1 - Patronage and competition

Summary

Public examinations were one of the great discoveries of nineteenth-century Englishmen. Almost unknown at the beginning of the century, they rapidly became a major tool of social policy. They were used to recruit men for government service. They selected the ablest students in the universities, they controlled the work of the secondary schools, they were used by the state to regulate grants to elementary education under the Revised Code of 1862 and to encourage scientific studies through the Science and Art Department. E. E. Kellett, in an autobiography published in 1936, argued that during his life-time opinion on the subject of examinations had greatly changed. In his youth they had been ‘almost the be-all and end-all of school life … If, in fact, I were asked what, in my opinion, was an essential article of the Victorian faith, I should say it was “I believe in Examinations”.’ His own headmaster had been a devotee of the system, and his successes had been proportionate to the trouble he took in training his pupils for the course and in ensuring that they paid due respect to the foibles of the examiners. In his eyes lack of success imputed moral failure to those who had not done well. This confidence in the inerrancy of the examination test was, however, not to endure. Men soon came to appreciate that examiners make mistakes and that their individual judgments often differ.