The Highway to the University1

Abstract

THE report on the accessibility of university education to poor students prepared by Mr. G. S. M. Ellis for the Stapley Trust, for which Lord Haldane has written an appreciative foreword, reopens an ancient controversy on a basis of modern needs. The author's case, reduced to its bare bones, is that the percentage of the population of England educated at a university is far behind that of Scotland or Wales; that the wider opportunities in Wales and Scotland are reflected in the larger numbers of pupils from elementary schools who reach the university; and that the scholarships offered by local education authorities in aid of university education in England are inadequate in number and, on the average, insufficient in amount. The remedy proposed is that a uniform minimum provision of university scholarships should be made a statutory obligation on all local education authorities. Incidentally, the author criticises severely the Board of Education for neglecting to bring up-to-date statistics of scholarships such as were supplied for 1911-12 to the Royal Commission on the Civil Service, and published in 1914. The author apparently had not seen, before his booklet went through the press, the recently published Statement of Expenditure on Maintenance Allowance Awards incurred by local education authorities in 1923-24 (Cmd. 2415). It would have warned him of the unreliability of any conclusions drawn from the figures of 1911-12 being applicable to the conditions of 1924-25. The limitation also of the report to one-though no doubt the largest- source of supply of scholarships, namely, those offered by local education authorities, makes impossible any kind of estimate of the adequacy or inadequacy of the supply as a whole. A general review, however, is a task for the Board of Education, and not for an individual worker. The most valuable part of the author's case is that he has shown the pressing need for such a survey.