Wycombe Abbey

Wycombe Abbey is one of the famous independent girls' schools in the UK, established in 1896. This school is located in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire. About 540 students, ranged from 11 to 18, are studying there. This school is a bording school, which means most students are staying there to study. I will show you more about what boarding is in this entry.

Aims and Ethos

The students' happiness and well-being are considered the most important.

The school's core values are trust, encouragement, and mutual respect.

Boarding School

The reason why this school is boarding school , according to web site, is "Always with friends", "Less time commuting to school and more doing something more interesting". There are a lot of merits being a boarding student. One girl states in school website, "Being a boarding environment allows Wycombe to become more than a school; it becomes a community." It seems to clearly show what boarding is like. Another student says, "You can go to see a teacher for help anytime." For them as students who study seriously, no wonder they have some hardtime to study and want to ask questions to teachers. I think this environment staying with students and teachers are good so that they can get more motivated and inspired to study. However, there are a few students called day boarder, but many of them choose to do full boarding later if there is bed vacancy.

Sport

Playing sports is one of the important aspect of Wycombe life. At the first few years, students are taught lacrosse, swimming, netball, gymnastics, dance, cross-country, athletics, and tennis. At Wycombe Abbey, a lot of sporting facilities are available. For example, The Sports Center, which opened in March 2004, has 25 m 6 lane swimming pool, sports hall, gymnasium, dance studio, fitness, 4 glass-squash court, and climbing wall. I was very surprised that they have a lot of sporting facilities, especially the fact they have a climbing wall seems to be very unusual to me. I suppose that they feel much stress if they only focus on study; therefore, I think having a lot of sporting facilities is good. Besides, I have heard that exercise makes study more effective. In this sense, Wycombe Abbey has a good balance study and sport.

Universities in the UK

Between 20 th century and 21th century, British university has been changing a lot. The number of professors got bigger, and the number of students also got bigger at the same time. In addition to traditional courses, a lot of new majors increased. Besides As the consequence introducing American way, result-oriented method, professors have gotten more motivated for education. At first I think you would imagine Oxbridge (Oxford and Cambridge) as British university. Both universities are prestigious and have some Nobel Prize winners.Each university in the UK is called ancient university, red brick university, or plate glass university and so on according to what university's building is made by.

Ancient Universities
Oxbridge and four universities in Scottoland (University of St Andrews, University of Glasgow, University of Aberdeen, and University of Edinburgh) have more than 500 years history. The buildings of these universities are mainly made up of limestone. The University of Oxford is the olderst university in the UK, which was established in 11th century. As of 2008, 47 nobel prise winners, 25 prime ministers, 6 kings, over 50 Olympic medalists graduated from Oxford.




Red Brick Universities
Relatively new universities which established mainly between late 19 th century and mid 20 th century are often called “Red Brick University”. The reason why they are called that is because buildings are made of red brick. The person who mentioned this word, red brick university, at first is Edgar Allison Peers, who was a professor teaching Spanish in University of Liverpool. He called these six universities;University of Manchester, University of Liverpool, University of Birmingham, University of Leeds, University of Sheffield, and University of Bristol as red brick universities.

Plate Glass Universities
Since 1960s, a lot of universities were founded in the UK based on "The Robbins Report", which called for expansion of universities. As the result, nearly twenty new universities were established. Since they are constructed by steel and plate glasses which are put in concrete frames, they started to be called plate glass university.
For example, University of East Anglia, University of York, and University of Essex are called plate glass university.

Reference
Deguchi, Yasuo. Kobayashi, Akio. Saitou, Takako. The 21st Century Encyclopeadia of British Culture. Tokyo: Tokyo shoseki, 2009.

Class System in the UK

Although the class system has been getting less serious between 20th century and 21st century, it still exists in British society. Plus these days, people called "New Rich" who became wealthy through IT business came out. British class system is roughly divided into four groups, which are Upper Class, Upper Middle Class, Middle Class, and Working Class. According to the book, The 21st Century Encyclopedia of British Culture, only one percent of people belong to Upper Class. 10-20 percent of people belong to Upper Middle Class. 30-40 percent of people belong to Middle Class. The rest of people are Working Class. Of course there are many homeless in the UK, and we can categorize the class into more complicated, but there are four classes if we roughly classify as I stated.　

• What kind of class is New Rich?

In 1970, the UK was struggling for depression and working conflict. Especially in 1978, many strikes broke out because of opposition against the policy by the government which restricted wages. As the result, Conservative Party lead by Prime Minister Thatcher was established. She carried out very aggressive method so that economy would turn back to normal. For example, introducing foreign capital and following competitive principle. Thanks to this, British economy got better in 1990s through 21st century. The main thing helped this boom was IT business, and the people who got rich from IT business are called New Rich. However, due to subprime mortgage crisis occurred in the US in 2008, British economy nosedived. At the same time some New Rich people are facing seriously bad situation.

• What kind of jobs are classified into these four groups?

Upper Class
 Aristocrats such as royal family
Upper Middle Class
 Doctor
 Laywer
 CEO
 Professor
Middle Class
 Company employee
 Public employee
Working Class
 Those who are doing physical work, in other word the unskilled

• What difference does each class have?

One characteristics between each class is accent. Generally speaking, we can recognize what class they belong to by their accent. The typical British English is called“RP (Received Pronunciation)" also known as “King’s English”, “Queen’s English”. It is said that people who can speak RP is below three percent of the population. Former prime minister of the UK, Tony Blair, is a good example who can speak RP. He might have been naturally practicing speaking RP through his career, which he went to public school, Oxford University, and became a lawyer. Meanwhile Margaret Thatcher is said that having taken lessons how to speak RP with a tutor after she became prime minister. Strictly speaking, RP and the pronunciation spoken by Upper Class are different. Originally RP is the pronunciation spoken by educated people in Upper Middle who went to public school and a prestigious university such as Oxford and Cambridge. Upper Class consists of only a few royal family and aristocrats, and their accent is just their own language, not RP.

• Movie recommended to learn British Class System
  

My Fair Lady

The Full Monty

Reference
Deguchi, Yasuo. Kobayashi, Akio. Saitou, Takako. The 21st Century Encyclopeadia of British Culture. Tokyo: Tokyo shoseki, 2009.