Examination Age-Limit
sik—Janus refers with approval to the caustic comments made by the headmaster of Harrow and the headmaster of Mill Hill on the imposition of an age-limit for candidates for the School Certificate. These comments, and Janus's approval, might give a wrong impression. They ignore the fact that there is in the grammar schools a large body of opinion which favours the imposition of an age-limit, and favours it on purely educational grounds. Those who hold this view hope that the Minister will not only retain the limit but will soon see his way to raise it still further, as was recommended by the Secondary Schools Examinations Council in 1947, and they hope, too, that this will be but the first of a series of reforms that will bring the sixth forms of our grammar schools, and their relationship with the universities, into a much healthier state.
The arguments which weigh with those who hold this opinion concern the details of sixth-form work and would take too long to set out in full, but they exist and they arc educational arguments, not, to quote the headmaster of Harrow, arguments, " supported only by a crack philosophy using education as its tool."—Yours truly, St. Olave's, Tower Bridge, S.E.1. . Headmaster.
R. C. CARRINGTON,
Previous page
