Britain: An official handbook > 1977

EDUCATION
Independent
Schools
School Leaving
and Secondary
School
Examinations
H9
special schools (including hospital schools). It has long been government
policy not to send to special schools those handicapped children who can be
educated satisfactorily at an ordinary school. There are, however, some 1,800
special schools including hospital schools, day and boarding schools and there
are also boarding homes for handicapped children attending ordinary schools.
There are 11 categories of handicapped pupils in England, Wales and
Northern Ireland and nine in Scotland for whom local education authorities
must provide special educational treatment: blind, partially sighted, deaf,
partially hearing, delicate, educationally subnormal (mentally handicapped in
Scotland), epileptic, maladjusted, physically handicapped, autistic and children
suffering from speech defects. There is no separate category for the delicate in
Scotland. As many children have multiple handicaps there is a growing ten¬
dency to relate educational needs to over-all medical condition and to use the
system of categories for administrative purposes only.
Independent schools in England and Wales receive no grants from public funds
but all are open to inspection and must register with the Department of Edu¬
cation and Science or the Welsh Office which has power to require them to
remedy any objectionable features in their premises, accommodation or in¬
struction and to exclude any person regarded as unsuitable to teach in or to be
the proprietor of a school. In default, the appropriate Secretary of State can, in
effect, close a school, but schools have a right of appeal to an Independent
Schools Tribunal against any of the requirements. The schools whose standards
are regarded by the department or the Welsh Office as comparable with those
of well-run maintained schools are, on application, granted the status of ‘recog¬
nised as efficient . Such schools (1,482 of 2,615 independent schools registered)
contain 80 per cent of the pupils in independent schools. In Scotland where
there are 103 registered schools, the position is generally the same except that
there is no ‘recognised as efficient’ status. In Northern Ireland there are only
four independent schools; these have to be registered with the Department of
Education for Northern Ireland and be open to inspection. As in England and
Wales they receive no grants from public funds.
Independent schools cater for pupils of all ages. The largest and most im¬
portant of them are the public schools,1 which accept pupils at about 12 or 13
years of age usually on the basis of a fairly demanding examination. There are
about 260 public schools, most of them still single sex (about half of them for
girls) and at least partly boarding; but there are some coeducational schools and
certain boys’ schools have recently begun to admit some girls direct to their top
forms. Combined tuition and boarding fees in the public schools are usually
between £1,200 and £1,600 a year, but some of this may be remitted for
children winning competitive scholarships. A number of preparatory schools,
day and boarding, coeducational and single sex prepare children for entry to
the public schools.
Over the past decade there has been a large increase in the number of pupils
staying on at each age beyond the minimum school-leaving age, which was
raised from 15 to 16 in 1972.
There is no national school-leaving examination in England and Wales, but
secondary school pupils may attempt examinations, in various subjects, leading
Public schools are usually taken to mean those schools in membership of the Head-
™s.t<;rsc Conference, the Governing Bodies Association or the Governing Bodies of
ur Sc,hoo1ls.Association. They should not be confused with the State-supported
public schools in Scotland.