After 1831 the navy implemented changes which affected both the system of entry and the mode of advancement within the junior officer ratings. While these changes ultimately advanced the central power of the Admiralty to determine who entered the navy as an officer candidate, the process was far from direct. Efforts to standardize recruitment manifested slowly and at times appeared to be all but abandoned. Not until the mid-nineteenth century did a more uniform, centralized system of selection, education, and training finally take form.

The abolition of the Royal Naval College, 1837

Beginning in 1816 the Admiralty refocused its attentions on the age-old problem of educating young gentlemen at sea. The shortage of qualified schoolmasters persisted, despite earlier efforts to convince chaplains to take on the role of teachers in addition to their clerical duties. Pay increases for schoolmasters were awarded in 1816 and again in 1819, although these inducements did little to encourage new schoolmasters to take up the challenge.

The lack of success in attracting qualified men to serve as schoolmasters meant that even greater pressure was placed on Admiralty efforts to maintain standards at the Royal Naval College at Portsmouth. More attention was paid to academic subjects in the decades after 1815 and the school's reputation improved accordingly. In 1830 the lieutenant governor of the College pronounced that there was a ‘large portion of high spirited and gentlemanlike feelings amongst the boys generally and the smallest quantity of evil’.