Item RSP/7/k/13 - Photograph: Preliminary Professional and Matriculation Department

Photograph showing men and women students in a classroom, seated at desks, with a male teacher lecturing at the front of the room.

Labelled on reverse 'Central Office of Information Photograph. Crown Copyright reserved (See Feature Set Into No.210 The Working Man's University: The First Polytechnic. The demand for evening education in Britain far exceeds facilities. After a full day's work a large proportion of the adult population hurry to evening institutes and polytechnics to learn, at a very low cost, the 'know-how' that modern industry and commerce insists of its workers. More than 11,000 people in the evenings, and 2,500 during the day attend courses for further education at the Regent Street Polytechnic, where the twelve departments and three craft courses are designed almost exclusively for the vocational student who has reached the age of seventeen (there is no maximum age) and has passed Matriculation or an equivalent University entrance examination.'

Separately labelled 'D.47575 (2) The greater proportion of work at the Polytechnic is done in the classroom, particularly in the Preliminary Professional Matriculation Department. Anyone wanting to enter upon a professional career must first have passed the Matriculation Examination at London, or an examination equivalent to it. As so frequently happens people reach the middle twenties, or even older, before this need arises and those who have not passed these examinations must 'go back to school'. In the centre of the front row is Robert Marshall, who at twenty-five discovered he needed the Matriculation to get the job he wanted'.