Upper class schooling

Question

I wonder if someone of right-pondian persuasion could provide me with a summary of the traditional upper class schooling in England during the first half of the 20th century?
It's my understanding that a well brought up Briton was minded by a nanny until age eight or nine before being sent off to a prep-school. Did this nanny's duties involve any basic schooling in reading, writing and 'rithmatic for her charge? Was the new boy at prep school expected to bring to his first classes some primary education? How long did the prep-schooling last before it was time to be off to boarding school? To what left-pondian level would that boarding school correspond? Middle school? High school? A combination of the two? I'm trying to relate terms such as 'fourth-form boy' to the North American school grade system.

Usenet · Accepted Answer

[nq:1]I wonder if someone of right-pondian persuasion could provide me with a summary of the traditional upper class schooling in England during the first half of the 20th century?[/nq]
For extended discussion, see Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy's The Old School Tie (1978).
[nq:1]It's my understanding that a well brought up Briton was minded by a nanny until age eight or nine before being sent off to a prep-school. Did this nanny's duties involve any basic schooling in reading, writing and 'rithmatic for her charge?[/nq]
No. I think in most families the nanny looked after the youngest one or two children, and her duties did not include teaching reading, etc.
[nq:1]Was the new boy at prep school expected to bring to his first classes some primary education? How[/nq]
Most boys went to a local primary school at age 6 before prep school (boarding or daily) at age 8 or 9. My prep school required passing entrance examinations at age 8 in reading, writing, arithmetic (and music).
[nq:1]long did the prep-schooling last before it was time to be off to boarding school? To what left-pondian level would ... combination of the two? I'm trying to relate terms such as 'fourth-form boy' to the North American school grade system.[/nq]
There were important differences 1900-1950, e.g. all British boys had to take Latin to Junior Matric. level (age 15 or 16, nominal requirement for university
admission), and thereafter specialized in either
classics, science or history/English (writing no
exams in the other subjects after this age) etc.
Boys normally entered "public school" at age

13 or 14. Conventionally the lowest or second-junior class was the Fourth Form and the top class the Sixth Form. At my school it was:
bottom (age 13-14) Fourth Form
next (14-15) Middle School
next (15-16) Fifth Form (Junior Matric exams at end, in any number of subjects between 6 and 12; mine were Latin, English, French, German, History, Elementary Maths, Maths & Calculus, Divinity, Advanced English) next Sixth Form
next Upper Sixth (Senior Matric and univ. scholarship exams in no more than two subjects, e.g. Physics & Chemistry or French and German.)
There were 550 boys in total and most stayed

5 years, thus passing through all five classes(except that scholarship boys started in Middle
School.) This was a boarding school organized
in 11 houses, thus 50 boys in each of all ages,
supervised by a (bachelor) housemaster with
one assistant and 4 or 5 prefects (senior boys
with disciplinary powers.)
The system was not particularly uniform because
most schools deliberately maintained their ancient traditions, e.g. scholarship boys at Eton (largest school) were segregated in their own house.
Games illustrate a difference from US high schools. Sports activities were compulsory 6 afternoons a
week (cross-country runs if you were not scheduled for rugby or cricket etc.), practically every boy was on some team or other, and inter-school competition was very important. But there were no professional coaches. Teams were managed and fixtures
arranged solely by the boy captains. The only
external coaching was by those schoolmasters
who happened to be interested and able.

Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs (Ottawa, Canada)

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]I wonder if someone of right-pondian persuasion could provide me with a summary of the traditional upper class schooling in ... combination of the two? I'm trying to relate terms such as 'fourth-form boy' to the North American school grade system.[/nq]
Probably, if the family lived in a town large enough to offer such facilities, he would first go to a pre-prep school (4-7 years old). If not, and the family were wealthy enough, he would have a governess. The nanny's duties were more to do with welfare and so on than with schooling - a sort of surrogate mother. These two women had a certain status in the household (the governess might indeed be a lady but of small means), and there was therefore also a nursery maid for the most menial tasks.

The boy would go to prep school (probably as a boarder but fairly often in cities as a day boy) at 7 (never as late as 9, I think) and at 13 proceed to his public school (NB an exclusive private school!) almost certainly as a boarder, but in London perhaps as a day boy at St Paul's or Westminster. He would normally stay there until 18 or 19, when he would probably go to university but could embark on a career in the City. These ages were not fixed: a very clever boy might move faster through the system.

The term "fourth-form boy" meant different things in different schools. At a prep school it would be a boy of 11 or 12, at public day schools a boy of 14 or 15. The boarding schools, oddly enough, followed that system too, so that a boy entered at 13 as a "third-former", but there were all kinds of oddities in year nomenclature, such as the "Remove", usually but not always a staging post for boys who needed a further year of preparation rather than enter the Lower Sixth after the Fourth Form, or who might choose to leave at
16.

A boy entering a prep school at 7 was expected to be proficient in arithmetic and most aspects of English: he might also have had a French governess (possibly a German one before 1914) and have acquired a good accent and general vocabulary. At prep school he would immediately start Latin, a core requirement for entrance to most public schools, and a year or two later Greek. There would be little teaching of science in most prep schools, though this changed gradually through the period 1900-1950.

I don't know how you could relate this to the US system. A major difference might be academic selectivity: some prep and public schools were and are highly selective, and their pupils formidably well versed in traditional school subjects. As I understand it, US high schools are what we would call "comprehensive", accepting children of all abilities. Your high schools have, I think, a local intake: our so-called "public schools" (not now the official term) recruit nationally, except of course for day boys.

Hope this helps!
Alan Jones (a retired English schoolmaster)

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]our so-called "public schools" (not now the official term) recruit nationally, except of course for day boys.[/nq]
This wider recruitment explains the often-noticed anomaly where some Scots, Irish and Welsh (not to mention Australian, Indian, etc etc) people have, even to this day, English accents; and, of course, how upper-class English people usually have little or no trace of the accent of the region they come from.
Mike.

Upper class schooling

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