In the popular mind, education in the United Kingdom is associated with private schools, Eton and Oxford, with everybody else consigned to inferior public schools. Is this the form of education in the United Kingdom today? What are the changes and forces influencing change?
In order to gain the information needed to overhaul its national curriculum and school system, Great Britain conducted a major study during the early 1990s which was released in 1993. That study, completed by the United Kingdom National Commission on Education, advanced a number of different recommendations about the design and development of the school system.
In looking at the primary years, the report recommended changes in the design of the curriculum. It indicated that younger students should be studying more of the basics, or fundamentals, and recommended a reduction in non core subjects for this age group.
However, during the late secondary years, the report recommended the opposite movement for students. It recommended that 14 16 year old students be granted more freedom of choice to take non core subjects, assuming that much of the basic material had been mastered during the elementary school years.
Most of the pressure on the education system in the United Kingdom comes from economic competitors in Europe, rather than from Asia or North America. It is generally France and Germany that the United Kingdom compares itself to in order to ascertain its position.
The study by the United Kingdom National Commission on Education indicated that the United Kingdom was succeeding in reforming and modernizing its system, but that it was still behind such competitors as France, and that France was reforming and modernizing faster (Trying, but must do better, 1993).
Problems exist at many levels, including funding and allocation of funding, as well as curriculum reform. Public protests occurred in 1996 in relationship to education funding, since...