Education
Wiltshire has twenty-nine county secondary schools, publicly funded, of which the largest is Warminster Kingdown, and another thirteen independent secondaries, including Marlborough College, St Mary's Calne, and Dauntsey's, near Devizes. The county schools are nearly all comprehensives, with the older pattern of education surviving only in Salisbury, which has two grammar schools (South Wilts Grammar School for Girls and Bishop Wordsworth's School) and three secondary moderns. All but two of the county secondary schools in the former districts of West Wiltshire and North Wiltshire have Sixth forms, but only half of those in the rest of the county.
Wiltshire Council operates Urchfont Manor College, which is a residential adult education college. There are also three further education colleges, New College, Swindon, Wiltshire College and Swindon College, providing some higher education.
As yet there are no universities within Wiltshire, except that Bath Spa University has a centre at Corsham Court in Corsham, and Oxford Brookes University maintains a minor campus in Swindon (almost 50 km from Oxford). Outline plans for a projected University of Swindon or University of Wiltshire were announced by the Borough of Swindon in November 2008, but the scheme remains uncommitted. Swindon is the UK's largest centre of population without its own university. The closest university to Wiltshire's county town of Trowbridge is the University of Bath. Wiltshire is therefore one of the few remaining English counties without a university or university college.
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Famous quotes containing the word education:
“Nature has taken more care than the fondest parent for the education and refinement of her children. Consider the silent influence which flowers exert, no less upon the ditcher in the meadow than the lady in the bower. When I walk in the woods, I am reminded that a wise purveyor has been there before me; my most delicate experience is typified there.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“From infancy, almost, the average girl is told that marriage is her ultimate goal; therefore her training and education must be directed toward that end. Like the mute beast fattened for slaughter, she is prepared for that.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“I think the most important education that we have is the education which now I am glad to say is being accepted as the proper one, and one which ought to be widely diffused, that industrial, vocational education which puts young men and women in a position from which they can by their own efforts work themselves to independence.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)