Education
Eastbourne’s reputation for health, enhanced by bracing air and sea breezes contributed to the establishment of many independent schools in the 19th century and in 1871, the year which saw the arrival of Queenwood Ladies College, the town was just beginning a period of growth and prosperity. By 1896, Gowland’s Eastbourne Directory listed 76 private schools for boys and girls. However, economic difficulties during the inter-war years saw a gradual decline in the number of independent schools.
In 1930, the headmistress of Clovelly-Kepplestone, a well-established boarding school for girls, referred to "heavy financial losses experienced by schools in the past few years". In 1930, this school was forced to merge its junior and senior departments; in 1931, one of its buildings was sold off, and in 1934 the school closed altogether. Finally, indicative of the changes that would later befall many of the larger buildings in the town, the school was demolished to make way for a block of flats, which was completed in 1939.
The Eastbourne (Blue Book) Directory for 1938 lists 39 independent schools in the town. With the fall of France in June 1940, and the risk of invasion, most left – the majority never to return. By 2007, the number had reduced to just four: St. Andrew's School, Eastbourne College, St Bede’s Preparatory School and Moira House Girls' School.
Eastbourne has 6 state secondary schools, 17 state primary schools, 1 primary special school, and 2 secondary special schools. Parts of the University of Brighton are based in the Meads area of the town. There are several language colleges and schools, with students coming mainly from Europe.
Read more about this topic: Eastbourne
Famous quotes containing the word education:
“What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Institutions of higher education in the United States are products of Western society in which masculine values like an orientation toward achievement and objectivity are valued over cooperation, connectedness and subjectivity.”
—Yolanda Moses (b. 1946)
“He was the product of an English public school and university. He was, moreover, a modern product of those seats of athletic exercise. He had little education and highly developed muscles—that is to say, he was no scholar, but essentially a gentleman.”
—H. Seton Merriman (1862–1903)