lic schools which la

are hundreds of years old. Some, like Eton, Harrow and Rugbys

are famous all over the world. State schools, on the other hand, are

not part of tradition: they are comparatively new, a means of ex-

tending education to the common people, imitating the public

schools in some ways but generally inferior to them

If your parents think like this, they will certainly want to send

you, at the age of thirteen, to a Public school, and your whole

school career will be different from the one we described earlier

You will probably begin at a small private school (i. e. one run by

an individual person or company, and charging fees) for children up

to seven or eight years old. You will probably be wearing a smart

little uniform, which will help you to feel different from the

of noisy, variously dressed children from the big infants

nearby, though the classwork you are doing is similar.

Meanwhile

your parents

s will be looking around for a suitable

prep school(i. e. preparatory school), talking to the headmaster

of this one or that, being shown round the premises, and trying to

form an impression of the suitability of the school for their son. It is

ikely that you will be a boarder. Thus, when the time comes, your

mother or father will take you to the school and leave you in the

care of the school matron. For a mother to say goodbye to an eight

arold child like this is not easy, and it is even harder for you, the

child: your first night in prep school will probably be a miserable

perh

of your first term

The prep school curriculum differs considerably from that of

unior school, since its main target is not the ' eleven plus, but

the " common entranceexamination at the age of thirteen, for ad

mission to a public school, Latin, French and mathematics are all

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