Education

California's superintendent of public instruction and director of education is elected for a four-year term. The seven-member state board of education is appointed by the governor. The board determines educational policy for the public elementary and secondary schools and for public junior colleges. School attendance is compulsory for children from the age of 6 to 16.

The first schools in California were Indian mission schools, established from San Diego to Sonoma by Spanish Franciscans in the 1770's. The first compulsory school attendance law was enacted in 1874. One of the first junior high schools in the nation was established at Berkeley in 1909. The California public school system has more students than that of any other state. The state also leads the nation in the number of public junior colleges. The system's headquarters are in Long Beach.

The California state college and university system consists of a number of state colleges and state universities (not including the University of California) in communities throughout the state.

The University of California, one of the nation's largest institutions of higher learning, was opened at Berkeley in 1868. The branch campus at Los Angeles is known popularly as UCLA. Other branches are in Davis, Irvine, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, and Santa Cruz. The university's Hastings College of Law is at San Francisco. The Scripps Institution of Oceanography at La Jolla is part of the San Diego branch.

The University of California is one of the major recipients of federal funds given to educational institutions for research. The most outstanding research facility it operates is the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, where the first atomic bomb and hydrogen bomb were developed.

The Naval Postgraduate School, for naval officers, is at Monterey.

Among the best known of the state's privately supported schools are California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, and Stanford University, near Palo Alto.