In the mid-1950s, there were 476,000 pupils in the primary education system, but just 83,000 in secondary and vocational schools, suggesting that more than 80 per cent dropped out of formal education at fourteen, the legal school leaving age. The reason was simple: secondary schools, overwhelmingly owned and run by the church, were private institutions and charged fees that most families could not afford. About 5 per cent of secondary students had publicly financed scholarships – a mark of the state’s commitment to educational equality was that the level of the scholarship was set in the 1920s
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