Educational Survey

Extract

A child who passes his eleven-plus examination can learn Latin free of charge till he is eighteen. A child who does not pass this test can still learn Latin till he is eighteen, if his father will pay for him to go to an independent or direct grant school. If a candidate cannot pass a university entrance examination in Latin, not even the offer of a fee of a thousand pounds a year can secure a university place for him.

When parents make great sacrifices in order that their children shall learn a particular subject, be educated in the religious tradition of the family, whether it be Jewish, Catholic or Quaker, or have the opportunity of being taught in small classes, they are often accused of ‘contracting out’ of their social obligations. There are at least two menacing assumptions behind this question-begging stock phrase which need to be brought into the open. Recently a weekly columnist wrote, ‘Influential people buy their children out of the public system.’ Since each university is autonomous, the question of contract is forced into some curious acrobatics where the payment of students’ fees is concerned. The passing of an examination at eleven entitles a child to a free grammar-school education, whether the parents be rich or poor. The passing of a university entrance examination at present entitles a young man or woman to a free university education only if the parents are relatively poor. The family problems involved in this situation have been faced in the report of the committee on grants to students which met under the chairmanship of Sir Colin Anderson.