EDUCATION GLOSSARY*
HE vocabulary of education gets stranger, less familiar, daily. We publish a basic glossary of terms in the hope that it will help you to follow the arguments and indeed to join in. Bilateral school: A secondary school with two distinct sides: grammar, technical, or technical/modern, or grammar / modern. Comprehensive school: A school taking practically all the children from a given district and not organised in distinct sides, Direct-grant grammar school: A school which is not under the control of the local education authority but which receives a financial grant direct from the Ministry of Education. This grant is at present £43 per pupil below the sixth form and £124 in the sixth form. In effect, the vast majority of direct-grant establishments would close tomorrow without the huge subsidies they receive from both state and local authority. Grammar school: A secondary school providing a mainly academic course from II to 16 or 18. It is still the main route to universities and the professions. The proportion of working-class children getting to universities has remained at about the same level as in 1938, despite the “equality of opportunity” philosophy of the 1944 Education Act.
Independent school: A school which
receives no money from public
funds and therefore charges fees.
Must be registered with the Min-
istry of Education and conform to
prescribed standards. Very few
actually “recognised as efficient.”
Standards often incredibly low.
Still considered a lucrative game
by the true descendants of Squeers,
Multilateral school: A secondary
school with three or more distinct
sides, e.g., grammar, technical,
modern, Only one in England and
Wales.
Prep school: An independent school,
age range usually between seven
and 14, which prepares boys and
girls for entry to public schools via
the Common Entrance examination
(for independent schools) taken at
Public school: Big, independent boys’
boarding schools, about 80 in num-
ber, whose heads are members of
the 200-strong Headmasters’ Con-
ference. Not public in any normal
sense: they are not maintained by
public funds, and they are not open
by right to the children of the pub-
lic..Many Socialists would like to
see them integrated into the public
sector at once.
Tripartite system: An ugly phrase for
an ugly arrangement: the division
of secondary education into gram-
mar, technical and modern schools.
*Published originally in the Janu-
ary issue of Stockport Voice.