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Funding is available for some Ph.D. courses. There is more funding available
to those in the sciences than in other disciplines
Costs
The costs for a normal education in the United Kingdom are as follows:
Primary: No Charge
Secondary: No Charge
Further (Secondary) Education in either a sixth form or college: No Charge
if under 19 in that particular academic year or on a low income.
Higher / Tertiary Education (University): A tuition fee per year (varies
from £1,000 to £9,000).
Primary and Secondary education can also be charged for, if a fee-paying
(public) school is attended by the child in question.
Public schools in the UK
A
public school, in common British usage, is a school which is usually
prestigious and historic, which charges fees, does not arbitrarily restrict
admissions, and is financed
by bodies other than the state, commonly as a
private charitable trust. Often but not always they are boarding schools.
Confusingly to a non-native English speaker a public school is actually a
private school! In British usage, a government-run school (which would be
called a 'public school' in other areas, such as the United States )
is called a
state school.
Many of the independent schools in the UK do not refer to themselves as
public schools . Many choose to use the term independent school. In part this
is due to a sense that some 'minor' public schools have many of the social
associations and traditions of public schools but without the quality of
teaching and extracurricular activities.
The term 'public' (first adopted by Eton) historically refers to the fact that the
school was open to the paying public, as opposed to, a
religious school that
was only open to members of a certain church, and in contrast to private
education at home (usually only practical for the very wealthy who could
afford tutors).
Public schools played an important role in the development of the
Victorian social elite. Under a number of forward-looking headmasters
leading public schools developed a curriculum based heavily on classics and
physical activity for boys and young men of
the upper and upper middle
classes. They were schools for the gentlemanly elite of Victorian politics,
armed forces and colonial government. Often successful businessmen would
send their sons to public school as a mark of participation in the elite (it was
Martin Wiener's opposition to this tendency which inspired his 1981 polemic
"English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit: 1850-1980", which
became a huge influence on the Thatcher government's opposition to old-
school gentlemanly Toryism and, by default,
a key reason for the recent
upsurge of privately-educated pop singers in the UK).
Public schools often relied heavily on the maintenance of discipline by
older boys, both to reduce staffing costs and as preparation for military or
public service.
While under the best circumstances the Victorian public schools were
superb examples of education, the reliance on corporal punishment and the
prefect system could also make them awful. The
classics-based curriculum
was criticised for not providing skills in sciences or engineering.
The public school system influenced the school systems of the British empire
to an extent. Recognisably 'public' schools can be found in many
Commonwealth countries.
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Today most public schools are highly selective on academic grounds, as
well as financial grounds (ability to pay high fees) and social grounds (often a
family connection to the school is very desirable in admissions).
SLANG PECULIAR TO OR ORIGINATING FROM PUBLIC SCHOOLS
The following list includes some commonly used slang terms, and some
historic slang, used at public schools in the UK:
Достарыңызбен бөлісу: