Author: Purple Brolly

The oil paintings of John Constable, RA (1776-1837) were ground-breaking in their day. He rebelled against the teaching of the Royal Academy of Arts in terms of subject-matter, painting technique and working methods, and was a key figure in the Romanticism movement. Today, his work attracts the ‘chocolate box’ label, but this vastly downplays his talent and pioneering spirit.

Born in rural Suffolk, Constable soon realised his artistic calling. His father supported him financially while he began his prolific output of paintings of the surrounding landscape. After his father’s death his income came from portraits, of which there are over a hundred. Yet his passion was for depicting meadows, trees, cloudy skies, rainbows, cottages, mills, boats, farmwork, streams, rivers and churches, all painted from life rather than imagination.

He was also unusual in making full-size preliminary sketches of his larger paintings (‘six-footers’) such as his most famous, ‘The Hay Wain’ (1821). His French counterparts quickly took to this new style, but Constable vowed never to cross the Channel, so did not develop this fanbase himself. Instead, he enjoyed his eventual election as a member of the Royal Academy in 1829 and continued painting until his sudden death in his London studio at age 60.

(Image of ‘The Hay Wain’: Wikimedia Commons / Public domain)

While some children in the UK do unfortunately finish their time at school without any or very few qualifications, most will breathe a sigh of relief on receiving their exam results in the summer. Under current regulations, they must remain in education until age 18, giving them plenty of time to amass their individual collections of school-leaving qualifications. The options include GCSEs, GCE A-Levels, BTECs, OCR Nationals, Scottish Highers and the International Baccalaureate Diploma, depending on what is offered at the particular secondary school or college.

The school-leaving age has steadily risen from 10 in the late 1800s and at that time the concept of obtaining a qualification at school was fairly new, with the very first examinations having been set in 1858. From 1918, by which time the school-leaving age was 14, the School Certificate was introduced for the 20% of children who stayed on until age 16 and the Higher School Certificate for those still there at age 18.

In 1951 a range of subject-related General Certificate of Education (GCE) O-Levels and A-Levels came into being. In 1965 the Certificate of Secondary Education (CSE) appeared but was not valued by employers as highly as O-Levels, so in 1988 they were merged into the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE).

(Image: David Hawgood at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-SA 2.0)