ABSTRACT
The social aims of the system of civil service examinations were to restrict nepotism and to draw into the Imperial service able young men from the villages. Designed for the increasing number of skilled men demanded by expanding industry and commerce, they were linked on the one hand to the apprenticeship system with origins going back at least to the Middle Ages and to the more recently founded mechanics institutes of the nineteenth century. The inception of the Local Examinations of Oxford and Cambridge universities in the middle of the nineteenth century is well documented and only those points which touch on subsequent events and policies. But the elementary school examinations of the Revised Code of 1862 did have some things in common with the Locals and with technical and vocational examinations. The university examinations of the last century, intended as they were to produce a small elite in politics and public service, need concern us at any great length.
