SIR,—It is pleasant to observe that the two headmasters who
have written in opposition to the age-limit agree so largely with the objectives set out in my article. What surprises me is that Mr. Stirland, who is so opposed to burdening the young sixth-former with an examination in two or three subjects, has no qualms about burdening him and so many others with the whole apparatus of the school certificate, or its equivalent, a year earlier. If abolition of the age-limit means something different from this, I see no hint of it in his letter, or in Mr. Snow's. Mr. Stirland is surely aware that most examining bodies have devised alternative "ordinary" papers which meet the objections he has to plain " ordinary" at sixth. form level. Some, it is true, have not, but schools are not obliged to keep tp them.
Of course I agree that a headmaster does not need an examination to tell him how to draw .up a sixth-form time-table, though I cannot add, as I should like to, that sixth-form time-tables •are always well- balanced. Even Mr. Stirland mentions neither science nor mathematics- as a subject worth continuing on the arts side. A well-devised examina- tion is a help, not a hindrance, as it mcourages the sixth-former to take his subordinate subjects seriously ; but my article stated quite clearly, I hope, that there is more to be done yet.
The greatest immediate gain, as Dr. Carrington insists, is the change In what was the school-certificate year. Unfortunately many head' masters, including, it would seem, two of your correspondents, insist 00
turning the gain into loss. The new examination was never intended to be the same as the old, and it seems a waste of breath to complain that it isn't.
The pity of it all is that we are dissipating our energies on agitation about the age-limit, when we might be agitating effectively about the universities' insistence (with rare and not very helpful exceptions) on three " advanced " subjects. Mr. Stirland objects to this as much as I do. Agitation about the age-limit must either lead us back where we were or lead to further frustration. On the other matter the schools could insist on a necessary reform—Yours faithfully,
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