Secondary Education

Nursery (Pre-school) Education

Free nursery schools are provided in some areas for children under five years of age, usually for those between two and five, but only a small percentage of the nation's children of this age group attend, as accommodation and admittance are restricted, in some places there are waiting lists of several hundreds.

A nursery school is an educational establishment and is positively concerned with the children's development. Nursery schools operate during the normal school hours and observe normal school holidays. In these schools equipment including toys of all kinds is provided to keep the infants busy from nine o'clock in the morning till four o'clock in the afternoon. Here they play, lunch and sleep under the guidance of two supervisors for each classroom of about 20-25 youngsters.

When a mother starts looking for a nursery school, she might be confused by the existence of both nursery schools and day nurseries. The latter are run by the local health authorities. A day nursery meets a social need: it minds children while their parents are at work. Day nurseries are normally open for longer than nursery schools and remain open all the year round. Unlike nursery schools they charge tuition, you pay according to your income for day nurseries.

In addition many children attend informal pre-school playgroups organized by parents and voluntary bodies in halls or private homes.

Primary Education

Most children start school at five in a primary school and go on at eleven or twelve to the next stage of education in a secondary school of some kind. A primary school may be divided into two parts (departments) - infants and juniors. These may be in separate buildings and have separate headteachers, but they are normally very close together or are housed in the same building under one head.

Primary schools are usually quite small; most of the infants schools have between one hundred and three hundred pupils, and most of the junior schools have between one hundred and four hundred pupils. Almost all primary schools are mixed schools.

In infants schools the methods may seem like an extension of those used in nursery schools. The class-room is normally free and probably noisy. The children are likely to be in groups doing quite different things. Some may be keeping shop, selling each other goods and keeping accounts; some may be engaged on a project, like making a model village, or drawing, cutting and pasting, modelling, etc. Others will be in a cluster reading together, writing or figuring. Even when the whole class is doing more or less the same thing, they are likely to be doing it not as a body, but in smaller groups.

It is assumed that by the time children are ready for the junior school they will be able to read and write and do simple addition and subtraction of numbers ("the three Rs").

At seven or so, children go on from the infants school to the junior school. The junior school has the same kind of staff, the same size of classes. Parents often feel that the transition from the infants school to the junior school marks the transition from play to "real work". The curriculum begins to be arranged more formally into individual subjects. The children have set periods of arithmetic, reading and composition. Other subjects that would appear on an average time-table are: history, geography, nature study, art and music, physical education, religious education. The children are graded.

Secondary Education

There is usually a move from primary to secondary school at about the age of eleven, but schools are organized in a number of different ways.

Until the l960s there existed the tripartite system of secondary schools. Under it, most children took an examination at the end of primary school (the eleven Plus). The highest-scoring pupils (about twenty per cent) went to grammar schools which offered an academic five-year course leading to the General Certificate of Education at the ordinary level (the GCE O-level). On obtaining this certificate a pupil either left the school or continued his studies for another two years in what is called the "Sixth Form" to obtain the same certificate but at the advanced level (A-level). The sixth form curriculum provided (and it still does) intense specialization.

The secondary technical school admitted five to two per cent of the pupils, and as the name implies, it offered a general education with a technical bias. It served those pupils who are more mechanically inclined. The pupils were given opportunities to try their hand at the machines in the work-shops. There was more science and mathematics taught on its curriculum. In other words, this school was to give a good foundation for careers in branches of industry or agriculture. However, for various reasons they were widely considered inferior to grammar schools.

The secondary modern school was attended by about seventy-five per cent of the pupils of the age-group eleven to sixteen and led to the Certificate of Secondary Education (the CSE) which was not accepted for entering a university. These schools were given the task of providing a general non-academic education for children of average ability. Many of these schools developed a bias in one of the following courses: secretarial, art and crafts, trade and commerce, agriculture, gardening, etc.

For years the tripartite system was under assault for separating children too early. And in early 70s the Labour government began its major reform the task of which was to escape from class patterns, to create new institutions, to mobilize the nation's talent. Under it, in l965 the national 11+ examinations were abolished. And within the next decade about ninety per cent of all maintained secondary schools were reorganized on comprehensive lines.

Comprehensive schools admit children without reference to ability or aptitude. The children represent a total social cross-section. Their curricula attempt to satisfy two seemingly contrary requirements. On the one hand, they try to reflect the broad aims of education and offer demanding courses leading to public examinations. On the other hand, they allow for difference in the abilities and other characteristics of children, even of the same age. Accordingly, they provide courses that focus on practical life skills considered essential for the world we live in.

Comprehensive schools in most places are all-through schools, that is, one school takes the whole age group 11-18. Some LEAs, however, have introduced new patterns. One variation is comprehensive schools for children of 11-16 (the minimum school-leaving age) linked with sixth-form colleges for pupils who stay on after 16. Other LEAs have middle schools for ages 8-12, 9-13 or 10-14, linked with upper schools (or high schools) for ages 12/13/14-18. Middle schools bridge the traditional division at 11 between primary and secondary education, and in areas with this system the first schools which children attend compulsorily (from 5 to 8/9/10) are called first schools. Thus children in these areas go to three schools instead of two as follows: first school--middle school---upper (high) school.

Comprehensive schools are usually much bigger than the schools of the tripartite system (at least l,000 pupils). The area from which a comprehensive school takes its pupils is called a catchment area.

Within each comprehensive school the children may be grouped according to their ability for specific subjects, and the divisions will be called "sets". In others, pupils are placed into A, B or C "streams" according to their abilities and aptitudes. A few schools offer mixed-ability organization for the whole curriculum withdrawing sometimes individual pupils with serious learning difficulties.

In a few areas pupils are still selected according to levels of academic attainment and receive secondary education in secondary modern or grammar schools (these being remnants of the old tripartite school system).

Date: 2015-12-24; view: 1319