The English Examining Boards: Their route from independence to government outsourcing agencies

71

fortunes improve, but meanwhile were determined to maintain their distance from the
stratum below them in the social order. They were suspicious of state interference.
Including “ gentlemen of small incomes..., trades people, the farmers, the merchants
and the superior class of mechanics (Quoted in Roach 1971: 43), these people were
determined to remain distinct from their social inferiors by paying for their children to
be educated. Therefore, unless their sons qualified for the limited number of
‘grammar’ schools, these solid citizens sent them to ‘lower private schools’ - as a
result often called ‘middle class schools’ (Roach 1986: 61). These institutions were
often of a dubious standard and were famously parodied in Dickens’ ⁱⁱDotheboys
Hair.

The great majority at the bottom of the social pyramid, who might have seen
education as a means of advancement, had to depend for any education either on the
Church in the form of Sunday Schools or on other charitable bodies or individuals.
Since in English thinking the educational needs of the labouring classes were limited,
this group was not a major source of Victorian concern. It was the middle-class
schools that were the first focus of reformers.

In his book Public Examinations in England 1850-1900, John Roach has documented
several successive “ efforts of private individuals to achieve reforms” (Roach 1971:
44). In Sussex, Nathaniel Woodard established three schools - Lancing,
Hurstpierpoint and Ardingly - which still survive, although his differentiation of the
original client groups into a hierarchy of three social classes has faded. However it
was J L Brereton in the West Country whose ⁱⁱplans give a definite place to public
examinations as a means to effecting improvements” (Roach 1971: 43) and is
therefore of most interest here.

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