BRITAIN’S CIVIL SERVICE

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 52, Issue 3771, 19 June 1936, Page 3

BRITAIN’S CIVIL SERVICE

A revolution has taken place, writes a special correspondent of the Daily Mail, in the attitude of public school boys toward Whitehall. The want a more adventurious and lucrative career than that afforded by a civil service appointment with the certainty of a pension at the end. Many of the best type are ignoring the chances of Whitehall, preferring the greater risks and prizes of trade and commerce and the learned professions.

Until recently the big public schools were the exclusive nurseries of Whitehall and the other great Empire services, and it was said that they ruled the Empire. This is so no longer. At the last examination 80 appointments in all were filled in the administrative class of the home service, the Indian civil service, the Foreign Office and diplomatic service and the consular service. Only four out of the 80 were obtained by boys from the big public schools. Eton had one in the Foreign Office, Ruby one each in the Foreign Office and the consular service, and Charterhouse one in the home service. Neither Harrow nor Winchester sent forward a single successful candidate. More than one-half of the modem undergraduates at Oxford and Cambridge are or have been in receipt of public subvention, and it is said that grant-aided scholars from the council schools are now beating the public school boys in the great annual competition for Empire administrative appointments. This is not correct. The true explanation is that the public schools are no longer competing for these safe posts, and are showing a preference for other and more adventurous careers.