of whom 13 were the sons of tradesmen, and the remainder were mostly boarders, not only from Suffolk, but from Cambridgeshire and Norfolk. They included several sons of knights and members of the well-known landowning families of East Anglia. The headmaster, Dr. Stephens, was a fervent royalist and at the

(33) H. C. Maxwell-Lyte: History of Eton College (4th edition), 156, 7. (The Commensals were the boys not on the foundation who boarded with the Provost or Headmaster.)

(34) Maxwell-Lyte: op. cit. 198, 9.

(35) Maxwell-Lyte: op. cit., 300. (The fee of four guineas was raised to six between 1809 and 1818. Third Report from the Select Committee on the Education of the Lower Orders, 1818, 71.)

(36) No doubt in many cases the fees for boys not on the foundation were settled by private negotiations between the Headmaster and the parent. This may be illustrated by an extract from a dialogue written for performance by the boys of King's School, Canterbury, by George Lovejoy, the Headmaster, in about 1675.

Philoponus (Headmaster): Sir, doth it please you to give me entrance of your Jacky, as a pledge of what you will pay me hereafter for his education.
Credulio (an old farmer): Huh! What is your demand?
Ph.: Half-a-crown, Sir.
Cr.: What? Half-a-crown, Sir?
Ph.: Yea, and I favour you too.
Cr.: Favour me no favours. Let him but read well and sbell well and say dic Latine when he cannot speak Latine, 'twill satisfy mee. But Zoft! My daughter Jenny gave but three pence for her entrance into Zamplers, and reading besides. And I must distrain for him Half-a-crown? Well, I'll point out two marks for his learning ... But, Sir, what demand you for a year's destruction?
Ph.: Two pounds sterling.
Cr.: Starling, or noe starling - I'll point you quarterly two marks ...
Ph.: O Dei immortales, scire volunt omnes, mercedem solvere nemo.
Cr.: Nemo me no nemos, I'll point thee no more.
Ph.: Sir, not to spend words in vain, I will have forty shillings sterling per annum, or take away your son as you brought him hither.
Cr.: Well then! I see I must give as much for my son's destruction as for fatting and bringing up my Boar at Christmas.
    (Woodruff and Cape: Schola Regia Cantuarensis, 142, 143.)

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Restoration he put "all the boarders, who were of the chief families in the country, into red cloaks, because the cavaliers about the court usually wore such, and scarlet was commonly called the king's colour. Of these he had near thirty to parade before him, through that observing town, to church; which made no vulgar appearance". Five years later the distinction between the boarders and the boys from Bury was recognised in new Statutes, which for the first time established the regular payment of fees by "foreigners", though it was laid down that the masters "shall teach all townsmen's children gratis, yet may receive what is voluntarily preferred". At the same time an entrance fee was to be charged for every "town child" of twelvepence, but for every "foreigner" of half-a-crown. (37)

39. The payment of fees by pupils actually on the foundation is a different question. In most schools such boys usually continued to receive free tuition, but there were exceptions. At Winchester a Visitation by two Commissioners in 1608 forbade the extortion of chamber rent or payment for being tutor from the scholars. (38) In the eighteenth century the scholars paid the Headmaster and Usher a "gratuity" of ten pounds a year. (39) At Westminster under Busby a King's Scholar paid a guinea a quarter to the Headmaster and half a guinea a year to the Second Master. (40) The "gratuities" paid to the Headmaster at Eton were levied on Collegers and Oppidans alike. A more serious imposition, however, was that of considerable charges for board and lodging on those boys who were on the foundation. Naturally this did not apply when such boys came from the immediate locality, as was usually the case in the smaller Grammar Schools. But at Westminster under Busby a King's Scholar had to pay on his admission about eleven guineas for furniture and clothing and eight guineas in fees to the seniors, besides regular payments for candles, to his bed-maker, etc. (41) At Winchester in 1711 a scholar paid various charges, amounting to sixteen shillings and sixpence on admission, two shillings and sixpence a quarter, and two shillings and eleven-pence annually. (42) At Eton in 1818 the Provost agreed that the maintenance charges for the collegers were "nearly equal with those of many of the Oppidans". (43) Naturally a development of this kind tended to restrict the class from which the foundationers were drawn.

(37) Roger North: Lives of the Norths (1826), III. 280. V. C. H. Suffolk. II, 319, 320.

(38) Wilkins: Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, IV, 434.

(39) Leach: History of Winchester College, 417. (In 1776 a Scrutiny by the Wardens and Fellows of New College condemned the practice, and it was recommended that the scholars should be advised to tell their parents not to present the gratuities. The only change effected was that the charge was in future entered in the bills as "gratuity, if allowed". In 1834 Goddard, who had retired from the headmastership in 1809, gave £25,000 to provide a fund to make up the deficit on the Headmaster's emoluments if the gratuity were finally abolished.)

(40) J. Sargeaunt: Annals of Westminster School. 101. It was claimed before the Public Schools Commission that, although the Statutes of Westminster ordered that the education of the scholars should be free, they had, in fact, never been observed on this point. The Statutes were never confirmed by Queen Elizabeth and it was suggested that it was because she disapproved of this rule. (Report of Public Schools Inquiry, II, 456.) In the reign of James I, however, the Court regarded Westminster as a Free School. "The King to the Masters and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge. Is especially interested in that College, as being a royal foundation, the fairest in the kingdom, and the resort of the free scholars of Westminster." (9 September, 1623). Calendar of State Papers: Domestic. CLII, 30.)

(41) Sargeaunt: op. cit. 101.

(42) Kirby: Annals of Winchester College, 383.

(43) Third Report from the Select Committee on tile Education of the Lower Orders, 1818, 72.

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40. It must be admitted that the rise of certain schools during the eighteenth century to a distinctive position was due very largely to the inadequacy of the Grammar Schools as a whole. They were hopelessly encumbered by an outworn tradition in education. Many had been founded to prepare boys in the Middle Ages for the Church and the Law; they all still kept rigidly to the curriculum needed for those professions at that time. Even the study of Greek, introduced at the Renaissance, affected only a number of them. But, further, they were generally quite inadequately staffed, even according to the practices of their time; the masters were ill paid, and the Governors constituted under the original statutes generally gave little attention to the schools. The eighteenth century was a period when great interest was shown in educational theory in this country, but the effect of this on the Grammar Schools was negligible. The influence of this interest might be seen in the curriculum of the Dissenting Academies and in that of a number of private schools which began to flourish, and some of the latter became for a time serious competitors of the old Grammar Schools. It is true that the few schools which had always held a somewhat distinctive position, such as Eton and Westminster, (1) and the very few that rose to fame for the first time during the eighteenth century, such as Harrow and Rugby, offered no different curriculum to that found in the ordinary Grammar Schools. But the very inadequacy of the Grammar Schools as a whole gave a peculiar opportunity to a capable headmaster in any one of them.

41. The first half of the nineteenth century was decisive in the history of the Public Schools. It saw some of them pass through a period of declining popularity and considerable public criticism. It witnessed on the other hand the careers of Samuel Butler, who revived in a most remarkable manner the fortunes of Shrewsbury during his headmastership from 1798 to 1836, and of Thomas Arnold, Headmaster of Rugby from 1828 to 1842, to whom more than any other man the Public Schools owe their standing in the country. During this period there were founded a number of new schools expressly on the model of the more famous Grammar Schools of the period. Finally, it was at this time that a certain type of school, rather than a small list of schools, came to be differentiated in the public mind, under the appellation of a Public School.

42. The criticism of the Public Schools was due to a number of causes. The tendency of the age, at least after 1830, was in favour of the reform of institutions of various kinds and the Public Schools, with the old Grammar Schools generally, proved themselves remarkably insusceptible to change. The traditional curriculum seemed to be more unsuited than ever to the needs of the time. A rise in the general standard of living brought into sharper contrast the primitive accommodation the schools provided for the pupils. Above all, the changes in the moral outlook of the nation led men to look askance at the largely unregulated and undisciplined life of the boys. On the other hand, the only alternative form of education appeared to be the private school, as the ordinary local Grammar School was in no better case, and, although a few of these private schools were successful, the majority were little better, if at all, than the Public Schools themselves.

(1) Winchester experienced remarkable fluctuations in esteem between 1660 and 1800. The number of scholars remained constant at 70. The number of "Commoners" varied from 79 in 1681, to 28 in 1700, 123 in 1734, 8 in 1751, 116 in 1766, 38 in 1788 and 98 in 1801. In 1751 the numbers were lower than at any time since the original foundation.

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43. Samuel Butler, who was appointed to the Headmastership of Shrewsbury in 1798, did more than revive a great school which had fallen on very evil days. He brought about a remarkable improvement in the general level of work in the school, besides raising the intellectual standard of the Sixth Form to great heights. He accomplished this by a thorough reorganisation of the work of the school and particularly by introducing a competitive system of promotion from form to form. In 1864, the Report of the Public Schools Commission stated, "The principal stimulant of work at Shrewsbury appears to be the desire to attain a high place in the school". (2) Butler also went further than any of his contemporaries in the Public Schools in introducing the study of English, History and Mathematics into the regular curriculum. His successor, Kennedy, added the study of French, in 1836, and German, and at about the same time Arnold made a similar change at Rugby. (3) Shrewsbury's success had a considerable influence at the other Public Schools, and during this period a change took place in the organisation of the work in many schools. At Eton under Keate (1809-1834) the senior boys to the number of nearly 200 were taken in a single class. (4) Hawtrey, who succeeded Keate, separated the Sixth Form from the rest of the Upper School and divided the Fifth Form to be taught by four or five assistant masters. (5) Brian, Headmaster of Harrow, had felt obliged to appeal for a third master at Harrow, besides the Usher and himself, when in 1721 the numbers rose to 144. (6) In 1828, when the numbers were 127, there were eight masters besides the Headmaster. (7) No change in the Public Schools during these years was more complete than that in the actual arrangements for teaching. (8)

44. Thomas Arnold, who had been a boy at Winchester, was appointed as Headmaster of Rugby School in 1828. His influence on the development of the Public Schools was profound. What was most obvious and most generally noted was his personal effect on the moral atmosphere of the school. Widely recognised also was his use of the system of prefects by which the ordinary government of the school was left largely to the older and abler boys. There was nothing original in the principle. The control of boys by boys goes back to the Middle Ages. What was new was his close personal relationship with the boys in the Sixth Form, by means of which he was able to influence the whole school.

45. Arnold was a practising schoolmaster, rather than a theoretical or original educationalist. His influence may be seen most clearly in certain characteristics of Rugby in his day. Under his headmastership Rugby became a real community, inspired by a common ideal. Further, Arnold was the first

(2) Report of Public Schools Commission, I, 312.

(3) Arnold, however, wrote in 1840, "I assume it certainly, as the foundation of all my view of the case, that boys at a public school never will learn to speak or pronounce French well under any circumstances." (Stanley: Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold (13 Edition), I, 120.) But under Arnold the master of a form had himself to teach his form all the subjects studied, including mathematics and modern languages. (Report of Public Schools Commission, I, 17.)

(4) Report of Public Schools Commission, Ill, 120.

(5) Maxwell-Lyte: op. cit., 438, 9.

(6) P. M. Thornton: Harrow School and its Surroundings, 112.

(7) Thornton: op. cit., 257, 8.

(8) All these reformers were forestalled by Thomas Farnaby (1575?-1647), who was a postmaster at Merton, studied at a Jesuit College in Spain, was with Drake and Hawkins in their last expedition in 1595, became a schoolmaster at Martock, in Somerset, and later a famous scholar. He opened a very successful private grammar school in Cripplegate, He divided his school of some 300 boys into separate forms with numerous assistant masters. He is said to have been the first schoolmaster to make a fortune.

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Headmaster who fully recognised the importance of the separate houses into which the school was divided, and of these we shall have more to say later. Arnold, also, was a historian, and, though he deviated very slightly from the usual classical curriculum, he gave the classical teaching a very different interpretation. When he taught the History of Rome with his eye on the destiny of English boys faced with the duty of administering a large empire, he was introducing a new aim into the education of the Grammar Schools. But, above all, Arnold gave his school a clear moral purpose, based on the Christian faith. Nothing in his work at Rugby was more original than the use he made of the school chapel. Before his day, the Christian religion played only a very small part in the life of the Public Schools. At Eton at that time there was no religious instruction at all. (9) At Shrewsbury the Governors refused to allow Butler to address the school at a service, (10) and Harrow had no School Chapel until 1839. (11) Under Arnold Rugby became a school with certain well-defined aims. The greatest stress was laid on the formation of character, based on a religious training, though it must not be forgotten that Arnold drew his prefects only from boys in the Sixth Form and that he was a firm believer in the value of a rigorous intellectual discipline. The boys were taught to have an earnest purpose in life and the prefect system gave them experience in the arts of authority. The fame of Arnold led to the other Public Schools accepting his principles, and his own pupils and assistant masters from Rugby, leaving to take up headmasterships elsewhere, did a great deal to transmit directly his tradition to other schools. (12)

46. Nothing showed more clearly the position that the Public Schools had gained in the national esteem than the movement for founding new schools, which deliberately used the older Public Schools as models. It is true that they were, to some extent, intended to remedy those defects in the Public Schools which at this time attracted considerable attention, especially the restricted range of the curriculum, but they looked for no radical changes. These schools were usually founded as Proprietary Schools, often being the property of a body of shareholders, and those that proved successful were transformed in due course into purely charitable foundations. Some were day schools, such as University College School, founded in 1830, the City of London School in 1837 and Liverpool College in 1840, but the majority were boarding schools which provided an education similar to that found in the Public Schools, but nearly always less rigorously classical, and always less expensive. Mention may be made of Cheltenham (1841), Marlborough (1843), Rossall (1844), Radley (1847), Bradfield (1850), Wellington (1852), Epsom (1855), Clifton (1862), Malvern (1862), Haileybury (1862); of the schools of the Woodard foundation, to provide public school education on the principles of the Church of England and at a moderate cost, the earliest being Lancing (1848), Hurstpierpoint (1849) and Ardingly (1858); (13) and of two boarding schools founded especially to meet the needs of the sons of

(9) Maxwell-Lyte: op. cit., 388.

(10) S. Butler: Life and Letters of Dr. Samuel Butler, I, 81-3.

(11) Thornton: op. cit., 283.

(12) Pupils at Rugby under Arnold became Headmasters of Harrow, Marlborough, Lancing, Haileybury, Sherborne, Cheltenham, Felsted, Bury St. Edmunds, Leamington, Berkhamsted, Bromsgrove, Monkton Combe, Berwick, and Carlisle Cathedral School. Cotton, one of his assistant masters, became Headmaster of Marlborough. Benson, the first Headmaster of Wellington College, had been a master at Rugby under Arnold's successor.

(13) The three Woodard Schools of Lancing, Hurstpierpoint and Ardingly were founded to meet the requirements of those with three different levels of income, "professional men, the higher and the lower tradesmen".

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farmers, Cranleigh (1863) and Framlingham College (1864). Of the 89 independent Public Schools in England and Wales, 54 were founded after the beginning of the nineteenth century.

47. At some of these schools the intention was expressed to limit the entries to "the sons of gentlemen", and in this the schools were only reflecting what were the real facts of the case in the great majority of the older Public Schools. For it is clear that by the middle of the nineteenth century the pupils who attended the great Public Schools were coming to be drawn very largely, and sometimes without exception, from the wealthier classes. It is impossible to generalise on this question. At Rugby, for instance, at the time of the Public Schools Inquiry of 1864, there were 61 Foundationers, who received their education free, out of 463 boys in the school, but more than two-thirds of these Foundationers normally left very early and did not rise high in the school. (14) At Charterhouse it was stated that the forty-four foundation boys were usually "persons exceedingly well-connected, but really poor". (15) But the main reason for the assimilation of the foundationers of the schools to the other pupils can only be found in the changed nature of the schools themselves. As the Report of the Public Schools Inquiry stated, "The bulk of each school is an accretion upon the original foundation, and consists of boarders received by masters or other persons at their own expense and risk and for their own profit. ... The legal position of the Headmaster of Eton is that of teacher or 'informator' of seventy poor and indigent boys, received and boarded within Eton College; the Headmaster of Harrow is legally the master of a daily grammar school, established in a county village for the benefit primarily of its immediate neighbourhood". But, as the Report pointed out, "the discipline and teaching, as applied to the foundationers themselves, has been really moulded by the wants and capabilities of those who formed in fact the bulk of the school". (16)

48. The methods of selecting scholars or foundationers usually did nothing to hinder this process of assimilation. A distinction must be drawn between the system employed at local Grammar Schools, such as Harrow or Rugby, and that adopted at Eton and Winchester and the great London schools. In the former, free education was generally provided, according to the founders' intentions, to any boy living in the immediate vicinity, though during the nineteenth century there was a tendency to introduce competitive entrance examinations. (17) It is significant that at Harrow, while the Governors never refused applications for admission from such boys nor thought it necessary to limit their numbers, only a few boys took advantage of the opportunity, and these were all "the children of parents belonging to the higher classes". In the middle of the nineteenth century none of the farmers or tradesmen of Harrow sent their sons to the school, and in 1853 a separate day school had been established for them, known as the "English Form", in which boys were given "a commercial education, including French". (18)

49· The election of Scholars at Westminster had always been by means of a competitive examination, (19) known as the Challenge, though the Electors,

(14) Report of Public Schools Commission, I. 234, 5. (Only about a third were the sons of tradesmen. It was usual for upper middle class families to take houses in Rugby to be able to send their children there as day boys. Ibid, IV, 296, 7.)

(15) P.S.C., I., 10.

(16) P.S.C., I., 8, 9.

(17) Report of Schools Inquiry Commission, I. 158.

(18) Report of Public Schools Commission, I. 211.

(19) This was laid down in the Statutes, which provided that applicants should be examined in grammar, humane letters and composition. (Appendix to First Report of the Cathedral Commissioners, 87, 88.)

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representing Christ Church, Oxford, Trinity College, Cambridge, and Westminster, claimed certain rights of nomination until some date towards the end of the seventeenth century, when the selection fell entirely into the hands of the headmaster. (20) At Eton, on the other hand, scholars were chosen entirely by nomination until 1852, when a competitive examination was introduced. (21) Under the Statutes the scholars were to be chosen, first from the parishes where Eton or King's College, Cambridge, held property, then from the counties of Buckingham and Cambridge, and last from the rest of England. (22) At Winchester the election was carried out by the Warden and two Fellows of New College, and the Warden, Sub-Warden and Headmaster of the school. The kin of the founder were given an absolute right of election. Of the other candidates, preference had to be given, by the Statutes, to those who came from villages where lay estates belonging to New College or Winchester, then to those from the diocese of Winchester, then to the inhabitants of eleven counties of the south of England, and finally to any in the kingdom of England. Those elected had to have proved themselves well grounded in reading, plain song and the "Old Donatus", but there was no call on the Electors to choose the most able out of the applicants. (23) Actually election was practically a matter of patronage; the Crown claimed, and was granted a right of nomination from the beginning of the fifteenth century until 1726, as did occasionally the Privy Council and, until I731, the Bishop of Winchester. (24) A competitive examination was introduced in 1857 when new statutes were drawn up by the Oxford University Commissioners. These statutes also abolished the rights of the founder's kin and provided that the electors might refuse admission to a candidate whom they deemed to be not in need of a scholarship, and that "all other things being equal, shall have regard to the pecuniary circumstances of a candidate". (25)

50. At Charterhouse nomination was in the hands of the Governors in rotation. An examination in classics and arithmetic, "proportional to age", was instituted in 1844, which was stated to be of "a most elementary kind". Two places a year were opened to competitive examination in 1850. (26) At St. Paul's the Statutes allowed for an examination for the applicants, but this gave place in time to a "system of simple patronage". (27) At Merchant Taylors', nomination lay in the hands of members of the Company in rotation, though candidates had to show that they had reached "a moderate amount of attainment according to age". (28) At Christ's Hospital the right of presentation had originally been mainly in the hands of various City parishes, but during the seventeenth century it fell more often into the hands of individuals. In 1678 the rule that the children admitted must have come from within the boundaries of the City was abolished. In 1837 the Commissioners reported

(20) Sargeaunt: Annals of Westminster School, 24, 161.

(21) Maxwell-Lyte: op. cit., 477 .

(22) In the years 1444 and 1446, the records of which have been preserved, scholars were selected from 24 counties, and also from London. (Etoniana, No. 12, 177f.)

(23) Kirby: op. cit., 457-463 (Statutes II, III). (The" Old Donatus" referred to the 'Ars Minor' of Aelius Donatus (4th Century), the elementary Latin primer almost universally employed during the Middle Ages.)

(24) Kirby: op. cit., 73-6.

(25) Kirby: op. cit., 428.

(26) Report of Public Schools Commission, I, 177. (The Governors ordered candidates to be examined in 1672, but the practice seems to have been abandoned. Davies: Charterhouse in London, 253.)

(27) P.S.C., I, 190.

(28) P.S.C., I, 204.

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that the children were admitted by Governors in rotation, by Governors under occasional presentations, and by parishes, City guilds or individuals under special gifts. (29)

51. When we consider the development in English secondary education of the peculiar system by which a limited number of schools, most of them in origin indistinguishable from the remainder, had secured a distinctive position in the public eye, and had come to draw their pupils from a limited class in society, it might seem at first sight that the Public Schools were one of the prime causes of that segregation of the classes which marked the nineteenth century in this country and which remains to us as a legacy today. But a study of the evidence available shows that to ascribe these social phenomena to the Public Schools would be very largely to confuse cause and effect. It was not the Public Schools which caused the class divisions, but these divisions which were themselves largely responsible for the rise of the Public Schools. It is not to be expected, of course, that this cause of their emergence from the general run of Grammar Schools would often find conscious expression; though there are instances in the literature of the period which are not without significance. Thus we find Dean Swift in 1723 stating that it is the current opinion "that public schools, by mingling the sons of noblemen with those of the vulgar, engage the former in bad company", (30) and the Edgeworths, no supporters of the greater Public Schools, stating, in 1798, in their Essays on Practical Education, that "small schools are apt to be filled with persons of nearly the same stations, and out of the same neighbourhood: from the circumstance they tend to perpetuate uncouth, antiquated idioms, and many of those obscure prejudices which cloud the intellect in the future business of life". (31) But there exists a large body of evidence in the Report of the Schools Inquiry Commission of 1868 which gives a clear picture of the social conditions which led to the rise of the Public Schools.

52. This Commission, of which more will be said later in this chapter, was set up in 1864 to inquire into the schools which had not been considered by two earlier Commissions, one set up to inquire into the State of Popular Education in the country, the other into nine of the best known Grammar Schools. We find repeated references in their report to the social divisions in the country and to their effect on those schools where a mixture of classes was still to be found. Thus the Report stated, "Boys who can add much to the master's earnings must be boys from a superior class, and they will not be attracted to the school to associate with boys in the same position as those in the National Schools. Sometimes even a few boys seem to form an obstacle to the schools becoming attractive to others. If, on the other hand, the reputation of the master is high, boarders or paying day scholars come, but the foundationers are, to say the least, often slighted, and, even where well taught, are yet separated from the others by some distinction, which is in fact invidious ..." Some of the examples given are striking. At one school the twenty foundationers were not allowed to use the playground or to associate with the boarders out of school hours. At another the boarders were "taught in a room divided from the free boys, who are cottagers' sons, by a glazed partition". At several schools the free scholars were made to sit in a different part of the room; at another the two sets of boys were separated by "a partition breast high". The use of the playground was a continual problem. In one it was divided "by an imaginary

(29) Pearce: Annals of Christ's Hospital, 40-44.

(30) Swift: Essay on Modern Education. (The term "Public School" here had a wider significance than it has now.)

(31) Maria and R. L Edgeworth: Essays on Practical Education, chapter 19.

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line between the boarders and free boys, and a penalty imposed on transgressors", at another the "free boys" used it at stated times, when the boarders were forbidden to do so. (32) The evidence of the Headmaster of Repton is particularly interesting. He had clearly made a sincere attempt to break down the barriers between the local boys and the boarders, but he had had little success. He stated that he had had very numerous applications from "persons of good standing in the world and good fortune", and that he had invariably been asked, "What is the character, station and position of the home boarders?" When he had answered that they were "of all classes down to the sons of blacksmiths and washerwomen", the application had been immediately withdrawn. Of these "home boarders" he stated that he had "succeeded in gaining them perfect fair play in school", but he had had to separate them out of school and that "mainly for the sake of the village boys". He felt that if he allowed them to associate, "he should have a constant fear of their being ill-treated". He added that, "It is not the fault of the boys, it is the fault of society, I think. ... I never saw a man yet who would send his boy to a school in order to associate with those lower than himself". (33)

53. An added difficulty arose out of the nature of the education supplied. The Grammar School curriculum had changed very little. It was still well enough adapted for those boys who intended to go to the Universities. The fact that a classical curriculum almost exactly like that at the smaller Grammar Schools was followed at the larger Public Schools meant necessarily that it proved to be of no disadvantage to any whose entry into commerce or industry depended on family connections. But it was wholly unsuited to boys from the lower middle classes or the working classes. While it can hardly be said that the classical curriculum was universally favoured by the richer classes, at least it could not be said of them, as it was of those parents who generally, in the eyes of the members of the Commission, wished their sons to leave school at sixteen, that "the great mass of this class seem disposed barely to tolerate Latin". (34)

54. Evidence of this kind makes it impossible to substantiate the charge, often made, that the Public Schools themselves created the social distinctions of the nineteenth century. They were, in fact, called into being to meet the demands of a society already deeply divided. But it may certainly be granted that once the division in the educational system had been completed, it made far more difficult the task of those who looked towards a breaking down of these hard drawn class distinctions within the society of the nation. It may almost be said that nothing could have been better devised to perpetuate them than this educational development. We see, then, a sure instinct in the growing desire both within and outside the class of those educated at Public Schools to alter the conditions which allow only those with sufficient means to send their sons to them, and a study of the history of the Public Schools, while it may absolve them from the charge of having created these social distinctions, makes all the clearer the need in the widest national interest for a change in their methods of recruitment.

(32) Report of Schools Inquiry Commission, I. 152, 3.

(33) Report of Schools Inquiry Commission, IV, 443-449. The original prospectus of Clifton College stated that it provided a "thoroughly good and liberal education for the sons of gentlemen". In 1871 the Assistant Masters presented a Memorial to the Governing Body in favour of the College being thrown open to boys of all classes without regard to social position, but the Governors replied that the views of the shareholders could not be ignored. The Charter of 1877, when the College ceased to be a Proprietary School, spoke of it as "a College for the education of boys and young men." O. F. Christie: History of Clifton College, 92.

(34) Report of Schools Inquiry Commission, I, 18.

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55. Until after the middle of the nineteenth century there was no difference between the legal position of the few Grammar Schools which in general opinion had attained the position of Public Schools, and the rest. In the Middle Ages it had been firmly established that the Church had a wide control over all Education. In the words of Chief Justice Thirning in the Gloucester Grammar School case of 1410, "le doctrine et enformation des enfants est chose espiritual." (35) Appointments of Masters, of course, and the general supervision of the school would be under the particular ecclesiastical body responsible for the school, or the body appointed by the founder for that purpose. But all teachers had to receive a licence from the Bishop or the Ordinary. The Reformation brought with it no change in this general principle. Canon LXXVII of 1604 stated that, "No man shall teach either in public school, or in private house, but such as shall be allowed by the Bishop of the Diocese or Ordinary of the place." (36) The respective positions of Church and State at the time meant that no difficulty arose as to their relative rights in the matter, and it was as much for political as for ecclesiastical reasons that the Act of Uniformity of 1662 enacted that "every schoolmaster keeping any public or private school" should subscribe to a declaration of conformity with the Church of England. (37)

56. Many of the Grammar Schools of the later Middle Ages had been kept by Chantry Priests and the Act for the Dissolution of the Chantries in 1547 led, therefore, to the destruction of many schools. It is true that the Act gave power to the Commissioners appointed to take over the Chantry lands to assign them for the upkeep of schools, and in a number of cases the old schools were continued as royal foundations. The usual practice was to allow to such schools as endowments an annual payment equal to the sum the lands had yielded at the time of the Dissolution. The gradual fall in the purchasing power of money led to the provision becoming quite inadequate for the upkeep of the schools. But the Chantry Act gave the State a direct interest in the government of a number of Grammar Schools, and Acts of Parliament of the reigns of Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth empowered the Crown to make Statutes and Ordinances for the Grammar Schools "founded" by Henry VIII or Edward VI. (38) Further, two Acts of the end of Queen Elizabeth's reign, in 1598 and 1601, set up Commissioners for Charitable Uses, who had power to inquire into the management of charitable foundations and to rectify abuses. (39) Decrees under these Acts were made until the first half of the nineteenth century, and altogether thirty-three schools were reformed in this way. But an appeal from the Commissioners' decisions lay to the House of Lords by way of the Court of Chancery and this effectively prevented any considerable improvements resulting from the Acts.

57. Towards the end of the seventeenth century a number of law cases began the process of weakening the control of the Church over the educational system of the country, but these, while they succeeded in freeing elementary education, left the position of the Grammar Schools legally unaltered. An Act of 1779, however, gave Dissenters the right to teach in schools, but excluded from this provision "any College or School or Royal Foundation, or any other endowed College or School" founded before the

(35) Year Book, II. Henry IV, case 21, p. 47.

(36) Cardwell: Synodalia, I, 209.

(37) 14 Charles II, c. 4. s. 8.

(38) I Mary I, sess. III, c. 9 I Elizabeth c. 22.

(39) 39 Elizabeth c. 6; 43 Elizabeth c. 4.

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reign of William and Mary. (40) An Act of 1790, which allowed Roman Catholics a general right to teach, forbade them to do so in any Royal Foundation or endowed school whatever. (41)

58. The result of this withdrawal of the State from any concern in Secondary Education and its abandonment to the Church, which in fact exercised no real control, was altogether unfortunate. The state of affairs was well summarised by Lord Kenyon in The King v. Archbishop of York (1795). "Whoever will examine the state of the grammar schools in different parts of this kingdom will see to what a lamentable condition most of them have been reduced." He referred to "empty walls without scholars, and everything neglected but the receipt of the salaries and emoluments. In some instances that have lately come within my own knowledge, there was not a single scholar in the schools though there were very large endowments to them." (42) A little later two decisions of Lord Eldon laid it down that it was illegal to use any part of the endowment income of a Grammar School on the teaching of French or German, or even of English, writing and arithmetic, (43) although in fact these decisions were occasionally ignored.

59. In 1820 an abortive attempt was made in Parliament to exercise some control over the Endowed Schools. The bill, sponsored by Brougham, was abandoned after amendment in Committee. Winchester, Eton, Westminster, Rugby, Harrow and Charterhouse were to be exempt from its conditions. The Grammar Schools Act of 1840 excluded from its provisions "the Grammar Schools of Westminster, Eton, Winchester, Harrow, Charterhouse, Rugby, Merchant Taylors', Saint Paul's, Christ's Hospital, Birmingham, Manchester, or Macclesfield, or Louth, or such schools as form part of any Cathedral or Collegiate Church." (44) When the State at last intervened in the sphere of Secondary Education it dealt first, not with the general run of Grammar Schools, but with only nine of their number, which was significant of the position that a few schools had gained in the public eye. In 1861 the Clarendon Commission was appointed "to inquire into the Revenues and Management of Certain Colleges and Schools, and the studies pursued and instruction given there." The schools selected were Eton, Winchester, Westminster, Charterhouse, St. Paul's, Merchant Taylors', Harrow, Rugby and Shrewsbury. The Commission reported in 1864 and its Report was followed in 1868 by the passing of the Public Schools Act. (45) This set up new Governing Bodies for the schools inquired into by the Commission, except St. Paul's and Merchant Taylors', and on them was laid the duty of revising the statutes, which had, in due course, to be approved by the Queen in Council. We do not consider it necessary here to refer in any detail to the changes made in the constitutions of the

(40) 19 George III, c. 32.

(41) 31 George III, c. 32.

(42) Term Reports, Vol. VI, p. 490.

(43) Attorney-General v . Whiteley: The Leeds Grammar School Case (Vesey's Chancery Reports, Vol. Xl, p. 241); Attorney-General v. Mansfield (Russell's Reports in Chancery, Vol. II, p. 501). (The Grammar Schools Act, 1840, reversed the law in this matter. 3 and 4 Victoria. cap. 77.)

(44) 3 and 4 Victoria. c. 77. s. 24·

(45) 31 and 32 Victoria, c. 118 (and 32 and 33 Victoria. c. 58).

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Governing Bodies, resulting from the Act. (46) The tendency in all cases was to break down local restrictions, whether those of the kind in operation at Eton, where the Governing Body consisted previously of the Provost and seven resident Fellows, or those to be found at Rugby, which was controlled by a "self-electing body consisting of 12 gentleman, actually of Warwickshire and the neighbouring counties." (47)

60. An important change recommended by the Commission and adopted in the new statutes was made in the method of electing scholars. The competitive system, already practised in some schools, was extended to the remainder. (48) This new procedure brought about very little change in the class of boys chosen for scholarships. The kind of education provided at the Public Schools affected directly, as was to be expected, the demands made in the scholarship examinations, and it has proved to be unusual for a boy to be successful who has not been educated at one of those schools which prepare boys specifically for the Public Schools. On the other hand the change has had a great effect in raising their intellectual standards. Eton, Winchester and Westminster, are now the only schools where the scholars live separately from the other boys. In all other schools a scholarship is a pecuniary award only and does not affect in any way the life of the scholars.

61. At Harrow and Rugby the claims of the boys living in the neighbourhood were met by the foundation of new schools. The Lower School of John Lyon, established at Harrow in 1876, was a continuation of the "English Form", instituted twenty-three years before. At Rugby, the Lower School of Lawrence Sheriff was founded in 1878 to provide instruction "such as may be suitable for boys intended for commercial and other similar occupations, and also may qualify them for admission into the Higher School." Twelve major foundationerships were to be granted annually to boys from the Lower School, providing free tuition at Rugby School, and twenty-four minor foundationerships which provided education there at £20 a year.

(46) The following may be taken as examples:- Eton: The Provost (appointed by the Crown), the Provost of King's College, Cambridge, one elected by the University of Oxford, one by the University of Cambridge, one by the Royal Society, one nominated by the Lord Chief Justice, one elected by the Headmaster, Lower Master and Assistant Masters, the Vice-Provost (elected by the Provost and Fellows), and four co-opted fellows. Winchester: The Warden (elected by the Warden and Fellows of New College), the Warden of New College, one elected by the University of Oxford, one by the University of Cambridge, one by the Royal Society, one by the Lord Chief Justice, one by the Fellows of New College, one by the Headmaster and Assistant Masters, and three co-opted. Charterhouse: The Archbishop of Canterbury, one elected by the University of Oxford, one by the University of Cambridge, one by the University of London, one by the Royal Society, one nominated by the Lord Chancellor, one by the Lord Chief Justice, one elected by the Headmaster and Assistant Masters, three by the Governors of Sutton's Hospital, and four co-opted. Shrewsbury: The Master of St. John's College, Cambridge, one elected by the University of Oxford, one by the University of Cambridge, one by the Royal Society, one by the Lord Chief Justice, one by the Lord Lieutenant of Shropshire, two by the Corporation of Shrewsbury, one by the Headmaster and Assistant Masters, and three co-opted.

(47) Report of Public Schools Commission, I. 230.

(48) 31 and 32 Victoria, c. 118, s. 6. (The Governing Bodies were given powers to make Statutes "with respect to Boys on the Foundation, to remove, wholly or partially local or other restrictions on the Class of Boys entitled to become Boys on the Foundation, to make admission on the Foundation wholly or partially dependent on Proficiency in competitive or other Examination ... with respect to Scholarships, Exhibitions, or other Emoluments, either tenable at the School, or tenable after leaving the School by Boys educated thereat, ... to remove any Restrictions on the Election or Appointment to such Emoluments; to open to general or limited Competition within the School Emoluments now conferred otherwise than by competitive Examination.")

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62. In the meantime, in 1864 the Taunton Commission was appointed to inquire into those schools which had not been comprised within the scope of the Clarendon Commission or the Newcastle Commission on Popular Education of 1858. The Taunton Commission considered 782 Grammar Schools, as well as Proprietary and Private Schools and also the secondary education of girls. Of the recommendations in their Report of 1868, those concerned with the setting up of a system of State and local control of education were not accepted, but others were embodied in the Endowed Schools Act of 1869, (49) which set up an Endowed Schools Commission to approve new schemes for the schools. Its powers were later transferred to the Charity Commission and eventually in 1899 to the Board of Education. The endowed Schools Commission itself approved of 235 schemes. (50)

63. At first sight it would certainly appear that the distinction drawn in the terms of reference of the Clarendon and Taunton Commissions created or at least recognised a distinction between two types of school, the Public Schools and the others. Further, the Clarendon Commission had obtained information from three recent foundations, Cheltenham, Marlborough, and Wellington, and these were, therefore, excluded by the later Commission from its survey. The fact that the Public Schools Act was not concerned with St. Paul's and Merchant Taylors', (51) the recommendations made by the Commission that Charterhouse, and possibly Westminster, should be removed from London to the country, (52) the insistence that Shrewsbury was "in danger of losing its rank among public schools and becoming a merely municipal institution", (53) all seemed to foster the impression that a few of the large boarding schools were in a class by themselves in English secondary education. But, in fact, it soon became clear that no hard and fast line could be drawn in this way, and that it did not correspond to the popular view of the matter.

64. The Taunton Commission drew special attention to the nature of the connection with the Universities of the various schools within the scope of their inquiry, as well as that of the schools excluded. The figures given of entries to the Universities from the various schools are significant. Of the schools into which inquiry was made, 550 sent no pupils to the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. The nine schools of the Clarendon Inquiry accounted for

(49) 32 and 33 Victoria, c. 56.

(50) As examples of Governing Bodies set up by schemes under the Endowed Schools Acts we may give: Aldenham: Lord Lieutenant of Hertford, Chairman of Quarter Sessions, eight appointed by the Brewers' Company, two by Members of Parliament for Hertfordshire, one by St. John's College, Cambridge, three by the Board of Education and two-co-opted. King's School, Bruton: One appointed by Bishop of Bath and Wells, one by Visitors of Hugh Sexey's Hospital, two by Members of Parliament of Somersetshire, one by the Assistant Masters, three by the Somerset County Council, one by Oxford University, one by Cambridge University, and four co-opted. King's School, Ely: The Dean and Chapter of Ely and not more than three nominated by the Board of Education. Gresham's School, Holt: The Prime Warden of the Fishmongers' Company, eleven appointed by the Fishmongers' Company, one by the Bishop of Norwich, two by the Norfolk County Council, one by the Erpingham R.D.C., one by Cambridge University and three co-opted. Uppingham: The right heir male of the Founder, the Bishop of Peterborough, the Lord Lieutenant of Rutland, the Dean of Peterborough, Chairman of Quarter Sessions, two appointed by Members of Parliament of neighbouring constituencies, one by Oxford University, one by Cambridge University, two by Headmaster and Assistant Masters, five by Governors of Archdeacon Johnson's Foundation, and four co-opted.

(51) Neither school was actually omitted because it was a Day School but because the Government accepted the claim of the Mercers' and Merchant Taylors' Companies that they were under no legal obligation to apply their funds to the maintenance of a school. (This claim was subsequently abandoned by the Mercers' Company with regard to St. Paul's School which came within the scope of the Endowed Schools Acts).

(52) Report of the Public Schools Commission, I, 170-1, 184.

(53) P.S.C., I, 308.

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577 undergraduates then at the Universities (Eton 161, Rugby 109, Harrow 107, Winchester 74, Shrewsbury 35, Merchant Taylors' 27, Westminster 23, St. Paul's 21, and Charterhouse 20). Among the newly founded schools, Marlborough had 76, Cheltenham 41, Rossall 33, Brighton College; King's College and King's College School 22 each, and Radley 21. 89 schools had only one undergraduate apiece, 43 only two, and 72 numbers ranging from 3 to 18. But three of the old Grammar Schools were to be found higher in the list in this respect: Repton 36, Uppingham 35, and Manchester Grammar School 21 undergraduates. (54)

65. These three schools represented a development of no small importance in the history of the Public Schools. During the years before the activities of these two Commissions, a certain number of Grammar Schools were undergoing the same evolution that Harrow and Rugby had experienced in the previous century. Uppingham in 1853, when Thring was appointed Headmaster, had been a small local Grammar School with only 28 boarders. In 1868 it had become a large boarding school of 268 boys, with a national reputation. Repton was a school which had very varying fortunes. Founded as a local school, it had always shown a tendency to become one receiving boys from a wide area of the Midlands, but the prestige of the school had constantly fluctuated. When Pears was appointed Headmaster in 1854, there had been only 48 boys. In 1868 there were 201. It was clear, then, that the process by which certain schools attained a position distinctive from the rest was by no means complete. (55) The activities of the Endowed Schools Commissioners enabled a good many other schools to improve their position in a similar way after 1869.

66. As significant was the fact that a number of Endowed Grammar Schools in the great cities were beginning to overcome the peculiar difficulties which faced Secondary Education in the first half of the nineteenth century, in particular, at this time, Manchester Grammar School, King Edward VI's School, Birmingham, and Bradford Grammar School. (56) The Endowed Schools Act made it possible for many other schools of this kind to take their proper place in the educational system.

67. It was natural that the distinction drawn between the two classes of schools with the implied assumption that the seven schools of the Public Schools Act of 1867 deserved privileged treatment should have been resented by the more successful of the other Grammar Schools. (57) It was to oppose certain features in the Endowed Schools Act and, in particular, this differential treatment, that Thring of Uppingham founded the Headmasters' Conference in

(54) P.S.C., I. Appendix VII.

(55) In the debate on the Second Reading of the Endowed Schools Bill, Mr. Beresford Hope said, "As an instance, he would mention the Free Grammar School at Cranbrook, with which he was well acquainted. At the date of the election of the late master only five or six town boys attended it, and for all reasonable purposes it was absolutely defunct; but a fortunate choice of a new master having been made in him, that gentleman, who died about three years ago, raised the institution to the position of a small public school, which it maintains under his successor, elected out of a numerous list of candidates. There were about eighty boys there at the present time, mostly boarders, sons of gentlemen of high position, partly town boys, sons several of them of small tradesmen. and they were taught high classical subjects, with the good-will of both classes of parents, while at the same time a good modern department coexisted." (Hansard: 3rd Series. CXCIV, 1385.)

(56) These three schools had all had periods of great distinction during the eighteenth century.

(57) In the same way Butler had expostulated at the fact that Shrewsbury was not included among the schools exempted in Brougham's Bill of 1820. (S. Butler: Life and Letters of Samuel Butler, I, 194.)

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1869 (58). The Headmasters attending the first meeting came from Uppingham, Repton, Sherborne, Tonbridge, Liverpool College, Bury St. Edmunds, Richmond (Yorks.), Bromsgrove, Oakham, King's School (Canterbury), Felsted, Lancing and Norwich. (59) But the breach between the "seven schools" and the remainder was of short duration. Within a few years the Headmasters of all seven of them had become members of the Conference, as had the headmasters of the large day schools. (60) The Headmasters' Conference was from its outset a meeting of men with common professional interests, and, as far as can be seen, it never considered itself as denoting any particular mark of rank in the educational system, but it is clear that its composition reflected a real characteristic in that system, namely, the rise during the nineteenth century of a number of schools to a greater degree of prosperity and popularity than that enjoyed by the majority of the old endowed Grammar Schools.

68. The last thirty years of the nineteenth century were a period of great prosperity for the Public Schools. The influence of Arnold remained paramount, though it was never felt so directly at Eton and Westminster. These two schools never came under the immediate influence of men who had been boys or masters at Rugby in Arnold's time or in the period following his death, as did the majority of the more successful schools. (61) New subjects, in particular Science, were introduced into the curriculum. History and Modern Languages gained a more prominent place. A number of very able headmasters, such as Temple at Rugby from 1858 to 1870, Butler at Harrow from 1859 to 1885, Haig Brown at Charterhouse from 1863 to 1897, Ridding at Winchester from 1866 to 1884, Walker at St. Paul's from 1877 to 1905, and Warre at Eton from 1884 to 1905, organised the schools with great efficiency. But it must be admitted that during the period between 1870 and the last war the Public Schools became also more conventional, stereotyped and complacent. If better organisation, by improving their discipline, helped to make them more humane, various factors, such as the growth of compulsory games, their very success and the strength of their traditions, when over-emphasised, tended to encourage the production of a recognised type, loyal, honest and self-confident, but liable to undervalue the qualities of imagination, sensibility and critical ability.

69. The most original headmaster to be found in the Public Schools at this time was Edward Thring, who was at Uppingham from 1853 to 1887. In many ways he was a conservative, inspired by Arnold. But some of his ideas, and more particularly his practices, were new and were eventually to have a great effect on the other schools. He laid the greatest stress on the need to develop the interests and abilities of the individual boy, and no aim was more necessary than this as a corrective to the excessive insistence then laid on the value of the corporate spirit. He recognised the need for boys of privacy and individual attention. He introduced subjects until then quite outside the ordinary range of the school curriculum, particularly Art and Music. He built the first school gymnasium. He realised the necessity

(58) An account of the formation of the Headmasters' Conference is given in Parkin: Edward Thring, I, 197-214, 338-40.

(59) The Headmasters of Highgate, Dulwich, Ipswich, City of London School, St. Peter's York, Marlborough, Magdalen College School, Durham and Christ's Hospital would have attended but were otherwise prevented.

(60) The first Committee of the Headmasters' Conference, appointed in December, 1870, consisted of the Headmasters of Winchester, Eton, Harrow, Repton, Cheltenham, Clifton, Uppingham, City of London School and Sherborne.

(61) Moberly, who was Headmaster of Winchester from 1836 to 1866, although he had only a small personal acquaintance with Arnold, acknowledged that he was greatly indebted to his example. (Stanley: op. cit., I, 164, 5.)

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for good and adequate buildings. More revolutionary in his changes was Sanderson, Headmaster of Oundle from 1892 to 1922, though his influence on other schools was less far-reaching. To some extent he may be said to have carried on the ideas of Thring, but he went a great deal further in altering the content of the education provided. He introduced the first really drastic change in the curriculum that the Public Schools had ever witnessed, when he instituted large-scale workshops, and a revised technique in the teaching of Science.

70. Immediately after the last war the Public Schools experienced a period of unprecedented popularity. Not only did most of the schools increase considerably in numbers, but at that time several new schools were founded, including Rendcomb in 1920, Stowe and Canford in 1923, and Bryanston in 1928. In spite of the effects of the industrial depression m the thirties the number of boys in the independent Public Schools was greater at the outbreak of the present war than in 1914. The schools, however, had added new boarding houses and other buildings to meet the increase in their numbers and for this reason the fall in their numbers after 1930 inevitably created financial difficulties. Since then some of the schools have experienced the difficulties of evacuation from their premises and many a revival in numbers during the past year or so, a phenomenon equally apparent in the other Secondary Schools of the country.

71. Most of the changes that have taken place in the Public Schools during the last fifty years have been on the lines laid down by Thring, though it is impossible to say how far they were directly due to his influence and how far to the general pressure of public opinion. The evolution has been a slow one and marked by no very prominent figures. The change has been mostly one of emphasis, and this has varied from school to school, and often in one school from one period to another. The Public Schools are now less stereotyped, the curriculum is more flexible, the range of interests wider, and the impact of the present war has done much to break down old traditions and to introduce new activities. In an age of revolutionary change it is only to be expected that the Public Schools should be less aloof and the boys there more directly interested in the world around them. But the trend of social development is leaving the Public Schools out of alignment with the world in which they exist. Even the movement, which began over sixty years ago, for founding School Missions in the poorer districts of London and the great cities has brought into sharper relief the unreality of an educational system which segregates so thoroughly the boys of one class from those of another in a world where, much more than in the past, they will meet in later life as equals.

72. But, if the Public Schools have experienced rather a natural development than radical changes since the formative period of the middle of last century, the rest of Secondary Education in England has undergone a complete revolution, and, as one-half of the Public Schools, as defined in our terms of reference, were directly affected by it, we feel it necessary to give some account of the process by which the State came to intervene in Secondary Education and, in particular, of the administrative arrangements which have already brought a considerable number of the Public Schools into relationship with the general system of Education.

73. In the period between the passing of the Endowed Schools Act and the Education Act of 1902 the central authority was in direct relationship with the Endowed Schools through the agency of the Department of Science and Art, which was empowered to give aid for the establishment and maintenance

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of science and art classes at these schools. In April 1894, 240 Endowed Secondary Schools received some grant from this Department though the amount involved was small, amounting in the financial year 1893-4 to only 5s. 6d. per 1,000 of the population. (62) More important was the relationship established at this time between the schools and the Local Authorities. The Technical Instruction Acts of 1889 and 1891 (63) empowered County and Borough Councils and Urban Sanitary Authorities in England and Wales to levy a rate not exceeding 1d. in the £ to supply or aid the supply of technical or manual instruction, and the Local Taxation (Customs and Excise) Act, 1890, (64) placed at the disposal of the Local Authorities in England, Wales and Scotland, sums representing the residue of the beer and spirit duties, known as "whiskey money", for developing technical education, including instruction in science and art. Grants made under this Act consisted of annual grants for maintenance and capital grants for building or equipment. The use made of these funds and of the rates that might be levied under the Technical Instruction Acts varied considerably in different parts of the country. Twenty out of 49 County Councils, including London, in 1894 made no grants to Grammar and other Secondary Schools, and in six others the grant was limited to small sums for equipment. Only 14 out of the 91 County Boroughs made grants in aid of Secondary Schools. (65)

74. Under the Technical Instruction Acts it was laid down that either the County Council or its Technical Instruction Committee should be represented on the managing body of the school aided. (66) It was noted in the Report of the Secondary Education Commission of 1895 that County Councils had usually not found it wise or practicable to treat technical instruction as a thing apart from general Secondary Education, as was clear from the large number of cases in which the grants had been made to Grammar Schools. The Report stated that, "Despite the fact that they are not as yet charged with the aid and control of Secondary Education generally many County Councils are already spending large sums of money on the direct and indirect assistance of such education, thus adding considerably to the school incomes, and obtaining in return a considerable power of control over the government and curricula of schools." (67)

75. In 1894 the Bryce Commission on Secondary Education was set up and it presented its Report in 1895. This noted a great improvement in the condition of the endowed Grammar Schools since 1868. In seven counties, especially selected for inquiry, while the population had increased from a little under six to a little under nine millions, the number of scholars had more than doubled. (68) On the other hand, there were too many schools,

(62) Report of Secondary Education Commission I, 29.

(63) 52 and 53 Victoria c. 76; 54 Victoria c. 4.

(64) 53 and 54 Victoria c. 60.

(65) Report of Secondary Education Commission, I, 33, 38. (Of the Schools now represented on the Headmasters' Conference, the following were in receipt of an annual grant for maintenance from County Councils or County Boroughs in 1893-4: Perse School for Boys (Cambridge), Barnard Castle School, Newcastle Royal Grammar School, Wellington School (Somerset), Pocklington School, Bradford Grammar School, Wakefield Grammar School, Bristol Grammar School, Manchester Grammar School, Wallasey Grammar School, Battersea Grammar School, Newcastle-under-Lyme High School, King Edward VI School (Stafford), St. Olave's School (Southwark), Alleyn's School (Dulwich), Bishop Wordsworth's School (Salisbury), Liverpool College. Ibid. I, 350-7.)

(66) 52 and 53 Victoria c. 76. s. 1. (The degree of representation actually demanded varied considerably.)

(67) Report of Secondary Education Commission, I, 39.

(68) Report of Secondary Education Commission, I, 42.

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especially smaller schools, where the position was far from satisfactory, and the total provision of Secondary Education was quite inadequate. The total number of scholars in the seven selected counties amounted to only 2.5 per thousand of the population, and the distribution showed startling inequalities, varying between 13.5 per thousand in Bedfordshire and 1.1 in Lancashire. (69)

76. The Taunton Commission had divided Secondary Schools into three grades and had found that these corresponded "roughly, but by no means exactly, to the gradations of society". The Bryce Commission found that this classification needed to be modified, as the Endowed Schools Act had already done something "to open schools which lead directly to the universities to the sons of men who fall into the categories neither of the rich nor of the educated". (70) They noted also that, while the Local Authorities had recently founded a large number of scholarships to Secondary Schools, the demand was yet far from satisfied. (71)

77. The Commission noted the stronger sense of public responsibility in the governing bodies of Grammar Schools and the fact that in the majority of schools re-constituted by schemes under the Endowed Schools Act there was a considerable representative element on the Governing Bodies. In 1889, the year after the Local Government Act, setting up County Councils, three schemes were established which gave, together, thirteen representatives to County Councils and by 1893 those bodies had secured 71 representatives under 19 schemes. (72) The Commission recommended that, while the Governing Bodies of endowed schools should continue to be constituted or modified by scheme, the Local Authority within whose jurisdiction a school lay, or any Local Authority giving aid to a school, should be entitled to appoint one or more persons to be members of the Governing Body and they felt it worthy of consideration whether the non-local schools, otherwise exempt from the general jurisdiction of the Local Authorities, might not usefully be connected with them by such a limited right of nomination. (73)

78. The Bryce Report was followed by the institution of the Board of Education in 1899 and by the Education Act of 1902. As a result of this Act, subsequently embodied in the Education Act of 1921, Local Education Authorities were given power to "supply or aid the supply of higher education" (74) and to "provide or assist in providing scholarships (which term includes allowances for maintenances) for, and to pay or assist in paying the fees of, students at schools or colleges or hostels within or without that area". (75) Generally speaking, Local Education Authorities have exercised these powers in three ways, by providing and maintaining new schools, by aiding schools not provided by them, and by paying the fees of pupils at schools not under their control, whether grant-aided or not.

79. After 1904 grants were paid to Secondary Schools by the Board of Education on a capitation basis and, accordingly, schools provided or aided by Local Education Authorities received financial assistance through two separate channels. In 1919 a percentage grant to Local Education Authorities was introduced and it was then felt that the Board could not at the same time pay a direct grant to the schools and a percentage grant to the Authorities

(69) S.E.C. I, 48.

(70) S.E.C. I. 133.

(71) S.E.C. I, 167, 168.

(72) S.E.C. I, 45.

(73) S.E.C. I, 298.

(74) Education Act. 1921. 11 & 12 George V, c. 51. s. 70 (1) .

(75) 11 & 12 George V. c. 51. s. 71 (2).

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on their expenditure in aiding the same schools. The Board, therefore, ceased to pay direct grant to schools provided by the Local Education Authorities, and aided schools were given the option of receiving their grant either through the Local Education Authorities or direct from the Board. In this way there came into being three types of Secondary Schools, Maintained, Aided, and Direct Grant. (76)

80. In some Direct Grant Schools a proportion of pupils have their fees paid by Local Education Authorities and some Authorities have also used their powers to pay the fees of pupils at Day Schools which are not recognised for grant. Direct Grant Schools are required to offer a certain proportion of their places to pupils educated at Public Elementary Schools, and certain independent Day Schools with Schemes under the Endowed Schools Acts have similar obligations. In this way a certain relationship exists already between the Public Schools and the general educational system.

81. From time to time efforts have been made to extend and strengthen this relationship. For example, when the Teachers' Superannuation Act was passed in 1918, which secured State pensions to teachers in grant-aided Schools, a number of independent schools were of the opinion that, in order to provide adequate pensions for their assistant masters, they would be compelled either to increase their fees or to apply for grant. The Headmasters' Conference in 1919 considered the question and it was decided in principle that those schools which were able to provide adequate pensions without assistance from public funds should offer the same proportion of Free Places as would be expected from grant-aided Schools. The negotiations on the matter had no result, but, in a letter to the Chairman of the Headmasters' Conference, the President of the Board of Education referred to the proposal as representing "a sincere desire to make the public system of Education as comprehensive, as accessible, and as effective as possible, and a readiness to co-operate with the Board of Education which I am bound to acknowledge with gratitude". (77) This approach was made by the independent Public Schools at a time when they were enjoying a period of unprecedented prosperity.

82. Of recent years certain individual Public Schools have made experiments in admitting as boarders pupils previously educated in Public Elementary Schools. The scope of these experiments has of necessity been limited and Local Education Authorities have been restricted in their powers to make a financial contribution. Nor have any of these arrangements led to the representation of public bodies on the Governing Bodies of the Schools. They cannot be said, therefore, to have done more than point the way for future advance.

83. The Education Bill now before Parliament alters the situation in many respects. In place of Provided and Aided Schools there will be County and Auxiliary Schools, fully maintained by the Local Education Authorities. The Direct Grant and Independent Schools are outside the scope of the Bill, except for the provisions relating to the inspection and registration of schools, but the Minister and the Local Education Authorities are given ample powers to

(76) In 1912 pupils were distributed between the three types of schools as follows:-

(77) F. Fletcher: After Many Days, 275, 6.

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make grants and to pay the fees of pupils at such schools. Most important of all, boarding education, for the first time in our educational history, is brought into the foreground as a kind of education to be made available for suitable pupils of all classes and incomes; and attention is specially directed to this in the Clause dealing with development plans.

84. Since a Public School, as defined in our terms of reference, is taken to be a school represented on the Governing Bodies' Association or the Headmasters' Conference, it is necessary to say something of the composition and history of these two bodies.

85. The Headmasters' Conference, as its name implies, is an association of schoolmasters, meeting to discuss common educational problems. Exact rules of entry have never been laid down. Within ten years of its foundation, however, the practice had grown up of inquiring particularly, when new applications were considered, as to the number of boys in the school, the number of undergraduates from the school at the Universities, and the constitution of the Governing Body. A Constitution for the Conference, with regulations based on these principles, was drawn up and accepted in 1906, and the purpose of the Conference was then defined as "the discussion of educational questions which affect such Schools as are in close connexion with the Universities."

86. A few years later it was decided to limit the number of members to 150, as the largest which could conveniently meet at a school for the annual conference. The number of applications, however, made it difficult to keep within this limit, and in 1931 it was decided to accept the applications of headmasters beyond that figure, the additional members receiving the literature of the Conference, but not attending its meetings. In 1937 this practice was abandoned; all headmasters then members became full members, the maximum number was increased to 200, and new rules for admission were drawn up.

87. These rules stated that the existing conditions of membership, with regard to the size of the school, the connexion with the Universities and the extent of advanced work at the school, should remain in force. Provided that their schools fulfilled these conditions, the Headmasters of Independent Schools and Direct Grant Schools might be admitted, and Aided Schools when "the Committee is satisfied on the general question of the freedom of the School and of the Headmaster". Further, the rules allowed for the admission of a limited number of schools which did not qualify on these grounds, "after consideration of the standing of the School and the Headmaster." (78)

88. There are now included among the members of the Headmasters' Conference a certain number, elected before 1937, from schools which do not come within the regulations adopted at that date, and as, when a Headmaster retires, his successor does not automatically become a member, it is uncertain whether these schools will then continue to remain represented on the Conference. This, in itself, serves to show that membership of the Headmasters' Conference cannot be taken as any precise definition of the status of a Public School, nor has any claim to such a status ever been put forward by the Conference itself.

(78) Since 1937 the Headmasters of six schools have been elected under this special regulation, those of Lancaster Royal Grammar School, Maidstone Grammar School, Owen's School, St. Dunstan's College, Catford, St. Saviour's and St. Olave's Grammar School, and Warwick School.

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89. The Association of Governing Bodies of Public Schools was founded in 1940 and has as its constituent members "the Governing Bodies of Schools for Boys (including Co-Educational Schools) in the British Isles receiving no grants from public monies (the 'Independent Schools') or receiving direct grant from the Board of Education or equivalent authority in Scotland or Northern Ireland (the 'Direct Grant Schools')." Schools not qualified under these two heads may be admitted on such conditions as the Association may from time to time determine. At the present time (June, 1944) the Association's membership in England and Wales includes 87 Independent, 59 Direct Grant and 7 other schools.

90. The objects of the Association are - to discuss matters concerning the policy and administration of Public Schools, and to encourage co-operation between their Governing Bodies; to consider the relation of such schools to the general educational interests of the community; to express the views of Governing Bodies on the foregoing matters, and to take such action as may be expedient. Its Committee, which meets frequently, keeps in touch with the Headmasters' Conference (partly through a Standing Joint Committee), and its representatives have on several occasions joined in conference with the President or other representatives of the Board of Education. The functions of the Association and its Committee in relation to particular Governing Bodies are purely advisory, but it is consulted with increasing frequency.

91. In 1942 an Association of Governing Bodies of Girls' Schools was founded which followed closely the aims and constitution of the Governing Bodies' Association of Public Schools.

92. We are left with two different kinds of categories into which the Public Schools may be divided. On the one hand, there is the distinction between those that are entirely without assistance from public funds, and those which receive grant from the Board of Education or the Local Education Authorities. On the other hand, there is the distinction between those schools that are wholly or mainly boarding schools and those that are wholly or mainly Day Schools. These two divisions are not identical. Not only are there a few independent schools that are entirely or to a large extent Day Schools, but out of the 99 Direct Grant, Aided or Maintained Schools on the Headmasters' Conference or the Governing Bodies' Association, 15 have more boarders than day boys, 10 more have over a quarter of their pupils as boarders, and only 42 are wholly Day Schools.

93. We have now followed the history of the Public Schools during a period of over five hundred years. We have considered the historical and social causes for the emergence of a separate class of Secondary Schools, which have, in the main, remained independent of all support from the Exchequer or the Local Authorities. We have seen also that the Headmasters' Conference and the Governing Bodies' Association comprise a large number of schools which are no longer, in this sense, independent, but that the inclusion in these bodies of both types of schools reflects an essential fact, their common origin in the Grammar Schools of the past. In attempting now to consider some of the essential characteristics of the independent Public Schools against this historical background, we cannot be unaware that they are often shared by

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schools within and without the general system of education. Further, the new schools created since the passing of the 1902 Act were inevitably largely influenced by the experience of those that already existed then, and so they also have shared in this common tradition. It must not be thought, therefore, that the characteristics here considered are necessarily to be regarded as exclusive to the independent Public Schools.

94. When we turn to this task, we are immediately confronted by another anomaly, which the history of the schools can alone explain. At first sight, the most obvious characteristic of these schools is that they are Boarding Schools. But it will be remembered that during the hundred years between 1512 and 1611 there were founded five great schools in London, which, probably from their situation in the metropolis, have been regarded as Public Schools ever since the term began to be applied to a limited class of schools. Of these, one, St. Paul's, is still mainly a Day School, and two, Westminster and Merchant Taylors', are schools with a larger number of day boys than boarders. (1) Charterhouse was for many years predominantly a day-school, except for the Gownboys on the Foundation, though it had already become largely a boarding school a century before it moved into the country in 1872. Christ's Hospital is yet another anomaly, of a different kind, for, while all the other Public Schools, in this sense of the term, have become entirely, or to a great degree, the preserve of a restricted class in society, this school has retained unchanged the full accessibility for those without means which characterised it in the sixteenth century.

95. Bearing in mind these exceptions, we may now consider the historical factors which have led to the rise of a boarding-school education in the Public Schools. The one certain fact is that this was due solely to the circumstances of each school. Public Schools did not become Boarding Schools because anyone believed that a boarding education was superior to that provided at a Day School. But if a boy were to go to a particular school, away from his own neighbourhood, whether it was because there was no Grammar School near his home or because his parents wished to send him to a school with a particular reputation or because they looked for one where he would meet those of his own social standing, he had to become a boarder.

96. We may allow, as some exception to this, the Colleges of Winchester, Eton and Westminster, and also Charterhouse. At all of these the foundationers lived together, as a community, and we may see behind this, no doubt, the mediaeval tradition of the common religious life. But in these schools also, until the last century, life as a boarder for the boys who were not on the foundation hardly ever meant life as a member of a community. If the number of boarders was small, they would probably live with the headmaster, and this was, in fact, regularly regarded as a means whereby the headmaster could add to his income from the foundation. (2) If the numbers increased,

(1) Merchant Taylors' was a day-school, though as late as 1870 a number of boys there boarded with the Headmaster, ushers and dames. An official boarding house was founded when the school moved to Northwood in 1933.

(2) In a bequest by Robert Dow to Christ's Hospital in 1609, it was provided that the Singing-master might have eight or ten pupils "not of the Hospital" in order "to do the better in his place and to increase his profit like is used and accustomed with the Grammar Teachers and other Schoolmasters of the said House." (Pearce: Annals of Christ's Hospital, 141.) Anthony Wood spoke of one, David Thomas, "master of a well-endowed school at Leicester, where he continued until the time of his death in Aug. 1667, having before obtained a comfortable estate by the great pains he took in pedagogy, and by the many sojourners (i.e. boarders) that he always kept in his house (Life and Times of Anthony Wood (ed. A. Clark) Oxford Historical Society. I, 108).

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some might live with the second master, or with one of the assistant masters, if there were any at the school, or if not, as was more common, with landladies in the neighbourhood. In a patent of 20th June, 1444, It was ordered that "all the inns (hospitia), houses and mansions in the town and district of Eton shall be specially reserved for the boys and scholars coming together there for their education, and others coming there for any reason connected with the college." (3) As early as 1479 William Paston writes of "mine Hostess" at Eton. (4) There was difficulty in superintending the discipline in the houses of these ladies, or "dames", as they were usually called, (5) and eventually it became more usual for assistant masters to found boarding houses, as a means of augmenting their salaries. At Charterhouse, during a period of very high numbers between 1820 and 1830, there were at one time six houses managed by assistant masters besides the original house of the foundationers. At Eton in 1864 there were thirty houses, five managed by gentlemen who were not masters of the school and four by "dames". (6) The Report of the Public Schools Commission noted of Eton that keeping a boarding house had become "the regular and principal source of income of an assistant master." (7)

97. But it was Arnold at Rugby who first looked on the boarding houses as an integral part of the organisation of the school. As they became vacant he placed them exclusively under the care of the masters. In the words of his biographer, Dean Stanley, "Every house was thus to be as it were an epitome of whole school. On the one hand, every master was to have, as he used to say, 'each a horse of his own to ride', ... and, on the other hand, the boys would thus have some one at hand to consult in difficulties, to explain their case if they got into trouble with their headmaster, or the other masters, to send a report of their character home, to prepare them for confirmation, and in general to stand to them in the relation of a pastor to his flock. 'No parochial ministry', he would say to them, 'can be more properly a cure of souls than yours'." (8) This innovation of Arnold's was undoubtedly the most important development in the history of the Public Schools since the beginning of the nineteenth century. (9) In their houses the boys found - and find now - a community of a size appropriate to their years. If they learn to live as members of a community, it is largely made possible by this division of the schools into smaller, homogeneous units. It has resulted also in a complete transformation of the relationship between the boys and the masters.

98. It may be admitted that the rise of the house system has brought with it certain disadvantages. It has led too often to a narrowing of outlook

(3) V. C. H. Buckinghamshire, II, 163.

(4) The Paston Letters (ed. J. Gairdner). III, 241.

(5) At Westminster it was usual during the Eighteenth Century for an Usher to be appointed to each dame's house to preserve discipline. (Sargeaunt: Annals of Westminster School, 158.)

(6) Report of the Public Schools Commission, I. 98. (The last dame at Eton, Miss Evans, died, still in charge of a house, in 1906.) Mrs. Boyes, with whom Thackeray boarded between 1825 and 1828, had a boarding-house with boys from both Charter house and Merchant Taylors'. (Melville: Life of Thackeray, I, 23.)

(7) P. S. C., I, 98.

(8) Stanley: Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold (13th Edition), I, 92.

(9) At other schools, before Arnold went to Rugby, houses had been under the control of masters, but this practice could hardly be called part of the official organisation of the school. At Charterhouse there were three houses, and later six, kept by masters, between 1821 and 1830 apart from the Scholars on the Foundation. The Governors could only take cognisance of them in so far as they affected the Foundation scholars. In 1821, after an outbreak of scarlatina, which was considered to be due to overcrowding, they stated that they feared this "might at a future time become prejudicial to the Foundation Scholars", and they ordered a reduction of the numbers in the houses. Brougham's Bill in 1820, which never became law, would have given Governors the power to regulate the number of boarders or to forbid the taking of boarders altogether.

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and interests, a further parochialism within the parochialism inevitable in any school, and more especially a boarding school. (10) The corporate sense that may be created in a house has sometimes led to a loyalty which may be strong but is also restricted and unimaginative. There were signs in the period before the last war that the Public Schools too readily imposed a conventional code on their members and in this development the intensification of the house spirit undoubtedly played a part. That there is still some danger of this is generally admitted, in spite of the greatly widened range of interests now open to boys at Public Schools, most of them, fortunately, cutting across the sectional divisions created by separate houses. But this is a problem which faces, to a greater or less degree, any community, and it could not have been expected of the Public Schools that they would form real educational communities without running the risks inherent in such a development.

99. Nowhere was this risk clearer than in connection with the organised games at the schools. A number of factors combined to bring about this development. Boys at boarding schools naturally engaged in the kinds of games that they would have played with their fellows in town or village if they had been day-boys. All the games played at the Public Schools have their origins in rural sports played long before the days when they were organised at schools. Educational theorists, from the days of Locke and earlier, had advocated training the body in hardness and endurance. The changed outlook in the schools during the first half of the nineteenth century led naturally to the rise of organised games. If boys were to be kept under greater control, and that control was to be largely exercised by boys, it was almost inevitable that regular and eventually compulsory games would be evolved by the boys themselves. Headmasters, like Butler and Kennedy, his successor at Shrewsbury, had disapproved of football and rowing; others, like Arnold, had taken no particular interest in these sports. Cotton, at Marlborough, was the first headmaster to see in organised games a way of employing boys in their possibly dangerous leisure hours. (11) At many schools, it may be felt, the playing of games came to occupy an undue place in the boys' interests. It elevated to a quite disproportionate degree of importance in their lives certain qualities, in themselves of great value, and it depressed the regard which should rightly be paid to the intellect, and to the talents of the boy who is artistic, musical or skilled with his hands.

100. The problem again was one of finding a balance between different educational factors. The present age, which has become alive once more to the absolute necessity of the training of the body as well as of the intellectual faculties, can appreciate more readily the benefits that the Public Schools derive from their tradition of team games and physical exercises. Nor must it be forgotten that the organisation of games has been a general social development during the last seventy years in this country, by no means confined to the Public Schools, and it is now a recognised characteristic of all Secondary Schools. (12) The provision of many other outlets for a boy's interests during his

(10) An early - and extreme - example may be found at Harrow in 1757, when a fight took place between Hawkins and Thackeray's houses. (Thornton: Harrow School, 136.)

(11) Bradley: History of Marlborough College. 137.

(12) Of football it has been said, "The upper and middle classes in the shape of the schools borrowed the game from the people, and in the end the people took their own game back again." (Early Victorian England, I. 271.) Originally most schools had their own variety of football, as Eton, Winchester, and Harrow have still. Rugby Football was based on the game played at the school of that name. The first rules of Association Football derive from those drawn up for the game played between Charterhouse and Westminster. The same process cannot be traced in Cricket. Fives is a game that has been borrowed by the schools and never returned. It used to be played against the walls of churches and in the west country there are still standing "fives towers" in some villages. The game is now only played at the Public Schools and at some Day Secondary Schools.

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time out of school has certainly done much to destroy the inflated prestige which games had acquired.

101. Of all the characteristics of a Public School none has attracted more attention, both in this country and abroad, than the prefect system. As stated before, this has its origins in the earliest years of these schools. The Statutes of Winchester College provide that in each of the six camerae, or dormitories, there should be three older boys to watch over the other boys and report misdemeanours to the master. (13) At Eton in the sixteenth century Praepostors made lists of absentees from lessons and one, known as the Praepostor Immundorum, was to look out for "yll kept hedys, unwasshed facys, fowle clothis and sich other". At the same period at Eton "monitors" were appointed to see that the boys spoke only in Latin on their way home "two and two in order" to their hostesses or "dames".(14) The "Rules for the Schollers", drawn up by the Provost Rous at Eton in 1646, said that the Praepostors were to see that the boys kept in bounds. (15)

102. From early times also the older boys were sometimes employed to teach the younger. This duty was laid down by Colet in his Ordinances for St. Paul's. "In every form, one principal child shall be placed in the chair, president of that form." (16) The same practice was employed from the sixteenth century at Westminster. (17) It had practically died out by the end of the eighteenth century when it received a new lease of life at one well-known Public School. Russell, Headmaster of Charterhouse from 1811 to 1832, introduced there the so-called "Madras" system, founded by Andrew Bell and perfected by Joseph Lancaster, which was extraordinarily popular in elementary education. This was really an attempt to solve the problem of teaching immense classes with very few masters by employing for the purpose large numbers of boys. At Charterhouse it was for a short time considered to be most successful, and the numbers rose from 238 in 1818 to 431 in 1821, the number of masters remaining constant at five, but it proved a complete failure and by 1832 there were only 137 boys in the school. (18)

103. The duty of monitors or praepostors was not originally themselves to manage the discipline of the school, but to report offenders to the Headmaster. This is clear from the Statutes of Winchester and the practice at Eton, Westminster and other schools. (19) At Harrow John Lyon's Statutes specifically forbade the Monitors to inflict punishments themselves. (20) The introduction of a system by which the older boys were themselves responsible for discipline cannot be traced to any deliberate policy. At Harrow it was unknown for Monitors to punish other boys before 1771. (21) James, Headmaster of Rugby,

(13) Kirby: Annals of Winchester College, 509, 510.

(14) H Maxwell-Lyte: op. cit., 139, 155. Archaeologia XXXIV, 37.

(15) Maxwell-Lyte: op. cit., 236.

(16) Report of Public Schools Commission, II, 582.

(17) Sargeaunt: op cit., 46.

(18) Davies: Charterhouse in London, 264-6.

(19) Maxwell-Lyte: op. cit., 315; Sargeaunt, op. cit., 42, 281; Kirby: op. cit., 87. In 1821 Butler, Headmaster of Shrewsbury, defined the duty of a praepostor as follows: "A praepostor is one of the first eight boys to whom the master delegates a certain share of authority, in whom he reposes confidence, and whose business it is to keep the boys in order, to prevent all kinds of mischief and impropriety, and to give up the names of offenders to Dr. Butler, either when called upon by him, or without such requisition as often as they see cause." (S. Butler: Life and Letters of Dr. Samuel Butler, I. 206.)

(20) Thornton: Harrow School, 74.

(21) Thornton: op. cit., 208.

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stated in 1798 that, "At the Charterhouse the monitors restrain the boys from going out of bounds by imposing tasks themselves", (22) apparently as an exceptional practice, though the account of a famous "rebellion" at Eton in 1768 shows that it was already customary there. (23)

104. The practice appears to have arisen at a time when a few schools had grown considerably in numbers and their organisation had not altered in any way to enable them to deal with the new conditions. The lives of the boys were largely uncontrolled and power fell into the hands of the larger and stronger. At first this meant little more than a licensed form of tyranny. James of Rugby held that "a headmaster's house may always be expected to prove a hot-bed of rebellion, because he will have a larger number of big boys there". (24) The first headmaster to attempt to bring the new custom under any kind of control and to use the older boys to uphold a regular discipline was Goddard, who was Headmaster of Winchester from 1791 to 1809. (25) Arnold, who had been under him as a boy, always acknowledged his debt to Winchester. (26) But Goddard does not seem to have founded any kind of organised prefect system, as Arnold certainly did.

105. It was generally felt that the only alternative to the system, if any control over discipline were to be allowed at all, was the constant check of a master's presence. John Wesley had insisted on this at Kingswood School. (27) Gabell, who succeeded Goddard at Winchester, deliberately resorted to personal control by assistant masters in the place of supervision by monitors. (28) After Arnold, the contrast between discipline by prefects and continuous supervision by the masters came to be regarded as one of the marks distinguishing a public from a private school. Cotton, Headmaster of Marlborough, addressing the school after a disturbance in 1852, told the boys that he had only accepted his position "on such terms, that the school I hoped to govern was a public school, not a private one, and I would try to govern it by means of prefects. The school must know how matters stand. They must either submit to the prefects or be reduced to the level of a private school and have their freedom ignominiously curtailed." (29) By 1864 the Clarendon Commission found the prefect system established in all the schools they examined except Eton. (30)

106. It is now a particular mark of the Public Schools that in them the control of ordinary day to day discipline is left largely in the hands of the boys themselves. The records of these schools during the first half of the last century are evidence of the harm which can result from this system, if left unregulated, but it would be difficult to exaggerate the change that has taken place in the life of the schools since that time. It has been clearly proved that monitorial responsibility, if properly controlled by the masters, need not lead to the tyranny of boy over boy. When a school is able to train boys to accept responsibility, and to regard it as a responsibility for the welfare and good discipline of others, rather than as a means of securing

(22) S. Butler: op. cit., I, 9.

(23) Maxwell-Lyte: op. cit., 338, 9.

(24) H. C. Bradby: Rugby, 41.

(25) Leach: History of Winchester, 415, 416.

(26) Stanley: Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold (13th Edition), I, 104.

(27) John Wesley: Works (1829). XIII. 268. "The children ought never to be alone, but always in the presence of a Master."

(28) Leach: History of Winchester, 419.

(29) Bradley: History of Marlborough College, 138. (Compare Moberly, Headmaster of Winchester, 1835-1866. "A public school is one in which the government is administered, in greater or less degree, with the aid of the pupils themselves: a private school is one in which the government is altogether administered by the masters." (1848). Winchester Sermons, II, Preface.)

(30) Report of Public Schools Commission, I, 42, 3.

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advantages for themselves, it is making a valuable contribution to society. In recent years greater stress has rightly been placed on the need for all boys, and not only the older among them, to feel their responsibility as members of a community. In the nineteenth century, as was natural when the educational ideas of the period are borne in mind, too great an attention was paid to the merely disciplinary aspect of the system, though Arnold always insisted that it was the general influence and example of his Sixth Form that mattered most. It must be agreed that, if this training was valuable, to confine it to those from a limited social class meant that it was missed by many boys who would have gained from receiving it. And, further, this restriction was to some degree positively harmful, as it upset the balance of educational experience which should be found in all classes in a democratic community. But we believe that this tradition, which allows so large a degree of responsibility to the boys themselves, is one of great educational value. We recognise the part that it plays already in the day Secondary Schools of the country, but it has of necessity even greater opportunities of development in boarding schools.

107. During the last hundred years there has been one development at the Public Schools which has served particularly to differentiate their organisation from that of the other Secondary Schools of the country. Until about seventy years ago there seems to have been no generally accepted age at which boys should be sent to the Public Schools, but since then it has become the established practice in tile great majority of the Public Boarding Schools to fix the age of entry at about thirteen. (31) At the same time, the practice in the day Secondary Schools, crystallised since the publication of the Hadow Reports, has been to fix the age of eleven as marking the break between primary and secondary education.

108. At the same time, the usual curriculum adopted at the Public Schools is not wholly in line with that of the other Secondary Schools. It is true that the Public Schools, like the other Grammar Schools of the country, have experienced great changes in their curricula and in the range of their studies, which are now largely governed in both types of school by the demands of the School Certificate and Higher Certificate Examinations. But the educational traditions of the Public Schools have given to the study of Latin an importance in the curriculum which it does not hold in most of the other schools. In most of the Public Schools a majority of the candidates for admission, and in some cases all, offer Latin in the Entrance Examination.

109. Finally, with the raising of the usual age of admission, there has grown up in close connection with the Public Schools a system of privately owned Preparatory Schools, the origin of which may be traced back to the eighteenth century. Nowhere, in fact, is a deeper gulf to be found between the independent Public Schools and the general system of education than in the difference between the methods adopted to prepare boys to enter the two kinds of school.

(31) At Rugby in 1800, the 24 entries varied in age as follows: one boy of 5, one of 6, one of 7, one of 8, three of 9, four of 10, four of 11, four of 12, two of 13, and three of 14. (The boys of 5 and 6 were day boys, the boy of 7 a boarder.) In 1841 there were two boys of 9, three of 10, eight of 11, twenty of 12, thirty-eight of 13, forty of 14, twenty-four of 15, and six of 16. (The five boys of 9 and 10 and four of the boys of 11 were day boys.) In 1913, there were ninety-seven of 13, fifty-five of 14, three of 15, and one of 16.

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110. In considering the question of the part played by religion in the education at the Public Schools, it will be well to state first the legal relationship of these schools with the Established Church, as it has developed through the centuries. As we have seen, during the Middle Ages, through the period of Reformation and in the Eighteenth Century, the Grammar Schools were an integral part of the English ecclesiastical system. During the Eighteenth Century the control of the Church was allowed to fall into desuetude, though even after the passing of the Act of 1779, Dissenters were not allowed to teach in any Endowed School founded before 1688. The old Endowed Schools, however, were still sometimes regarded as forming part of the Establishment. (32) This position was completely altered by the passing of the Public Schools Act and the Endowed Schools Act. An attempt to secure the provision in the Public Schools Act that in all the schools covered by the Act the members of the Governing Body should be members of the Church of England was defeated in the House of Commons. It was left open, however, to the Governors of the schools under the Public Schools Act to draw up Statutes or Regulations which would ensure that the Headmaster belonged to a particular denomination or that services in the School Chapel were conducted in accordance with it. Of the 89 independent Public Schools in England and Wales, all but twelve have definite links with a particular denomination, (63 with the Church of England, six with the Roman Catholic Church, three with the Methodist Conference, three with the Society of Friends, one with Protestant Dissenters of different denominations, and one with the Church of Wales). In 41 schools it is laid down in Statutes or Regulations that the Headmaster shall be a member of the Church of England. But of greater importance was the fact that the larger and better-known Public Schools gained for themselves an even more widely recognised, though now undefined, status in the Church of England. Until the end of the century a considerable number of masters in these schools were in orders, the headmasters invariably so. Three out of the Archbishops of Canterbury who held the position during the nineteenth century had been headmasters of Public Schools, and other headmasters, such as Cotton of Marlborough, and Percival of Clifton and Rugby, rose to be very notable figures in the Church. These, and others, were men of great force of character, and it was inevitable that their presence in the Public Schools should have done much to build up a strong religious tradition. Since the nineteenth century the headmasters appointed have been more commonly laymen, and now only 24 out of the 89 headmasters of the independent Public Schools are clergy or ministers of their respective denominations, and few of the schools have more than two or three assistant masters in orders on their staffs.

111. It is impossible to write with any measure of exactness on the part played by religion in the life of the Public Schools. Its value and the effects on the lives of the pupils are not susceptible to statistical inquiry. But the strength of the religious tradition in the Public Schools during the last century cannot be gainsaid. No doubt, like all traditions, it has sometimes looked too much to the letter and too little to the spirit. In so far as the Public Schools have been responsible for educating a high proportion of the most prominent men in thought and action during the last century, they cannot escape their share of responsibility for any failing of religious faith in this

(32) John Wooll, Headmaster of Rugby from 1807 to 1829, stated in his Life of Joseph Warton, Headmaster of Winchester from 1766 to 1793, "But surely the established religion of the Church of England can by no means be more successfully secured to the rising generation, than when education is pursued on the open and acknowledged system of great schools. and preferment is in the hands of public and authorized foundations". (J. Wooll: Biographical Memoirs of Joseph Warton, 50.)

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nation in recent years. But Chapel services and religious teaching have continued to form an absolutely integral part of the life and education of the schools. (33) At this time, when the Government's Education Bill aims at making religious worship and teaching a part of the education provided by all schools in the national system, we feel that this living religious tradition of the Public Schools has much of value to offer.

112. Clearly the most striking difference of all between the schools of which we have just been speaking and the other Secondary Schools is the fact that the former are under the control of independent Governing Bodies. Their constitution is very varied. Most of them are required to contain representatives of Universities and other learned bodies, of particular professions and public interests, and often of special local interests also. But few of them contain representatives of publicly elected bodies. (34) Though some are fully autonomous, many are constituted by, and in certain respects subject to, schemes approved by the Board of Education as the successors of the Charity Commissioners, and in that capacity the Board also has certain rights of surveillance over the management of endowments, and nearly all the independent Public Schools are inspected at intervals by His Majesty's Inspectors. But, with these limitations, the schools are almost entirely independent corporations. It is sometimes argued that this independence, not only of control, but of any association with the State, gives the independent Public Schools opportunities for educational experiment, denied to other schools. We do not feel that this opinion is generally true. Freedom to experiment in a school derives not from the independence of the Governing Body, but from the freedom allowed to the Headmaster and the assistant masters to try new methods of teaching or discipline, and, further, a strong tradition may hamper experiment more effectively than any external agency. In the majority of the independent Public Schools, Statutes or Regulations lay it down that the Headmaster should have control of the teaching, discipline

(33) In 1867, as is shown by the Public Schools Commission Report, a daily service was not a regular practice in all the nine schools. Winchester alone had a daily service in Chapel: at Rugby, St. Paul's and Merchant Taylors' there were daily prayers for the whole school. At Eton there was one service on half holidays and two on whole holidays. At Rugby and Charterhouse there were services in Chapel on Saints' Days, and at Westminster in the Abbey. All the schools, except the day schools of St. Paul's and Merchant Taylors', had services for the whole school on Sundays - at Winchester, Harrow and Rugby three, at the other four two.

(34) These examples may be given of Governing Bodies of Schools not affected by the Public Schools Act or the Endowed Schools Acts: Cheltenham: 10 Life Members (one elected by Oxford University, one by Cambridge University, remainder co-opted) and 10 Ordinary Members, elected for five years (two elected by Headmaster and Assistant Masters, remainder co-opted). Epsom: Council of 32, two (President and Treasurer) ex-officio, the remainder elected or re-elected as to one third annually by the Governors, whose qualification is an annual subscription of a guinea a year to the Foundation. Lancing: The Society of SS. Mary and Nicolas, Lancing (which also controls four other schools in the Southern Division of the Woodard Schools). The Society consists of a Provost and not more than 24 co-opted Fellows. For each school is appointed a School Committee, consisting of not less than four Fellows and two co-opted members who need not be Fellows. Leys School: President, Ex-President and Secretary of the Methodist Conference, President and Ex-President of Old Leysian Union, 20 elected by Life Donors of the School, 3 by Methodist Education Committee, 2 by Tutors of Methodist Ministerial Training Colleges, 1 by Assistant Masters. Radley: One nominated by Oxford University, one by Cambridge University, one by Board of Education, remainder co-opted. Stonyhurst: Provincial Superior of the English Province of the Society of Jesus and his four Consultors.

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and internal organisation of the school. (35) But the Public Schools have gained much more from their independent Governing Bodies in other ways. The Public Schools derived great benefits from the Public Schools Act and Endowed Schools Act. The Trustees or Governors of many of the schools before these Acts had often been quite unfitted for their responsibility. Butler and Arnold had, on the whole, good relations with their Governors; Hawtrey, who succeeded Keate at Eton in 1834, was continually hampered by the Provost and Fellows of Eton under the old Statutes; Thring's career was marked by constant struggles with the Trustees of Uppingham. The prestige of the schools, the fact that they have educated a high proportion of the leading figures in the country, the loyalty of those educated at them, itself a tribute to their success, have led to the Governing Bodies themselves being often composed of men of culture and ability. No administrative regulations can preserve a tradition of this kind, but to remove from the Governing Bodies the responsibility they at present enjoy would inevitably weaken it. It is, however, true that the absence of any representatives of those bodies which administer the education provided under the general system of the country has been an influence separating the Public Schools from the remainder.

113. But no mere analysis of the characteristics of the Public Schools can be expected to do justice to them. Like any other institutions which have an ancient history it would be as false to dwell only on their traditional customs, as it would to neglect the effect, often quite unconscious, of their associations with the past. A true picture of the Public Schools would have to include a reference to the annual Latin Play at Westminster, performed today as laid down in the Statutes of 1560, and also to such an undertaking as the performance of Mr. Bernard Shaw's St. Joan by the boys of one of the older schools to audiences in Strasbourg, Nancy and Paris in the spring of 1939. It would pay attention as much to the educational experiments in work on the land carried out at a very recent foundation, such as Bryanston, as to the rules of Fives at Eton, where the Court in which the game is played is a faithful representation of the space between the buttresses of the fifteenth century Chapel. It would have to take account of the Greek iambics written in Sixth Book at Winchester as well as the work in the Metal Shops at Oundle, without forgetting the Science taught at the one school or the Classics at the other, and it would have to consider the buildings of the Public Schools from the Chapels of the founders at Winchester or Eton to those of more recent years at Giggleswick, Lancing and Stowe, and to the War Memorial Chapel at Charterhouse completed sixteen years ago. At least the Public Schools have made of themselves real communities, and there may be seen in the education they offer a definite sense of purpose. During the last hundred years they have preserved for English education a belief in the value of humane studies, in the need for a training in responsibility, and in the essential part to be played by religion in education. But we do not feel it our duty to pass any final judgment on the merits and failings of these schools. We are satisfied that there are many in this country who would agree that the education they provide is of value and that by means of boarding schools, old or new, those who wish their children to have this kind of education should have the opportunity of obtaining it. We have framed our proposals in the belief that new schools must be provided which will absorb and

(35) The Public Schools Act ensured, in all the seven schools with which it was concerned, that the appointment and dismissal of the assistant masters should be the sole responsibility of the headmaster. (31 and 32 Victoria c. 118, s. 13.)

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no doubt enrich the Boarding School tradition and that the old schools should be enabled to remedy the most serious weakness in the education which they offer, derived from the fact that at present they too often concern themselves with children coming from only a limited section of society.

114. The brief historical account which we have given of the rise of Public Schools will have shown that they have two main characteristics: they are for the most part Boarding Schools and they are managed by Governing Bodies which have a relatively large measure of independence. Of the independence of the Schools we have already spoken in the Introduction and in Chapter 3 and we shall discuss at a later stage such changes in the constitution of their Governing Bodies as we consider desirable. We are concerned now with the characteristics of the boarding system under which the pupils are resident in the school during the whole or a considerable part of their school life, at least from the age of about 13. We think these characteristics can be most instructively set out against the background of a Day School education, and accordingly we sketch this background first.

115. Day Schools are characterised by three main features. First, they leave a larger share of interest in the pupils' education to the home. Secondly, they usually develop a very real measure of co-operation with the parents. Thirdly, they are often connected in varying degrees with the institutions of their local areas. We consider these features in turn.

116. First, the home, being a natural community with a place and function in local society, can often supplement the influence of school in ways that can be recognised as having valuable educational possibilities. For instance, Day School pupils are more in the company of their parents and have ordinarily more opportunity than those at Boarding Schools for meeting their parents' friends and acquaintances. They often learn something of the different kinds of skill and knowledge connected with their fathers' trades and professions. They watch and help their mothers at the household tasks, the shopping and the care of younger brothers and sisters. They feel the impact of government, local and national, on their own and their parents' lives and so are introduced in the most direct and natural way to some of the problems of citizenship which they will have to understand and help to solve when they grow up.

117. This twofold life of school and home may lead, admittedly, to strain and maladjustment if conditions are faulty, but may also lead, if conditions are favourable, to breadth of outlook and to harmony and sensibility of character; and this, we think, has been the effect of family life in hundreds of thousands of good homes where physical conditions are not impossibly difficult, and where the affection of parents is supported by understanding and willingness to take trouble. In such circumstances the good home contributes, no less than the good school, to the growth of those virtues which are commonly recognised as characteristic of a home-based education:- seriousness of purpose, flexibility of mind and sympathy, individuality and an unwillingness to accept blindly the conventions of either school or world.

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118. Secondly, co-operation between home and Day School is often very close and is promoted not only by Open Days and by Parents' Associations, valuable as these are where they are of spontaneous growth, but even more by the informal friendship of parents and teachers both in school and in the pupils' homes; so that if the school can be said to educate the parents, the home can equally be said to help the masters and mistresses to understand their pupils' individual problems. From such co-operation both teachers and parents will learn much about each other's responsibilities and will recognise more fully their dependence on one another for carrying out effectively their respective obligations to the children. Indeed, the organised out-of-school activities of Day Schools are apt to make demands on the parents no less exacting, nor less willingly met, than those made on the school staffs themselves.

119. Thirdly, the Day School is usually associated closely with the life and institutions of its local area, primarily through its contacts with the parents but also through the corporate activities of the school and through the parts played by past pupils in the business and social life of the neighbourhood and in its cultural and religious institutions. The Day School's contacts with local life are many and varied and the influence of the school is often interwoven with the whole life of the town and the surrounding country side: the shops and offices and farms, the mills and factories, shipyards and railway stations, the libraries, art galleries and museums, the antiquarian and natural history societies, the musical and play-reading circles, the choirs and orchestras; the Scouts, Guides and Youth organisations, the hospitals and school missions and, above all, the Churches and Chapels and the religious organisations of every kind. This interpenetration between the schools and the life of the local community cannot fail to give to Day School boys and girls, in addition to their natural pride in their own schools, a further sense of purpose and service comparable with that inspired by the wider connections and more widely known traditions of the famous Boarding Schools.

120. We have tried in the preceding paragraphs to summarise the characteristics of a Day School education as having its own ethos and its own positive advantages, quite apart from any consideration of cost as compared with a Boarding School education. These characteristic advantages we find in the social and moral training of family life, in the regular partnership of parents and teachers, and in the relationship of home and school to local institutions. These are found in all kinds of good Day Schools, private and grant-aided, primary and secondary; academic and practical, orthodox and experimental. If each is present more in some schools than in others, the differences are to be ascribed less to the financial or administrative status of the schools than to variations between town and country conditions and in particular, between conditions in London and a few very large provincial centres, on the one hand, and the rest of the country on the other.

121. Boarding Schools are not to be regarded primarily as a substitute for Day Schools in sparsely populated areas or where the home is inadequate, but they have, like Day Schools, their own purpose and their own characteristic values.

122. We recognise that boarders are not entirely deprived of the advantages of home influence, since they spend part, at least, of their long holidays at home and, at such times, especially in the villages and smaller country towns,

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they often play a not unimportant part in local life. Nor are Boarding Schools unable or unwilling to achieve a real measure of co-operation with the parents of their pupils, and they are not always completely detached from the social and cultural institutions of their villages and towns. Some of our witnesses tell us there is probably no society the members of which discuss more keenly, according to their lights and on the basis of their experience, the social problems of the day than do the older boys and girls of Boarding Schools. This interest is not wholly academic, since Boarding Schools are not, as is often supposed, the preserve of the rich, and many of their pupils realise, even at school and certainly in the holidays, the hard struggle that has enabled their parents to send them there.

123. We set out the positive advantages of Boarding Schools, so far as possible, as they have been described to us by our witnesses.

We place first a training in community life which enables the boys and girls to work in and for a society composed of very different types, to sacrifice their personal wishes to the general good, to find their place in the community and to be ready, if called upon, to take responsibility. Our witnesses are practically all agreed that an opportunity to learn such lessons is given by Boarding School life, particularly by that part of it which, being lived out of school, is to a large extent governed and organised by the pupils themselves. A boy or girl begins by being a nobody but still having a place in the community, and gradually grows in importance and usefulness, learning lessons of public spirit and habits of unselfishness in the give and take of the community life, acquiring self-reliance and confidence, learning unconsciously to give or obey orders without giving or taking offence, to work with people of all kinds, whether congenial or not, and by degrees to become fit for the responsibilities which a member of a community may have to discharge, whether holding office or not. Boys and girls thus learn from Boarding School life the habit of self-dependence, of taking decisions and making plans without unnecessary reliance on the guidance or encouragement of their parents.

124. The value of a Boarding School life in these respects is fully recognised in some of the evidence submitted to us. Thus the memorandum of the Co-operative Union's Education Department, after saying "our ideal is that all Secondary Schools should be Boarding or Residential Schools", explains that "living in common under an educational roof is an educational process in itself as valuable, if not in some respects more valuable, than the general lessons in the classroom. Life is a process of give and take. In a democratically conducted Boarding School adolescents begin as citizens in readiness for the larger social field of service where they will have to mix with fellow citizens in field, farm, factory, workshop and office. Boarding School education can give the children a measure of experience in democratic self-government, almost a miniature republic, which no family life can ever give. It will develop self-reliance and produce democratic leadership."

125. Similarly, the County Councils' Association is "satisfied that from the standpoint of education in its wider sense, namely development of character, personality, self-reliance and initiative, efficient Boarding Schools do offer a type of training which could advantageously be extended. ... Moreover at a Boarding School a boy shares in the life of a community and learns to adapt himself to its claims and to discharge the duties of such a corporate society. Such training is of great value to him in after life."

126. A very real and valuable common life will be achieved in any good school. Day or Boarding. But the sphere of common life and self-government which goes with it is mainly in the life out of school, and this in a Day School

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is inevitably smaller in range and there is always a danger that some boys and girls may remain untouched by it. The daily journey to and from home, which may be a long one, is bound to curtail the out-of-school activities of many day pupils. It is much easier for boys and girls in Boarding Schools to realise fully the opportunities, and to discharge the obligations, of life in a community of their fellows and equals.

127. It must not be supposed that, when the common life of either a Boarding or a Day School is said to produce qualities which fit the young for responsibility, the object or the effect of the school's training is to produce a superior class of leaders whom the rest of the world are to follow, or that the community consists of two predetermined groups of leaders and led. What is meant is that the common life of the school prepares boys and girls to take responsibility if it comes to them, giving them scope and initiative and developing self-reliance, but prepares them no less to follow the lead of others in the school, and afterwards, if that should be their duty.

128. Another advantage which is or may be possessed by a good Boarding School, lies in the close association of pupils drawn from many parts of the country, bringing with them a greater variety of interests and ideas than is likely to be found in the Day School serving a single area, especially an area mainly given up to a predominant industry. This enriches that education of boys and girls by one another which is rightly claimed as one of the best things in school life. Some of our witnesses regard the non-local character of these schools as of prime importance and value and there can be little doubt that the mixture of types in continued contact with one another helps to increase the social experience which a school may develop. The Association of Directors and Secretaries of Education says in its memorandum:-

"The Boarding School, from the very fact that it is non-local, draws pupils from varying parts of the country and with different experiences of life. Even nowadays there are many children whose experiences are too much dominated by the particular locality in which they live, and the advantages of this mixing go further than merely bringing the town child and country child together. ... The value of linking with other children whose home life has centred around different forms of profession or industry conduces to increase the width of outlook and background of experience and breaks down a tendency to think in terms of one's locality."

129. Some witnesses lay special stress upon the greater influence which teachers may exercise from the mere fact that their whole time is given to the school and that a master or mistress, and more especially a House-master, is able to know and help his pupils individually in all sorts of good ways, giving much informal guidance which is invaluable for many of them, and influencing them by an example which is constantly before them. A master's teaching also may gain much from his intimate knowledge of his boys. It would indeed be impossible to speak too highly of the devotion and self-sacrificing energy of many Day School masters. There are masters and mistresses in some Day Schools whose teaching and pastoral duties occupy the greater part of their waking hours from beginning to end of term, as well as much time in the holidays, but the time at their disposal is ordinarily much less and Boarding Schools have a peculiar opportunity of realising, between pupils and staff, an all-round human relationship which does not begin or end in the class-room.

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130. Some mention must be made of the health of the pupils, and in this respect it would be too much to claim that the Boarding School enjoys all the advantages, especially since the development of efficient health and medical services in Day Schools. But Boarding Schools have some positive advantages. They are mostly situated in healthy country surroundings and have the advantages of proper sick-bay accommodation and experienced resident matrons and nursing staff and, sometimes, also of their own school doctors. The boys and girls are subject to a healthy and regular physical routine under full and constant supervision. The evidence of the Heads of Day Schools which have been evacuated owing to the war and have been fortunate enough to secure hostel accommodation is emphatic as to the improvement of the boys and girls in general health, physical development and hygienic habits through their life as boarders. A memorandum received from the Association of Medical Officers of Schools points out the advantages of having "skilled nursing and medical attention in specially equipped rooms available at the very beginning of illness and for the treatment of all injuries without delay."

131. Finally, whereas the care for the religious education of a Day School pupil is largely shared by the parents and by the Church or Chapel with which the family is associated, in a Boarding School the responsibility rests mainly with the School, and this is the most important of the many forms of trust assigned by parents to the school authorities. The School Chapel focuses the growing religious sense of the boys and girls in ways to which their ages and their school loyalties readily respond, and the common acts of prayer and worship, the preparation for Confirmation or Church-membership and those possibilities of religious education which lie outside the classroom, can become an integral part of the school life and organisation. There are, moreover, in the close contacts of Boarding School life countless opportunities for masters and mistresses to help boys and girls individually over their religious difficulties and to give them the encouragement they need. We by no means underrate the religious atmosphere of the Day School: we have been impressed with the influence of the daily prayer and worship offered in the vast majority of Day Schools, and of the terminal or annual services which some of these schools hold in a Cathedral, a Parish Church or one of the Free Churches; and we recognise fully the individual help given in these schools to their pupils, especially in schools which have established a Tutorial system. But the continuity of the Boarding School life naturally opens special opportunities, and where these are taken, the school may have an influence of the greatest value to whose who benefit by it.

132. There is, indeed, a danger, of which we have been wisely reminded, that the religious life of the school may be isolated in the mind of a Boarding School pupil from that of the wider Church, that the individual pupil may be detached from the influence of the parish priest or minister and that he may regard his share in the religious exercises of the school as part of the educational routine which will cease when he leaves. On the whole, however, it must be recognised that the opportunities of healthy religious development which a good Boarding School gives are one of the great advantages of such a school, and this is abundantly confirmed by the evidence of some of the Head Masters of evacuated schools which are enjoying this advantage for the first time.

133. We have said nothing about educational advantages in the narrower sense and we think it would be difficult to point to any superiority in Boarding as against Day Schools except in so far as the efficiency of teachers in the

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classroom may be enhanced by their greater intimacy with many of their pupils and in so far as the larger number of teachers in proportion to pupils, which is common and almost necessary in Boarding Schools, makes more individual attention possible. It is also easier in a Boarding School to make desirable adjustments of timetable and to fit in subjects or special work which are demanded by only a few pupils.

134. The various advantages of Boarding School life are summed up in the evidence which comes to us from schools which are experiencing it for the first time owing to evacuation. This evidence has been for the most part favourable. The Head Masters and Head Mistresses record an increase in community spirit, and an improvement in social behaviour, as well as the growth of a keener sense of responsibility and often of initiative in senior boys and girls. Some of our witnesses, as we have already noticed, lay particular stress on the value of a regular religious service. Most refer to the benefits of regular hours, and of those advantages of health and hygiene to which we have already referred, and to these they attach a great deal of importance.

135. Such are the features of Day and Boarding Schools as they have been represented to us by our witnesses and as they are known to some of us by our own experience; they are, of course, combined in different degrees in schools in which there are both day and boarding pupils. Our conclusion is that while Day and Boarding Schools do not by any means exclude some of each other's characteristic advantages and while many children would be equally well suited by either, the choice between a day and boarding education is, for others, important and even critical and ought to be made freely and without financial bar.

136. We need scarcely draw attention to the obvious cases where health or circumstances should make either a Day or Boarding School the obvious choice, if parents and guardians were really free to choose. If it is true, on the one hand, that the delicate or highly strung child often needs the confidence and individual understanding that a good home can give even better than a good Boarding School, it is equally true that other children would benefit from the continuous discipline of a Boarding School and from an education in surroundings free from the distractions inseparable from day school life. Again, Boarding Schools are needed for children who have lost one or both of their parents or whose parents are separated; for children who live in remote country parishes or thickly populated areas; for those whose parents are both engaged in a business or profession. Above all, Boarding Schools are necessary for those whose parents' occupations, often in the service of the State, compel them to live abroad, and these children, whatever their parents' means, should have a first claim on whatever Boarding School accommodation is available.

137. But, apart from these more obvious instances, our evidence suggests that there are thousands of others who, though tolerably well suited by the day school system, would find in the life of a good boarding school the widening of experience or the extra encouragement or stimulation that would develop and strengthen their characters and release their full potentialities. We are convinced that this most important of all educational choices ought not to depend, as it does now, on financial considerations and that the issue ought not to be confused by the social distinctions, real or imaginary, which divide the two types of schools.

138. Some of our witnesses expect considerable opposition from parents to allowing their children to go away from home, particularly to an environment

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of a markedly different character. There is, however, some evidence to the opposite effect. The Head Master of a school, which admits boys from Primary and private Preparatory Schools in approximately equal numbers, states from his experience that "the fear that parents would be unwilling to let their children go away to boarding school or are definitely antagonistic to the idea has been, in our experience, quite groundless." The experience of evacuated schools has been that the parents have been strongly impressed by the improvement brought about in their children by boarding school life and have largely changed their attitude towards it. A nation-wide enquiry by the National Federation of Women's Institutes has shown a welcome from its members, in most districts, for the idea of at least a period of boarding education. The Education Committee of the Trades Union Congress thinks that boarding may be more popular with parents after the war but that it may take two generations for the idea to take root. Others anticipate a more rapid conversion, and probably the rate depends upon the wisdom and the results of the scheme for admission which is adopted. Some of us are inclined to think that the conversion may be really rapid, as it has been in regard to halls of residence in the newer universities, which it was predicted would fail through parental opposition, but most of which, before the outbreak of war, were, in fact, full to overflowing.

139. There is one last consideration. Apart altogether from any general advantages which Boarding Schools possess as such, we recognise that many of them have other special merits of their own and that these advantages are at present closed for financial reasons to all but a small minority of parents. Some Boarding Schools, for instance, have particular denominational affinities; some have experimented in new methods of education; many have to their credit a fine record of scholarship in one field or another. To certain groups of parents these attractions hold a special appeal and it is wrong that they should be cut off from them purely by lack of means. We hold, therefore, that the Public Boarding Schools, and other Boarding Schools too, should be made more widely accessible, not only because they are Boarding Schools but also because many of them have individual features and distinctions to contribute to the common stock of education.

140. We have considered in the previous paragraphs the respective characteristics of Day and Boarding Schools and have suggested that the choice between them is often one of great importance for the children and their parents and that it ought to be made freely and without financial bar. The necessary provision for extending this freedom of choice could be secured in two ways:-

(i) by the admission of pupils from grant-earning Primary Schools to Boarding Schools already in existence;
(ii) by the provision of more boarding schools.

(1) "In one direction a new departure may be looked for. Hitherto, apart from the provision made at certain country grammar schools for pupils from remote homes, boarding education has been restricted either to those children whose parents are able to send them to the Public Schools or to children who have to be removed from their homes because they are destitute, defective, or delinquent. There is no reason why the benefits of a boarding education should be thus limited, and it is widely held that such facilities should be extended within the ambit of the state system. This need not mean the building of a large number of new boarding schools since there is likely to be a surplus of accommodation that can be used for this purpose after the war. The whole question of boarding education is at present under consideration by the Fleming Committee."

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shall discuss each in turn; but before we bring forward our practical proposals for making the Public Schools more widely accessible, we must consider the arguments put forward by those who disapprove of such a step altogether. These arguments fall into two parts - first, those which challenge the wisdom of introducing a number of boys from poorer homes into boarding establishments attended mainly by those whose parents can pay a considerable fee; and secondly, those which condemn the whole Public School system on the widest social and political grounds.

141. It is anticipated by a number of our witnesses that the introduction of a number of boys from poorer homes into schools mainly attended by those whose parents can pay a considerable fee would be a failure; that the boys so introduced would find great difficulty in adjusting themselves and might be really unhappy; that there would be too sharp a contrast between the standards of living of the school and the home, and between the ways of thinking, the tacit assumptions, of each; so that if a boy so introduced did make himself happy at school he would be unable to do so in his holidays at home. It would be particularly difficult, we are told, for such boys to make friends among a majority who had had a different upbringing at home and who might even pronounce English with a different accent. Some might achieve happiness only by attempting to intimate the ways and speech of the majority. Two of the memoranda which we have received may be quoted:- "The effect on working-class children would in most cases be thoroughly unsatisfactory. Most of the children would be distinctly unhappy and suffer from an inferiority complex. There is the risk that both the few who might be happy and the many who would be unhappy would be turned into undesirable snobs." Again - "There is no gainsaying the fact that a boy from a poor home who is sent to a Public Boarding School is going to find acute difficulty in adapting himself to both environments, and the result may possibly be the reverse of beneficial to the boy or advantageous to the community." The Head Master of an East London School also writes:- "I cannot see anything but acute unhappiness arising from the well-meaning desire to throw open the Public Schools to all classes. It would entail a complete change of living and habit, and would engender mischievous thought in the victims, to say nothing of the effects on their families. Imagine the Stepney boy during vacation." On the other hand, a Senior School Head Master who sees many of the same risks says he would like to see the experiment tried and is quite prepared to find his apprehensions falsified.

142. We understand the fears of these witnesses but such evidence as we possess from quarters where the experiment has recently been tried points in the opposite direction. The Head Master of Christ's Hospital, where the Elementary School boys are associated with boys from Preparatory Schools, told us that the mixture takes place very naturally, and that he could only remember half a dozen boys who would have done better if they had stayed at home or gone to a day school. The Head Masters of two Yorkshire Public Schools to which Primary School boys are sent by the Local Education Authority state emphatically (to quote one of them) that "Even with the boarders, there has been no difficulty of any kind about their fitting in - 'snobbery problems' simply do not exist ... Misfits have been extremely rare." Some of us have personal knowledge of these two schools and we can confirm the Head Masters' statements. We are informed that at Rendcomb College, where boys from Preparatory and Elementary Schools are admitted in about equal numbers, "Friendships present no difficulty. Continuance of them during the holidays depends almost entirely on the attitude of the parents. Within the

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school there appears to be no 'class-consciousness' at all. Problems have not arisen around the question of speech. The buildings and the general life of the school are sufficiently different from the home environment of all the boys not to encourage comparisons," and we are told that the poorer boys' relations with their homes remain unimpaired and that there is no evidence that the education of working-class boys at the School has tended to separate them from working-class interests. Again, we are told that at the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, scholars from the grant-aided schools mix successfully with those from private Preparatory schools. There are no social barriers and no tendency whatever to form groups or cliques inside the common life of the College or the boarding houses. The positive benefits of the mixing are rated very highly.

143. We give this evidence as it comes to us, believing it is reassuring, even though Christ's Hospital and Rendcomb College are in the nature of special cases and the rest of the evidence is based on comparatively small figures and on very recent experience. We believe that, if certain important conditions are observed, the risks of misfits will be few, and that even these can be avoided if vigilance and goodwill are exercised by all concerned.

144. In so far as the fear of maladjustment is based on the supposed luxury of Public Schools, there is probably some misapprehension. Our evidence suggests there is very little luxury in most of these schools. Meals are sufficient and wholesome, but plain; dormitories are in general clean and airy, but very simply furnished; studies are adapted for work; and if there are servants to do for boys many things which would be done at home by themselves (or more probably by their mothers) the experience of war-time has shown that boys can and are willing to perform many such services for themselves, and we hope this will continue in the future. There is some danger, as indeed there always has been, of a contrast between richer and poorer boys in regard to clothes (where there is not a uniform dress) (2) and pocket money, and some restriction of the amount of pocket money should certainly be encouraged; but perhaps it is no bad thing for boys to learn, even in their school days, to accustom themselves to a world in which there will long be many degrees of wealth and poverty. What seems to be the first necessary condition of success is that the number of boys so admitted shall be large enough to save the individual from any risk of unhappy isolation and from the temptation to cease to be his natural self. We deal with this question of proportion later, and the method of selection which we propose will, we hope, go far to prevent misfits.

145. We pass now to the wider and more serious objections which are raised to the admission of pupils from the Primary Schools to the Independent Public Schools - objections based not on anticipation of the failure of the experiment, but upon the belief that there is something radically wrong with the Public Schools as such. There is undoubtedly a very widespread belief that the Public Schools originated in, and still tend to increase, the cleavage between social classes - and particularly between rich and poor - which is deplored by all men of goodwill and not least by the Governing Bodies of the Public Schools themselves. It is true, roughly speaking, that the Public Schools were part of a social order which existed until the beginning of the present century and in which little attempt was made to provide any but elementary education for the children of manual and industrial or even of the less well-paid clerical workers. One of the consequences of this was that all those posts

(2) This is said to be a preventive of class-distinctions at the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, where also there is a wise standardisation of pocket money. At Christ's Hospital the uniform is said to have the same effect.

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which demand a higher education in Church and State and in some of the professions, went almost inevitably to persons educated in the Public Schools and the older Universities; those who by force of character rose from other beginnings to these positions were rare though notable exceptions. Moreover, such a state of things was bound to persist to a great extent even after the introduction of secondary education for a large number of the pick of Elementary School children. Such posts of power and responsibility are not usually awarded to anyone before middle life; it could hardly be expected that any considerable number of men who were educated in Secondary Schools (from 1902 onwards) and in the newer Universities (nearly all created in the present century) would find their way to the higher positions earlier than the last fifteen years or so, and the process would still be retarded by the natural tendency of the dispensers of patronage to select persons of the same type and outlook as themselves. From some tables submitted to us by the Workers' Educational Association, it appears that, in 1939, out of 830 Bishops, Deans, Judges and Stipendiary Magistrates, highly paid Home Civil Servants, India Civil Servants, Governors of Dominions, Directors of Banks and Railway Companies, 636, or about 76 per cent, were drawn from the Public Schools, and of these 394 (or about 47.5 per cent of the total) from twelve of the more important Public Schools - a result which is approximately the same as was worked out by Professor R. H. Tawney twelve years earlier.

146. We see some signs of gradual change in the evidence submitted to us by the Civil Service Commissioners. In the examinations for the Administrative Class of the Home Civil Service, between 1925 and 1937, there was a decrease of about 13 per cent, as compared with the period 1904 to 1914, in the proportion of successful candidates who had been previously educated in Public Schools. Even in the later period, three-fifths of the successful candidates had been at Public Schools as defined in our terms of reference, but it must be remembered that the term "Public School" in this sense includes a number of well-known and successful Direct Grant Day Schools and a number of important Scottish Day Schools; in both the earlier and the later periods mentioned there was a majority of successful candidates from Day Schools as compared with Boarding Schools. In the examinations for the Indian Civil Service, between 1921 and 1938, the proportion of successful candidates both from Public Schools and from Boarding Schools was about the same as for the Home Civil Service during the same years, i.e, rather less than half from Boarding Schools and about three-fifths from Public Schools; no comparable figures were available for the Indian Civil Service during the earlier period. In examinations for the Consular and Diplomatic Services, between 1923 and 1938, a majority of the successful candidates came from Boarding Schools and an even larger majority (in the Diplomatic Service an overwhelming majority) from Public Schools. In examinations for admission by Special Entry to the Royal Navy in 1942 and 1943 there was, among the successful candidates, a bare majority of boys from Boarding Schools, and a considerable majority (over three-quarters) from Public Schools.

147. These figures do not afford a substantial basis of comparison between recent and less recent times, and such changes as they do reveal are small and gradual, though perceptible. They do, however, establish the considerable extent to which the higher branches of the public service are, and have for some time been, dependent on the Day Schools and they show also that, in the Home and Indian Civil Services at least, boys from the grant-aided schools generally (and not only from the better known Direct Grant and Scottish Day Schools) are obtaining an increasing share of responsible posts

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in the public service. Other figures supplied by the Commissioners show that such entrants are successful in holding their own with others in subsequent progress in the service. But changes of this kind make themselves felt slowly, and a natural impatience with what many people regard as unfair advantages has been accentuated by the experience of the war, in which all classes of society have contributed without distinction of origin to the number of gallant and successful officers in all the Services, and many men whose career began in Elementary Schools have filled high offices of State with great efficiency and distinction. A full solution of this problem, which is not a purely educational one, does not lie within our power to devise, but the proposals we make for enabling boys and girls of all classes to enter the Public Schools will go far, we hope, to ending the social exclusiveness of these schools, and so to ending, also, any unfair or undeserved advantages which their pupils may have enjoyed from the mere social reputation of their schools.

148. We realise the possibility that just as some parents now send their sons to Public Schools partly, perhaps mainly, for the sake of social or economic advantages, so our proposals may attract some other parents who are interested mainly in the same narrow advantages. This [is] a risk that must be taken, but it can be watched and reduced, if not entirely eliminated, from the start, and should eventually disappear as the Public Schools become representative of all classes of the community. We recognise also, that if a number of Primary School boys were admitted to the Public Schools, the privileges for the rich and the inequality of opportunity would not immediately disappear. Indeed some of our witnesses tell us that nothing would happen beyond a slight extension of the privileged class through the addition of a few poorer boys who would absorb its prejudices and failings. There would certainly be some risk of this if the number admitted were small; but the number need not be small, and we emphasise again that the ultimate object of our proposals is to make these schools accessible to all classes irrespective of wealth and social position.

149. Finally, it has been very freely stated to us that Public School men generally show a lack of sympathy with, or even understanding of the lives and difficulties of the other classes in society, from which they are said to be wholly segregated, and particularly of those engaged in manual and technical work; and that they are out of touch with social realities and incapable of grasping modern social conditions. It is difficult to prove or disprove sweeping statements of this kind, but it may be admitted that in so far as social classes exist, the members of one class, especially while they are young, are bound to know more about the life and conditions of work and the outlook of their own class than about those of another, and that in so far as Schools exist which are accessible only to those who can pay high fees, there is a real danger that the outlook of those who are less well off should be insufficiently understood. It must not be forgotten, however, that those Public Schools which are attended by boys whose parents are wealthy or aristocratic are very few out of the whole number, and in all schools there are boys whose parents have only been enabled to send them there by a hard struggle; there is in the Public Schools much less economic exclusiveness than is often supposed. But so long as degrees of wealth and poverty and a diversity of functions in the social organism exist, all men of goodwill must desire increased mutual understanding, and the question before us, once more, is how this aim is most likely to be furthered. We hope that, as a result of our proposals, any exclusiveness and lack of understanding that may be associated with the Public Schools may be diminished, but, as we said earlier, the problem is part of a wider one, the solution of which will call for broadminded ness and good sense outside as well as inside the Public Schools.

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150. We are, then, led to the conclusion that the education given by the Public Schools includes elements of very high educational value, especially but not entirely on the boarding side. It would, therefore, be wrong to destroy them, as the more extreme of their critics desire (by the appropriation of their endowments and the diversion of their buildings to other purposes) or to refuse to associate them in any way with the general system of education, provided that the number of boys admitted to them from Primary Schools is sufficient to avoid the dangers which have been discussed. The problem of providing boarding education for all who can benefit will only be partly solved by this means, but the contribution of the Public Schools, though relatively small in numbers, would be very far from negligible in other respects. The Public Schools have been giving a boarding education for generations, and some for centuries, and thus they have experience in a matter where experience is of the highest importance, and they have also, in most cases, sufficient and suitable accommodation and equipment to make a sound start. Above all, they are willing and anxious to play their part and they can begin without delay. We see the risks and difficulties, but these are not sufficient to persuade us that proposals cannot be framed which will be to the immediate educational advantage of thousands of children and will be a first step towards a much greater measure of social and educational unity in the nation.

151. In paragraph 140 we concluded that the necessary boarding accommodation for achieving our purpose would need to be found, partly by admitting pupils from grant earning Primary Schools to existing independent Boarding Schools, and partly by providing new Boarding Schools and Boarding Hostels. We then considered the desirability of using for the first of these purposes those existing Public Boarding Schools which fall within our terms of reference. But it is clear that the problem of finding additional boarding accommodation can be only partly solved in this way. All the boys' Public Boarding Schools have only something over 6,000 annual vacancies as against an age group population at 13 of about 295,000 boys in the country as a whole, while the accommodation in girls' Public Boarding Schools is, both absolutely and relatively, even smaller (just over 2,000 annual vacancies). The total number of boarding places in boys' Public Schools is about 29,000 and in girls' Public Schools about 10,500. It is impossible to predict how readily parents will avail themselves of Boarding Schools when the fees are wholly or partly payable by public authorities, but we may reasonably expect that, even at the start, and increasingly later on, the facilities offered by the Public Schools will need to be supplemented: by a great deal of additional boarding accommodation in other schools. We must, therefore, consider briefly from what sources this additional accommodation may be looked for.

152. First, there are a certain number of boarding places in independent schools which do not come within our terms of reference but which are inspected and recognised as efficient by the Board of Education and are not conducted for private profit. Many of these have special characteristics which would commend them to certain groups of parents. Some, for instance, are denominational schools, while others have experimented in new ideals and methods of education; some are co-educational. From what we have been told by the Association of Convent Schools, the Friends' Education Council, the Methodist Education Committee and the English Association of New Schools, we know that many of these schools are anxious to be associated

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with the general system of education, provided they are not asked to sacrifice their freedom of worship and religious teaching, or to abandon their special educational principles.

153. Turning from the independent to the grant-aided schools, we anticipate that in the future, many Local Education Authorities will wish to use their new powers of aiding or providing a boarding education. There are at present in attendance at grant-aided schools about 13,000 boarders of whom 9,000 are boys and 4,000 girls. Many of these are in schools which fall within our terms of reference, but others are in schools not in membership of the Headmasters' Conference or the Governing Bodies' Associations of either Boys' or Girls' Schools, and such provision is therefore additional to that mentioned in paragraph 151. In future, the Local Education Authorities will be enabled to assume financial responsibility for boarding hostels in County and Auxiliary Schools, and we expect that many will be anxious to expand the existing boarding accommodation in schools under their jurisdiction and to create new facilities where none now exist. We attach the greatest importance to the expansion of boarding facilities within the general system of education and we are glad to know from evidence submitted to us that our view is shared by the County Councils' Association and the Association of Municipal Corporations.

154. We conclude also that in certain districts where the population is sparse and where communications are difficult it will be necessary to provide Boarding School accommodation for all the children of secondary school age. In such districts, many parents will probably desire that their children shall attend secondary schools as close as possible to their homes, and return home for weekends. In that event, it will be necessary to provide hostels or small boarding houses at secondary schools of all types which are attended mainly by day pupils. We recommend that such hostels should be controlled by the teaching staff of the school and regarded as an integral part of the school provision. We recommend also that opportunities should be given to children in such hostels to receive a full boarding school education if that is found to be best suited to their needs.

155. We feel it necessary to draw special attention to one difficulty that may arise under the arrangements for secondary education in the Education Bill now before Parliament. Under the terms of the Bill, fees will be payable for boarding expenses at schools maintained by a Local Education Authority, though no fee may be charged in respect of the education provided in any such school (Clause 60). In 1938, before the issue was complicated by the factor of evacuation, 79 of the 283 Aided Schools in England, included in their numbers ten or more boarding pupils. (The usual arrangement is to have one boarding house, of between 20 and 40 pupils, at the school, though 13 had over 50 boarders in all in 1939. In 15 Aided Schools more than a quarter of the pupils were boarders.) Many of these boarders come from administrative areas other than the one in which the school is situated, and even from many different parts of the country. There is a real danger that, unless appropriate steps are taken, these schools will no longer be able to draw boarders from outside their own areas. As it will no longer be possible for these pupils to pay tuition fees, the cost of their education will fall on the Authority responsible for maintaining the school, unless agreements are reached allowing for appropriate payments to be made by the Authorities of the areas in which the pupils are domiciled. Further, there may well be

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a shortage of Grammar School places in some areas and the Authorities there may feel it incumbent on them to reserve all the available places for pupils for whom they are themselves responsible. This also would make it impossible for such schools to continue to draw boarding pupils from outside their own area.

156. We should regard it as altogether unfortunate if a measure which for the first time encourages Local Authorities to enter the field of boarding education was to result in a restriction of the areas from which the boarders in schools within the State system were drawn, particularly as for some time the boarding accommodation in the country will of necessity be unevenly distributed. We have made it clear that we consider the coming together of boys and girls from different parts of the country to be a very valuable element in the life of the independent and Direct Grant Public Boarding Schools, and we recognise that it may often be found also in Aided Schools. We consider it essential that steps should be taken to preserve this element in those schools which will in future be maintained by the Local Authorities.

157. We recommend, therefore, that the Board of Education, when the development plans of Local Education Authorities are considered, should give special attention to this aspect of the question. We believe that it should be capable of solution by means of reciprocal arrangements between the different Authorities, and we have every reason to believe that this view is shared by a large number of the Authorities themselves.

158. So far we have considered only full-time boarding, and we assume that this would be, in the main, the natural contribution of existing Boarding Schools, whether independent or grant-aided, to the general educational provision. But it seems certain that a great deal of entirely new boarding accommodation will be needed and, though much of this, also, would be designed for full-time boarders, we can conveniently mention here the idea of part-time boarding. This has been suggested to us by many witnesses who think that most boys and girls would benefit from a short period of boarding at some time in their school lives, even though their education generally is to be in Day Schools.

159. Part-time boarding has been recommended to us by different witnesses for several different reasons. It is advanced by some as an expedient for spreading the benefits of new boarding accommodation as widely as possible. (These witnesses would leave the existing Boarding Schools to deal with the supply of full-time boarding to the limit of their capacity.)

160. Others believe that by the age of 16 a boarding education has served its purpose and doubt the wisdom of extending the period of boarding, in any case or in any type of school, beyond three years at most.

161. Others appear to grasp at part-time boarding as a compromise which would partly solve the old, unprofitable, and largely unnecessary Day and Boarding School controversy which we tried to avoid when we examined the characteristics of these two types of schools earlier in this Chapter.

162. We cannot wholly accept any of these reasons, least of all the second (para. 160), but we do see some possible advantages in part-time boarding, and we think its merits are most persuasively argued by those who regard it, rather as they regard School Journeys or School Camps, as an extension of the corporate life of Day Schools and an opportunity of teaching Day School pupils certain lessons of independence and public spirit which they will not necessarily learn at home. The analogy must not be overstrained, since School Camps and School Journeys are undertaken as a break in school routine, and

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though they have an educational object, they are only indirectly connected with the normal programme of studies. Part-time boarding, on the other hand, ought not to interrupt the school curriculum, and for this reason we prefer to avoid the term "Camp Schools". The Camp Schools of the National Camps Corporation were not constructed to provide for periods of protracted residence and study, and it is only by the accident of war that some of them had to be used by schools as permanent homes. We recognise the usefulness of school camps as centres for holidays and rural projects, but for part-time boarding the accommodation would need to be designed, from the start, to satisfy the requirements of a school (or part of a school) in full working order and at all seasons of the year.

163. The practical problems raised by part-time boarding do not at present admit of any but the most tentative solutions. Our witnesses make various suggestions as to how long the pupils should spend at the boarding hostels; some recommend a term, some two years or even three years, and others various intermediate periods. There are equally different estimates of the most suitable age; some say 11, others 16, while others would postpone the boarding period until full school days are over; the most favoured age is between 13 and 16. Some witnesses advocate a double break for boarding, first at 14 and then again at 16 or 17. Practically all witnesses are agreed that the part-time boarding arrangements of a Day School should be controlled by the school's own Governing Body and managed by the school's own regular staff and that each school should have its own boarding annexe and not merely a share in some regional boarding establishment. The arrangement of suitable teaching programmes and the distribution of staff between the day and boarding parts of the school would present obvious difficulties, but these may not prove insuperable. Other difficulties are bound to remain, since a partial break in the unity and continuity of the school's life could not be avoided; it would be for each Local Education Authority to decide whether the advantages of the experiment were worth the risks, but, in any event, provision of this kind could not be regarded as a substitute for full-time boarding, whatever other advantages it might be found to promise.

164. We have considered part-time boarding only in relation to new provision, mainly because of the difficulty of fitting "birds of passage" into existing communities of full-time boarders whose life is organised on a 4 or 5 years cycle. But we do not wish to bind independent Boarding Schools to making one and only one kind of contribution to the national provision for boarding. Some Public Schools for instance, already make arrangements to take some of their day-boys into the boarding houses for a year or two, usually, but not always, towards the end of their school lives. Other Public Schools would willingly accept new-comers for two years of advanced work in the Sixth Form, though we think that, in the interests of the Day Schools, these facilities should normally be limited to the few boys and girls for whom suitable Sixth Form work is impossible without a change of school. Other Public Schools might, exceptionally, offer some facilities for short-term boarders coming from and then returning to other schools. We do not know how these experiments would work out, and we do not wish, at this stage, to do more than state the general principles on which we are agreed, and which we have borne in mind in framing the proposals which are set out in the next Chapter:-

First, that the Public Schools and the other independent Boarding Schools should associate themselves with the general system in all kinds of different

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ways according to their different characters and circumstances and the circumstances of the areas in which they are situated.

Secondly, that the association of the independent Boarding Schools with the general system should be accompanied by the expansion and creation of other boarding accommodation, both full-time and, where it is desired, part-time, by the Local Education Authorities.

165. An experienced witness tells us that after the War there are likely to be a number of Royal Air Force and Army Establishments which will be no longer needed for their present purpose. These buildings, we understand, are well and solidly constructed of brick, stone or concrete and are equipped with such necessary services as water, light, heating, power and roads. As school buildings, they would offer ample Assembly Halls, Recreation Rooms and Gymnasia, up-to-date Kitchens and Dining Halls and a large range of rooms suitable in size and other respects for teaching purposes or readily adaptable for residence. They are surrounded by open spaces and are situated in some of the loveliest and healthiest parts of the country. The total accommodation of each would often be several times the size of even a large school, but as the separate buildings or groups of buildings are usually well dispersed, it would be possible for several separate schools to lead their independent lives on one site with common catering and recreational facilities. We hope that the Board of Education will take early steps to learn how much accommodation of this kind is likely to be available and to bespeak some of it for educational purposes. We urge, also, that in any planning schemes which may be adopted by the Central or Local Authorities the reservation of land for Boarding Schools and boarding hostels should not be overlooked.

166. As we have seen in Chapters 1 to 3, the Secondary School system of England and Wales, as it exists today, has grown up as the result of centuries of history. Its range extends from the provided school to the independent school through a wide variety of types, each shading off into another. In regard to administrative control, scales of fees, provision of scholarships and the determination and amount of grant there is great divergence between one type of school and another. In characteristic English fashion the system has developed by stages, without reference to any ultimate pattern, and with little attempt at logic or uniformity; but, throughout its growth, one fundamental principle has characterised and informed the system - the gradual extension of opportunity. In almost all Schemes for Endowed Schools made in the nineteenth century a Scholarship and Exhibition Clause is to be found, often with reference to a particular area in which the pious founder lived or worked. In 1902 the new Local Education Authorities were given power to award Scholarships; five years later the offer of a proportion of Free Places was made a normal condition of grant. But it was in 1918 that the principle received statutory embodiment in Section 4 (4) of the Education Act, 1918. The section provided that, in Schemes submitted by Local Education Authorities "adequate provision should be made in order to secure that children and young persons should not be debarred from receiving the benefits of any form of education, by which they are capable of profiting, through inability to pay

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fees." In the words of an official Report issued in 1920 (1) this statutory provision "effected a revolution and looked forward to a new order"; it has, in fact, been the basis of development in secondary education ever since.

167. The main defect of the system so built up is its unevenness. At the present time - forty years after the beginning of a State system of higher education - the provision of Secondary School places varies from area to area between 5.3 and 33.5 per thousand of the population; tuition fees range from £4 10s. to £45 a year; the percentage of Special Places may be as low as 10 per cent in individual schools or as high as 100 per cent in certain areas; income scales and awards vary widely both in range and gradations. So it comes about that a child may be fortunate or handicapped in securing higher education according to the scale of the local Secondary School provision and to differences between one district and another in the matter of school fees and remissions.

168. A further step forward is promised in the Government's new policy. Local Education Authorities are to prepare development plans for bringing their provision of schools up to satisfactory standards. In so doing they are to ensure such variety of instruction and training as is appropriate to the needs of the pupils. All tuition fees in County and Auxiliary schools are to be abolished and boarding fees are to be suitably graded. Lastly, more comprehensive arrangements are to be made for transport and for contributions by Local Education Authorities in respect of children attending schools in other areas. When all these measures are completed there should be an educational system in every area affording reasonable opportunity for children to attend the type of school for which by capacity and aptitude they are best fitted.

169. But there remain two tracts outside the strictly local field which have yet to be charted. In the first place, the Day School system includes a number of schools, most of them aided by Direct Grant from the Board, which in one way or another present special characteristics differentiating them from the schools which are in an administrative relation with the Local Education Authorities. Again, there are the Public Boarding Schools most, though not all of them, entirely independent of public control which, apart from scholarships awarded on a competitive basis, have so far made little provision for pupils unable to pay the full boarding and tuition fees. It follows logically from the principle enunciated in Section 4 (4) of the Education Act, 1918, and from the Government's present proposals, that all places in these two classes of schools should be available to children capable of profiting thereby without regard to the income of their parents.

170. Before outlining our proposals it is necessary to make two general comments:-

(a) In the first place, it could not be expected that one solution will fit all schools. The term "association", which occurs in our terms of reference, is a vague word; it may denote anything from juxtaposition to almost complete absorption. Most of the Day Schools, and also a few Boarding Schools, have for many years been within the grant-aided system; for them the problem is how far this association should be more fully realised. Most of the Boarding Schools, on the other hand, have so far had no experience of the grant-aided system, and in this respect they are now in much the same position as the Day Schools were forty years ago. We think it necessary, therefore, to propose two Schemes which recognise the differing

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history and practice of schools, though we do not regard the solution we propose as final, since much must be left to the experience of tile future.

(b) In the second place, we are bound to refer to the question of fees. In our Special Report we examined this question very fully, and we do not now intend to reopen the conclusions there set out. We are entirely agreed upon the principle that all schools should be fully accessible to qualified pupils without regard to means. Whether or not this logically implies the general abolition of fees, we are in practice faced with a position in which fees will continue in some schools, and our present proposals have been framed to conform to this situation.

172. Accordingly, we propose that the Board of Education should compile a list of schools which will not in future be maintained by Local Education Authorities but which agree to play their part in association with the general system of education on certain clearly defined terms. The schools on this list, which we refer to hereafter as associated schools, should be sub-divided into two categories - Scheme A. and Scheme B. schools.

173. Scheme A. would comprise schools fully accessible to all pupils and would replace the present Direct Grant system. At the present time Direct Grant schools receive fixed capitation grants payable in respect of all pupils over 11 in the school, on condition that the school accepts a minimum percentage of Free or Special Place pupils. The present system is open to three main objections. First, it is illogical that in a fee charging school public funds should be applied towards reducing the cost of education for pupils whose parents can well afford the full cost. Secondly, there is a technical duplication involved in subsidising from the Exchequer both the school fees and the expenditure of the Local Education Authorities in meeting them. Thirdly, it is unsatisfactory that the percentage of Free or Special Places, which in the majority of schools was settled many years ago, should remain unaltered.

174. Under our proposals, the requirement of a minimum percentage of Free or Special Places would disappear and all schools associated under Scheme A. would be made fully accessible to pupils without regard to income, either by the abolition of tuition fees or by grading the fee according to the means of the parents. The Local Education Authority or Authorities would have the right to reserve a reasonable number of places to supplement the

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local provision of free secondary education and would pay in full for their pupils, receiving grant from the Board on their expenditure. Apart from the pupils sent by the Local Education Authorities, the Governors would be responsible for the admission of pupils, but the Board would satisfy themselves that no pupil was excluded on other than reasonable grounds and that a sufficient proportion of pupils educated in grant-aided Primary Schools was maintained.

175. Scheme B. would involve a new principle. At the present time certain Public Day Schools receive pupils sent by Local Education Authorities and there is no reason why this practice should not be continued and extended. There is, however, no machinery for sending pupils at the expense of public funds to Public Boarding Schools. Our proposals provide means by which a number of places in Public Boarding Schools can be filled by pupils who would have their fees made up, either by means of State bursaries or at the cost of Local Education Authorities, who would receive grant on their expenditure.

176. Both schemes will contribute towards building up a single body of associated schools, which will thus take their place in a national system side by side with the County and Auxiliary Schools for which provision is made under the Education Bill. There will be one essential difference, in that County and Auxiliary Schools will rely on public funds for their running costs, while in associated schools public funds will be applied to supplement the loss of fees. There will also be differences in the degree of responsibility exercised by the Governors over the administration and premises of their schools. But it is vital to our conception that the system should, from now onwards, be regarded as a single whole, with schools of different types. With this introduction we now outline the two Schemes which we propose.

177. (i) Scope of Scheme. The Scheme should be open to such schools, recognised by the Board as efficient and not conducted for private profit (2), as the Board may accept.

In considering whether a school should be accepted, the Board should have regard to:-

(a) the financial position of the school;
(b) the non-local and other special characteristics of the school;
(c) the value and extent of the contribution which the school could make to the national provision of secondary education, including the education of pupils who had previously attended grant-aided Primary Schools;
(d) the observations of the Local Education Authority.

(iii) Local Education Authority' Places (Day or Boarding). The Local Education Authority or Authorities should have the right to reserve at the schools a number of places, day or boarding, for pupils for whom they are responsible. The number of places so reserved would vary from school to school and should be settled between the Governors and the Authorities, with reference to the Board if necessary. Close collaboration should take place

(2) See also paragraph 181 (a).

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between the Schools and the Local Education Authorities in the process of the selection of these pupils. There should be a provision prohibiting the exclusion of pupils on other than reasonable grounds.

(iv) Other Boarding places. In Boarding Schools and Schools which have a Boarding House as part of the School a number of boarding places might by agreement between the Board and the Governing Body be placed at the disposal of the Board of Education to be filled according to the provisions outlined in Scheme B.

(v) Financial arrangements - Payment of fees. Schools should be required either to abolish tuition fees or, if tuition fees are retained, to grade them according to an approved income scale which should provide for total remission in cases where the parents' income requires it. Boarding charges would similarly be graded in all schools participating in the Scheme.

In the case of pupils sent by Local Education Authorities:-

(a) the tuition fee or cost of education would be paid in full by the Authority and no part should be recovered by the Authority from parents, since such places would constitute a part of the free secondary provision of the area;
(b) in the case of pupils sent as boarders, the Authority would pay the boarding fee to the school and would recover the appropriate amount under the income scale from the parents, except in cases where a suitable education could not otherwise be provided.

Local Education Authorities should pay to the school the full cost of tuition and boarding for all pupils sent by them and receive grant from the Board on their net expenditure. The Board of Education should pay grant to the school in respect of all other pupils. The method of calculating the amounts to be paid by Local Education Authorities and by the Board are set out in the first Supplementary Note appended to this chapter.

(vii) Grants from Local Education Authorities towards capital expenditure.

Local Education Authorities would make no contributions towards the maintenance of the schools, other than the fees for the pupils sent by them, but contributions by Local Education Authorities towards the capital costs of alterations and improvements should be allowed with the approval of the Board, and grant would be paid by the Board to the Authority on such expenditure.

(viii) Use of Endowments.

The Governors should be responsible for the improvement and alteration of premises and for this purpose they should be empowered to use the income and, under proper conditions, the capital of any endowments available under the Scheme or other Instrument of the School, but

(a) when this income is exceptionally large the Board might, in consultation with the Governors, require some part to be used to reduce the approved cost of education per pupil (3);
(b) loan charges and sinking funds current at the time of application might be taken into account at the discretion of the Board in calculating the approved cost per pupil (3):
(c) for special reasons the Board might authorise the Governors to take into account similar charges incurred subsequently with the Board's approval.

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In making this last recommendation, our object is to make provision for schools which, judged by considerations we have already described, are clearly entitled to become Scheme A schools but which, for exceptional reasons, are unable to finance their capital expenditure entirely from endowments or subscriptions. We do not recommend that advantage should be taken of this provision to enable schools to enter Scheme A on any other grounds than those already stated in section (i) of paragraph 177.

Staffing ratios and salary scales should be considered by the Board in calculating the approved cost of education per pupil. Reasonable variations should be allowed in staffing ratios; the rates of salary should in no case fall below the scales which will be in force for secondary schools in the future. We hope that when the new scales are framed they will afford a satisfactory common measure for salaries throughout the grant-aided secondary schools, including schools now independent which may wish to participate in this Scheme. Some schools have built up standards of work which they owe to highly-qualified men and women attracted to them by the payment of salaries more generous than the present Burnham Scale, and this should be allowed for when the Board approves the salary scale of Scheme A schools. If the revised national salary scales are sufficiently generous to attract to the teaching profession men and women of the right kind in adequate numbers, there should be few, if any, Scheme A schools where the salaries would be in excess of those generally paid. (4)

In accordance with the ordinary practice, the position of existing teachers should be recognised by arrangements suitably framed to safeguard their present contracts with the Governing Bodies who employ them.

Participating schools would come within the Government Superannuation Act and thus be enabled to provide for the pensions of their teaching staffs on terms more advantageous than can be enjoyed by schools outside the grant-aided system.

(x) Composition of Governing Bodies.

At least one-third of the Governing Body should be nominated by the Local Education Authorities sending pupils to the school, or, for Boarding Schools receiving pupils sent by the Board of Education, partly by the Local Education Authorities and partly by the Board of Education.

178. (i) Scope of Scheme.

The Scheme, which would be open to such schools as the Board might accept, should apply only to Boarding Schools or schools having a substantial number of boarders, recognised by the Board as efficient and not conducted for private profit.

(ii) Bursaries for pupils from Primary Schools.

The Board should grant bursaries to qualified pupils who have been previously educated for at least two years at a grant-aided Primary School, to enable them to proceed to Boarding Schools accepted for inclusion in this Scheme. The bursaries should cover such remission of tuition and boarding fees and other expenses as is held to be justified according to an approved income scale and there should be total remission where necessary. Special

(4) In paragraph 154 of the McNair Report an important recommendation is made for raising the salaries of teachers in Primary and Secondary Schools.

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arrangements should be made for the offer of a certain number of bursaries to the children of British parents living and working overseas.

(The assessment of the fees to be paid for bursars is considered in Chapter 7.)

(iii) Proportion of places allotted to pupils from Primary Schools.

Schools participating in this Scheme should offer in the first instance a minimum of 25 per cent of their annual admissions to pupils from grant-aided Primary Schools.

The scheme of admissions should be reviewed every five years with a view to the progressive application of the principle that schools should be equally accessible to all pupils and that no child otherwise qualified shall be excluded solely owing to lack of means. As the proportion of bursars increases above 25 per cent it will be necessary, in order to maintain the principle of equal accessibility, to modify the requirement that all bursars shall be drawn from grant-aided Primary Schools.

Certain schools may have undertaken already commitments to prospective pupils in numbers large enough to make it impossible for them to accept, as bursars, 25 per cent of their admissions in the years immediately after the Scheme is brought into operation. We recommend that the Board of Education, for this reason - and for this reason only - should allow a lower proportion to be accepted, but only for as long as existing commitments affect the situation.

(iv) Reservation of places by Local Education Authorities. Local Education Authorities should be able, by agreement with the Board and the Governing Bodies, to reserve under this Scheme a certain number of places at particular schools for pupils from their areas who have for at least two years attended a grant-aided Primary School. When the total number of bursars sent to any school by the Local Education Authorities and the Board of Education together exceeds 25 per cent of the total numbers in the school, the requirement of previous attendance at Primary Schools might be waived in particular cases. The fees and expenses of pupils sent by Local Education Authorities should be paid to the school by each Authority, which should recover from the parents amounts determined under an approved income scale and should receive grant from the Board on its net expenditure.

(v) Method of Selection of Bursars. Applications for bursaries should be made by parents through the Local Education Authorities to the Board of Education. Parents should be free to apply for any Boarding School in the country which has accepted the Scheme and, if they wished, for more than one, stating an order of preference.

Suitable candidates should be seen by Regional Interviewing Boards to be set up by the Board of Education on the advice of a Central Advisory Committee (see paragraph 180) and a report on each candidate should be sent to the Central Advisory Committee which should recommend to the Board the final distribution of candidates to the different schools. Final acceptance should rest with the school authorities but they should be expected to satisfy the Board of Education as to their reasons, in the event of their rejecting recommended candidates.

The Regional Interviewing Boards should be small, consisting of about four persons, of whom one should be the Head Master or Head Mistress of a Public School participating in the Scheme, another the Head Teacher of a Primary School, and a third a member or officer of a Local Education Authority. The Boards should have the assistance of each candidate's Primary or Secondary School record, a report from the Head Master or Head Mistress

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and the observations of the Local Education Authority; they should not be limited in their choice of candidates by rigid conditions, but their aim should be to choose those for whom a Boarding School education appears desirable and suitable.

Further details of our proposals for the selection of bursars will be found in Chapter 6 where we consider more fully both the method of application for bursaries and the broad principles which might govern the work of !he Regional Interviewing Boards.

(vi) Age at Entry. Bursaries should be available at the ages of 11 and 13. Pupils awarded bursaries at the age of 11 might enter a Preparatory Department of a Public School or a Preparatory School specially approved for the purpose (see paragraph 181) until the age of 13. Pupils awarded bursaries at 13 should enter the Public School direct.

(vii) Composition of Governing Bodies. The Governing Bodies of schools participating in this Scheme (but not in Scheme A) should include persons nominated by the Board of Education who should normally be not more than one-third of the whole Governing Body, provided that in no case should there be less than three so nominated. When a School makes an agreement by which a certain number of places are reserved by a particular Local Education Authority (see (iv)), some of these persons should be nominated by that Authority.

(viii) Salaries. The rates of salary in any school accepted for this Scheme should not be less than those in force generally for Secondary Schools.

(ix) It should be open to the Board of Education and to any participating school, at any time after the first five years from its admission to the Scheme, to give a year's notice to discontinue the entry of further bursars at the school.

179. The two Schemes outlined above form part of a single plan for associating the Public Schools with the general educational system. We have not attempted to elaborate them in every detail and we think it would be unwise at this stage to do so. For some time to come there will be need for experiment, and many of the particular problems will be solved by practical experience. But it is important from the very outset to have in mind the picture of a continuous system of Grammar Schools, from the oldest Public School to the newest County School; this now, for the first time for nearly two centuries, becomes a possible ideal. For this reason, we recommend that the administration of the Schemes should be conducted through the normal machinery of the Board of Education and we cannot accept the suggestion made to us of a special Independent Schools Grants Committee set up to deal with a privileged class of schools. The analogy of the University Grants Committee, which has been cited in favour of this proposal, really points in the opposite direction, since that Committee is concerned with all Universities, not with some of them. To propose to exclude the Public Schools participating in the Schemes from the purview of the Board of Education would be analogous to proposing to transfer certain Universities away from the University Grants Committee to a separate financial authority.

180. At the same time, in view of the complex problems that will arise in working the Schemes, we think it will be necessary for the Board to have the advice of a Central Committee appointed under an independent Chairman

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by the President of the Board of Education and including in its membership representatives of the Local Education Authorities, the Governing Bodies, and the Teaching Profession as well as one or more persons not directly associated with the conduct or administration of education. The duties of this Committee would be to advise the Board on questions connected with the Schemes, to review and report on the Schemes at stated intervals, to carry out on behalf of the Board certain functions and, in particular, to advise the Board as regards the setting up and working of Regional Interviewing Boards and the distribution of pupils to individual schools when the Regional Boards have made their recommendations.

181. With regard to ways in which the period from 11 to 13 could be spent a special problem arises. The normal age of admission to Public Boarding Schools is about 13 and our witnesses are generally in favour of retaining this age. We believe that for many pupils it will be found preferable to delay a final decision as to a boarding education until the age of 13, and in such cases it would no doubt be appropriate for the child to spend the two years in the lower Forms of a Secondary Day School. If, however, the preliminary choice is made at 11, where are the two preparatory years to be spent? Some Public Schools have Junior Houses to which the pupil could be sent, and the practice of providing such houses is growing. Where this is not the case, we recommend that the pupil should be educated for these two years at a Preparatory School, provided that his parents are willing and that three conditions are fulfilled:-

(a) that the Preparatory School is not conducted for private profit. There is no guarantee of continuity in a school conducted for private profit. It may be closed at the will of the proprietor and a change in proprietor may lead to a complete alteration in the character of the school. Further, we recognise that the motive of private profit is out of place in education and may lead to decisions being taken which are educationally wrong. Finally, the school conducted for private profit is under no liability to render accounts.
(b) that the Preparatory School is recognised as efficient after inspection by the Board and is specially approved for the purpose of receiving bursars;
(c) that responsibility for the arrangements made with the Preparatory School is undertaken by the Head Master of the Public School for which the boy is accepted. The value of the bursary would be adjusted, during this period, to the cost of education at the Preparatory School.

182. Our suggestions will call for a considerable expansion of boarding accommodation in many different directions. The proposals outlined in this chapter would enable suitable pupils to be entered at Public Boarding Schools whether by a Local Education Authority or by the Board with a bursary. But we look also for a wide development of boarding facilities in County and Auxiliary Schools, and for the reasons given in Chapter 4 (paras. 155 and 156) we think it important that Local Education Authorities should enter freely into reciprocal arrangements for sending pupils as boarders to County and Auxiliary Schools in other areas where boarding facilities exist or will be created under the new powers given to Local Education Authorities by the Education Bill. Such opportunities should not necessarily be restricted

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to Grammar School pupils and we think that boarding facilities should be available also to pupils in Technical and Modern Schools, schools where special stress is laid on agriculture or schools of a multilateral type.

183. As we stated in the Introduction, our proposals have been framed to enable all schools to play a part and we have agreed on them unanimously in the expectation that they will find general acceptance by the Schools. But no proposals for formal association can have much hope of success if they are not accompanied by practical manifestations of goodwill and common purpose between the Public Schools and all the other schools of every kind. Already the war has helped in many ways to break down barriers. For example, the pupils of the independent and grant-aided schools have been brought together through harvest and forestry camps and various forms of pre-Service training as well as through the greater readiness of neighbouring schools of different types to join in games and debating fixtures and joint sessions of school societies. Again, some Public Schools have placed part of their buildings and grounds at the disposal of evacuated Secondary Schools or have helped with educational activities outside the range of their ordinary peace-time experience. Conversely, other Public Schools, which are themselves evacuated, have been dependent in some measure on the resources and hospitality of the reception areas and have discovered bonds of interest, not only with the local Secondary Schools but also with the organised social life and daily work of the countryside. We hope these new friendships will be strengthened and developed, since the success of our proposals will depend largely on the extent to which formal association is accompanied by mutual feelings of trust and, where possible, by an exchange of educational facilities and by the recruitment of staff for each type of school from the pupils of the other.

184. In a number of ways we expect that our proposals will themselves develop this increase of mutual sympathy. The entry into the Public Schools of boys and girls from Primary Schools will acquaint the Public Schools, often for the first time, with some aspects of primary education, and at the same time will bring a direct knowledge of Public Schools into many homes where such schools have been previously known only through distorted or out-of-date descriptions.

185. In this section of our Report we have traced briefly the evolution of secondary education from 1902 onwards; we have seen the gradual extension of opportunity for children educated in Public Elementary Schools to enjoy the privilege of higher education. We have noted the great advance marked by the Government's proposals now before the country and we have outlined a plan for carrying this advance further into regions where it has hitherto been unknown. The picture of the future, as we see it, is one of consolidation of the ground already won, combined with a steady and gradual advance to new gains. We do not disguise from ourselves the difficulties. For the Primary School child a door is to be opened into new country, but the prospect may seem at first strange; to the Public Schools an opportunity is given for new and wider service, but it may seem like the long arm of bureaucracy. For complete success there will be need of vision, courage and understanding; but, if success is attained, the benefits for future generations will be incalculable.

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The arrangements for the payments to be made by the Board of Education and Local Education Authorities should be as follows:

(i) Tuition

Each School should prepare once every five years an estimate of annual expenditure (excluding boarding expenditure). This sum would be divided by the number of pupils at the school, and the resulting quotient will constitute the Standard Rate. This Standard Rate would be subject to approval or modification by the Board, after examination of the accounts and consideration of the observations of each Local Education Authority sending pupils to the School. Each Authority should pay at the Standard Rate for each of its pupils, receiving grant on its expenditure. The Board should pay direct to the school at the Standard Rate for all other pupils. In special cases the Board should be authorised to sanction a temporary variation of the Standard Rate or to pay an emergency grant (not exceeding in all a specified sum in any one year) to meet any unforeseen and considerable increase of costs occurring between one quinquennial estimate and another.

Each School should fix a tuition fee to cover the cost of education (excluding Boarding expenditure). This fee would be subject to approval or modification by the Board, after examination of the accounts, and after consideration of the observations of each Local Education Authority sending pupils to the school. Each Local Education Authority which sent pupils to the school should pay the Approved Fee for each of its pupils, receiving grant on its expenditure. The parents of all other pupils should pay tuition fees according to an approved income scale and the Board would pay the school the difference between the Approved Fee for each pupil and the amount actually received from the parent. There would be the same provision as in (a) above for emergency payments.

(ii) Boarding

Each School should fix a Boarding Fee, which would be subject to approval or modification by the Board, after an examination of the various items of expenditure connected with the boarding houses and after considering the observations of the Local Education Authority. Each Local Education Authority which sent boarding pupils to the school should pay the full boarding fee for each of its pupils and would recover from the parent according to an approved income scale, except for pupils for whom a suitable education could not otherwise be provided: for these no boarding charge should be made. The Authority would receive grant from the Board on its net expenditure. The parents of all other pupils should pay the boarding fees to the school according to an approved income scale and the Board should pay the school the difference between the boarding fee for each pupil and the amount actually received from the parents.

The business of obtaining from individual parents a statement of their incomes for the purpose of assessing fees has in the past proved cumbersome and it would be of great advantage if some simpler method could be devised. It is suggested that the Board of Education should consider in consultation with the Board of Inland Revenue whether some arrangement could be devised by which local Inspectors of Income Tax, who already possess the required information, could supply to the Governors, on application from the parents or with their consent, a confidential statement sufficient to enable the Governors to assess the fee under an approved national income scale.

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186. In Chapter 5, "Proposed Schemes of Association", we have recommended that applications for admission to Boarding Schools, under Scheme B, should be considered by Regional Interviewing Boards, and we have stated our opinion that these Boards should not be limited in their choice of candidates by rigid conditions. But, in preparing our Schemes, we have kept constantly in view the means by which they would be brought into operation, and we feel bound to suggest some of the criteria which, we think, should determine the selection of candidates for bursaries. Indeed, a further consideration makes this necessary, for, if the numbers of candidates to be considered by the Boards are much in excess of the places available, there will be rejections and disappointments. To avoid suggestions of inequality of treatment it is very desirable that Boards should make their selections in accordance with principles that are generally understood and appreciated.

187. At the same time we realise that it is not possible to regulate the selection of applicants by precise rules, for this will be largely an uncharted field and it is only through experience that the relevant criteria will become fully apparent. We make here, therefore, what are a number of suggestions rather than any definite recommendations.

188. The suspicion is sometimes voiced that any scheme such as we propose in this Report will, in fact, entail the selection of the most promising pupils from the Primary Schools for a Boarding School Education, and their withdrawal from education at Day Schools. To send a boy or girl to a Boarding School rather than a Day School would very often entail a greater expenditure of public money, and there is an evident danger that pupils likely to attain academic distinction would be chosen, since, on a superficial judgment, their education might appear to give greater value for the money spent. We should regard any such segregation of the particularly gifted children of the country as altogether unfortunate. The harmful effect on the intellectual standards of the Day Schools will be obvious. Although the numbers involved would be extremely small, the Day Schools could hardly be expected to accept with equanimity the removal of those pupils who were outstanding either intellectually or in their all-round contribution to the life of the school. Further, we believe that any advantage which might appear to accrue to the Boarding Schools would actually be quite illusory. If a school is to be a true community, it must contain children of varying intellectual qualities, as well as those of different temperaments and interests. This is one reason why we have rejected without hesitation any plan for a competitive examination for the bursaries under the Scheme we propose.

189. We hold, then, that any attempt to make use of the Schemes which we propose in order to segregate the abler children and to send them to Boarding Schools would be socially and educationally wrong. But this does not mean that when a particular school can offer some particular educational advantage otherwise unobtainable, and a child is specially well fitted to benefit from it, it should be denied to him. Provided that it is well understood that intellectual ability by itself should be no criterion for selection for education at a Boarding School, we think that, if it appears to an Interviewing Board that a child would derive special benefit by going to a particular school, the application should be favourably considered. There should be a clear distinction between any attempt, on the one hand, to differentiate Boarding

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Schools from Day Schools or independent from grant-aided Schools, and, on the other, the recognition that there may be a particular school which is especially well suited for a particular child.

190. We believe that the first principle to be accepted in any consideration of this question is that which we have propounded in Chapter 4, "Day and Boarding Schools", paragraph 135, where we state that, "Our conclusion is that, while Day and Boarding Schools do not by any means exclude some of each other's characteristic advantages, and while many children would be equally well suited by either, the choice between a day and boarding education is, for others, important and even critical and ought to be made freely and without financial bar". The parent who has the means is now able to ensure a boarding school education for his child, if he desires it. To refuse it to the child of a parent without the means would be a clear denial of the principle of equal opportunity in education, once it is agreed that the provision of boarding education is to be undertaken by the State at all.

191. It must be recognised, however, that for some time to come the provision of boarding education may well fail to meet the demand for it. The independent Public Schools, however many places they offer, cannot do more than provide for a very small proportion of the children of the country. Local Education Authorities will take several years to provide their own Boarding Schools during a period when they have other extensive duties to fulfil. We must, therefore, consider the possibility that the number of applications before the Interviewing Boards will be in excess of the total number of places, and, in that case, some form of selection will become inevitable. To put it shortly, if there are more applications than places, the wishes of the parent, though necessarily a first consideration, cannot possibly be a final one, and it would be necessary to supplement them by some other criteria.

192. We have said that there should be no attempt to take only abler children. At the same time, those chosen for bursaries must be able to assimilate the ordinary curriculum of the school to which they go. It is to be noted, further, that in most Public Schools for boys a knowledge both of Latin and of French is required for entrance. Bursars who are selected at the age of 11 should be able to acquire sufficient knowledge of these two languages by the age of 13, either in the Junior School or Preparatory School or in the lower forms of a Secondary Grammar School. It is, however, not at all to be desired that candidates, whether chosen at 11 or at 13, who have little or no knowledge of Latin should be thereby disqualified. While the Central Advisory Committee and the Regional Boards will be in a position to know the standards and curricula current in the different schools and to direct bursars accordingly, the schools themselves should be prepared to make any special provisions which may be necessary to meet the needs of particular bursars. But, generally speaking, they should be able to take their places naturally in one or other of the forms in a school to which new entrants are usually assigned.

193. The first task of the Interviewing Boards should be to remove from the lists the names of those candidates for whom an education at the school or schools applied for would not seem really suitable. It can never be satisfactory for a child to be educated at a school in which the standard of the work is above his powers, or the curriculum not suited to his particular aptitudes. The Interviewing Boards should therefore reject applications from those children whose school records and Head Masters' reports show that they cannot be expected to profit from the education provided at the school or schools for which application is made. There are also children who are

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clearly unsuited, for temperamental reasons, for a type of education in which the pressure of the community is inevitably stronger than at a Day School. Here it is particularly difficult to lay down hard and fast rules, to distinguish, to take one instance, between a retiring child, who would find in the closer communal life of a Boarding School just the experience needed to help him to overcome his difficulties, and another who would stand particularly in need of the opportunities to escape from his fellows which life at a Day School more readily provides. Clearly, very considerable reliance will have to be placed here on the reports of Primary School Head Masters and Head Mistresses, supplemented by a report in every case from the Local Education Authority.

194. But it is when those children are eliminated for whom a Boarding School education is plainly unsuitable that the problem of finding positive criteria begins. There will be children for whom it will be clear that education at a Boarding School is essential if they are to be given any real chance for education to play its proper part in their lives, and there will be others who seem to have qualities of mind or character which such boarding education could best develop. In both cases it will really be the need of the child which is being considered, though the need is not of the same kind in the two types.

195. We recommend that both the parent or guardian, on making the application, and the Primary or Secondary School Head Master or Head Mistress, when making the reports, should be required to be quite explicit in stating the particular reason why it is considered that the child should have a Boarding School education. An obvious claim to consideration is possessed by children who, though perfectly sound in mind and character, would not derive the fullest benefit in a Day School because of exceptional home circumstances such as we described in paragraph 136. There are also children who stand in greater need than others of the continuous discipline of a Boarding School and those who would benefit particularly from education in surroundings free from the distractions inseparable from life at a Day School. There are also those who seem lacking in initiative or self-reliance, and who would almost certainly benefit from living in a Boarding School. But we do not consider that Boarding Schools should be regarded as valuable only for children who are in some way handicapped, either by reason of difficulties in their homes or because of some temperamental weaknesses and, so long as places are insufficient in number, the Boards must necessarily face the difficult task of selecting those children of whom it cannot be said that they stand in positive need of a Boarding School education, but for whom such an education would undoubtedly afford special opportunities for the fuller realisation of their particular qualities. We recognise that in no part of our Report is it more difficult to make recommendations than here. Educational psychology is still in its infancy; methods of selection can only be improved by the process of trial and error, and mistakes will no doubt be made. But the accumulation of experience in this matter should be rapid.

196. The method of application and selection which we recommend is as follows: Parents would make application for bursaries in the first instance to their Local Education Authorities who would forward the applications to the Board of Education, accompanied by copies of: (a) the candidates' Primary School or Secondary School records. As experience of keeping such records grows these may be expected to furnish a comprehensive summary of progress and development over a number of years; (b) reports from the Head

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Masters or Head Mistresses of the Primary or Secondary Schools from which the candidates come; these reports would be expected to comment on the personality and circumstances of the candidates and, in particular, their suitability for a Boarding School education; (c) the observations of the Local Education Authorities, especially on matters which might lie outside the range of either the school records or the Head Teachers' reports.

197. The Board of Education, on receiving the applications from the Local Education Authorities, would discard any which, on serious grounds of health or character seemed, prima facie, completely unsuitable; these would probably be very few indeed, and there might be none. The applications would then be classified by Regions and sent, together with copies of the records and reports, to the Regional Interviewing Boards who would arrange to see the candidates selected by them for further consideration, accompanied, wherever possible, by their parents or guardians; travelling expenses and, where necessary, out-of-pocket expenses would be paid. When the interviews were completed, the Regional Interviewing Boards would make their recommendations to the Central Advisory Committee who would advise the Board on the final distribution of the available vacancies among the recommended candidates, the latter being subject to further interview and final acceptance by the Heads of the Schools for which they had been recommended.

198. In making their recommendations, the Regional Boards would be guided by the parents' choice of school and by the special needs and aptitudes of the pupil, so far as these considerations can be reconciled with one other and with the availability of places in the schools. The Central Advisory Committee would act as a clearing house.

199. It is impossible to predict what demand there will be for the bursaries, but it may well be, as we said earlier, that it will be possible to find vacancies for only a proportion of the candidates, and the difficulties of selection may be complicated further if the bursaries prove more attractive to parents in some parts of the country than in others. It will be necessary for the Board of Education to advise the Regional Interviewing Boards, before they start work, as to the proportion borne by the total number of Boarding School vacancies in any particular year to the total number of candidates applying from the country as a whole. These figures would enable each Board to decide roughly what proportion of the candidates from its area should be recommended for awards and to group its candidates accordingly. Each Board would be allowed and, no doubt, expected, to recommend in the first instance rather more candidates than would be eventually offered awards, and it would fall to the Board of Education, with the help of the Central Advisory Committee, to adjust the total number of awards to the number of available places (with a reserve list) and to ensure that the bursaries were distributed as fairly as possible among the different Regions, having regard to the number of applications from each Region. This procedure would probably prove less complicated in practice than might be expected, and similar methods have, we understand, worked quite smoothly in other fields of selection (e.g., Engineering Cadetships) during the war.

200. We recommend that the Board of Education, with the help of the Central Advisory Committee, should pay particular attention to the experience gained after the scheme has come into operation and should regard it as a duty to obtain information from the Boarding Schools participating in the scheme, to help it to decide whether the process of selection is being carried out satisfactorily.

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201. There is finally, one most important consideration. When a bursary has been awarded, it will not be sufficient to send the child to any Boarding School. Schools vary considerably in their intellectual standards, in their methods of discipline, in the curriculum they offer and, more important still, in their religious uses and practices. The school chosen must suit the aptitude and temperament of the child and not conflict with the religious background of his home. In applying for a bursary, a parent will normally select a number of schools in order of preference, but he may not have sufficient knowledge to make a wise choice, and it will be the duty of Regional Boards to help him as far as possible to choose a suitable school. Particularly we feel that it would be wise for Interviewing Boards, when considering whether a child is suitable for the school for which his parents have applied, to bear in mind the regulations and traditions of that school with regard to attendance at religious services and instruction. In many schools, where a right of withdrawal is already normally exercised, no problem should arise. But we do not believe that it could be to the benefit of a child, nor could the education provided be regarded as suitable, if his parent claimed for him the right of withdrawal at a school where this is not granted to other pupils and would be quite foreign to the general traditions of the school. We should certainly deprecate any arrangement by which the right were accorded only to the one class of pupils, as this would create a conspicuous mark of distinction.

202. In this Chapter we have considered some of the problems which will confront the Interviewing Boards and have suggested certain broad principles on which we think the awards might be made. But we recognise that much must be left to the experience of the future and that the success of the Schemes will depend less on any detailed guidance given to the Boards than on the qualities of the persons serving on them and the spirit in which they work.

203. We have not thought it part of our task to make a complete enquiry into the financial position and prospects of the Public Boarding Schools. It is common knowledge that, financially, most of the Public Boarding Schools have had their ups and downs since the end of the last war, that different schools suffered to a different degree from the slump and the declining birth rate, that one or two have closed or amalgamated, while a few others have remained continuously full or nearly so the whole time; during this period the accommodation at many Public Schools was extended and a few entirely new Public Schools were founded. For the first two years of the present war numbers again fell at many Public Schools, but, since then, most have recovered and it would probably be true, now, to say that Public Schools as a whole are fuller and more prosperous than they have been for some years. We have not, however, pursued these changes in the fortunes of the schools but have directed our financial enquiries almost entirely to answering the single question: "What ought a Public Boarding School education to cost?"

204. There are at present in membership of the Governing Bodies' Association of Boys' Public Schools and the Headmasters' Conference 84 Independent Public Schools, situated in England or Wales, which are entirely

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or mainly Boarding Schools or have sufficient boarders to bring them into our consideration of Boarding School fees. Of these, four charge fees, inclusive of tuition, of over £200 a year, thirty-nine between £150 and £200, thirty-eight between £100 and £150, and three less than £100. The highest fee charged is £245 and the lowest £81. There are twenty-five schools whose fees are more than double the lowest on the list. It should be remembered that these are all maximum fees (1) (inclusive of tuition) and that, quite apart from scholarships and exhibitions, a number of schools remit part of the fee to certain specially qualified classes of pupils.

205. The Association of Governing Bodies of Girls' Public Schools includes in its membership 70 Independent Public Schools which are entirely or mainly boarding schools or have a considerable number of boarders. Only one charges fees, inclusive of tuition, of over £200 a year. Thirty-five charge between £150 and £200, thirty-two between £100 and £150, and two less than £100. The highest fee charged is £240 a year and the lowest £90. These are maximum fees, including tuition and all compulsory extras. Some of the schools charge a lower fee throughout school life for girls who enter under a certain age; and, as with the boys' schools, a number remit part of the fee to certain specially qualified classes of pupils.

206. A Boarding School's charges to the public are largely determined by a few leading items of expenditure such as salaries wages and pensions, rates and taxes, insurance, the overhead and maintenance expenses of the premises and the cost of food, furniture, fuel, books and equipment. There are wide possibilities of variation in the cost of most of these, goods and services and, therefore, wide possibilities also of variation in the cost of education at different schools. Generally speaking, parents choose a school which they prefer from among those whose fees they can afford, and if the school proves suitable they commonly think the charges justified, whether the fees are £100 or £200 a year.

207. Our own proposals are, however, not concerned with a free contract between parties who are spending their own money. Under Scheme A, described in paragraph 177 of Chapter 5, the Board becomes a partner to the school's contract with the parent by making an important contribution on the parent's behalf to the school's annual income. Under Scheme B, described in paragraph 178 of the same chapter, the Board becomes a partner (in respect of its Bursars) to the parent's contract with the school by arranging for the selection of the child and paying the fee, or part of the fee, on the parent's behalf. In either case a considerable sum of public money is involved, and the public authorities concerned must be expected to assure themselves that it is properly and economically spent. On what basis can this best be done?

208. We have been enabled to make a study of the annual income and expenditure of twenty-four boys' Public Boarding Schools, drawn from the top, middle and bottom of the fee scale; from these figures and from other financial information relating to Girls' Schools, we have drawn some broad conclusions about Public School costs.

(1) Most schools make charges for extras of which some are voluntary and some are virtually compulsory. These are not invariably included in the fees quoted above and the practice of schools in regard to them varies greatly.

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Boys' Schools

    Expenditure

209. One of the main items of a school's expenditure consists of the salaries and pensions of the teaching staff. In the representative sample of boys' Public Schools under review we found a variation in these costs between the limits of £21 and £73 per pupil, the variations depending on the ratio of teachers to pupils, the generosity of the pension scheme and, above all the teaching salary scales and rates of increment and the salaries paid to House-masters, where these do not consist mainly of the profits on their Houses. Board and lodging charges vary almost as widely, these variations depending not so much on the standard of living as on whether the buying and feeding are centralised, on the standards of accommodation and on the extent to which the remuneration of the House-masters depends on the profits derived from their Houses. For food and services together we found a variation in costs between the limits of £25 and £56 per pupil, and for overhead and maintenance charges (School and Boarding Houses together) a further variation between £21 and £69 or, if House-masters' profits are included, between £21 and £88. The total fees, including unavoidable extras, of these same schools varied from £100 to just under £220.

    Income

210. For income, the schools under consideration depend mainly on fees and these, for some of them, constitute their only source of revenue. Generally speaking, our enquiries showed that the independent Boarding Schools, especially those whose foundation dates back no further than the second quarter of the last century, are not as heavily endowed as is sometimes believed. Very few of the nineteenth and twentieth century foundations have any considerable endowment incomes and what they have is almost invariably used up in entrance and leaving scholarships and school prizes, the money being usually earmarked for this purpose in the terms of the bequests or gifts. Of the older foundations a very few have an endowment income running into five figures, but here again enquiry suggests that the greater part of the endowment income, and in some schools the whole, is expended on scholarships and prizes. Where a balance exists, it is ordinarily passed into the general account and used to reduce the fees, either of the pupils generally or of special classes of pupils such as those living in certain areas, those who are the children of particular classes of persons, such as ministers of religion, officers of H.M. Forces or public servants, or those whose parents are members of a religious body with which the school is traditionally associated.

Girls' Schools

211. As regards the girls' Public Schools, our information shows that the causes of the variations in fee are the same as those in boys' schools, except that in all the girls' schools the House-mistresses are paid fixed salaries which are in no way dependent on profits from the warding houses.

212. The girls' independent Boarding Schools, dating as they do with but few exceptions from the last quarter of the nineteenth century or from the twentieth, have as a rule no endowments other than those earmarked for special purposes.

213. This enquiry into the income and expenditure of some representative schools may suffice to show how variable their financial circumstances are.

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With these variations in mind we can consider and answer some of the financial problems raised by the two Schemes proposed in Chapter 5.

Scheme A

214. Dealing first with Scheme A, we have to ask how the approved cost of tuition and the approved boarding fee should be assessed. (2) In regard to three main items of expense we think no difficulties are likely to arise. The cost of board and lodging is not likely to be often in dispute, provided that the buying and feeding are sensibly and economically managed and the domestic and administrative staff is not excessive. Again, there cannot be much difference of opinion about the cost of maintaining the fabric and grounds or about the charges for rates, taxes and insurance. As regards pensions, which are a serious item of expenditure for some schools, it will be necessary for all independent Schools which accept Scheme A to come under the Government Superannuation Act; but this will not necessarily eliminate existing private pension schemes until the schools' commitments to their present staffs have been finally discharged.

215. On these matters we anticipate no difficulty or disagreement, nor need there be any serious trouble over staffing ratios, though these are often regarded as a probable source of difficulty in associating independent schools with the general system. We suggest that reasonable variations in staffing ratios should be allowed as between one school and another, and we recognise there may be schools, both Day and Boarding, where a good case could be made for treatment more generous than the average, owing to the inclusion of particular subjects in the curriculum and to the extent of Sixth Form work. The main cause of higher staffing ratios, however, is the presence of boarders, and, as Boarding Schools and Houses become more common within the grant-aided system, this important factor will have to be recognised in all types of school - County and Auxiliary as well as those associated in the manner suggested in our Report.

216. The salary problem is certainly more difficult, but not insuperably so if we can anticipate a general improvement in the Burnham rates. We have considered this matter already in paragraph 177 (ix) of Chapter 5 and need do no more now than repeat that our financial recommendations are dependent on our expectation of improved salaries in all types of school. If these expectations are realised, but not otherwise, we do not expect any serious financial difficulty in associating Public Boarding Schools with the general system without either unfairness to the grant-aided schools as a whole or any threat to the educational standards of those independent schools which participate in the Scheme.

Scheme B

217. In Scheme B there is no necessity to differentiate between tuition and boarding fees; the main financial question concerns the rate of total payment to be made by public authorities for the places put at their disposal by individual schools. It cannot be assumed that public authorities would invariably pay the full prospectus fee, though it follows from the differences already quoted in paragraph 209, between the costs of different schools that the payments made on behalf of State or Local Authority bursars would need to vary from school to school, subject to the right of the public authorities

(2) In many schools the boarding houses were originally owned by the Masters who looked for a return on their capital outlay and made some profit on the management of the house, This practice is rapidly disappearing but survives in some schools in various forms. In paragraph 222 we recommend its total abolition in associated schools.

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concerned to satisfy themselves, in, each case, that the scale of charges was justified. The two questions, therefore, that we have to decide are first, whether or not these variable fee payments should be subject to a fixed upper limit, and secondly, by what means the fees payable at any particular school should be checked and regulated to ensure that public funds do not contribute to extravagant or luxurious standards or to unnecessary expenses due to inefficient administration.

218. We see one insuperable objection to a uniform upper limit to the fee payable by public authorities, quite apart from the difficulty of suggesting a figure that would not be purely arbitrary. As we explained in the Introduction, we are anxious that all independent Public Schools shall become associated under one or other of the schemes. But it would be financially impossible for some schools to meet, out of their own resources, the whole difference between the actual cost of each bursar's education and a maximum payment from the Board or Local Education Authority which might in some schools be considerably below the prospectus fee. For instance, a school of 500 boys would contain approximately 125 Bursars after five years of Scheme B. If the average cost of education at the school is £180 a year, and if the payment for bursars were limited to £140, participation in the Scheme would cost the school £5,000 in that year, and this cost to the school will rise as the proportion of bursars rises above the original 25 per cent. It will be obvious, especially in the light of what was said in paragraphs 210 and 212 about endowment incomes, that any requirement of this kind would make it financially impossible for a number of schools to consider Scheme B, however sincerely they might wish to be associated with the general system.

219. It is sometimes suggested that the inclusion of schools with very high fees in any form of association with the general system cannot be contemplated, on account of their scales of charges, and that it would be better, therefore, to leave them out of account. We are convinced, however, that such a suggestion is altogether mistaken. For one thing, it would seem most unfortunate to deny to pupils, whose parents cannot afford the fees, an education at any Public School which has a notable record of past services and continues to provide a good education at the present time. Further, to leave these schools on one side would be to create a new social division in education just at the moment when it is agreed that such divisions are harmful; and we cannot ignore the fact that if some Public Schools are forced, and indeed expected, to remain outside the association contemplated, this is bound to affect the decision of others when they come to consider the terms offered them.

220. We have, therefore, framed our proposals in the belief that they should make possible the association of all the Public Schools with the national system in one or other of the ways we suggest, and for this reason we recommend that there be no uniform upper limit to the fee payable, but that the fee be negotiated in each case between the school and the Board of Education, or the Local Education Authority subject to the Board's approval. We recognise that this will mean that, in some schools, fees will be paid which will be considerably higher than those paid at the majority of schools participating in the Scheme. But the alternative, that certain schools should be forced to stand aside from the association proposed, is one which we reject.

221. Our second problem is that of finding a satisfactory basis for calculating the rate of payment to be made by public authorities at each of the associated schools. We pointed out earlier that the cost of Public School

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education is governed largely by several outstanding items or groups of items of expenditure, of which the chief are salaries and pensions, food and wages, and overhead and maintenance costs. We suggest, therefore, that the schools should furnish the Board with figures showing the cost of each of these items of expenditure during the financial year and thus enable the Board to relate the various component parts of the total charge to the special circumstances of each particular school, e.g. the age and plan of the buildings, the size of the grounds, the scale of class-room, study and dormitory accommodation, the library and laboratory facilities, the catering, cooking and feeding arrangements, the salary and pension scales, the numbers and qualifications of the staff, the curriculum, and the size of the Sixth Form. Information of this kind could be furnished without any enquiry to which reasonable objection could be taken, and, indeed, much of it is already made available when Public Schools submit themselves to inspection by the Board of Education. In this way the Board could establish a basis of comparison between schools in the light of all the relevant circumstances and would be able to settle, in each case, a payment which would be fair and reasonable to the school and justifiable in the public interest.

222. We assume that all schools wishing to become associated under either Scheme would be willing to place their House-masters on salaries which are independent of the profits of the House, if this has not been done already, and we recommend that schools coming into either Scheme should be required to undertake the abolition of House-masters' profits as soon as existing contracts permit. We recommend, also, that associated schools should examine their buying and feeding arrangements and the details of their administration generally, with a view to such reductions in cost as do not impair the school's educational values and as appear practicable, having regard to the design and situation of the premises and to other fixed and unalterable circumstances.

223. There remain two general observations to be made. First, the war has shown the possibility of making some reductions in Public School costs by encouraging the pupils to do more for themselves. No doubt there are some forms of self-help which, though necessary in wartime, take up time which cannot really be spared. Others, however, are in themselves a desirable part of education and we hope they will continue for their own sake, even though they would enable Public School fees to be reduced only slightly.

224. Secondly, there will be certain expenses, over and beyond the tuition and boarding fees, which it will be necessary to pay on the bursars' behalf if it is to be possible for parents of very limited means to accept the offer of a bursary. We have in mind, particularly, the expenses of outfit, pocket money, travelling, and perhaps assistance during the intervals between terms. In addition there are in Boarding Schools, and, to a lesser degree in Day Schools, certain expenses which may not be covered by the prospectus fees but which must be met if the pupil is to enter fully into the life of the school; these extras vary from school to school, but often include the subscriptions to various societies and clubs, the expenses incidental to games, and sometimes the tuition fees for learning a musical instrument. We feel strongly that, once a pupil is admitted to a school, he should be able to enjoy all its advantages and opportunities from which he can profit and should be able to enter, without further cost, into the various activities which contribute to the common life of the school. In particular, it would be disastrous

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if the bursars found themselves differentiated from their fellows and shut away from many opportunities because of extra charges which could not be met, either by their parents or through the bursaries. We recommend that as many extra charges as possible should be comprised in an all-inclusive fee which should be the prospectus fee of the school. If any extra charges still remain, we recommend that the Board and the Local Education Authorities should have the power to meet them on the bursars' behalf and that they should take such charges into consideration in settling an agreed fee with the school.

225. By our terms of reference we are instructed to consider how far any measures recommended in the case of boys' Public Schools could be applied to comparable schools for girls.

226. The present position of girls' Public Schools differs in certain respects from that of boys' schools mainly on account of differences in their history and, consequently, in their traditions. In order to trace the causes underlying the present relation of the boys' Public Schools to the general system of education it has been necessary to go back to the Middle Ages, but, with a few exceptions, the history of the comparable girls' schools covers less than a century.

227. The few Secondary Schools for girls, not conducted for private profit, that existed before 1850 can be divided into three classes: there were denominational schools such as the Mount School, York, established by the Society of Friends, and schools of the Moravian Community; there were a small number of charitable foundations, of which the Girls' School of Christ's Hospital and the Godolphin School for twelve (originally eight) "young orphan gentlewomen" are among the best known; and there were schools established for the benefit of particular sections of the community, such as daughters of the clergy, of naval and marine officers, missionaries, commercial travellers, and one school for "daughters of persons once in a superior position in life". The total number of girls in these schools was small.

228. The sisters of boys in the Public Schools and Grammar Schools in the first half of the nineteenth century were educated either at home - by parents, governesses and visiting tutors - or in private schools, where the teaching was generally very superficial and attention was paid mainly to accomplishments and deportment, the recognised aim of a girl's education at school being to fit her, not for married life, but to get a husband.

229. Schemes of social reform were, however, much in the air in the early part of Queen Victoria's reign and many women who may themselves have had the advantage of the influence of an intelligent father in their home education felt hampered in the work they wished to do by the lack of a more methodical intellectual training. The period marked in boys' Public Schools by the influence of Arnold at Rugby and by the rise of many new proprietary schools is one of great importance in the history of girls' schools, for it is the age of the pioneers, whose enthusiasm and determination opened the way to the higher education of women and eventually led to the establishment of girls' Public Schools all over the country.

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230. After attending lectures at the recently established Queen's College, Harley Street, Frances Mary Buss in 1850 started the school later to be known as the North London Collegiate School for Girls and destined to become the model for girls' Day Schools throughout the country. In 1858, Dorothea Beale, who had been both student and tutor at Queen's College, was appointed Principal of Cheltenham Ladies' College, founded in 1853 as a sister school to the one for boys which had been established in Cheltenham twelve years earlier. These were the two pioneer schools that were to provide many of the Head Mistresses for the schools to be started in the 1870's and later. In the meantime there was great difficulty in obtaining qualified head mistresses and in establishing a standard of work for the pupils. The latter problem was solved to some extent by the opening of the Cambridge Local Examinations to girls, informally and as an experiment in 1863, and regularly from 1865. It was not until, in the words of a memorial presented to the Schools Inquiry Commission in 1867, colleges had been founded "designed to hold in relation to girls' schools and home teaching a position analogous to that occupied by the universities towards the Public Schools for boys" that the problem of qualified mistresses began to be solved.

231. The persistent efforts of Miss Emily Davies, supported by other men and women of far-seeing and enlightened views, led to the foundation in 1869 of a small women's college at Hitchin, the nucleus of Girton. In 1870, Mr. and Mrs. Henry Sidgwick established a house of residence for women students in Cambridge under the charge of Miss A. J. Clough, and this was the beginning of Newnham College. Bedford College for Women had been founded in 1849 , and in 1878 all degrees of London University and all honours and prizes awarded there, were made accessible to students of both sexes on equal terms. Lady Margaret Hall and Somerville College were founded in Oxford in 1879, to be followed later by St. Hugh's (1886) and St. Hilda's (1894). Thus, to quote again from the memorial of the Schools Inquiry Commission, at last women were able to obtain "instruction and discipline adapted to advanced students, combined with examinations testing and attesting the value of the education received".

232. The Schools Inquiry Commission (1864-8), generally known as the Taunton Commission, forms a landmark in the history of girls' schools as it does in the development of secondary education generally. The supporters of better education for women successfully petitioned that girls' schools should be included in the scope of the Inquiry, and Miss Emily Davies, Miss Beale, and Miss Buss were called as witnesses. The investigation was most thorough, covering, as it did, Public and Private Schools for boys and girls throughout the country. The Report (1868) summarised the existing conditions of girls' education as follows:-

"It cannot be denied that the picture brought before us of the state of Middle-Class Female Education is on the whole unfavourable." (1)

"We find, as a rule, a very small amount of professional skill, an inferior set of school-books, a vast deal of dry, uninteresting task-work, rules put into the memory with no explanation of their principles, no system of

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examination worthy of the name, a very false estimate of the relative val,:e of the several kinds of acquirement, a reference to effect rather than to solid worth, a tendency to fill or adorn rather than strengthen the mind." (2)

233. An important part of the Report of the Taunton Commission dealt with the application of educational endowments, in which connection the Commissioners stated, "The education of girls is as much a matter of public concern as that of boys, and one to which charitable funds may properly be applied even when girls are not expressly mentioned in the instrument of foundation." A section in the Endowed Schools Act, 1869, which followed the publication of the Report, enacted that "in framing schemes under this Act, provision should be made, as far as conveniently may be, for extending to girls the benefits of endowments." (4) As a result of the work of the Endowed Schools Commission appointed under the Act, part of the endowments of many old foundations were used for the benefit of girls and in many places new girls' schools grew up by the side of the older boys' Grammar Schools; a number of schools for girls were endowed by the City Companies and by local Trusts, and others by the raising of subscriptions or by application of other available funds. Well might the Charity Commissioners in their forty-second report, when reviewing the work of twenty-five years, say:-

"As to one particular branch of educational endowment, viz., that for the advancement of the secondary and superior education of girls and women, it may be anticipated that future generations will look back to the period immediately following upon the Schools Inquiry Commission, and the consequent passing of the Endowed Schools Act, as marking an epoch in the creation and application of endowments for that branch of education similar to that which is marked for the education of boys and men by the Reformation."

(3) 32 and 33 Victoria c. 56, s. 12.

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234. These High Schools and other endowed schools are mainly Day Schools, though a number of them have Boarding-houses for girls coming from a distance. Many are now in receipt of Direct Grant from the Board of Education and their position in this respect is exactly the same as that of the boys' Direct Grant Schools, except that they have comparatively few endowments available for the general purposes of the school, the capital originally subscribed having been used for buildings and equipment. Even when a girls' school shares the benefit of an old foundation its share is usually smaller than that of the boys' school.

235. Although a number of boarding schools for girls, not run for private profit, existed before 1877, it was not until that year that the first Public Boarding School for Girls, organised on the lines of the boys' Public Schools, with Houses and a prefect system, was established by the founding of St. Leonard's School, St. Andrews. Other schools of the same type have followed, each with its special character. Among them are Roedean (1885), the Godolphin School, Salisbury, a revival of the old foundation (1886), Queen Anne's, Caversham, on the old Greycoat Foundation (1894), Wycombe Abbey (1896), St. Felix, Southwold (1897), Sherborne (1899), Benenden (1923) and Westonbirt, the first of the several schools of the Allied Schools Trust (1928). There are also schools organised on these lines for both boarders and day-girls, of which Liverpool College for Girls, Huyton (1894) is an example. In all these schools the Houses form an integral part of the school, the House-mistresses are members of the teaching staff, the control of ordinary day to day discipline is largely in the hands of the girls themselves, and games play an important part in the life of the school, though less now than formerly. All subjects normally included in the curriculum of the boys' Public Schools are included in the girls', but, as in girls' schools generally, the curriculum is more flexible and the emphasis on the individual subjects is different.

236. Many other Boarding Schools, which, for the most part, do not approximate quite so closely to the boys' Public Schools, have been founded in the last seventy years or so, some by religious bodies, such as the Woodard Foundation, whose first girls' school, St. Michael's, Bognor, was founded as early as 1855, the Church Education Corporation, the Methodists, the Religious Orders, Anglican and Roman Catholic; some are for particular sections of the community, such as the Royal School for Daughters of Officers of the Army, Bath (1865); others are individual foundations.

237. At the time of their foundation several of these schools were affected by the social distinctions which were so marked a feature of English life in the second half of the nineteenth century, and, as with the proprietary boys' schools started a little earlier, there was sometimes to be found the deliberate intention to confine the entries to girls of a restricted social class. In this they were sharply contrasted with the contemporary girls' Day Schools, those of the Girls' Public Day School Company and others, where there was a conscious effort to recruit the pupils from as wide a social range as possible. We do not believe that this kind of exclusiveness is now at all a serious characteristic of these schools. More important is the fact that their higher fees have, in themselves, served to limit the field from which their pupils can be drawn. But, in this respect, no distinction can be drawn between the Public Boarding Schools for girls and those for boys. It creates an inevitable difficulty, but it is, in itself, one of the main reasons why we feel that a closer association of these schools with those in the national system of education has become desirable.

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238. In 1942 the Association of Governing Bodies of Girls' Public Schools (G.B.G.S.A.) was formed. The constituent members of the Association are "the Governing Bodies of Schools for Girls in the British Isles receiving no grants from public monies or receiving direct grant from the Board of Education or equivalent authority in Scotland or Northern Ireland". Further conditions of membership require that the school should be of reasonable size, with a fair proportion of the pupils following courses of post-School-Certificate standard, and that the Head Mistress should be a member of the Association of Head Mistresses. At the present time the Governing Bodies of 80 Independent and 59 Direct Grant schools are represented in the Association. Several of these are situated outside England and Wales.

239. The following seem to be the main differences in the position of the girls' Public Schools, using the term in the narrower sense of independent Boarding Schools, and the similar schools for boys:-

(i) A girl does not gain the same social privileges and professional advantages as a boy from the mere fact of having been educated at a Public School.

(ii) There has been a much freer exchange of staff and pupils between the independent Boarding Schools and the Day Schools of various types than in the boys' schools. Head Mistresses, too, of every kind of Secondary school, except such as are conducted for private profit, belong to the one Association, (5) in contrast to the two organisations (Headmasters' Conference and Head Masters' Association) for the Heads of boys' Secondary Schools.

(iii) There will be less difficulty in fitting into the girls' Public Schools girls who come direct from the Primary schools because:-

The girls' schools, being of more recent growth, have never had the strong classical tradition of the boys'. While emphasising the importance of scholarship and of a high standard of work in academic subjects, they have recognised the value of the aesthetic and practical subjects, and they have always attached particular importance to the discovery of the tastes and the development of the capacity of the individual.

Many of the Boarding Schools have preparatory departments and others admit girls as young as twelve years of age. Many of them are accustomed to receiving girls at varying ages and with varying types of previous education. There is no Common Entrance Examination. A memorandum received from the Association of Head Mistresses of Boarding Schools states: "The previous education of girls is very varied. Some have had

When in 1905 the term "secondary school" needed to be more clearly defined, in connection with the conditions of membership, the definition laid down by the Board of Education in the Introduction to Regulations for Secondary Schools, 1904, was adopted: "The term "Secondary School" will be held to include any day or boarding school which offers to each of its scholars, up to and beyond the age of sixteen, a general education, physical, mental and moral, given through a complete graded course of instruction of wider scope and more advanced degree than that given in elementary schools."

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governesses; some come from Preparatory Schools, others from local Secondary Day Schools; and others again from small private schools in which the education may be excellent but is more often very poor. The course of study in these different types of schools is anything but uniform ".

240. It is as important for girls as for boys that a Boarding School education should be available for all who desire it and can profit by it, whatever may be the financial circumstances of their parents. The total number of places in girls' Boarding Schools is, however, much smaller than in boys' schools, and many new Boarding Schools are likely to be needed and should be provided. To quote the memorandum sent by the Association of the Governing Bodies of Girls' Public Schools: "We urge that the importance of a right education is at least as great for girls as for boys, if not greater. It must in no sense be regarded as a secondary matter. If there is too great a 'class consciousness', if snobbery still prevails, if 'privilege' still holds too high a place, it is largely in the education and development of the minds and spirit of women that the remedy lies".

241. We hold that the characteristics of Day School and Boarding School education, as set out in Chapter 4, are as true for girls as for boys. We recognise, however, that there are those who would be ready to accept the value of a boarding education for boys, but would feel doubtful of its suitability for girls. This does not appear to us very surprising. The need for the serious education of girls has been accepted by the nation as a whole only in quite recent times. Even now there are certainly families in which the education of the girls is considered to be a less urgent matter than that of the boys. In families where the adoption of a boarding education for any of the children will be no small break with tradition, it is natural that it should be undertaken more readily for the boys than for the girls.

243. Just as we have not found it possible, when considering the question of boarding education in general, to attempt to assess the comparative merits of education in Day or Boarding schools, so we do not feel that it can be said that one form of education or the other is more desirable for girls. We are satisfied, however, that the experience of the past seventy years has shown that many girls have derived great benefit from education at a Boarding School. If that is so, it should be possible for parents to decide whether or not their daughters should go to a Boarding School without their powers of choice being restricted by financial considerations. It is important also for the girls themselves that the same opportunities should be available for them as for their brothers.

243. We recommend, therefore, that the Schemes of Association which we propose should apply to girls' schools as well as to boys'. But, for the reasons stated above, we do not think that it will be necessary to send girls to Preparatory Schools before they enter their Public Schools.

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244. The Tudor period saw the rise of eighteen independent and collegiate Grammar Schools in Wales including Brecon (1531), Abergavenny (1543), Bangor Friars (1560), Ruthin (1574), and Carmarthen (Queen Elizabeth's) (1576). Some of these, e.g. Brecon, were collegiate schools, that is, they were attached to ecclesiastical institutions whilst others (e.g. Abergavenny) were independent. This provision of eighteen schools for a population of, say, 350,000, was approximately at the rate of one Grammar School for every 20,000 of the general population; in other words, it was about twice the corresponding provision in the middle of the nineteenth century, with its 32 grammar schools for a population of approximately 1,286,000. All these Grammar Schools followed English models; the Statutes of Bangor and Ruthin were based on those of Westminster School. The collegiate schools boarded their scholars but that was not the practice in most of the early independent Grammar Schools. Of these Tudor schools some remain to this day, and have rendered valuable service to Wales, and they were supplemented by schools on the border, notably Shrewsbury, King's School, Chester; and Oswestry Grammar School. Dr. Samuel Butler, writing in 1797, says of Shrewsbury, "This school was once the Eton or the Westminster of Wales and all Shropshire."

245. One of the most important documents for the history of Secondary education in Wales is the Report of the Committee on Intermediate and Higher Education in Wales (1881) - sometimes known, from the name of its Chairman, as the Aberdare Report. At that time, there were 27 endowed schools in Wales and Monmouthshire; of these, thirteen were in North Wales, eleven in South Wales, and three in Monmouthshire. The total did not include either (a) those schools which owing to deficiency of funds or other reasons, had become Elementary Schools or (b) those schools on the border which, though in England, had done and were still doing much to serve the needs of North Wales.

246. The total number of pupils in Secondary Schools then was 4,036. Of these, 1,540 were in endowed schools, as against 2,496 pupils in proprietary and private schools. On the basis suggested by the Schools Inquiry Commission Report (1865-66), namely 16 pupils per 1,000, there should have been in Wales about 15,700 pupils pursuing "post-elementary" education. Although in some of these schools the premises admittedly were very poor, the main reason, as will be shown later, for the small number of pupils was not lack of accommodation.

247. Nor could the quality of the endowed schools be held mainly responsible, although there was much variety in their size, buildings, curriculum, and history. Some, like Bangor and Abergavenny, were very old foundations, while others, for instance Llandovery (1848), were of recent date. As for curriculum, Greek was taught to 500-600 of the total of 1,540 pupils and "Natural Science" (a comprehensive term) to a slightly smaller number, and most of the pupils were receiving instruction in Latin, Elementary Mathematics, and one foreign language; the number of boys taking Greek and Natural Science at Bangor Friars, Brecon, Llandovery, and Monmouth formed

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more than one-third of the total in the 27 schools. It may be gathered from the evidence submitted to the Committee that the amount of Welsh taught at the endowed schools was negligible, since the statistical data given in the appendix to the Report includes no specific reference to Welsh. On the whole, the education provided in these 27 schools was reasonably satisfactory, although in some, such as Bottwnog and Deythur (Deuddwr), it was nothing more than elementary. Proof is easily found of the unexpectedly high quality of the work, in some of them at least, in Classics. The well-known poet, Goronwy Owen (1723-1769) for instance, who was educated at a small school in Pwllheli and at Bangor Friars, and did not go to a University, had a proficiency in Latin and Greek comparable to that of the best pupils of the English Public Schools.

248. Although some of the witnesses at the Aberdare inquiry maintained that the fees of the boys' schools were too high, the actual figures cited in that Report hardly support that statement. At Brecon, for instance, the annual tuition fee ranged from eight to ten guineas, and the boarding fee, in addition, was £42. At Monmouth the classical school had a boarding fee of 50 guineas and a tuition fee of £6; and the commercial school had fees of 28 guineas and £2 respectively. Boarding at Llandovery cost 35-40 guineas and tuition eight guineas. Carmarthen Grammar School charged £45 for boarding and its tuition fee ranged from £7 10s. to £13. The corresponding figures for Swansea Grammar School were 40-45 guineas and 12 guineas. Some of the smaller schools charged lower fees, but those cited above may be taken as a fairly representative selection.

249. There were in Wales certain special conditions which may explain why the endowed schools were not more generally attended. According to the Aberdare Report, two-thirds of the pupils of the endowed schools were Anglicans whereas three-quarters of the population of Wales were Nonconformists, and religious animosities in the nineteenth century were much more acute in Wales than in England. As the upper classes in Wales did not normally send their children to the Welsh schools but rather to the English Public Schools, the pupils were usually the children of professional men, farmers, and tradesmen. It was suggested in the 1881 Report that the Anglican atmosphere of the endowed schools militated against their success, but, in many, the staff was only partly Anglican and no direct disability was suffered by Nonconformist pupils. So strong, however, was the sectarian feeling in the middle years of the nineteenth century that anything savouring of an Anglican atmosphere was sufficient to cause apprehension of its indirect influence. In the words of the Report, "The Nonconformists of Wales would rather be shut out altogether from the schools than admitted into them under the protection of a 'conscience clause'." Ineligibility to serve on the Governing Bodies of these schools was another source of grievance to those Nonconformists who, during the nineteenth century, were prominently connected with political and social movements. Section 17 of the Endowed Schools Act (1869) directed that religious opinions need not exclude any person from being on the Governing Bodies of Schools regulated by Scheme under the Act, but Ystrad Meurig (1734), Brecon and probably Llandovery, were exempt from that section, and all the Governing Bodies of Ruthin, Cowbridge (re-established in 1685), Monmouth (1614) and Howell's (Llandaff 1858 and Denbigh 1858) Schools were at that time exclusively Anglican.

250. Moreover, the Nonconformist ministry attracted many talented young Welshmen in those days, and any Nonconformist students who were anxious to get something better than an elementary education would usually go to

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the small preparatory schools or academies, whether denominational or private, which were at the time very numerous in Wales, such as Bala, Clynnog, Neuaddlwyd, Trevecca, Pontypool and Gwynfryn.

251. There was yet another and, from a Welsh point of view, much more serious objection to these endowed schools. In many of them the Headmaster was English and had no ties either of blood or culture with his pupils. He too often regarded himself as a missionary in partibus infidelium [in the land of the infidels] and sometimes took advantage of his position to sneer at the Welsh, their language, and their culture. (6) As headmasters of pure Welsh descent were sometimes guilty of these lapses, we can only conclude that there existed, during the nineteenth century an instinctive hostility and distrust between the Grammar Schools and the national life of the country which they were endowed to serve.

252. The comparative poverty of the middle classes in Wales was suggested by the Aberdare Report as another contributory factor. Although the fees of the endowed schools in Wales were not unduly high, they proved an obstacle to many parents. In 1875-6 the Income Tax Assessment for the counties of England was approximately £15 per head as against £12 in Wales; the corresponding figures for the English and Welsh Parliamentary Boroughs were £24 and £13 respectively (the income tax then was 3d. [= about 1p] in the £). The population of Wales was about 1/18 of that of England; yet the total income of the educational endowments of Wales and Monmouthshire in 1877 (£14,231) was only about 1/44 of that of England (£632,650).

253. There was also the problem of the sparsity of the population and of the scattered sites of the schools. Some of these had suitable boarding accommodation, while others, such as Bala, Bottwnog and Ystrad Meurig, had hardly any such accommodation although they were situated in thinly populated areas; pupils were compelled to find lodgings for themselves, and, though some schools had an open mind on the matter, the experience of Llandovery and Cowbridge was that the use of lodgings was unsatisfactory. The need for boarding accommodation was all the more necessary because the endowed schools were unevenly scattered throughout Wales; there was, for example, only one small Endowed School, Deythur (Deuddwr), in Montgomeryshire.

254. In 1887 Sir Hugh Owen, a pioneer of higher education in Wales, offered a scholarship for "continued education" to Anglesey pupils, but before that, in 1879, a "meeting of teachers of public elementary schools in Anglesey and others interested in elementary education in North Wales" was held to consider a scheme for awarding scholarships' or exhibitions to children from elementary schools, to enable them to continue their education. As a result, the North Wales Scholarship Scheme was established and continued to exist as a voluntary system until the gap was filled by the Welsh Intermediate Education Act of 1889, which provided for entrance Scholarships to the County Schools. The Association was dissolved in 1894, after paying out nearly £3,000 in scholarships, and the balance in hand was handed over to the University College of North Wales.

255. Perhaps a short account of one of the old schools may serve to illustrate the educational grievances of the Welsh people in the 19th century. In 1867, the Charity Commissioners held an inquiry into the Beaumaris Grammar School. They reported that this well endowed foundation had been rebuilt in 1834, and that about £3,000 had been spent in additional building work in 1853. Before 1850 its Head Masters and Assistants had been Welshmen, who

(6) See the reference to Llanrwst Grammar School in 1879 in Dr. Lloyd Williams's Atgofion iii 6.

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had also held Church livings. But in 1850 the Headmaster was an Englishman who, being monoglot, could not hold a Welsh living, and therefore had to add to his inadequate stipend by keeping boarders, and the buildings were enlarged for that purpose. The character of the school was now changed, so that instead of serving the needs of Anglesey, it became a boarding school for those pupils not of Welsh nationality, and often from Ireland, whose parents were able to pay the fees (£60 Boarding, including £10 tuition). By the year 1867, it had only 9 day scholars and only 7 boys from Anglesey. At the Aberdare Inquiry, the Head Master emphasised that the endowment (David Hughes' Charity) was not specifically limited to Anglesey, but Anglesey people naturally thought and expected that their own county should benefit. A suggestion, made in a report by the Charity Commissioners, that much of the endowment should be transferred to the Friar's School, Bangor, was successfully resisted by Anglesey in 1871. Subsequently by reducing boarding fees, offering some free places, widening the curriculum, and making grants to Anglesey pupils. the school again became more closely associated with the County.

256. The passing of the Welsh Intermediate Education Act (1889) marked the beginning of a great expansion of secondary education in Wales, and the question had now to be considered how far the existing endowed schools could and should be included in the system of Intermediate Secondary Schools which was in due course to be set up. Among the old Grammar Schools which became part of the Welsh Intermediate School system were Beaumaris, Bottwnog, Bangor Friars, Llanrwst, Bala, Ruabon, Carmarthen (Queen Elizabeth's) and Haverfordwest. Others, such as Llandovery, Brecon, Monmouth, Ruthin, Howell's (Denbigh) were not included and still remain outside the system, though only three - Ystrad Meurig, Brecon, and Llandovery - were precluded by the terms of their Trust Deeds, from being conducted on an entirely undenominational basis. Ruthin and Howell's (Denbigh) had been included in the Denbighshire Scheme, but were struck out by the House of Lords.

257. The County Schemes set up in accordance with the 1889 Act favoured the policy of establishing several schools in a county rather than that of establishing a few large schools with hostel provision or to which pupils would be conveyed. The County Schools tended, therefore, to be "local" schools and were controlled, in the main, by a local governing body which was undenominational and representative of all interests. A brief reference to a number of endowed schools in Wales may serve to illustrate some of the difficulties that faced those responsible for organising Secondary education in Wales after the passing of the 1889 Act.

258. Ruthin Grammar School was established in the reign of Queen Elizabeth by the benefaction of Gabriel Goodman (1528-1601) Dean of Westminster, who founded the Christ's Hospital, Ruthin, with which it was closely connected. The school remained comparatively small until the middle of the nineteenth century when it became a popular boarding school. Like Howell's School it was excluded from the Denbighshire scheme under the Welsh Intermediate Education Act 1889 and has since remained an independent school outside the public system of education, being conducted under a scheme made under the Endowed Schools Acts. At the time of the report of the Aberdare Committee in 1881 there were 41 pupils and, although this number has since increased, the school has never been large.

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259. Cowbridge Grammar School founded in 1608, received in 1685 an additional endowment under the control of Jesus College, Oxford, and its close connection with this College has lasted until the present time. The school, with its long classical tradition, has in the course of this century developed mainly on the lines of a local Grammar School for day boys, but the boarding side has been retained and about 45 out of a total of 225 pupils are boarders. It is now partly supported and governed by the Glamorgan Education Committee.

260. Llandovery, in view of its history, merits a more detailed account. It was admittedly one of the best schools in Wales at the time, and so its decision to remain outside the County School Scheme was in many ways a loss to Welsh education. It was founded in the year 1848 by Thomas Phillips, who recited in the Deed regulating the original endowment, (7) that he was "desirous of founding and endowing a Welsh school in the diocese of St. David's for the study and cultivation of the Welsh or ancient British language and literature, not only as a medium of colloquial communication, but as a means of promoting antiquarian and philological investigation, in combination with a good sound classical and liberal education fitting for young men destined for any liberal profession or scientific pursuit to be exercised and followed in the Principality of Wales, and more especially for young men desirous of qualifying themselves to be efficient ministers of the church in that Principality."

261. Among other provisions of the Deed (8) it was declared that-

"The scholars should be properly instructed in Welsh reading, grammar and composition, and in English, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arithmetic, Algebra, and Mathematics, sacred, English, and general history and geography, and such other branches of education as the trustees with the approbation of the visitor should for the time appoint and require; and the master should under the direction of the trustees make the proper classification of the boys for the due education of them in such several matters according to their respective capacities and acquirements. The Welsh language should be taught exclusively during one hour every school day and should during that time be the sole medium of communication in the school and should be used at all other convenient periods as far as might be possible as the conversational language of the school, so as to familiarize the scholars with the use of it as a colloquial language, and the master should at all convenient times give lectures, in that language upon subjects connected with philology and upon subjects of science and general knowledge fitting for a ministerial or liberal education, and so as to give to the scholars examples of its use in its higher style as a literary language and the medium of instruction on grave and important subjects:

"It was especially enjoined that under no pretence or plea of the study or cultivation of the Welsh language or literature being no longer useful or required, should the object of the founder of the provisions aforesaid for the instruction and education in the Welsh language and the cultivation thereof be disregarded or neglected, but that the same should be at all times religiously and faithfully observed as the primary and chief intent and object of the institution, but should the Welsh language entirely cease as a colloquial and literary language, then the education should be still such as to qualify young men either for Lampeter College or for commercial, agricultural or other useful callings: and it was further recommended by the

(8) See Note 7.

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founder that in such case the instruction substituted for the disused Welsh language should be geology, mineralogy, and chemistry, particularly such portion of those sciences as might be applicable to the soil and substrata of the principality, the object of the founder being the dissemination of useful and practical knowledge in Wales and the raising both morally and intellectually the character of its people:

"The master was to be at liberty, subject to the regulation thereinafter mentioned, to take into his school for education any number of pay scholars so that they did not interfere with the due and sufficient education of the free scholars according to the intention of the founder, and it was especially enjoined that as between the pay scholars and the free scholars the system of education should be in all respects equal, and so that no distinction whatsoever be directly or indirectly made to the disadvantage or disparagement of the free scholars."

"The School is at present so popular and in many respects so useful to South Wales, that it may perhaps, be best to let it work on as heretofore. Certain changes have, however, been proposed, and among these, the diminution of Welsh teaching. The obligation to devote one whole school hour daily to it is certainly a clog to the success of the school; it confines the masterships, or at least most of them, to Welshmen: and it keeps away boys from England, or from those parts of Wales in which Welsh has become an obsolete speech. On the other hand, the founder's command is explicit, and the teaching of Welsh has considerable practical value for those who are to become Church of England or Nonconformist clergymen.

"Although the Governors of the foundation have deviated in some respects from the founder's intentions, although the Welsh he loved is felt as an incubus, while the study of natural science has not yet received such a place as he meant to give it, the school has, on the whole, been prosperous and useful, and is a conspicuous example of the good which endowments may effect. It is natural enough that some of those who are connected with the school should desire to see peculiarities removed which hamper it in the struggle with other schools: but it is only fair to remember that these peculiarities are the cause and end of its existence. And in the prospect of that assimilation to one common type which seems to impend over all our schools, one cannot but wish that some institutions may continue to preserve features distinctively their own."

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in the principality. There were then 160 boys in attendance, of whom 132 were boarders. The fees were little higher than those of many endowed Grammar Schools and 88 per cent of the boys came from various parts of Wales. In due course the School, in spite of its very explicit Trust Deed, lost its Welsh character, and those who desired that their boys should have a good secondary education at a boarding school with a robust Welsh atmosphere, were deprived of the privilege which had been provided for them with all the sanctions of law. The Joint Education Committee of Carmarthenshire established under the Welsh Intermediate Education Act, 1889, had assumed that Llandovery would be included in the County Scheme and had made provision for boys living in that district to hold scholarships at the "Collegiate Institution" as it was then known, but this did not come about and a separate County School was set up at Llandovery under the County Intermediate Scheme. Llandovery College remained an independent school and the general effect of the 1889 Act was thus to increase its non-local character.

264. In 1920 the School received a full Inspection by the Inspectors of the Welsh Department for the purposes of recognition, but this was withheld because the School had entirely ceased to carry out certain of the trusts. In 1938, however, at the request of the Governors, it was again inspected, but by this time a specialist teacher in Welsh had been appointed and a good proportion of the boys were taking Welsh as a subject. Moreover, Welsh had now resumed its honoured place in the life of the School, and it was thus possible for the Board to grant recognition.

265. The Foundation of Christ College, Brecon, was licensed in 1531 when the collegiate institution at Abergwili, Carmarthenshire, was transferred to the Dominican Priory building at Brecon, where a grammar school was attached to it. In the Letters Patent authorising the transfer it was explicitly stated that nothing was "to be taken from boys or their parents for their education" at the Grammar School. The building was largely destroyed by the Puritans in the reign of Charles I but was rebuilt after the Restoration. After the founding of Lampeter College in 1827 for the education of the Anglican ministry in Wales, the school at Brecon languished, but by "The Christ College of Brecknock Act" (1853) a new institution of a purely educational character was established. Its control was placed under a body of Governors, and some of the revenues which had been vested in the Ecclesiastical Commissioners were restored to the College; the present school building was erected some years later. At the time of the Aberdare Report, the school had 131 pupils (including 83 boarders) most of whom were Anglican. The scheme under which the School was regulated included a "conscience clause" in regard to religious instruction and attendance at School Chapel, but some of the evidence submitted by Nonconformist witnesses at the time of the Report indicated that the College was regarded by them as essentially an Anglican institution. Christ College remained outside the County Intermediate Scheme and two schools (one for boys and one for girls) were ultimately set up under that scheme in the town of Brecon.

266. The Free Grammar School in Monmouth was founded in 1614 as a part of the Charity of William Jones, a Merchant Adventurer of the Company of Haberdashers, who had early associations with the town of Monmouth. Up to 1868 only pupils from the counties of Monmouth, Hereford and Gloucester were admitted to the School and no boys were admitted as boarders in any master's house. It was, therefore, virtually a Day School serving mainly its immediate locality. The Scheme established by the Charity Commissioners in 1868 threw open the Upper School (but not the Lower School) to all England and Wales, and allowed the masters to take boarders, and authorised fees to be charged on all pupils. The Haberdashers' Company, as Governors, had a general responsibility for the School but it

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functioned mainly through a local body of Visitors who were appointed by the Governors. Before 1868 the Haberdashers' Company appointed all the masters but afterwards it had only the power of appointing the Head Master who had to be a member of the Anglican Church, but not necessarily in Holy Orders, and the Master of the Lower School. At the time of the Aberdare Report, the School had 201 pupils of whom 86 were boarders, 119 came from Wales and Monmouthshire, and 173 were Anglican. The School remained outside the Welsh Intermediate School System but as it continued to receive many day pupils from the immediate locality it accommodated itself, in effect, to the needs of the area, and no school under the County Intermediate Scheme was set up in Monmouth. During the closing years of the nineteenth century some of the ample funds of the Jones's Charity were devoted to establishing other educational institutions in the county, namely, Monmouth Girls' School, West Monmouthshire School (Pontypool) and an elementary school in the town of Monmouth. Today Monmouth Grammar School is a Direct Grant School and about two-thirds of its 310 pupils are day pupils. 194 of the pupils come from Wales and 116 from England.

267. Rydal School was founded in 1885 as a private school and was conveyed to trustees in 1906, when regulations for its management were drawn up by the Wesleyan Methodist Conference. A few day boys are taken, but the School is almost entirely a boarding school serving Wales as well as a very wide area in England. It has now approximately 320 pupils.

268. The history of Oswestry High School, though it was a private venture, is not irrelevant to the question of Welsh endowed schools. It was situated just outside the Welsh border, but it attracted many Welsh-speaking boarders from North Wales and during the nineteenth century, under the Headmastership of Mr. Owen Owen, its last Head Master and later Chief Inspector of the Central Welsh Board, it maintained a definitely Welsh atmosphere, and many of his pupils, attracted by his generous provision of Scholarships for promising boys, have rendered conspicuous service to Wales.

269. Very little boarding provision exists in the numerous County Schools formed or reconstructed as the result of the Welsh Intermediate Education Act (1889) - and consequently subject to the examination and inspection of the Central Welsh Board - or in those Secondary Schools set up under the Education Act (1902). Of the eight schools in Wales (Llandovery, Brecon, Monmouth, Rydal, Newport, Grove Park Wrexham, Haverfordwest Grammar School and West Monmouthshire School), the Head Masters of which are members of the Head Masters' Conference, only three (Llandovery, Christ College and Rydal) are entirely or mainly boarding schools and only one other (Monmouth Grammar School) has a substantial number of boarders.

270. At the time of the Aberdare Report (1881) the three main Girls' Schools in Wales were Howell's Llandaff and Howell's Denbigh, and Dolgelley (Dr. Williams'). There is today practically full boarding accommodation at three Girls' Schools which are recognised as efficient by the Board of Education, namely, Howell's School (Denbigh), Penrhos College, and Lowther College. Three other Girls' Schools, viz., Howell's Llandaff, Dr. Williams' Dolgelley, and Monmouth Girls', are part Boarding and part Day schools.

271. The Schools at Llandaff and Denbigh were founded by the Howell's Charity. Thomas Howell (supposed to have been born at Usk), who had made his fortune in Spain, left in 1540 a large sum of money (12,000 ducats, of

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which 4,000 were lost en route to this country) to the Drapers' Company, London, the interest on which was to provide marriage portions to ladies who were lineally descended from him. In 1559 the Bishop of Llandaff was appointed to be the person to determine the claims of those ladies. Towards the middle of the nineteenth century the money was, by Act of Parliament, handed over for educational purposes, and in 1860 the schools at Llandaff and Denbigh were opened. Of the 100 pupils at Llandaff in 1881, 30 were Foundation Orphans (who were clothed, fed and educated free of charge); 30 were ordinary boarders (at an inclusive fee of £20 a year), and 40 were day pupils. The corresponding figures for Denbigh were 25, 30 and 30. Both schools, at first, were mainly orphanages for girls; at Denbigh, for instance, each Foundation orphan who leaves the School with an unblemished character has £100 placed in trust for her, a part for her advancement in life and a part retained for a marriage portion. Both schools were under the general control of the Drapers' Company, and their total income in 1877 was nearly £8,000. Under the Scheme of 1894, the Llandaff School became associated with the Welsh Intermediate School system, but Denbigh still remains outside.

272. After the refusal of the House of Lords to include the School in the Denbighshire Intermediate and Technical Education Fund Schemes of 1894, Howell's Denbigh developed steadily in size and reputation, and now has about 400 pupils, mainly boarders. This development was made possible by the generous assistance given to the school from time to time by the Drapers' Company in the erection of fine modern buildings.

273. Howell's Llandaff, although associated with the Intermediate system, has a special scheme under which it has developed as an important Girls' School serving a large area in South Wales. Before the war it had 450 pupils, including about 120 boarders.

274. By a Scheme for the management of Dr. Williams' Trust (1875) payments which had previously been made by the Trustees for the education of children in various places in North Wales were to cease and a school was set up in Dolgelley; the town of Dolgelley provided £1,000 and a site of two acres. Of the Governing Body, six were appointed by the Trustees; four by the Dolgelley School Board, and at least three of the ten Governors had to be women. The School, which was undenominational, was opened in 1878, with boarding accommodation, and in 1893 it became part of the Intermediate School provision for Merionethshire. At the moment there are 304 pupils, of whom 201 are boarders. Normally, about half the pupils are from Wales and the remainder from England.

275. Monmouth School for Girls was established in 1897 under the William Jones Foundation in pursuance of a scheme under the Endowed Schools Acts. In the Jones Grammar School Foundation Scheme, dated 1910 ("scheme made by the Board of Education under the Charitable Trusts Acts 1853-1894" for the alteration of the scheme, regulating Jones Grammar School Foundation), the following paragraph refers to the School for Girls:

"The Girls' School of the Foundation ... shall be a day and boarding school for girls and shall be maintained in or near the Borough of Monmouth in the present or other suitable school buildings, as a Public Secondary School, under the name of Monmouth High School for Girls. There shall be applicable for the purposes of the Girls' School a yearly sum of £1,000 to be paid out of the income of the Foundation by the Estates Governors to the Governing Body."

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Gloucester and Hereford. The School is very much a border school, drawing its pupils mainly from these three counties.

277. Like the Boys' School, it has remained independent, has adapted itself to modern conditions, and serves the Monmouth district as a Day School. Of the 271 pupils, 81 are boarders, 188 pupils come from Wales, and 83 from England.

278. Lowther College was conducted for about 25 years in Lancashire before it was removed to Bodelwyddan Castle, Flintshire, in 1921. It was acquired by the Allied Schools' Trust Ltd. in 1927. There are now about 244 girls, of whom 242 are boarders.

279. Penrhos College for Girls, Colwyn Bay, was established as a Wesleyan Methodist School in 1880; it is now controlled by a Limited Company. The Memorandum and Articles of Association require that religious instruction shall be given in accordance with the doctrinal standards of the Wesleyan Methodist Church.

280. There are about 218 girls, all boarders. At the time of the last inspection (1925) about twelve per cent of the girls came from Wales, and the remainder mainly from England.

281. The need for more girls' schools was emphasised in the Aberdare Report, but this need had already been felt by the Society of Ancient Britons, which had reopened Ashford School (Middlesex) as a girls' school in 1882. Early in the eighteenth century some Welshmen (the Society of Ancient Britons) had begun to raise a fund for "setting up and supporting a School in or near London, for instructing, clothing and putting forth as apprentices, poor children descended of Welsh parents, born in or near London ... by means whereof they would be pre-eminently prepared not only to be good apprentices but better fitted for any other employment or business. ..." Originally the institution was only a Day School, which later in 1772 moved into new premises in Grays Inn Road. New school premises, with boarding accommodation, were opened at Ashford (Middlesex) in 1857. Up to that time, about 2,600 boys and 900 girls had been admitted. In 1882 the school was recognised as a Girls' School and did much to provide education for Welsh girls. All the girls admitted had to be of Welsh or Shropshire parentage. The Foundation scholars (two of whom were nominated by Queen Victoria, the Patron of the Institution) received free boarding and tuition. The full boarding fee was £32 per annum.

282. All the schools discussed above, both boys' and girls', will necessarily form part of whatever Boarding School provision Wales will have in the future. It is, therefore, pertinent to point out that those schools which are under Local Education Authority control have full-time teachers of Welsh, and others, namely, Howell's School (Denbigh), Penrhos College and Lowther College, make provision for the teaching of Welsh, when required.

283. Within the borders of Wales, as we have seen, Public Schools are few in number and not so exclusive in character as those of England. Their impact on Welsh public and social life is relatively small and they do not present a subject of high controversy as far as Welsh life and purposes are concerned. On the other hand, citizenship in Wales as well as in England involves common responsibilities in all matters which concern education, government, or social affairs. The relation of the Public Schools in England to the social and economic life of the country is one which affects the whole

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British community. Therefore, any proposals contained in this Report for the Public Schools in England will have their repercussions upon Wales.

284. In this section we are concerned with the special considerations that should govern the participation of Wales in the policy put forward in this report. These are discussed in detail in the Report of the Departmental Committee on "Welsh in Education and Life", 1927.

285. It must be recognised that the small community is a much more important factor in the life of Wales than in that of England, and a Welsh boy or girl would lose a great deal by being cut off from the main stream of communal and family life, and by having no part in those things which distinguish it - its festivals, social functions, peculiar beliefs, and its attitude towards language. From a specifically Welsh point of view this is the heart of the question, since men are Welshmen chiefly in virtue of their participation during the period of youth in the adult life of the home and the community. The culture of minorities can only be preserved from becoming a mere "museum-piece" by being maintained as a practical response to practical needs, and though the exceptional individual may successfully resist the cultural amnesia which so easily overtakes a youth or child in new surroundings, it is from his educational environment that the average individual, and certainly the average child, must acquire the way of life which must distinguish his manhood, and, if there is no place in that environment for the values which the community in general holds, the child will necessarily find that his education has ill-adapted him for a useful adult life in his own country.

286. Minorities, if they wish to preserve their national culture, cannot afford to segregate their children from the national background in which language and other characteristic modes of national behaviour are practised. On this score any form of Boarding School life in Wales before the decisive formative years, or for any considerable number of years, would have its perils unless the schools in Wales adapt themselves to the needs of Welshmen and to the national culture.

287. Whatever linguistic differences there may be between various parts of Wales they all have in common certain attitudes of mind derived from common features in their social and economic history. This identity of outlook shows itself most characteristically as an insistence on equality of opportunity. Educational advance in Wales, even including the foundation of its University, has always been the result of a popular demand which has always insisted on the widest possible extension of educational facilities. Hereditary privilege, for various reasons, has played a declining part for the last few centuries in Welsh life and a certain egalitarian quality in social and public affairs is now the basis of its life.

288. This means in effect that the approach made in Wales to the Boarding School question must aim at making it generally accessible as a common right, and must avoid any considerable segregation from Welsh social life. As far as Wales is concerned, the chief factor undoubtedly is the exceptional position of a minority whose culture, owing to economic factors, has had already to yield considerable ground to English. So there is no easy approach to the problem.

289. Isolation and cultural independence are impossible in our highly industrialised world of the 20th century except among agricultural peoples where it may be aided by geographical conditions, and, even there, the result may be, under certain systems, economically disastrous. Nevertheless, withdrawal, or at least some measure of isolation, is forced upon minorities

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who wish to take to its logical conclusion the struggle to preserve intact their culture, language and way of life. It may be possible for those who hold most strongly the Welsh point of view to admit that they themselves cannot avoid participation in the adult life and affairs of the wider community, and that such a contact is even necessary and desirable; but they cannot compromise in respect of the youth of the community. For reasons we have briefly indicated, the ability of the individual to share in the affairs of wider societies, without losing his own cultural distinction, depends on the completeness with which he has in his youth assimilated the various elements of his own culture. In Wales its typical pattern is reflected in the intimate association of education and social and religious life with the Welsh language in the small community.

290. What has been said hitherto might suggest that there is no room at all in Wales, with its typical village life, for a Boarding School education of a purely English type which would, to many, seem virtually a form of cultural suicide; but rather that the school, the home, and adult society should go, as is traditional, hand in hand, as one integrated whole. This, however, does not imply that there is no room in Wales for Boarding Schools in which the essentially Welsh characteristics are preserved, in which the staff would be Welsh-speaking and within which the smaller community of the school could model itself on the social and cultural life of the outer community: schools which would, in other words, seek to be microcosms of the greater society without, and which would actually strengthen all those social bonds which are essential to a vigorous national life.

291. We turn now to a consideration of our proposed Schemes of Association in their relation to the educational setting in Wales. Whatever special measures of Boarding School education may be fitting and desirable for Wales as a distinctive community, Welsh parents (and this term includes many who have few or no cultural roots in Wales) have an obvious right, as citizens of the wider British Community, to participate in any extension of opportunities proposed in respect of the Public Schools as a whole. The general recommendations of the Report and the Schemes outlined therein must therefore apply to Wales as to England.

292. In principle, a parent in Wales, no less than in England, should be free to apply for the admission of his child to any of the Public Schools in England or Wales. It is, however, reasonable to suppose that both the parents and the Local Education Authorities will wish to be associated, under the Schemes, chiefly with Public Schools in Wales, if these schools elect to come under either of the Schemes. Indeed, one body of evidence submitted to us urges that Local Education Authorities who decide to submit pupils for entry, should stipulate that the Public School chosen should be situated in Wales. Clearly a Welsh parent who selects a school in England can make no claim for the instruction of his child in Welsh, but if he selects a school in Wales he can properly contend that such a school should make provision for instruction in Welsh Language and Literature and Welsh History. In view of the declared policy of the Board of Education to promote and foster the language and culture of Wales in the schools, it would be reasonable to insist that schools in Wales participating in the Schemes should make provision for bilingual teaching: It would be anomalous, and, indeed, to Welsh sentiment intolerable, if the extension of Boarding School opportunities in Wales, with the assistance of public funds, should involve the sacrifice of the language.

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293. It is proposed that pupils should enter Public Schools at 11 or 13 and one of the suggestions is that, when necessary, they might attend approved Preparatory Schools between the ages of 11 and 13. This means that some Preparatory Schools in Wales may wish to be associated with the Schemes. In that event, what has been said concerning Welsh in regard to the Public Schools must also apply to the Preparatory Schools, with perhaps even greater force, since continuity is the essence of any language teaching, and a hiatus from 11-13 might well prove disastrous. Participation on this basis would not only weld the Public Schools in Wales to the National system of education, but would help to bring about that unification of social classes in Wales which modern Welshmen so eagerly desire.

294. We now turn to the place of boarding education in the Welsh educational system. In the early stages of Secondary Education in Wales it was not unusual to find that the school provided boarding accommodation, generally in the Head Master's house. At that time schools were scattered and pupils consequently came from distant areas, but the Welsh Intermediate Education Act, 1889, within a remarkably short space of time placed several County Schools in each county, and thus the need for boarding on a large scale vanished. Yet there remained a body of pupils (so remote and isolated in character are some of the country districts) who found it impossible, or at least extremely inconvenient, to return home daily. Thus there arose a demand for lodging facilities from Monday morning to Friday night. These facilities were often thoroughly unsatisfactory. Lack of privacy, lack of suitable opportunity for study, lack of supervision, lack of proper feeding - all these contributed to make the life of a "lodging" pupil hard, uninviting, and unnecessarily austere. There were areas, however, where conditions were admirable and signal service was rendered by many private individuals towards the supervision and welfare of pupils under their care. Nevertheless, we feel that this is not the right way to deal with the problem.

295. We have investigated thoroughly the characteristics of a Boarding School Education and our views are set out in Chapter 4. Where travel facilities are unduly onerous, where long distances have to be traversed, with the consequent waste of time and physical and mental tiredness, we do not hesitate to affirm that there should be provided adequate and suitable hostel accommodation. The war - through "evacuation" and through the necessity of placing factories in remote areas - has shown us how easy of accomplishment this is, and we have learnt that boarding houses that are an essential part of the establishment they serve are superior to billets.

296. It is true that the increase of Secondary Schools under the new Act will be such that there may be less need than ever, from the geographical point of view, for the provision of such facilities. Nevertheless, we believe that Local Education Authorities should seriously consider schemes whereby pupils may, at least for some period of their school life, share in the benefits of boarding school life, and by the gain in initiative, confidence, independence and grace, face the world before them with a richer equipment.

297. In consideration of what has been said above, we may confidently predict that the future will hold much greater opportunities for the few Public Schools which are already in Wales, and that the Welsh Local Authorities will be fully aware of the special gain to Wales from a carefully considered system of Boarding School education.

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We recommend:-

1. That opportunities of education in the schools included in our terms of reference and in such other schools as may be approved for the purpose by the Board of Education (see para. 152) be made available to boys and girls capable of profiting thereby, irrespective of the income of their parents. (Paras, 135, 137, 139, 150, 164, 171 to 176 and 243.)

2. That, in order to carry out this recommendation, a list of associated schools shall be compiled by the Board of Education; and that the terms of admission of schools to the list and the conditions under which they will work shall be of two types, described respectively as Scheme A and Scheme B; and that both these Schemes shall apply equally to boys' and girls' schools. (Paras. 172 to 176.)

3. That the first scheme (Scheme A) shall be open to such Schools (recognised by the Board as efficient and not conducted for private profit) as the Board of Education may accept, and that in considering whether a School shall be accepted the Board shall have regard to: -

(a) the financial position of the School;
(b) the non-local and other special characteristics of the School;
(c) the value and extent of the contribution which the School could make to the national provision of secondary education, including the education of pupils who have previously attended grant aided Primary Schools;
(d) the observations of the Local Education Authority. (Para. 177 (i).)

5. That the Local Education Authority or Authorities shall have the right to reserve at the schools a number of places, day or boarding, for pupils for whom they are responsible. The number of such local places shall be settled between the Governors and the Local Authorities, with reference to the Board of Education if necessary. (Para. 177 (iii).)

6. That in Boarding Schools, or schools which have a boarding house as part of the school, the Board of Education may nominate for admission as many pupils as may be agreed between the Board and the Governing Bodies, such places being filled according to the provisions outlined in Scheme B. (Para. 177 (iv).)

7. That schools participating in Scheme A shall be required either to abolish tuition fees, or, if tuition fees are retained, to grade them according to an approved income scale which shall provide for total remission if a parent's income requires it; and that boarding charges shall be similarly graded in all schools participating in the Scheme. (Para. 177 (v).)

8. That, in the case of pupils sent by Local Education Authorities, no part of the tuition fee or cost of education shall be recovered from the parents by the Authorities; but that, when such pupils are sent as boarders, an appropriate part of the boarding fee shall be recovered under the income scale from the parents by the Authorities, except in cases where a suitable education cannot otherwise be provided. (Para. I77 (v).)

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9. That Local Education Authorities shall pay to the school the cost of tuition and boarding at the approved rate for all pupils sent by them to the school and shall receive grant from the Board of Education on their net expenditure. (Para. 177 (vi).)

10. That the Board of Education shall make payments to the school in respect of all other pupils and that the method of calculating the amounts to be paid by the Local Education Authorities and the Board of Education towards the approved cost of each pupil's education shall be that set out in the first Supplementary Note appended to Chapter 5. (Para. 177 (vi).)

11. That the Governors of schools participating in the Scheme shall be responsible for the improvement and alteration of premises and that for this purpose they shall be empowered to use the income and, under proper conditions, the capital of any endowments available under the Scheme or other Instrument of the school, with the following provisos:-

(a) that when this income is exceptionally large, the Board after consultation with the Governors may require some part of it to be used to reduce the approved cost of education per pupil;
(b) that loan charges and sinking funds current at the time of the application of the School for admission to the Scheme may be taken into account in calculating the approved cost per pupil;
(c) that, for special reasons, the Board may authorise the Governors to take into account similar charges incurred subsequently with the Board's approval;
(d) that Local Education Authorities shall, with the approval of the Board, be free to make contributions towards the cost of alterations and improvements of schools accepted under the Scheme, and that grant shall be paid by the Board of Education to the Authorities on such expenditure. (Para. 177 (vii) and (viii).)

13. That the rates of salary in any school approved for the purpose of this Scheme shall not fall below those which are in force for secondary schools generally in the future, and that, subject to this provision, schools accepted under the Scheme shall be permitted, with the Board's approval, after an examination of their accounts, to continue to pay salaries at the rates to which they have been accustomed. (Para. 177 (ix).)

14. That at least one-third of the Governing Body shall be nominated by the Local Education Authorities sending pupils to the school or, for schools receiving boarders sent by the Board of Education, partly by the Local Education Authorities and partly by the Board of Education. (Para. 177 (x).)

15. That the second scheme (Scheme B) shall apply to such Boarding Schools or schools taking a substantial number of boarders as the Board may accept, being schools recognised by the Board as efficient and not being conducted for private profit. (Para. 178 (i).)

16. That the Board of Education shall grant bursaries to qualified pupils who have previously been educated for at least two years at a grant-aided Primary School, to enable them to proceed to Boarding Schools accepted for inclusion in this Scheme. The amount of the bursaries shall cover such

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remission of tuition and boarding fees and other expenses as is held to be justified according to an approved income scale, and there shall be total remission where necessary. (Para. 178 (ii).)

17. That special arrangements shall be made for the offer of a certain number of bursaries to the children of British parents living and working overseas. (Para. 178 (ii).)

18. That schools accepted for this Scheme shall offer in the first instance a minimum of 25 per cent of their annual admissions to pupils from grant-aided Primary Schools, and that the schemes of admission shall be reviewed every five years with a view to the progressive application of the principle that schools shall be equally accessible to all pupils and that no child otherwise qualified shall be excluded solely owing to lack of means. (Para. 178 (iii).)

19. That in the case of schools which have already undertaken commitments to prospective pupils which will make it impossible for them to offer 25 per cent of their annual admissions to bursars in the years immediately after the Scheme is brought into operation, the Board of Education shall be empowered to allow a lower proportion to be accepted, but only for so long as existing commitments remain. (Para. 178 (iii).)

20. That Local Education Authorities be empowered by agreement with the Board and the Governing Bodies of the schools to reserve under this scheme a certain number of places at particular schools for pupils from their areas; that the number of pupils from grant-aided Primary Schools sent by the Local Education Authorities and the Board of Education together shall not be less than 25 per cent of the total numbers in the school: and that the fees and expenses of pupils sent by the Local Education Authorities shall be paid to the school by the Authorities, which shall recover from each parent an amount determined under an approved income scale and shall receive grant from the Board of Education on their net expenditure. (Para 178 (iv).)

21. That bursaries shall be available for boys and girls at the ages of 11 and 13. (Para. 178 (vi).)

22. That pupils awarded bursaries at the age of 13 shall enter the Boarding School at once, and that pupils awarded bursaries at the age of 11 shall enter either the preparatory department of a Boarding School or a Preparatory School especially approved for the purpose where they will remain until the age of 13; provided in the latter case that the parents are willing, that the Preparatory School is not conducted for private profit, is recognised as efficient after inspection by the Board and is especially approved for the purpose of receiving bursars, and that responsibility for the arrangements made with the Preparatory School, is undertaken by the Head Master of the Boarding School for which the pupil is accepted. (Paras. 178 (vi) and 181.)

23. That applications for bursaries shall be made by parents or guardians through the Local Education Authorities to the Board of Education, and that parents may apply for any school on the list of those participating in the Scheme or for more schools than one, stating an order of preference. (Paras. 178 (v) and 196.)

24. That candidates for bursaries be interviewed by Regional Interviewing Boards to be set up by the Board of Education and consisting normally of four persons, of whom one shall be the Head Master or Head Mistress of a Boarding School participating in the Scheme, another the Head Teacher of a Primary School, and a third a member or officer of a Local Education Authority. (Para. 178 (v) and 197.)

25. That there shall be no competitive examination for bursaries tenable in Boarding Schools under these Schemes. (Para. 188.)

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26. That Interviewing Boards, in considering candidates for bursaries, shall consider the wishes of the parents, the circumstances and character of the candidate, the school record, the report of the Head Master or Head Mistress on the candidate, and the observations of the Local Education Authority; and that both the parent and the Head Master or Head Mistress of the Primary or Secondary School from which the candidate comes shall set out explicitly the particular reasons why it is held that the candidate should have a Boarding School education. (Paras. 178 (v), 189, 195 and 196.)

27. That the final right of acceptance of a candidate recommended for admission to any particular school shall rest with the school authorities, who shall be expected, in the event of their rejecting recommended candidates, to satisfy the Board of Education as to their reasons. (Paras. 178 (v) and 197.)

28. That the Governing Bodies of schools participating in this Scheme shall include persons nominated by the Board of Education, who shall normally be not more than one-third of the Governing Body, provided that in no case shall there be less than three so nominated; and that when a school makes an agreement by which a certain number of places are reserved by a particular Local Education Authority (see Recommendation 20) some of these persons shall be nominated by that Authority. (Para. 178 (vii).)

29. That it be open to the Board of Education and to any participating school, at any time after the first five years from its admission to the Scheme, to give a year's notice to discontinue the entry of further bursars at the school. (Para. 178 (ix).)

30. That the payments made on behalf of bursars to each school falling under Scheme B be determined by agreement between the school and the Board of Education or the Local Education Authority, subject to the Board's approval, after consideration by the Board of the income, expenditure and administration of the school in the light of its history and present circumstances; but that there shall be no uniform upper limit to the value of the bursaries (Para. 220 and 221.)

31. That as many as possible of the existing extra charges at schools participating in the Scheme shall be comprised in an all-inclusive charge which shall be the prospectus fee of the school; but that, where any extra charges remain, the Board of Education and the Local Education Authorities shall have the power to pay them on a bursar's behalf and shall take these charges into consideration in settling an agreed fee with the school. (Para. 224.)

32. That in addition to tuition and boarding fees, the Board of Education and the Local Education Authorities shall have the power to defray on behalf of each bursar the expenses of outfit, pocket money, travelling and, where necessary, assistance in the intervals between school terms. (Para. 224.)

33. That it shall be a condition of acceptance as an associated school under the Scheme that the system of private profits on the management of Boarding Houses shall have been, or shall be, abolished. (Para. 222.)

34. That the rates of salary in any school accepted under the Scheme shall not be less than those generally in force for secondary schools. (Para. 178 (viii).)

35. That schools participating in the Scheme shall examine their buying and feeding arrangements and the details of their administration generally, with a view to such reductions in cost as do not impair the school's educational values and as appear practicable having regard to the design and situation of the premises and to other fixed and unalterable circumstances. (Para. 222.)

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36. That independent Day Schools shall be encouraged to take advantage of the opportunities already available for entering into agreements with their Local Education Authorities for the admission of pupils for whom the Local Education Authorities take responsibility. (Para. 175.)

37. That the Board of Education shall have the assistance of a Central Advisory Committee appointed by the President of the Board of Education under an independent Chairman, and including in its membership representatives of the Local Education Authorities, the Governing Bodies and the Teaching Profession together with one or more persons not directly associated with the conduct or administration of education; and that the duties of this Committee shall be to advise the Board on questions connected with both Schemes, to review and report on the Schemes at stated intervals, to carry out on behalf of the Board certain functions, and, in particular, to advise the Board on the setting up and working of Regional Interviewing Boards and the final distribution of candidates among the various schools when the Interviewing Boards have made their recommendations. (Para. 180.)

We are of the opinion that Local Education Authorities should be encouraged to make full use of the powers to be conferred upon them by the Education Bill with regard to the provision of boarding accommodation, both for long and short periods of residence, at County and Auxiliary Schools, and in this connection we make the following recommendations:-

38. That the opportunities of a boarding education shall be made available, not only to pupils in Grammar Schools, but also to pupils in Technical and Modem Schools, schools making provision for training in Agriculture, and schools of a multilateral type. (Para. 182.)

39. That when it is necessary that Hostels or small Boarding Houses should be provided in Secondary Schools of any type for pupils desiring residence during the school week but not on Saturdays and Sundays, such Hostels shall be controlled by the teaching staff and treated as an integral part of the school provision; and that if it is found that full Boarding School education is best suited to the needs of any of such pupils, provision shall be made for them to receive it. (Para. 154.)

40. That Boarding Schools and Boarding Hostels provided or maintained by Local Education Authorities shall, so far as possible, include pupils from a number of different areas and that Local Education Authorities shall be encouraged to make reciprocal arrangements to this end. (Para. 155 and 157.)

41. That the Board of Education shall take steps as early as is practicable to secure the use for Boarding Schools after the war of any suitable buildings in country districts which will no longer be required for the purposes they now serve in connection with the war. (Para. 165.)

42. That in any planning Schemes that may be adopted by the central or local authorities, the reservation of land for Boarding Schools and Boarding Hostels shall not be overlooked. (Para. 165.)

43. That associated schools in Wales participating in Schemes A or B and accepting bursars from Wales, shall provide for the continuation of the pupil's bilingual teaching. (Paras. 292 and 293.)

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44. That similar reciprocal arrangements to those in paragraph 155 shall be made as between Local Education Authorities in Wales. (Para. 296.)

45. That Wales shall be represented on the Central Advisory Committee described in Paragraph 180.

We have the honour to be, Sir,

Your obedient servants,

(Signed)

D. P. FLEMING (Chairman).
JAMES AITKEN.
J. G. BARRINGTON-WARD.
A L. BINNS.
ROBERT BIRLEY.
M. DOROTHY BROCK.
HAROLD E. CLAY.
EDWARD CROWE.
W. J. GRUFFYDD.
M. L. JACKS.
GEOFFREY LONDON.
A. E. NICHOLS.
H. N. PENLINGTON.
A. W. PICKARD-CAMBRIDGE.
ERNEST POOLEY.
C. L. REYNOLDS.
E. M. TANNER.

Joint Secretaries
R. N. HEATON
P. WILSON

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The term "Public School" (publicae scolae) was used only infrequently in England during the Middle Ages, and it is difficult to determine, from the few instances known, exactly what meaning can be ascribed to it during that period.

The earliest recorded example is to be found in the Opus de Miraculis Sancti Ædmundi, written about 1180, probably by Abbot Samson of Bury.

He (Canute) then is remembered as having been so pious, so charitable, and so great a lover of religion, that he established public schools in the cities and towns, appointing masters to them, and sending to them to be taught well-born boys of good promise and also the freed sons of slaves, meeting the expense from the royal purse. (1)

The term may be found again in a letter written by William Edington, Bishop of Winchester, to the Prior of Canterbury in 1364, in which he stated that,

We learnt some time ago, on the report of our beloved sons and parishioners of the town of Kingston-on-Thames, that they were without a master for their own boys and for others coming into the said town where they were accustomed to keep a school, and that they made an agreement and entered into a contract with one Hugh of Kingston, clerk, born in the said town, lately the worthy pedagogue, as it is said, of the scholars in your Almonry, that he should undertake the instruction and teaching of the said boys and other scholars in the said town, and rule over the public school there. (4)

(4) Letter Books of the Monastery of Christ Church, Canterbury (Rolls Series), II, 464. (Sane, referentibus nobis dilectis filiis parochianis nostris ville de Kyngeston, pridem accepimus, quod ipsi informatore seu magistro puerorum eorundem, et aliorum in dictam villam ubi consueverant scole exerceri confluencium, tediose carentes, cum quodam Hugone de Kyngeston, clerico, de dicta villa oriundo, nuper scolarium in dorno Elemosinarie vestre digno, sicut dicitur, petagogo, ut informacioni et doctrine dictorum puerorum et aliorum scolariurn in dicta villa intenderet, et scolas publicas gubernaret, convencionem fecerunt et pactum fidele inierunt.

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It is to be noted in this passage that there is a definite statement that boys came to the school to be taught from outside the parish of Kingston, and it is possible that the term, scolae publicae, is used here for that reason. On the other hand, it may only be a reference to the school as the local endowed School.

The same term, scolae publicae, is used in a document referring to the Cathedral Grammar School at Lincoln in 1437, which states that the Chapter ordered the poor clerks in the person of their Provost to go to the public school and study there diligently. (5)

The "poor clerks", who were aged between eighteen and twenty-four, were attached to the Cathedral and were studying there to be ordained. They were admonished to attend the public school, which here refers to the Cathedral Grammar School, not to the Grammar School of the city, and it was also stated that "no one was to presume to teach them in private places such as their own rooms (propriis cameris)." The Cathedral School was allowed to admit only the choristers, the commoners boarding with the masters, and the relations of the canons or vicars choral or boys boarding with them. All others were to go to the City Grammar School, referred to as the General School (scolae generales). (6) It would seem that the word, publicae, here was only used in contrast to the private tuition which was forbidden.

In the grant of a monopoly for teaching Grammar to Eton College and the prohibition of other Grammar Schools in Windsor and within ten miles of Eton, in 1446, it is stated,

We have granted to the Provost and our college aforesaid that they and their successors for ever should have forever within the boundaries of the said our Royal College a public and general grammar school ... and further we have granted to them that no others shall have licence, whatever his authority, at any time to presume to keep, set up or found any such public grammar school in the town of Windsor or elsewhere within the space of ten English miles from our said Royal College. (7)

It is clearly impossible, from these few instances, to determine the exact meaning of the term as used in the Middle Ages. In the Opus de Miraculis Sancti Ædmundi it may possibly have denoted the town Grammar Schools as distinct from the monastic schools. In the letter of William of Edington and in the Grant of a Monopoly to Eton College it may possibly have been used because boys resorted to the schools from outside the immediate localities. In the order to the poor clerks at Lincoln it was probably used in contrast to private tuition. It was doubtless generally used loosely in a sense varying according to the context, but it possibly had a popular meaning to denote a school without narrow restrictions on admission.

(5) V. C. H. Lincolnshire. II. 430. (Monuerunt pauperes clericos in persona Prepositi eorundem, quod adeant scolas publicas et adiscant effectualiter.)

(6) Leach: Educational Charters, 390.

(7) Leach: Educational Charters, 412. (Concessimus preposito et collegio nostro predicto quod ipsi et eorum successores imperpetuum habeant semper infra cepta eiusdern collegii nostri regalis publicas et generales scolas gramrnaticales ... concessimusque eisdem insuper quod nulli sit licitum cuiuscumque fucrit auctoritatis scolas huiusmodi grammaticales publicas infra villam Wyndesore aut alibi infra spacium decem milliarium Anglicorum a dicto nostro Regali Collegio ullocunque tempore regere, instituere vel fundare presumat.)

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During the sixteenth century the term, "public school", came to be applied particularly to schools in contrast to private establishments or private tuition. Thus the Canons of Canterbury of 1571 laid it down that

No one may teach grammar or instruct boys, either publicly in school or privately in the houses of any, unless he has been licensed by the bishop of the diocese. (8)

For as much as a great deal of the corruption in religion, grown throughout the realm, proceedeth of lewd schoolmasters, that teach and instruct children as-well publicly as privately in men's houses; infecting each where the youth without regard had thereunto (a matter of no small moment, and chiefly to be looked into by every Bishop within his diocese), it is thought meet for redress thereof, that you cause all such schoolmasters as have charge of children, and do instruct them either in public schools or in private houses, to be by the Bishop of the diocese, or such as he shall appoint, examined touching their religion. (9)

Education is the bringing up of one, not to live alone, but amongst others (because company is our natural cognisance), whereby he shall be best able to execute those doings in life, which the state of his calling shall employ him unto, whether public abroad or private at home, according unto the direction of his country, whereunto he is born, and oweth his whole service. ... In public schools this swerving in affection from the public choice in no case can be. The master is in eye, what he saith is in ear: the doctrine is examined: the child is not alone, and there must he learn that which is laid unto him in the hearing of all and censure of all. Whatsoever inconveniences do grow in common schools (as where the dealers be men, how can there be but maims?), yet the private is much worse, and hatcheth more odd ills. ...

Now can Certainty (Discipline), being so great a beautifier both to public schools and private houses, be but very necessary to enter the Church with children upon holy Days? (10)

LXXVII. No man shall teach either in public school, or in private house, but such as shall be allowed by the bishop of the diocese or ordinary of the place, under his hand and seal. ...

LXXVIII. ... Provided always, that this Constitution shall not extend to any parish or chapel in country towns where there is a public school founded already; in which case we think it not meet to allow any to teach grammar, but only him that is allowed for the said public school. (11)

(11) Cardwell: Synodalia, I, 209, 291. (LXXVII. Nemo sive in schola aliqua publica, sive in privatis aedibus pueros docebit aut erudict, nisi qui ab episcopo dioecesano vel loci ordinario licentiam ejusdem manu et sigillo roboratam obtinuerit ... LXXVIII ... Proviso semper, quod praesens constitutio ad parochiam aliquam vel capellam, in oppidis ruralibus sitam, in qua schola publica fundata fuerit, minime pertinebit; quo casu consentaneum ducimus, licentiam ad grammaticam ibidem docendam nemini concedi, praeterquam publicae iIlius scholæ magistro.)

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In an Act of 1604 for the due execution of the Statutes against Jesuits, Seminary Priests, Recusants, etc., one section states,

And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid That no person after the Feast of St. Michael the Archangel next, shall keep any School or be a School Master out of any of the Universities and Colleges of this Realm, except it be in some public or free Grammar School, or in some such Nobleman's or Noblewoman's or Gentleman or Gentlewoman's House as are not Recusants, or where the same School Master shall be specially licensed thereunto by the Archbishop, Bishop or Guardian of the Spiritualities of that Diocese, upon pain that as well the School Master as also the party that shall retain or maintain any such School Master contrary to the true intent and meaning of this Act, shall forfeit each of them for every day so wittingly offending 40s. (12)

(12) James I, c. 4, s. 8.

(13) Parry: Education in England in the Middle Ages, 70. (Bedford School is referred to as a "Public Free Grammar School" on several occasions during the seventeenth century, at the nomination of Headmasters by New College in 1663 and 1683 and in a Licence to teach from the Ordinary to the Headmaster in 1684. (V. C. H. Bedfordshire, II, 165, 167.).)

(14) Report of the Public Schools Commission, I, 122, 123.

(15) Leach: Early Yorkshire Schools, II (Yorkshire Archaeological Society XXXIII), xlix; Memorials of Beverley Minster, I (Surtees Society XCVIII), lxii.

(16) Parry: op. cit., 69-71.

17 The town of Beverley petitioned in 1552 for a Grammar School. "The said town of Beverley is a market town and the greatest within all East Riding of your Majesty's county of York, having a great number of youth within the same, and five thousand persons and above, whereof some of them be apt and meet to be brought up in learning. ... May it please your grace ... that there may be erected within the said town, of your most princely foundation, one free grammar school, to the further increase of such youth as there remaineth at this present day and in time to come." (Leach: Early Yorkshire Schools, I, 113, 4, Yorkshire Archaeological Society XXVII.) The Charter of St. Saviour's School, Southwark, stated that a Grammar School had been founded "in which the boys and youths, as well of the poor as the rich, inhabiting the said parish; might be skilfully and successfully instructed in grammar" and it was referred to as "the Free Grammar School of the parishioners of the parish of St. Saviour's in Southwark". (V. C. H. Surrey, II, 176.) The Indent of Lawrence Sheriff, founder of Rugby School (1567), states, "and further, that after that, for ever there should be a free grammar school kept within the said school house, to serve chiefly for the children of Rugby and Brownsover aforesaid, and next for such as be of other places thereunto adjoining ..." (Report of Public School Commission, II, 589.) Parry cites Lincoln Cathedral School as one restricted to specified classes of persons, and therefore not a free school. But it was termed a "Free Grammar School" by the Chantry Commissioners in 1548 (V. C. H. Lincolnshire, II, 435), and had been called a public school in 1437.

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not uncommon, this is the most probable meaning. (18) The normal purpose of an endowment was to provide free education, and the terms Free School came to be practically synonymous with that of Endowed School. In this act, therefore, the term "public school" was probably used again in contrast to a private school conducted for the master's profit or private tuition. There are several examples known of successful private grammar schools during the seventeenth century, such as Thomas Farnaby's school in Cripplegate, and the school in St. Mary Axe, conducted by Thomas Singleton, who had been expelled from Eton in 1660. Charles Hoole, in his New Discovery of the Old Art of Teaching School (1660), styled himself "Teacher of a Private Grammar School in Lothbury Gardens, London".

In a number of Acts of Parliament after the Restoration the term is employed again in a very general way, along with that of "private school", to cover all forms of education other than tuition in a private house. These instances may be given:

(Act of Uniformity, 1662.) And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, That every dean, canon, and prebendary of every cathedral or collegiate church, and all masters and other heads, fellows, chaplains, and tutors of or in any college, hall, house of learning or hospital, and every public professor and reader in either of the universities, and in every college elsewhere, and every parson, vicar, curate, lecturer, and every other person in holy orders, and every schoolmaster keeping any public or private school, and every person instructing or teaching any youth in any house or private family as a tutor or schoolmaster, who upon the first day of May, which shall be in the year of our Lord God one thousand six hundred sixty-two, or at any time thereafter, shall be incumbent or have possession of any deanery, canonry, prebend, mastership, headship, fellowship, professor's place or reader's place, parsonage, vicarage, or any other ecclesiastical dignity or promotion, or of any curate's place, lecture, or school, or shall instruct or teach any youth as tutor or schoolmaster, shall, before the feast day of St. Bartholomew, which shall be in the year of our Lord one thousand six hundred sixty-two, or at or before his or their respective admission to be incumbent or to have possession aforesaid, subscribe the declaration or acknowledgment following. (19)

(Corporation Act, No. 2, 1665.) It shall not be lawful for any person or persons restained [restrained?] from coming to any city, town corporate, borough, parish, town, or place, as aforesaid, or for any other person or persons as shall not first take and subscribe the said oath, and as shall not frequent divine service established by the laws of this kingdom, and carry him or herself reverently, decently, and orderly there, to teach any public or private school, or to take any boarders or tablers that are taught or instructed by him or herself or any other; upon pain, for every such offence,

(19) 14 Charles II, c. 4. s. 8.

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to forfeit the sum of forty pounds, to be recovered and distributed as aforesaid. (20)

(Schism Act, 1713.) That every person or persons who shall ... keep any public or private school, or seminary, or teach and instruct any youth as tutor or schoolmaster, within that part of great Britain called England, the dominion of Wales, or town of Berwick upon Tweed, before such person or persons shall have subscribed so much of the said declaration and acknowledgement, as is before recited, and shall have had and obtained a licence from the respective archbishop, bishop, or ordinary of the place, under his seal of office (for which the party shall pay one shilling, and no more over and above the duties payable to Her Majesty for the same) and shall be thereof lawfully convicted, upon an information, presentment or indictment, in any of Her Majesty's courts of record at Westminster, or at the Assizes, or before justices of Oyer and Terminer, shall ... be committed to the common gaol (21)

That before the said feast day of our blessed lady St. Mary the virgin, they and every of them particularly certify me, how many, and what free schools are within their respective dioceses, and where, and by whom founded, and how endowed, and the names, surnames and degrees of the schoolmasters and ushers in the said free schools; and also the names, surnames and degrees of all other public schoolmasters, and ushers, or instructors, and teachers of youth in reading, writing, grammar, or other literature, and whether they be licensed and by whom; as also of all public mistresses of schools and instructors and teachers of young maids or women ... (22)

"Beddington. There are no public schools in this place: but there are 2 or 3 Persons who teach Children to read and sew etc. to whom we commit the Poor of our Parish. Godalming. There is no Publick Grammar Schoole; but there are some of the poor Children of the Parish taught to write and read by one Delarante, Paid out of the moneys collected at the altar." (24)

(20) 17 Charles II, c. 2, s. 4.

(21) 13 Anne, c. 7, s. 3.

(22) Cardwell: Documentary Annals of the Church of England, I, 325.

(23) G. H. Trevelyan: Blenheim, 441, note 77. Christ Church. Oxford: Wake MSS CLXXII.

(24) Surrey Archaeological Collections XXXIX, 84, 92. Winchester Cathedral Library. Answers to Bishop Willis' Visitation Articles, III fo. 7. 266. (But forty years later the two types of schools are distinguished in a return made by Laurence Sterne to the Visitation of the Archbishop of York in 1764. In this he stated, of his parish of Coxwold, Yorkshire, "There is a public school endowed by Sir John Hart. The scholars are only taught the Latin and Greek tongues - there is a Charity school also, endowed by the same person for the Instruction of the parishioners children in reading English." Letters of Laurence Sterne (ed. L. P. Curtis), 217.)

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During the same period the term began to be used in connection with girls' schools to cover schools which were certainly private ventures but which might be distinguished from the remainder by being boarding-schools of a considerable size. An instance may be found in The Virgin's Pattern, written by John Bachiler in 1661. This was a eulogy of Susanna Perwich, who had been educated at her mother's school at Hackney and was later an assistant there. The school was very successful, numbering at one time over a hundred pupils. Bachiler claimed that the book was written

to refute the opinion of such as greatly blame the education of public schools as if they were places of all others most dangerous to corrupt the manners of youth; Behold here a great instance to the contrary, besides many others that might be named of the very same School, there having been always some as virtuous and religious young Gentlewomen brought up there as in any private family whatsoever. Nor is it difficult to go to the several Cities and Counties of this Kingdom and find out the Houses in which many of them are surviving, beautiful ornaments of the places where they live, either as Virgins, Wives or Matrons (25)

As for your daughters education, I am resaulved to kep no mor a publicks col, nor to have aboue 2 gentil women at a tim, that they may be compane, on for another; for I am were of great impliment ... As for her larning lessen, I thenke it will not be fet to go to a publick col in the city, but there is a menester, that techeth, vere nere the place I dwel, that hath 30 collers. He hath 20 shelling a gurle, and, if you see good, I shall inquire of hem if he will teck her an our in a day, when his collers are gon. (26)

Discussion concerning the comparative merits of education in a school or at home is at least as old as Quintilian, who himself referred to public teachers (publicis praeceptoribus). (27) Writing about 1670, Lord Clarendon declared: "I must rather recommend the education in public schools and communities, than under governors and preceptors in the private families of their parents, where are only one or two more of the children of that family". (28)

(25) Cf. Dorothy Gardiner: English Girlhood at School, 211-214.

(26) Sara Burstall: The Story of Manchester High School for Girls, 31. Cf. Gardiner: op, cit., 217, 218. (Mrs. Amye was probably of Hugenot origin and her use of the words "col" and "collers", suggests a confusion with "école" and "écoliers".)

(27) Quintilian: Institutio Oratoria, I, 2. (Utilius sit domi atque intra privatos parietes studentem continere an frequentiae scholarum et velut publicis praeceptoribus tradere.) Quintilian himself was referred to as teaching in a public school by St. Jerome in 381. (Quinctilianus ex Hispania Calaguritanus, qui primus Romae publicam scholam et salarium e fisco recepit, claruit (Interpretatio Chronicorum Eusebii II).

(28) Dialogue on Education (Collection of Tracts of Edward, Earl of Clarendon).

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The publication of John Locke's Some Thoughts on Education in 1693 provoked a controversy on this subject which was referred to continuously in the literature of the eighteenth century. (29) An early instance may be found in an Essay in The Spectator by Eustace Budgell in 1712.

I intend to discuss that famous question, "Whether the education at a public school, or under a private tutor, is to be preferred?" ... The Greeks seemed more inclined to public schools and seminaries ... In short, a private education seems to be the most natural method for the forming of a virtuous man; a public education, for making a man of business ... It must be confessed, however, that a person at the head of a public school has sometimes so many boys under his direction, that it is impossible he should extend a due proportion of his care to each of them ... In our great schools, indeed, this fault has been of late years rectified, so that we have at present not only ingenious men for the chief masters, but such as have proper ushers and assistants under them. I must nevertheless own, that, for want of the same encouragement in the country, we have many a promising genius spoiled and abused in these little seminaries. (30)

Roger North: Autobiography (c. 1730).

This gives me occasion to note the benefit of public schools to youth, beyond private teaching by parents or tutors. For there they learn the pratique of the world according to their capacities. For there are several ages and conditions, as poor boys and rich, and amongst them all the characters that can be found among men, as liars, cowards, fighters, dunces, wits, debauchees, honest boys, and the rest, and the vanity of folly and false dealing, and indeed the mischiefs of immorality in general may be observed there. Besides, the boys enter into friendships, combinations, factions, and a world of intrigues, which though of small moment, yet in quality and instruction the same as among men. And further, boys certainly league with equals, which gives them a manage and confidence in dealing; teaches them to look before they leap; being often cuffed and put to cuff again; laugh at others' follies and are laughed at themselves; I need not press the advantage this brings to youth, in their learning to be men at little cost. I knew the torment of debt for 2s. 6d.; others make their first experiment with their whole fortune, which wit bought cannot be worth the price, because coming too late is good for nothing. Whereas in private teaching, their company is either superiors, inferiors, and if equals, but a few, without the liberty and variety of practique as in a populous school. ...

I know they pretend danger, want of looking after, and the like. As for danger, none can live free from accident, and such are most obnoxious as are bred least in the way of it, for they are ignorant, and suffer for want of comon precautions. Such as are bred in action (as in public schools) generally know all dangers that are not very extraordinary and avoid them; as for instance, swimming, which if learnt (as I did in such a school), is a precaution against all accidents of surprise by water. (31)

(31) Roger North: Autobiography (ed. A. Jessopp). 12, 13. (North was educated at Thetford Grammar School).

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Henry Fielding. Joseph Andrews (1742).

In this interval we shall present our readers with a very curious discourse, as we apprehend it, concerning public schools, which passed between Mr. Joseph Andrews and Mr. Abraham Adams. ... "Joseph", cries Adams, screwing up his mouth, "I have found it; I have discovered the cause of all the misfortunes which befel him: a public school, Joseph, was the cause of all the calamities which he afterwards suffered. Public schools are the nurseries of all vice and immorality. All the wicked fellows whom I remember at the university were bred at them. - Ah, Lord! I can remember as well as if it was but yesterday a knot of them; they called them King's Scholars, I forget why - very wicked fellows! Joseph, you may thank the Lord you were not bred at a public school ... What shall a man take in exchange for his soul? But the masters of great schools trouble about no such thing ... Believe me, child, all that gentleman's misfortunes arose from his being educated at a public school ..." "However, Sir, as you are pleased to bid me speak," says Joseph, "you know my late master, sir Thomas Booby, was bred at a public school, and he was the finest gentleman in all the neighbourhood. And I have often heard him say, if he had a hundred boys he would breed them all at the same place. It was his opinion, and I have often heard him deliver it, that a boy taken from a public school and carried into the world, will learn more in one year than one of a private education will in five. He used to say that the school itself initiated him in a great way (I remember that was his very expression), for great schools are little societies, where a boy of any observation may see in epitome what he will afterwards find in the world at large." - "Hinc iliac lachrymae: for that very reason," quoth Adams, " I prefer a private school, where boys may be kept in innocence and ignorance." ... "Besides, I have often heard my master say that the discipline practised in public schools was much better than that in private". (32)

Oliver Goldsmith: Essay in "The Bee" (1759).

A boy will learn more true wisdom in a public school in a year, than by a private education in five. (33)

Vicesimus Knox: Liberal Education (1781).

I am aware that what I have advanced in favour of public education, may be attributed to a regard to my own interest, since it is my lot to preside over a public school. (34)

William Bowles: Memorandums of Doctor Johnson (1784).

He (Doctor Johnson) was clear in his opinion that a mixed education partly at school and partly in the father's house is best. I found him no great advocate for public schools. (35)

James Boswell: Life of Doctor Johnson (1791).

More is learned in public than in private schools from emulation; there is the collision of mind with mind, or the radiation of many minds pointing to one centre. (36)

Jane Austen: Sense and Sensibility (1798).

But while she wondered at the difference of the two young men, she did not find that the emptiness and conceit of the one put her at all out of

(36) Sub anno 1775. Ibid (From "a few of Johnson's sayings"), II, 407.

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charity with the modesty and worth of the other. Why they were different, Robert explained to her himself in the course of a quarter of an hour's conversation; for, talking of his brother, and lamenting the extreme gaucherie which he really believed kept him from mixing in proper society, he candidly and generously attributed it much less to any natural deficiency, than to the misfortune of a private education; while he himself, though probably without any particular, any material superiority by nature, merely from the advantage of a public school, was as well fitted to mix in the world as any other man.

"Upon my soul," he added, "I believe it is nothing more: and so I often tell my mother, when she is grieving about it. 'My dear Madam,' I always say to her, 'you must make yourself easy. The evil is now irremediable, and it has been entirely your own doing. Why would you be persuaded by my uncle, Sir Robert, against your own judgment, to place Edward under private tuition, at the most critical time of his life? If you had only sent him to Westminster as well as myself, instead of sending him to Mr. Pratt's, all this would have been prevented.' This is the way in which I always consider the matter, and my mother is perfectly convinced of her error." (37)

S. T. Coleridge: Table Talk (8 July, 1833).

I am clear for public schools as the general rule; but for particular children private education may be proper. For the purpose of moving at ease in the best English society - mind, I don't call the London exclusive clique the best English society - the defect of a public education upon the plan of our great schools and Oxford and Cambridge is hardly to be supplied.

Though from ourselves the mischief more proceeds,
For public schools 'tis public folly breeds. (38)

Unfortunately for Euphorion he had no partialities of his own, for the good gentleman had had little or no education himself: the clergyman of the parish preached up the moral advantages of private tuition, the lawyer, his next neighbour, dazzled his imagination with the connexions and knowledge of the world to be gained in a public school. ... Geminus was put under private tuition of the clergyman above mentioned, and Gemellus was taken up to town by the lawyer to be entered at Westminster school. (39)

(37) Op. cit., Chapter 36.

(38) Cowper had been at Westminster. (Correspondence of W. Cowper (ed. Wright) I, 239-42.)

(39) Observer, Nos. 36 and 37. Cumberland had himself been educated at Westminster.

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grammar school curriculum, but they were ready to admit that some of these schools possessed social advantages which might outweigh the benefits to be derived from a private education.

It would, therefore, be in every respect impolitic and cruel to disgust those with public schools, who have no other resource for the education of their families. There is another reason which has perhaps operated upon many in the middle ranks of life, unperceived, and which determines them in favour of public education. Persons of narrow fortune, or persons who have acquired wealth in business are often desirous of breeding up their sons to the liberal professions; and they are conscious that the company, the language, and the style of life, which their children would be accustomed to at home, are beneath what would be suited to their future professions. Public schools efface this rusticity, and correct the faults of provincial dialect: in this point of view they are highly advantageous. We strongly recommend it to such parents to send their children to large public schools, to Eton or Westminster; not to any small school; much less to one in their own neighbourhood. Small schools are apt to be filled with persons of nearly the same stations, and out of the same neighbourhood: from the circumstances they contribute to perpetuate uncouth antiquated idioms, and many of those obscure prejudices which cloud the intellect in the future business of life. ... (40)

No one who had gone through what they call a great school, but must remember to have seen children of excellent and ingenuous natures, as has afterwards appeared in their manhood; I say, no man has passed through this way of education, but must have seen an ingenuous creature expiring with shame, with pale looks, beseeching sorrow, and silent tears, throw up its honest eyes, and kneel on its tender knees to an inexorable blockhead to be forgiven the false quantity of a word in making a Latin verse. ...

The Spartan boy who suffered the fox which he had stolen and hid under his coat, to eat into his bowels, I dare say had not half the wit or petulance which we learn at great schools among us: but the glorious sense of honour, or rather fear of shame, which he demonstrated in that action, was worth all the learning in the world without it. (41)

Your son is of an age to enable you to guess a little at his turn and disposition, and to direct his education accordingly. If you would have him be a very learned man, you must certainly send him to some great

(41) Spectator, No. 157. (30 August, 1711).

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school; but if you would have him be a better thing, a very honest man, you should have him à portée of your own inspection. At those great schools, the heart is wholly neglected by those who ought to form It, and is consequently left open to temptation and ill examples. (41a)

James Boswell: Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Doctor Johnson.

Dr. Johnson wondered that a man should send his son so far off, when there were so many good schools in England. He said, "At a great school there is all the splendour and illumination of many minds; the radiance of all is concentrated in each, or at least reflected upon each. But we must own that neither a dull boy, nor an idle boy, will do so well at a great school as at a private one. For at a great school there are always boys enough to do well easily, who are sufficient to keep up the credit of the school; and after whipping being tried to no purpose, the dull or idle boys are left at the end of a class, having the appearance of going through the course, but learning nothing at all. Such boys may do good at a private school, where constant attention is paid to them, and they are watched. So that the question of publick or private education is not properly a general one; but whether one or the other is best for my son." (42)

James Boswell: Life of Doctor Johnson.

There is now less flogging in our great schools than formerly, but then less is learned there; so that what the boys get at one end they lose at the other. (43)

We talked of education at great schools; the advantages and disadvantages of which Johnson displayed in a luminous manner; but his arguments preponderated so much in favour of the benefit which a boy of good parts might receive at one of them, that I have reason to believe Mr. Murray was very much influenced by what he had heard today, in his determination to send his own son to Westminster school. I have acted in the same manner with regard to my own two sons; having placed the eldest at Eton and the second at Westminster. I cannot say which is best. (44)

Lord Grenville: Speech on East Indian Affairs. (9 April 1813.)

The most obvious course would be, to choose the young men who are destined for the civil service by free competition and public examination from our great schools and universities. (44a)

My opinions on this point (expulsion) might, perhaps generally be considered as disqualifying me for the situation of master of a great school. (45)

It seems to me that we have not enough of co-operation in our system of public education, including both the great schools and Universities. (46)

(41a) Miscellaneous Works, IV, 243, 4.

(42) Op. cit. (ed. Pottle and Bennett). 60. (22 August, 1773)

(43) Sub anno 1775. Op. cit. (ed, Hill and Powell), II, 407 .

(44) Sub anno 1776. Op. cit. (ed. Hill and Powell), III, 12.

(44a) Hansard, XXV, 727.

(45) Stanley: Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold, I, 73. (21 Oct. 1827).

(46) Ibid, I, 347. (28 Jan. 1835).

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admission and matriculation ... If he comes elected from any public school, as from Westminster, Winchester, or Merchant-Taylors, to be admitted upon !he foundation of any college ...".) (47)

Mrs. Piozzi: Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson (1786).

It was on that occasion that I remember his saying, "A boy should never be sent to Eton or Westminster school before he is twelve years old at least; for if in his years of babyhood he 'scapes that general and transcendent knowledge without which life is perpetually put to a stand, he will never get it at a public school, where if he does not learn Latin and Greek, he learns nothing." (48)

Edward Gibbon: Memoirs of my Life and Writings (1788).

I shall always be ready to join in the common opinion, that our public schools, which have produced so many eminent characters, are the best adapted to the genius and constitution of the English people ... For myself, I must be content with a very small share of the civil and literary fruits of a public school. (49)

Lord Shelburne (1800-1805).

(Lord Chatham declared) that he scarce observed a boy who was not cowed for life at Eton; that a public school might suit a boy of turbulent, forward disposition, but would not do where there was any gentleness. (50)

William Hayley: The Life of William Cowper (1806).

It appears a strange process in education, to send a tender child, from a long residence in the house of a female oculist, immediately into all the hardships that a little delicate boy must have to encounter at a public school. (51)

John Wooll: Biographical Memoirs of Joseph Warton (1806).

The fatigues arising from the management and instruction of a public school, demanded those exertions to which the Doctor's advanced time of life now became incompetent. (52)

At the same time the use of the term to denote any kind of Endowed Grammar School was not entirely given up. Thus Richard Graves, educated at Abingdon Grammar School from 1728 to 1732, wrote in his Recollections of some particulars in the life of the late William Shenstone (1788), "Having been elected from a public school in the vicinity of Oxford, and brought with me the character of a tolerably good graecian." (53) Nehemiah Lambert, Headmaster of Wilson's Grammar School, Camberwell, from 1687 to 1700, was referred to in the Governors' Minute-books as "a great benefactor to the public school" (54) Dr. Ralph Heathcote stated in his memoirs (c. 1790) that he was in April, 1736, "removed to the public school of Chesterfield,

(47) Reminiscences of Oxford by Oxford Men (ed. L. M. Quiller Couch.) Oxford Historical Society, 68.

(48) Johnsonian Miscellanies (ed. G. B. .Hill), I, 294, 5.

(49) Op. cit. (ed. G. B. Hill), 39, 40. (Gibbon was at Westminster in 1749 and 1750).

(50) Fitzmaurice: Life of Lord Shelburne, I, 72. (From an Autobiographical Sketch written by Shelburne between 1800 and 1805. Chatham, who was at Eton from 1718 to 1726, died in 1778. It was about 1770 that he decided not to send his son, William Pitt, to Eton).

(51) Op. cit., I, II.

(52) Op. cit., 77. (Warton was Headmaster of Winchester from 1766 to 1793.)

(53) Op. cit., 13.

(54) V.C.H. Surrey II, 214. (2 April 1688. This is the first instance of the term in the Minute Books of the School. It is used subsequently on several occasions until 1843, but always with reference to the twelve Foundationers in contrast to the other pupils who paid fees.) And see Laurence Sterne's Answer to the Visitation of the Archbishop of York, supra, page 111, note 24.

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where I continued 5 years under the Rev. W. Burrow, a very ingenious as well as humane person, and who was more than ordinarily skilled in the Greek." (55) Thomas Blore's An Account of the Public Schools, Hospitals and other Charitable Foundations in Stamford, published in 1813, which criticised the administration of Stamford Charities, referred to all kinds of endowed schools as public schools. Dr. Goodall, Provost of Eton College, giving evidence in 1818 before the Select Committee on the Education of the Lower Orders, used the term to cover Grammar Schools of all types. (56)

An early example of the popular impression of a definite list of schools referred to as Public Schools may be found in The Farington Diary, under the date 26 September, 1806.

Public Schools were spoken of. Dr. Gretton keeps a private one at Taplow. He said the bane of the public schools is that the parents of many of the boys fill their pockets with Bank Notes, and opportunity is allowed for the expenditure of it viciously. He described the character of three great schools by saying that the youth at Eaton are dissipated gentlemen: those at Westminster dissipated with a little of the Blackguard; and those at St. Paul's School the most depraved of all. He said Eaton is at present upon a sad footing; the Master, Dr. Goodall, having lost much of his authority from want of resolution. He expelled a boy some time since, which being opposed by a youth of the sixth (the highest) form, he gave way and recalled the Boy and of course in so yielding is subject to objections of that form. He said Rugby School is also open upon a bad footing. In it are many of the sons of gentlemen, but more of those who are the sons of manufacturers at Birmingham, Wolverhampton, etc., who having little sentiment of the disgrace of anything dishonourable, act as their inclinations lead them. He said in his school, no Boy, though some are eighteen years of age, expends more while at school than two guineas a year. He desires the parents not to give them more than one guinea, and if they acquire more, he gives them a shilling at a time. At Harrow also, he said, the boys are gentlemen. (57)

By a public school, we mean an endowed place of education of old standing, to which the sons of gentlemen resort in considerable numbers, and where they continue to reside, from eight or nine, to eighteen years of age. We do not give this as a definition which would have satisfied Porphyry or Duns-Scotus, but as one sufficiently accurate for our purpose. The characteristic features of these schools are, their antiquity, the numbers, and the ages of the young people who are educated at them ...

Almost every conspicuous person is supposed to have been educated at public schools; and there are scarcely any means (as it is imagined) of making an actual comparison; and yet, great as the rage is, and long has been, for public schools, it is very remarkable, that the most eminent men in every art and science have not been educated at public schools; and this is true, even if we include, in the term of public schools, not only Eton, Winchester and Westminster, but the Charterhouse, St. Paul's School,

(57) Farington Diary, IV, 6.

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Merchant Taylors', Rugby, and every school in England, at all conducted upon the plan of the three first. (58)

Brougham's abortive Bill of 1820, dealing with the endowed Grammar Schools, had excluded from its operation the Cathedral Schools and Eton, Westminster, Winchester, Harrow, Charterhouse and Rugby. This drew from Samuel Butler, Head Master of Shrewsbury, A Second Letter to Henry Brougham (1821). In this he laid down four criteria to distinguish the Public Schools, all of which, he claimed, could be satisfied by Shrewsbury. A Public School should be,

1. A school open to the public, i.e. a school to which persons from all parts of the kingdom are in the habit of sending their children for education.

2. One at which boys are educated in the higher departments of literature, with a view to their entrance into public life.

3. One of ample foundation, endowed with valuable exhibitions.

4. One in which the numbers and competition are so great, that the boys educated there distinguished themselves by obtaining public honours at the Universities.

Bishop Berkeley: Essay in The Guardian (1713).

Hence I regard our public schools and universities, not only as nurseries of men for the service of the church and state, but also as places designed to teach mankind the most refined luxury, to raise the mind to its due perfection, and give it a taste for those entertainments which afford the highest transport, without the grossness or remorse that attend vulgar enjoyments. (59a)

Conyers Middleton: History of the Life of M. Tullius Cicero (1741). Dedication to Lord John Hervey.

But Your Lordship has a different way of thinking, and by Your Education in a public School and University, has learnt from Your earliest youth, that no fortune can exempt a man from pains, who desires to distinguish himself from the vulgar; and that it is folly in any condition of life, to aspire to a superior character, without a superior virtue and industry to support it. (60)

Henry Fielding: Joseph Andrews (1747).

She therefore resolved to persuade her son, if possible, to that which she imagined would well supply all that he might have learned at a public school or university - this is what they commonly call travelling. (61)

(61) Op. cit., Book III, chapter 7.

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Henry Fielding: Tom Jones (1749).

This worthy man having observed the imperfect institution of our public schools, and the many vices which boys were there liable to learn, had resolved to educate his nephew, as well as the other lad, whom he had in a manner adopted, in his own house; where he thought their morals would escape all that danger of being corrupted to which they would be unavoidably exposed in any Public school or university.( 6)2

Samuel Johnson: A Dictionary of the English Language (1755).

Academy. A place of education, in contradistinction to the universities or public schools. The thing, and therefore the name, is modern.

The Clarendon Commission, which reported in 1864, was set up to inquire into the revenues, management, studies and instruction of "Certain Colleges and Schools". In their report they stated, with regard to these schools,

From the prominent positions they have long occupied as places of instruction for the wealthier classes, and from the general but by no means exact resemblance of their systems of discipline and teaching, they have become especially identified with what in this country is commonly called Public School Education. We adopt for the present a phrase which is popular and sufficiently intelligible, without attempting to define its precise meaning. Public School Education, as it exists in England and in England alone, has grown up chiefly within their walls, and has been propagated from them; and, though now surrounded by younger institutions of a like character, and of great and increasing importance, they are still, in common estimation, its acknowledged types, as they have for several generations been its principal centres. (63)

The Taunton Commission, which issued its report in 1868, had considerable difficulty in deciding what the term was intended to convey. They excluded "the charitable foundations, where a limited number of boys selected as objects of charity, are clothed, fed and instructed, such as Colston's and Queen Elizabeth's at Bristol, and many others", on the grounds that "they cannot be considered as instances, for from their nature they are confined to a

(62) Op. cit., Book III, chapter 5.

(63) Report of Public Schools Commission, I, 3. (The Schools were Eton, Winchester, Westminster, Charterhouse, St. Paul's, Merchant Taylors', Harrow, Rugby and Shrewsbury).

(64) Report of Public Schools Commission, I, 25, 26.

(65) Hansard, 3rd Series, CLXXV 125, 6.

(66) Report of Public Schools Commission, II, 83.

(67) 31 and 32 Victoria, c. 118, s. 1.

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favoured few". (68) They included "schools giving a fair general education, but laying special stress on such mechanical and physical sciences as shall best assist the scholars who are intended for manufacturing or mechanical pursuits", and gave Bristol Trades School as "the most noticeable instance" brought before them. (69) They used the term, "public schools", "to comprise both endowed and proprietary schools", but stated later that "on the other hand, proprietary schools are not uncommonly private schools in this respect, that they do not admit to the benefits of the instruction any and every applicant of whatever social position he may be. It is this freedom of admission which gives endowed schools a special claim to the title of public schools." (70) Again, they allowed that, while "almost all private schools rest in some degree on social distinctions, the Grammar Schools know nothing of such distinctions at all. ... This is indeed the main title that these schools have to the appellation of public schools." (71) Finally the Commission recommended "that facilities should everywhere be given to the people to establish public schools of their own. We believe that recourse must be had to rates, if this object is to be effectually attained". (72) Most of the witnesses before the Commission showed that they had a more restricted view of the meaning of the term. Thus the Headmaster of Marlborough agreed that "the class of boys who go to your school rather places it in the rank of the great public schools than in what may be called the middle-class schools". (73) The Headmaster of Repton stated, "For some time past the school has been claiming, and has virtually attained, the position of a public school; that is, we have boys of the same rank as the public schools; our system is the same; they are doing as well at the Universities, and they come from, I may say, all parts of the world." (74) The Headmaster of Uppingham agreed that his school "is very much what Harrow is, a successful public school built upon a small endowment in an almost country village." (75) The Headmaster of Wellington regarded Birmingham as an endowed school rather than a public school. (76) But the Headmaster of King Edward VI's School, Southampton, said that by a public school he meant an endowed school, adding, "I myself am a public school man in that sense. I was at Uppingham for six years and at Bradford." (77) The Girls' Public Day School Company (1873) presumably chose its title as a sign that it was meeting the recommendation of James Bryce, one of the Commissioners of the Taunton Inquiry, for "the establishment of schools for girls under proper authority and supervision; it would be most desirable to provide in every town large enough a day school for girls under public management." These schools were founded as a deliberate contrast to the numerous private schools for girls which then formed almost the only provision for their education. The schools themselves, however, were all styled "High Schools." (78)

But perhaps the best evidence of the popular use of the term at this period may be found in Dickens' Great Expectations (1860), when the ex-convict, Magwitch, is telling Pip of his association with the swindler, Compeyson.

(68) Report of Schools Inquiry Commission I, 102.

(69) S.I.C., I. 103.

(70) S.I.C., I. 105.

(71) S.I.C., I, 297.

(72) S.I.C., I, 656.

(73) S.I.C., IV, 399 (4025).

(74) S.I.C., IV, 444 (4419).

(75) S.I.C., V, 104 (10,002).

(76) S.I.C., IV, 484 (4950).

(77) S.I.C., IV, 457 (4575).

(78) It had originally been intended to call the Manchester High School for Girls, founded in 1873, "The Manchester Public Day School for Girls", but the title was changed on the appointment of Miss Day as the first Headmistress. (Sara Burstall: The Story of the Manchester High School for Girls, 35).

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He set up fur a gentleman, this Compeyson, and he'd been to a public boarding-school and had learning. He was a smooth one to talk, and was a dab at the ways of gentlefolks.

The Schools, Shrewsbury,
February 27, 1866.

Dear Sir,

I write to ask if a match between Westminster and Shrewsbury can be arranged for this season? The most convenient date for us would be any day in the week beginning June 17. We shall be happy to play on any ground in London which you may select. - .Yours etc.,

J. SPENCER PHILLIPS, Capt.

To the Captain of the Westminster Eleven.

Westminster, March 5, 1866.

SIR,

The Captain of the Westminster Eleven is sorry to disappoint Shrewsbury, but Westminster plays no schools except Public Schools, and the general feeling in the school quite coincides with that of the Committee of the Public Schools Club, who issue this list of public schools - Charterhouse, Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Westminster and Winchester,

Yours truly,
E. OLIVER, Capt.

To the Captain of the Shrewsbury Eleven.

The Schools, Shrewsbury, March 9, 1866.

SIR,

I cannot allow your answer to my first letter to pass unnoticed, I have only to say that a school, which we have Camden's authority for stating was the most important school in England at a time when Westminster was unknown, which Her Majesty has included in the list of public schools by the royal commission, and which, according to the report of the commissioners, is more distinctly public than any other school, cannot be deprived of its rights as a public school by the assertions of a Westminster boy, or by the dictum of the self-styled Public Schools Club. I regret to find from your letter that the Captain of the Westminster Eleven has yet to learn the first lesson of a true public school education, the behaviour due from one gentleman to another.

I am, Sir, your obedient Servant,
J. SPENCER PHILLIPS.

To the Captain of the Westminster Eleven. (79)

Matthew Arnold, in 1864, accepted the same restricted interpretation. "The English public school produces the finest boys in the world ... But

(79) M.C.C. Cricket Scores and Biographies IX., 469, 470, (Compare the entry in the Westminster Cricket Ledger of July 1818: "A challenge was also sent to us by the Charterhouse to play them at cricket, which was very properly refused., not only on account of their being inferior players, but because it was thought beneath Westminster to accept a challenge from a private school." (The M.C.C., 1787-1937, 59)).

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then there are only some five or six schools in England to produce this specimen-boy, and they cannot produce him cheap." (80)

Finally, it may be noted that in the Report of the Bryce Commission (1895) the schools coming under the Public Schools Act were referred to as "the seven 'great public schools'", (81) and that "public secondary schools" were said to "fall into three classes; (a) endowed schools, (b) municipal or county council schools, (c) public elementary schools founded for subjects that lie beyond or outside the standards." "The public school, whether endowed or rate-founded and supported, is the property of no man, and as a property does not yield profit to any man." (82)

(80) M. Arnold: A French Eton, 38.

(81) Report of Secondary Education Commission, I, 41.

(82) Report of Secondary Education Commission, I, 137.

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*The Aided Schools are admitted under a special clause of the Regulations of the Association.

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(I) List of Bodies who have given oral evidence or submitted written statements, or both, to the Committee.

Association of British Chambers of Commerce.
Association of Convent Schools.
Association of Directors and Secretaries for Education.
Association of Education Committees.
Association of Governing Bodies of Public Schools.
Association of Governing Bodies of Girls' Public Schools.
Association of Head Mistresses.
Association of Head Mistresses of Boarding Schools.
Association of Head Mistresses of Independent and Direct Grant Schools.
Association of Head Mistresses of Recognised Girls' Private Schools.
Association of Municipal Corporations.
Association of Teachers in Colleges and Departments of Education.
Association of Technical Institutions.
Association of University Teachers.
Central Welsh Board.
Church Schools Company.
Civil Service Commissioners.
Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals.
Communist Party of Great Britain.
Conference of Catholic Colleges.
Conference on Democratic Reconstruction in Education.
Co-Operative Union.
County Councils' Association.
English Association of New Schools.
Federation of British Industries.
Federation of Education Committees (Wales and Monmouthshire).
Free Church Federal Council.
Friends' Education Council.
Girls' Public Day School Trust.
Harpur Trust, Bedford.
Headmasters' Conference.
Incorporated Association of Assistant Masters in Secondary Schools.
Incorporated Association of Assistant Mistresses in Secondary Schools.
Incorporated Association of Head Masters.
Incorporated Association of Preparatory Schools.
Independent Schools Association.
Joint Standing Committee of Working Women's Organisations.
London County Council.
Medical Officers of Schools Association.
Medical Research Council.
Methodist Education Committee.
National Association of Local Government Officers.
National Council of Labour Colleges.
National Farmers' Union.
National Federation of Women's Institutes.
National Society.
National Union of Manufacturers (Midland Council).

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National Union of Students.
National Union of Teachers.
New Education Fellowship.
Society of Medical Officers of Health.
Trades Union Congress.
Welsh Secondary Schools Association.
Workers' Educational Association.

(II) List of persons who have given individual evidence, oral or written, or who have otherwise assisted the Committee or have appeared before the Committee as representatives of one of the Bodies mentioned in (I) above. The offices indicated are those held by witnesses at the time their evidence was given.

Miss M. F. Adams, Head Mistress, Croydon High School; Chairman of Executive, Association of Head Mistresses.
Lt.-Cdr. Herbert Agar, U.S.N.R., United States Embassy.
Lt.--Cdr. H. L. Agnew, R.N., Royal Naval College, Dartmouth.
Mr. J. E. Badham, Head Master, City of Oxford High School for Boys.
Dr. Cyril Bailey, C.B.E., Honorary Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford.
Captain S. Balchin.
Mr. A. W. Ball, Head Master, Nicholas Green School, London, E.1.
Mr. W. A. Barron, Head Master, Brighton, Hove and Sussex Grammar School; Joint Honorary Secretary, Incorporated Association of Head Masters.
Earl of Bessborough, G.C.M.G., Chairman of Governing Bodies' Association of Girls' Schools.
Mr. J. H. Bingham, Association of Municipal Corporations.
Mr. N. P. Birley, D.S.O., M.C., Head Master, Merchant Taylors' School.
Rev. A. Bolton, Head Master, Magdalen College School, Brackley.
Mrs. A. Bolton, Magdalen College School. Brackley.
Mr. L. G. Brandon, Head Master, King Edward VI School, Aston, Birmingbam.
Mr. W. A. Brockington, Director of Education for Leicestershire; Honorary Treasurer of Association of Directors and Secretaries for Education.
Mr. W. J. Brown, M.P.
Mr. D. W. Lee Browne, Head Master, Rendcomb College, Gloucestershire; Chairman, English Association of New Schools.
Mr. H. Bullock, National Union of General and Municipal Workers.
Miss N. Caress, Head Mistress, Wyggeston Girls' Grammar School, Leicester.
Miss M. A. Carnell, Secretary, English Association of New Schools.
Mrs. William Cash, Girls' Public Day School Trust.
Mr. E. B. Castle, Head Master, Leighton Park School.
Miss A. Catnach, Head Mistress, Putney County School; President, Association of Head Mistresses.
Flying-Officer B. B. Causer, R.A.F.
Miss B. N. Champion, Head Mistress, Ashby-de-la-Zouch Girls' Grammar School.
Mr. G. Chester, General Secretary, National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives.
Mr. J. T. Christie, Head Master, Westminster School.
Mr. A. E. Clark, Head Master, Elmbridge Camp School.
Mr. W. A. Claydon, Head Master, Maidstone Grammar School.
Mr. T. F. Coade, Head Master, Bryanston School.
Mr. C. M. Cox. Head Master, Berkhamsted School.
Rev. E. C. Crosse, D.S.O., M.C., Head Master, Ardingly College.
Mr. W. B. Curry, Head Master, Dartington Hall.
Mr. V. S. E. Davis, Head Master, Latymer's School, Edmonton.
Miss H. C. Deneke, Association of Governing Bodies of Girls' Schools.
Mr. H. J. Dixon, M.C., Head Master, King's College School. Wimbledon.
Mr. L.J. Edwards, General Secretary, Post Office Engineering Union; Workers' Educational Association.
Mr. C. A. Elliott, Head Master of Eton College.
Mr. G. E. H. Ellis, Head Master, Whitgift School.
Miss A. E. Etty, Head Mistress, Risley Avenue Senior Girls' School.
Mr. R. J. Evans. Head Master, Woodhouse Grammar School, Yorkshire; President, Incorporated Association of Head Masters.
Mr. H. Fairhurst, Head Master, Windsor County School for Boys.
Mr. H. L. O. Flecker, Head Master of Christ's Hospital.
Sir Kaye le Fleming, Medical Officers of Schools Association.
Sir Frank Fletcher, formerly Head Master of Charterhouse; Governing Bodies Association of Public Schools.
Dr. G. E. Friend, Medical Officers of Schools Association.
Mr. J. F. Friend, Head Master, De Aston Grammar School, Market Rasen.
Mr. A. G. Gibbs, Head Master, Minchenden School, Southgate.

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Major W. L. Giffard. O.B.E., Secretary, Association of Governing Bodies of Public Schools.
Mr. G. C. T. Giles, Head Master, Acton County School; Vice-President, National Union of Teachers.
Mr. W. M. Gordon, Head Master, Wrekin College.
Sir Ernest Gowers, K.C.B., K.B.E., Vice-Chairman, Association of Governing Bodies of Girls' Public Schools.
Mr. R. B. Graham, Head Master, Bradford Grammar School.
The Reverend Cecil Grant, Founder of St. George's School, Harpenden.
Mr. Ernest Green, General Secretary, Workers' Educational Association.
Miss Linda Grier, Principal of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.
Mr. G. T. Griffith, Head Master, Oakham School.
Mr. W. Griffith, Ex-President, National Union of Teachers.
Dr. Vera M. Grubb, Head Mistress, Westonbirt School; President, Association of Head Mistresses of Boarding Schools.
Sir Samuel Gurney-Dixon, Chairman of Education Committee of County Councils' Association.
Mr. B. L. Hallward, Head Master, Clifton College.
Miss F. Hancock, National Woman Officer, Transport and General Workers' Union.
Mr. H. H. Hardy, C.B.E., Head Master of Shrewsbury School.
Miss I. Haswell, National Union of Teachers.
Mr. M. R. Hely-Hutchinson, M.P.
Mr. A. E. Henshall, Secretary to Education Committee, National Union of Teachers.
Mr. R. W. Hill, Head Master, Dorchester Grammar School.
Mr. J. L. Holland, Director of Education for Northamptonshire; County Councils' Association.
Sir Maurice Holmes, K.C.B., Permanent Secretary, Board of Education.
Mr. M. Holmes, Head Master, Sowerby Bridge Secondary School, Yorkshire.
Mr. H. W. House, D.S.O., M.C., Master of Wellington College.
Mr. F. R. Hurlestone-Jones, Head Master, Holloway School; Joint Honorary Secretary, Incorporated Association of Head Masters.
Mr. G, L. Humberstone.
Miss M. R. Hunter, Head Mistress of Mixed Elementary Residential School at Dartington Hall, Devon.
Mr. L. A. Hurt, Co-Operative Union (Education Department).
Mr. H. E. M. Icely, Reader in Education, Oxford University.
Mr. R. G. Ikin, Head Master. Trent College.
Dr. P. D. Innes. C.B.E., Chief Education Officer for Birmingham; Association of Municipal Corporations.
Dr. C. F. Jones, Head Master, Sutton High School, Plymouth.
Miss Enid Jones, Secretary, Association of Governing Bodies of Girls' Public Schools.
Professor Joseph Jones, Federation of Education Committees (Wales and Monmouthshire).
Miss Kingsmill Jones, O.B.E., Association of Municipal Corporations.
Mr. T. H. Jones, Vice-Chairman, Education Committee of London County Council.
Mrs. K. E. Kingswell, Head Mistress. Wakefield High School.
Mr. H. O. Kitchener, Head Master, Bledsloe Ridge (Bucks.) Junior Mixed School.
Mr. P. Knox-Shaw, Chairman, Incorporated Association of Preparatory Schools.
Mr. J. S. Lee, Head Master, Wilson's Grammar School, Camberwell.
Rev. Canon Spencer Leeson, Head Master of Winchester College; Chairman, Headmasters' Conference.
Mr. W. O. Lester Smith, Director of Education for Manchester.
Mr. A. C. Lightfoot, M.C., Girls' Public Day School Trust.
Miss K. D. B. Littlewood, Head Mistress, Wimbledon High School.
Mr. J. Lloyd, Head Master, Dolgelley Grammar School.
Miss K. Lockley, Head Mistress, Brighton and Hove High School.
Mr. J. H. Bruce Lockhart, Head Master of Sedbergh School.
Mr. J. H. R. Lynam, Incorporated Association of Preparatory Schools.
Mr. P. H. B. Lyon. M.C., Head Master of Rugby School.
Mrs. L'Estrange Malone, Chairman, Standing Joint Committee of Working Women's Organisations.
Mr. J. H. Matthews, Workers' Educational Association.
Mr. S. R. Maudsley, Co-Operative Union (Education Department).
Sir Percy Meadon, C.B.E., Director of Education for Lancashire.
Mr. J. V. Measures, M.B.E., Head Master, Ibstock Modern School, Leicestershire.
Mr. F. A. Meier, Head Master, Bedales School; English Association of New Schools.
Mr. D. G. Miller, High Master, Manchester Grammar School.

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Mr. R. W. Moore, Head Master of Harrow School.
Mr. P. R. Morris, C.B.E., Director of Education for Kent, now Director-General of Army Education.
Miss H. M. J. Neatby, Head Mistress, Ackworth School, near Pontefract.
Mr. J. H. Newsom, Chief Education Officer for Hertfordshire.
Mr. P. S. Newell, Head Master, Gresham's School, Holt.
Sir Cyril Norwood, President of St. John's College, Oxford.
Mr. W. F. Oakeshott, High Master of St. Paul's School.
Mr. G. W. Olive, Head Master, Dauntsey's School, Wiltshire.
Mr. E. H. Partridge, Head Master of Giggleswick School.
Sir Edmund Phipps, C.B., Girls' Public Day School Trust.
Miss O. M. Potts, Head Mistress, Liverpool College for Girls, Huyton; ex-President, Association of Head Mistresses of Boarding Schools.
Mr. A. B. Ramsay, Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge.
Mr. T. J. Rees, Federation of Education Committees (Wales, and Monmouthshire).
Mr. P. Roberts, Head Master, Frensham Heights School.
Mr. Charles Robertson, Chairman, Education Committee of London County Council.
Miss C. Robinson, Head Mistress, Howell's School, Denbigh.
Mr. A. B. Sackett, Head Master, Kingswood School.
Mr. E. G. Savage, C.B., Education Officer, London County Council.
Mr. C. H. C. Sharp, Head Master, Abbotsholme School, Derbyshire.
Miss M. C. Sharp, Head Mistress, Enfield County School for Girls.
Sir Percival Sharp, Secretary, Association of Education Committees.
Mr. H. C. Shearman, Education Officer, Workers' Educational Association.
Rev. Canon F. J. Shirley, Head Master, King's School, Canterbury.
Dr. J. W. Skinner, Head Master, Culford School, Bury St. Edmunds.
Mr. H. A. T. Simmonds, Head Master, Tottenham Grammar School.
Mr. H. J. Simmonds, C.B., C.B.E., Chairman, Girls' Public Day School Trust.
Lady (Ernest) Simon, Workers' Educational Association.
Mr. J. H. Simpson, Principal, College of St. Mark and St. John, Chelsea.
Dr. J. E. Smart, Director of Education for Acton; Association of Education Committees.
Mr. G. H. Stainforth, Wellington College.
Mr. F. B. Stead, C.B.E., Vice-Chairman, Girls' Public Day School Trust.
Miss Ethel Steel, O.B.E., Association of Governing Bodies of Girls' Schools.
Mr. W. Stewart, Co-Operative Union (Education Department).
Mr. T. Stinton, Head Master, Newcastle-under-Lyme High School.
Miss C. F. Stocks, Head Mistress, Talbot Heath School, Bournemouth.
Miss H. V. Stuart, Head Mistress, Sherborne School for Girls.
Miss Mary Sutherland, Secretary, Standing Joint Committee of Working Women's Organisations.
Professor R. H. Tawney, Professor of Economic History, University of London; President of Workers' Educational Association.
Mr. J. E. Taylor, Head Master, Sir Walter St. John's School, Battersea.
Mr. L. W. Taylor, Secretary, Headmasters' Conference and Incorporated Association of Head Masters.
Mr. Charles Tennyson, Chairman of Committee of Education, Federation of British Industries.
Dr. Terry Thomas, Head Master, Leeds Grammar School; Honorary Treasurer, Incorporated Association of Head Masters.
Mr. E. R. Thomas, Head Master, Newcastle Royal Grammar School (and the Staff of the School).
Mr. Ivor Thomas, M.P.
Mr. G. W. Thomson, Trades Union Congress; Editor of "The Draughtsman".
Mr. T. B. Tilley, Director of Education for Durham; Association of Directors and Secretaries for Education.
Mr. F. H. Toyne, Director of Education for Brighton; Association of Directors and Secretaries for Education.
Mr. E. R. Tucker, Head Master, High Wycombe Royal Grammar School.
Rev. P. C. Underhill, Secretary, Incorporated Association of Preparatory Schools.
Mr. F. I. Venables, Head Master, Prince Henry's Grammar School, Evesham.
Mr. W. W. Wakefield, M.P.
Sir Offley Wakeman, Bt., Chairman, Shropshire County Council.
Mr. T. Walling, Director of Education for Newcastle-upon-Tyne: President of Association of Directors and Secretaries for Education.
Miss K. A. Walpole, Head Mistress, Red Maids' School, Bristol.
Mr. C. S. Walton, Head Master, University College School.
Mr. A. P. Waterfield, C.B., First Civil Service Commissioner.
Dr. A. H. Watts, Head Master, St. George's School, Harpenden.
Mr. J. C. V. Wilkes, Warden of Radley College.

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Mr. Randall Williams, Head Master, Harrow County School for Boys.
Miss K. C. Wilson, Head Mistress, Carlisle and County High School.
Mr. T. A. Woodcock, Head Master, Ashby-de-la-Zouche Grammar School.
Mr. J. V. C. Wray, Education Officer, Trades Union Congress.
Miss J. T. Wright. Head Mistress, Lancaster Girls' Grammar School.
Mr. O. E. P. Wyatt, Incorporated Association of Preparatory Schools.
Miss D. E. de Zouche, Head Mistress, Wolverhampton Girls' High School; ex-President, Association of Head Mistresses.