英国教育：公学与公立学校之争
UK Education: The Public vs State School Debate
坦白说，我并不是来自富裕的家庭背景。作为一个在苏格兰中部长大的孩子，我离私立学校最近的距离只是我们每周开车到格拉斯哥市中心购物的途中经过圣阿罗依斯中学而已。
I think it’s fair to say, I didn’t come from a wealthy background. As a child growing up in Central Scotland, the closest I ever got to a private school education was when we used to drive past St Aloysius’ College on the way into Glasgow city centre for our weekly shopping.
在今年早些时候我读到的一篇文章使我开始怀疑自己长期青睐的私立学校（在英国却有很多人误以为这些是公学）从根本上优于公立学校。这篇刊载在英国传统右倾的《每日电讯报》文章指出，截止到2015年为止，最近的数据显示，英国排名前100的私立高中当中，首次有少于一半的学校学生成功进入精英高校。
Earlier this year, I read an article which led me to question my long held assumption that private schools (known somewhat confusingly in England as “public schools”) were fundamentally superior to state schools. The article in question, which came from the traditionally right-leaning Daily Telegraph, noted that at the end of 2015, which is when the most recently available statistics on the issue were released, for the first time fewer than half of the top 100 secondary schools in the UK, calculated according to the number of their students who gained successful entry to elite colleges and universities, came from private schools.
在这里，我需要强调几点。首先，在英国，私人补习是一个朝阳行业。而文章也没有提及公立学校的学生使用私人补习的数据。并且，有不少排名前一百的公立学校曾公开表明他们的独立性，有时候私立学校取得成功的重要原因就是办学的独立性。而在英格兰，一个倡导“自主学校”（译者注：2011年英国政府效仿瑞典建立首批24所自由学校（Free School）。自由学校是由政府出资建立，非盈利性独立学校。“自由学校”不仅享有较大的预算控制权，更重要的是，它有权改变学校的学期长短和教学日程，甚至不必依照英国现有的中小学教学大纲来安排课程。此举目的在于帮助不同背景的学生提高学习水平。）的运动欣然掀起，这个由前教育大臣迈克尔·戈夫监督的运动，则模糊了私立学校和公立学校的最大界限。需要指出的是，早在21世纪初，教育的权力已经被下放到苏格兰和北爱尔兰政府了，这意味着他们的学校跟英格兰和威尔士有着不同的运作系统。谢天谢地，即便在这位仁兄的老家，他也不被允许插手苏格兰的教育系统或者像在英格兰和威尔士那样干预教师们的教学了。
Now, there are a few caveats that need to be attached to this. Firstly, private tuition in the UK is something of a booming industry at the moment, and the figures here make no mention of the number of state school students taking advantage of private tuition. Also, a number of the state schools in the top 100 have quite openly cited the greater freedom to coordinate their efforts with independent, sometimes private sector partners as one of the primary reasons behind their heightened success. In England especially, movements such as the “free schools” initiative, oversee by the former education secretary Michael Gove, have somewhat blurred the line between how exactly one differentiates a private school from a state school. It should also be pointed out that, since the early 2000s, education has been a devolved power of both the Scottish Government and the Northern Ireland Assembly, meaning that their own schools run on completely different systems to those of England and Wales. Thankfully, for my friends back home, Mr. Gove wasn’t allowed to meddle in Scotland’s education system or upset its teachers in the same way as he outraged teachers in England and Wales.
更重要的是，我们需要考虑的事实是，这些世界一流私立学校只占英国所有学校的7%。
Crucially we also need to consider the fact that, for all they enjoy a first class global reputation, private schools in the UK still account for only 7% of the school populace.
然而，当你了解到这7%的学生可以跻身全国前50%的成绩，你或许又会觉得英国私立学校的水准并不那么差了。
So, when you take into account that they only have 7% of the available students to work with, attaining almost 50% of the top scores across the country isn’t a bad level of achievement at all for the UK’s private schools.
我们再来看看这次探讨的话题，英国的私立学校，就像在香港或者是其他地区的私立学校，时常都会提供一些特殊的教育。比如，其中有不少学校在音乐、戏剧等方面贡献良多。
We also need to consider the topics being studied. Private schools in the UK, as is also the case in Hong Kong and elsewhere, oft-times will offer specialist education of some kind. For example, there are schools devoted specifically to music, drama and so on.
许多专家则担心公学虽然提升学生的学术表现，却牺牲了他们表演艺术、文化研究以及社会学科方面的成就。
Many experts worry that state schools’ increasing academic competence has come at the expense of their dedication to the performing arts, cultural studies and social subjects.
近来在英国和美国高校的最大诉求就是“全能”学生，不但是可以取得高分的学生、可以用复杂的公式计算的学生。他们还要求学生有一定的社会以及生存技能，能清晰地表达自己的观点，在校期间能为学校做出鲜明的贡献。
One of the biggest requests among all the elite colleges and universities in both the UK and US these days is to have “well-rounded” students, able to not just attain high test scores and calculate using complex formulae. They also demand that students have the necessary social and life skills to articulate their ideas well, and to make a telling contribution to the university as a whole while they are there.
社会人口统计和社会分工也为公学林立起了推波助澜的作用。美国为富裕的白人划分了很多区域，相对地为黑人和西班牙人也划分了一些区域，跟美国相似的是，英国也有类似的划分。但是英国并非按照种族来划分，而是按照经济水平来划分的。房价在英国是一个重大问题，特别是在一些大的社区、一些公学录取学生很大程度取决于学生的住址。因此，谁能负担得起好学校附近的房子是一个好问题。
Social demographics and societal divisions are also contributors to this perceived “rise” of the state school. In much the same way as the US has its historically affluent, predominantly white, areas, and conversely its less affluent areas for blacks and Hispanics, the UK also has something of a divide to contend with. However, in the UK, this division is not founded on racial prejudice, instead it comes from economics. House prices are a major issue in the UK, especially in larger areas, and state schools do still, to a large extent, determine their intake based on geographical boundaries. Therefore, it has become a question of who can afford to buy a house next to the good school.
事实上，报刊上也已报道过一些关于“欺诈”的问题，有些人会谎报他们的住宅地址以让他们的孩子入读好的学校，这种行为已对社会造成了一定程度的影响。
Indeed, it was also noted in the report that issues of “fraud” in the sense that some people were misreporting their home address in order to get their kids into a better school, had influenced the results to some degree.
总的来说，我认为当你考虑到私立学校只录取7%的学生，以及你的孩子考入高质量公立学校的复杂成本，我不得不说私立学校依然是更好的一个选择，至少能给予独立的家长们对他们子女学术生涯更好的把控。
Overall, I think when you consider that private schools only account for 7% of the student intake, and also factor in the added complications and costs that come with trying to get your child admitted to one of the high-achieving state schools, I would have to say that private schools do still offer the better deal, and give the individual parent greater control over their child’s academic destiny.
