THE FUTURE OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS II
By A HEADMASTER
THE proposition enunciated in my first article is that secondary boarding schools have a healthy influence on the national life and should be continued so long as they can perform with efficiency and dignity their special service to the community. But it is safe to prophesy that, unless some reorganisation is devised, in fifty years there will be perhaps twenty-five public schools and all the rest will be owned and directed by the State as secondary day schools. That position will not be desirable unless by that time the era of universal peace has arrived and the State can find plenty of money for the proper education of its people. We may well wait more than fifty years for that. The first moves should, at any rate, come from the privately-owned schools.
Perhaps the most obvious answer to the problem is that a certain number of public schools should shut down and leave the field free for others. That may be an obvious answer, but it is one which does not readily occur to the Governing Body of any particular school. Schools, especially those of any considerable antiquity, have a proper pride and self-esteem and are not willing to commit suicide : their tradition, they believe, is worth maintaining and they would be ashamed to sell the past. Therefore any successful re- organisation must take this feeling into account. The present competitive scramble is disastrous to the cause of learning. Even in commerce " mergers " take place because it is believed that the public thereby get a better service : yet no such progressive action has been taken by the Governing Bodies of Public Schools. But there are tremendous possi- bilities in applying the general principle of mergers to schools ; and though the difficulties and obstacles are even greater, it is still worth while to make a thorough investigation.
There are, it is true, at present certain public schools in combines, and other schools, if rumour be true, have con- templated amalgamation. But neither the present form of combine nor complete amalgamation really offers a feasible solution. In existing combines of schools the basis of the combination is sometimes financial and sometimes sectarian ; and though sectarian combines may seem to some minds exceptionable, finance is certainly the proper basis of any combine. But schools in one combine are not distinguished from each other by special educational facilities but by divergences in fees and in social prestige. Nor are they united by any territorial contiguity. The divergence in fees and in social prestige is a deplorable condition. There are, it has been remarked above, certain schools which are out- side or above competition and these may be left outside the argument: The aim of all the rest should be to provide a definite type of education at a moderate cost, to produce a well educated man ; and the social prestige can go hang.
As for complete amalgamation, that is to say the fusion of two schools into one, that can only be accomplished by the sacrifice of something worth preserving. Either one school will swallow the other whole and, after digestion, continue without any change of identity, or both schools must give up their past, their buildings and traditions, and create together an entirely new school. But there may well be, between these two, a method of forming a successful combine which will retain history and tradition, reduce costs and increase efficiency. It is easiest to guess what such a combine would mean by inventing an example : all the circumstances of the example which follows are imaginary. There are three public schools, A, B and C, within a circumscribed area of. England, all enjoying roughly the same benefits of climate and sw.:.-tther and all offering the same type of education at about the same fee. They are losing between them A,000 per annum. All three are offering a full curriculum, including, beyond all the elementary subjects, Biology, advanced .Classics} advanced History and advanced French, German and Spanish. All three are paying a Headmaster, whose duty is not to work but to advertise and worry. All three are paying a Bursar to mitigate the stark horror of unbalanced accounts, and a clerk to the Governing Body—or school solicitor—to fight the accumu- lation of bad debts. All three have attempted economies over feeding and masters' salaries and are waiting now for that brilliant Headmaster, who has graduated in commercial travelling and won prizes for flattery and deceit, to come and save them from bankruptcy and extinction.
We will suppose that it now occurs to these three schools to form a combine, and we will investigate the saving that might be effected and the efficiency that might be gained.
The first step is to pool all resources, to put in a common fund all endowments and all sources of wealth whatever, and to bear all debts as a common charge. There will be only one central authority for the three schools—that is to say, one Governing Body, one solicitor and one Bursar. The combine starts with an annual loss of f 4,000, and it must, if possible, by the end of the first year be in a position to balance its budget : it is therefore necessary to make economies which will ensure this at once. By its very formation it has cut down three school solicitors to one and three Bursars to one. It is true that there must be in each school a competent Bursar's clerk and that the Bursar himself will need a clerk, but with the three schools in the same area it should not be necessary to have three highly-paid Bursars. On these two points alone it may be reckoned roughly that there is a saving of k600 per annum.
Before we indicate further lines of economy it will be clearer to outline the general character and policy of the combine. Schools A, B and C remain as entities in their traditional homes, but they now have only one Governing Body. This body issues a joint prospectus and joint adver- tisements for the Public Schools Year Book, &c., under the title of " The combine of Schools A, B and C." The prospectus sets out the main purpose of the combine and continues with a separate section on each of the three schools, outlining with illustrations their special characteristics. The fees charged in each school are exactly the same, and, as resources have been pooled, the scholarship facilities both for boys entering and leaving are exactly the same : in fact for entrance scholarships the combine holds a joint examination. It will then be found easy to make considerable economies by narrowing the curriculum in any one of the schools, but keeping it equally broad in the combine. Thus, all schools in the combine will teach all elementary subjects up to School Certificate standard—i.e., English subjects, Latin, French, German, Elementary Mathematics and Science, and all schools will teach Latin, French and History up to Scholarship and Higher Certificate standards. But only in School A will Greek be taught, only in School B Biology and advanced Science, and only in School C advanced Modern Languages, German and Spanish. Such a scheme obviously requires the most careful planning and considerable elasticity. To meet the many objections which swarm upon the tongue, it would be necessary to go into far more detail than the scope of this article allows. On the face of it, it looks as if a scheme of this kind, after generous allowance for modifications, would save the combine £1,800 per annum.
There is a further saving possible if the combine obtains successful contracts for the purchase of all its supplies and equipment ; b500 per annum is a moderate estimate for the saving here.
We have now reached a saving of k3,000 per annum, and we require to find another kt,000 in order to balance the budget. This can quite easily be obtained from the pockets of the Headmasters, if the combine is prepared to revise its views of.their duties. Each School, A, B and C, shall have its own Headmaster, but his duties will be much curtailed. He will have time to teach and to supervise the discipline of his school, but be will have no need to worry over finance or the supply of boys. He will commonly be, not the brilliant young " don " or the upstart careerist, but a man, promoted very likely from the staff, who has made his mark in the school by his activity and enthusiasm, the sort of man you find in most public schools, a man whom everybody agrees in trusting and respecting. He need not be old, he need not be the senior man left, but he must be the outstanding all-round schoolmaster on the staff. Such appointments inspire confidence and make for continuity : there is none of this hanging back and uncertainty in parents which follows the departure of even the worst Headmaster and none of the suspicion and lack of confidence which attends the first months of a new reign. The objection, commonly raised to such appointments and promotions, is that they tend to induce stagnation and complacency ; and that objection is no doubt a real one. But the combine will avoid that pitfall by appointing one Principal or Arch- Headmaster for all three schools. He will be their gadfly with his new ideas and new methods : it will be his duty to keep abreast of modern ideas in education and to press them with tact—he will certainly need tact—upon his three schools. He will also act as a co-ordinator of the work of the schools in the combine ; he will form with the Bursar the central authority. He must be the chief ambassador of the combine, who will spread its fame and inspire confidence in it, and, if it is based on the sound foundation here outlined, he will not need to deceive himself or others.
The saving effected by such an arrangement may be estimated as ir,000 per annum. It can be assumed that the three Headmasters are at present paid about £I,5oo per annum each. Under the new scheme staff salaries would be reduced by £600 per annum because the Headmasters really teach, and the Headmasters, liberated from half the worry and responsibility, -would be-well content with L800 per annum. The Principal can then receive £I,ro per annum—a salary quite big enough to attract the right type of man - The f.,4,00o is now saved ; the combine has successfully balanced its budget. - That is satisfactory, as far as it goes, but only the first skirmish in the fight is won. Unless the establishment of the combine has' inspired confidence in itself and the public, its creation was a waste of time. Yet it is likely enough that the public will feel greater security and hope : the basis of the combine is broad,, the possibilities more extensive. There is a much greater chance that the cost of education will eventually come down and, whatever happens, the educational facilities are there : there is no longer any fear that the teaching of German or Biology will suddenly cease. Moreover, the combine itself will now have the confidence and authority to make economies which the' individual school did not care to face. There may well be a House in each school which, for financial reasons, were better closed, but which sentiment and fear of the effect on public confidence have extravagantly kept open. These reasons disappear when such a wide reorganisation is put in hand. An improvement in education might well be the result ; there might at last be evolved in this country a school which could really teach modern languages. If once the foundation is financially 'sound -and secure, there is no end tO the developments which might ensue. At any rate, a reorgangtition of this 'kind may help' to save for future generations of boys opportunities, in school days, of friendship, vigorous growth and service—opportunities which secondary day schools in big towns, cramped and confined, large and impersonal, cannot, for all their noble attempts, hope to offer in such full measure.
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