10 - School Examinations – from Taunton to Bryce

Summary

The last chapter ended with the question how far education and preparation for examinations were the same thing. The question had beset the Locals ever since their foundation. They had brought forward able young men, and their defenders used this as one of the main arguments in favour of the system. The critics, who were vocal from the very first, were less happy, especially in the early days when it was very uncommon to enter whole classes. Had the achievements of the few, they asked, been purchased at the expense of the large majority of boys who did not take the examinations at all? Did the examinations reach only ‘the few picked boys of a few picked schools’? No one believed that examinations could be abolished altogether. What many of the critics wanted was some sort of general inspection and examination of schools such as had been suggested at Cambridge in 1857. This would ensure that the whole school was systematically tested in its ordinary work, it would prevent cramming, and it would discourage concentration of effort on the few promising boys who were likely to do the school the most credit in an external examination. Since efficient school-management always means good teachers, the advocates of school inspection and examination very often wanted to combine them with the training and registration of teachers. Some argued like E. R. Humphreys in a paper to the Social Science Association that this work could be undertaken only by the government. The studies and teaching of endowed schools and of private schools, if they wished, should be in the hands of a government board of examiners.