DUKES’ SONS AND COOKS’ SONS ARE EQUAL AT ETON

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 542, 20 December 1928, Page 10

DUKES’ SONS AND COOKS’ SONS ARE EQUAL AT ETON

FREE FOR F*OOR BOYS “It is now possible for the poorest boy to go to Eton and be educated quite free of fees and payments of any kind for clothes or books.” This fact was disclosed by the Rev. Dr. C. A. Alington, head master at Eton, to the Bucks County Teachers’ Association, recently. The fees at Eton are £230 a year, but in addition it costs parents something like another £l7O for extras. Now, however, as a result of recent changes, the son of a dock labourer or cook can maintain himself at Eton on equal terms with sons of dukes. “In the old days,” Dr. Alington explained to a reporter, “when the sons of poor parents won scholarships to Eton they were frequently unable to take them up, owing to the high cost of such extras as clothes, games, and books. This has now been remedied by the governors, who provide that the value of scholarships shall vary according to the circumstances of the parents. There are now among the seventy scholarship holders at Eton, boys whose maintenance is not costing their parents a penny-piece.”

The criticism is often made that educational endowments in this country do not go to the people for whom they are intended, but Dr. Alington points out that at Eton the sons of the wealthy only benefit from the endowments so far as the use of buildings are concerned.