SCHOOL EXAMS
Dr Richard Willis reveals the sort of exams your ancestors might have taken, and outlines their development from the Victorian era to the late 20th century
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This summer, students are taking their exams, just as their ancestors – for generations – did before them. The forerunners of modern GCSEs and A-levels originated during Queen Victoria’s reign with the rollout of national tests in the English system of education. However, exams have evolved dramatically over the decades, with huge variance in tests between different types of educational establishment. But if you know when your forebear took their exams and the kind of school they attended, then it’s possible to work out the kind of testing they are likely to have experienced.
When the Government launched the earliest nationwide exams in the 1840s, just 60 per cent of children attended school, and only a very small proportion of them were earmarked to participate in the innovation. Yet these exams offered a way for the most
able lower-class children to progress to the professional role of teacher. In addition, businessmen increasingly recognised the importance of the working classes learning literacy and numeracy skills – especially as Britain was facing severe economic competition from abroad. Exams were seen as the best way forward.
Parental scepticism
However, many parents regarded the tests with scepticism, merely viewing school as a convenient place they could send their offspring until they were old enough to earn a living doing relatively low-skilled and low-status work. Parents were also reluctant to pay examination entrance fees. Following their lead, pupils expressed their own dislike of testing or any form of ‘book learning’, pointing out that schooling and the certificates awarded for passing exams carried with them no relevance to the farm or factory jobs they were likely to go on to do.
There were exceptions, however. The most hard-working and intelligent children could work as ‘pupil-teachers’, essentially apprentices responsible for educating younger pupils while they received their own secondary education, and study from the age of 13 for the Queen’s Scholarship Examination. The final test was taken at 18 in more than 4,000 schools nationwide. There were compulsory papers in arithmetic, English and history; places at teacher-training colleges and scholarships awaited those who passed. However, very few pupil-teachers could be chosen: a school of 200–300 might include a staff of no more than five or six of them. Their real value to society came with the expectation they would go on to spread improved education to the masses. Unfortunately the conditions in the schools where the candidates took the exams were not always ideal, and efforts were rarely made to improve the environment: ventilation, for example, was generally poor. Worse, exams were normally held in winter and summer. In the colder months a smoky, coalburning stove produced only a little warmth, and when children sat the exams in the summer, classrooms became hot and stifling. Further state action leading to the provision of exams came about in 1859 when the Science and Art Department of the Board of Trade launched a scheme geared towards technical education. The consensus among employers and parents was that existing exams did not wholly address the day-to-day practical requirements of jobs within the economy. By 1867, the department had established 212 ‘science schools’, although they often suffered from a lack of schoolmasters who possessed the ability to teach in addition to good knowledge of the subject. In 1884, rumours circulated in the newspapers that the funding of the department’s “vast examining organism”
The most moral and intelligent children could work as ‘pupilteachers’ – essentially apprentices
would be terminated, but in the end the Treasury simply tightened its financial belt.
In contrast, the earliest initiative for exams marketed exclusively towards private schools was taken in 1850 by the College of Preceptors, a learned society of private teachers. The college’s archive, held at the Institute of Education at University College London, shows that on 1 December 1850 an editorial in the journal the Educational Times appealed to teachers and members of the college to send in applications for their pupils to be examined. Standard Hill Academy near Nottingham was the first school to be tested. That year, children at least 11 years old sat exams for seven hours on Monday 23 and again on Tuesday 24 December – no doubt making for a very happy
Christmas. Richard Wilson, dean of the college, and J Parker, secretary, were the examiners. The desks were in rows, all facing the teacher; the windows of the school were high up to prevent pupils being distracted by the outside world; and they were told not to talk to each other for the duration of these exams. The topics were algebra, arithmetic, classics, drawing, English, French, geography, philosophy, scripture, history and surveying.
On 3 January 1851, the Nottingham Journal reported that the testing at Standard Hill Academy marked the beginning of England’s first external exams in the private sector. They are now seen as the earliest prototype of the GCSE, yet the modern style of examining in which uniform papers are distributed en masse was not brought in until 1853. Between that year and 1867, as the report of the Taunton Commission on secondary education testifies, 9,000 candidates were examined by the college.
Girls allowed
The Preceptors’ pioneering activity in producing exams was enhanced further when, in 1851, secondary girls were included. In December of that year, 35 girls were examined. The mantle for examination reform was subsequently taken up by what became known in time as the Oxford and Cambridge Locals.
Oxford University set up its Delegacy of Local Examinations in 1857 to meet the demands of middle-class education. The junior examination was for candidates up to the age of 15, and the senior examination for candidates up to the age of 18. Both sets of students were required to sit a compulsory preliminary examination covering subjects such as arithmetic, English grammar, geography and history. Success here led to exams in botany, chemistry, Greek, Latin, mathematics, mechanics and zoology. More than 1,000 candidates sat the first year of exams, though many failed to gain a certificate. In the main, only a few pupils entered from each school, because teachers were concerned that if too many failed the exams it would reflect badly on their teaching.
The records show that several candidates who did well in the Oxford Locals went on to live and work abroad, taking positions and incomes far above what would be expected from their social class. But shortfalls in standards indicated that teaching methods were lacking. An examiner, for instance, observed that in natural philosophy – that is, the study of electricity, magnetism, mechanics and hydrostatics – boys showed good knowledge relating to the description of instruments. But when asked to explain the laws and rationale behind them, they failed completely.
Criticism was also evident with regard to candidates’ deficiency in classics – another examiner remarked that the children were invariably unable “to turn a simple English sentence into Latin”. Pupils clearly knew “the grammars”, but they could not apply the rules.
Minute papers held at the Cambridge University Archives confirm that the first Cambridge Locals appeared on the scene six months later in 1858. Exams were
held in Birmingham, Brighton, Bristol, Cambridge, Grantham, London and Norwich. As with the Oxford Locals, there were exams for both seniors and juniors.
It was not until 1867 that girls were allowed to enter public exams. Accomplishments such as music and drawing were put to one side and greater weight given to arithmetic and English. In the case of both sexes, the early exams exposed considerable weaknesses in punctuation, spelling and dictation. However, as the tests became established, passes were more forthcoming in English grammar.
The arrival of Locals encouraged other universities to offer a programme of exams, and by the beginning of the 20th century new exam bodies contributed to the expansion of testing in schools. One example is the University of London Extension Board, which set exams for children above the age of 16. Many pupils received private tuition at the university before sitting the exams.
However, there was widespread concern about the lack of coordination in the growth of school exams and the weaknesses in the system. A committee chaired by Arthur Herbert Dyke Acland, MP for Rotherham between 1885 and 1899, published the report Examinations in Secondary Schools on Christmas Day 1911. It concluded there were too many competing examining bodies, and that these should be reduced. The report also recommended new exams be provided by the state; those delivered by the Preceptors and the universities of Oxford and Cambridge were not officially recognised as being fit for purpose.
As a result, university matriculation exams ended, and in 1923 the Locals were replaced with School and Higher School Certificates. Unfortunately a subsequent report produced by a committee chaired by Sir Cyril Norwood in 1943 relayed complaints from employers and professional bodies that these certificates did not always tell recruiters what they needed to know about a job applicant. So everything changed again in 1951, when School and Higher School Certificates were themselves replaced by General Certificate of Education O- and A-levels. O-levels lasted until 1987, but A-levels survive to this day.
It was not until 1867 that girls were allowed to enter public exams