But this cause would enable guardians in a large town to pay for enlarging or building a school in some parish where they board out children. But a year afterwards the local committee may break up, the boarded-out children may be transferred elsewhere, and yet the guardians may have permanently contributed to the enlargement of this school which they will no longer use. Or Dr. Barnado may swoop down and outbid the guardians and capture all the houses which they used to use; and so, too, they may lose the benefit of the school to which they will have contributed. The further power for guardians to subscribe to the maintenance of such a school is also most objectionable, and raises at once the question of rate aid for the maintenance of privately managed schools. This clause, like nearly every clause in the bill, is full of reckless legislation, drawn apparently by those who had one aim, and one only, in view-how to subsidize and prop up private schools, how to stop any further school boards, and suppress those that exist. In reference to the audit of voluntary school accounts clause 5 provides at last for what has been long required. Security should also be taken, in accordance with the act of 1870, for full publicity of all school reports and accounts. The recent restriction on publicity introduced by the new code shows that the education department is ready to take away the right of access to these reports which now exists. Moreover, in dealing with voluntary schools greater care will have to be taken to put down the various forms of fraud now practiced, and which, when the education department detects, it does not take any adequate steps to punish. Thus, receipts are sometimes given for more salary than has been received; to balance this a fictitious subscription is entered, and so the school gets credit for a larger subscription and so has defeated the restrictions of the 17s. 6d. limit. * The new county authority is to have the power to aid training colleges. Nothing is more deplorable than the way in which the education department ever since 1870 has shirked the important duty of seeing that there was provided an adequate supply of properly trained teachers to meet the enormous growth of our elementary schools. But the jealousy of denominational training colleges still stopped the way, and it is only quite recently that some slight addition has been made by means of day colleges associated with local university colleges. We want at least twice as much training college provision as we have now to get back even to the proportion of trained teachers that existed before 1870. But, in addition to certificated teachers, our schools are flooded with ex-pupil teachers and women over 18, of whom a very experienced inspector said that the only educational qualification which they certainly possessed was that of being over 18. What is needed is that the new authorities for higher education should be enabled not only to aid but to establish training colleges. Probably two or three county authorities should combine for this purpose, as a good college requires a sufficient number of students. It is to be hoped that, when there are more opportunities of training, the course may be lengthened to three years. Section 19 fixes the maximum national contribution in each school to elementary education in future. It may be noticed that this is slightly below what a good school should receive now, apart from any grant for specific subjects or for pupil teachers. Thus, no school started hereafter can get more than 20 shillings for senior scholars and 17 shillings for infant scholars. At present a good senior department easily gets from 21 to 22 or 23 shillings in the case of a department limited to upper standards, and many girls' schools earn an additional shilling for needlework. No doubt it has been a bad thing to stimulate the teaching of a large number of subjects for the sake of special grants. Yet it is to be feared that this new limitation of the grant, especially coupled with the new limit in school maintenance, will induce many school boards to set before them a lower type of teacher and of teaching as all that they can afford to secure. Anyone who has followed the policy of several even among the larger boards (it were invidious to name them in this article) could point to school boards where this regulation will distinctly lower the teaching. It will-to use the exulting phrase of a leading, Roman Catholic-clip the wings and claws of the school boards; and the bill is meant to do so. It is obvious that the working of section 3 along with section 19 must tend to put all schools, good or bad alike, on a dead level as far as regards Government grant, with this important reservation, that whereas the board schools from their superior efficiency have hitherto received more than the voluntary schools, henceforward the voluntary schools are to receive 4 shillings a head more than the board schools. The effect of the two clauses together will be that in a town like Birmingham the superior efficiency of the board schools hitherto will have obtained a credit for the town with the education department, whereby, while the grants to the board schools will be cut down, the grants to the voluntary schools will be largely augmented. As to the repeal of the 17 shillings and 6 pence limit, it need only be repeated that if no new obligation to find some definite proportion of the cost from bona fide voluntary contributions be introduced, we shall rapidly pass to a state of things where, in many parishes the community will find all the money, parents of all opinion will be forced to send their children, and the clergy of one denomination will have the whole management. Section 27: This section introduces a serious innovation. School boards must make reasonable arrangements for any kind of dogmatic teaching in their schools and so must other managers. The education department is sole judge of what is reasonable. May that department rule that the appointment of teachers of the religious opinion to be taught and the requiring them to give the instruction is reasonable, or must the teaching necessarily be given by outsiders? If the latter, there might not be much objection to the arrangement if it were part of a scheme that provided universally for schools under public local management, but what is wanted is not to break up the school into a group of conventicles, but to secure that the local majority of parents shall obtain teachers and management which have their confidence. There are many rural parishes where the majority of the children attending the church school are Dissenters, and yet in such a school the clergyman may advertise for and require a strong churchman, a fasting communicant, one who will attend the daily service. The advertisements that appear in the Church scholastic newspaper are most exacting in their requirements, and often the reticence of the advertisement is supplemented by searching private inquiries. The Roman Catholic says that in his school he requires the whole atmosphere throughout the school time to be penetrated with Catholicism. Schools for minorities such as the Roman Catholics are nearly always in populous centers and supplement the general schools of the nation. But what should be demanded is that the nation should come first and the sects should take the second place. Let us enfranchise the schoolmaster and the school by making them the public servants of a wide local community, not the dependents of the clergy of any one denomination, with ecclesiastical duties first in the estimation of their clerical employer, while their public and lay usefulness takes the second place. The writer is well assured that never have proposals been made more thoroughly reactionary, more hostile to education and to public self-government, more favorable to private, autocratic, and clerical domination than those which pervade this bill. The trifling proposal to raise the age of half-time exemption from 11 to 12 was one which all parties were agreed to last year, and which can not be taken as a concession to bribe us to agree to the body of the bill. # # * As to what concerns secondary education, the proposals are obscure, indefinite and imperfect. The great question of secondary education should be treated in a separate act, and not mixed up with the intensely polemical matters which form the bulk of the bill now under consideration. If the English working people allow themselves to be robbed of the national system which was slowly establishing itself among them, and was doing so much for their children, they will put back for years the date of their full intellectual and social enfranchisement. 1 CHAPTER III. EDUCATION IN GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND.1 Great Britain and Ireland, constitutional monarchy; area, England and Wales, 58,186 square miles; population (estimated, 1894), 30,060,763; Scotland, 29,820 square miles; population, 4,123,038; Ireland, 32,583 square miles; population (census, 1891), 4,704,750. For previous articles on education in Great Britain, see the following: Detailed view of the educational system of England. (Report for 1888-89, Vol. I, pp. 78-111.) Religious and moral training in public elementary schools, England and Wales. (Ibid., pp. 438-457.) Brief view of the educational system, with current statistics. (Report for 1889-90, Vol. I, pp. 237-248.) Educational system of Scotland. (Ibid., pp. 187–236.) Elementary education in London and Paris. (Ibid., pp. 263-280.) Brief view of systems of England and Scotland, with current statistics and comparison with 1876 (England), 1880 (Scotland). (Report for 1890–91, Vol. I, pp. 125– 134.) Provision for secondary and for technical instruction in Great Britain. (Ibid., pp. 135-150.) Educational system of Ireland. (Ibid., pp. 151–164.) Elementary education in Great Britain and Ireland, 1892. (Report for 1891-92, Vol. I, pp. 97-104.) (Ibid., pp. 105–137.) Technical instruction in Great Britain. Great Britain and Ireland, educational statistics and movements, 1893. (Report for 1893-94, Part I, pp. 165-185.) Educational systems of England and Scotland, with statistics and movements, 189394. (Report for 1894-95, Vol. I, pp. 257-273.) The official reports of elementary education in Great Britain and Ireland for 1895-96 have been already submitted to Parliament, but have not yet reached this office. The principal statistics, here tabulated have been obtained from various official statements. A very graphic survey of the English field was presented by the vice-president of the education department, Sir John Gorst, in submitting to the House his estimates for 1896-97. His speech is reproduced in this chapter, supplemented by that of Mr. Yoxall, who has long been identified with Prepared by Miss Anna Tolman Smith. educational work, and who was elected as a member from Nottingham to represent the interests of elementary education in the House. The matter is introduced by a concise view of the system from an English source,1 with detailed tables reproduced from the Schoolmaster. TABLE 1.-Summary of educational statistics-Great Britain and Ireland. The entire province of secondary instruction is omitted from the above table, as no summaries for this department are attainable. Recent estimates place the number of pupils pursuing secondary studies in England and Wales at 890,000, including the 90,000 pupils in higher board schools. In Scotland 73 secondary schools (i. e., 30 public high schools, 24 endowed schools, and 19 private schools) have submitted to the scheme of Government inspection. The number presenting candidates for the Government "leaving certificate" in 1894 was 270, and the 1A digest of the new education bill with historical introduction, etc. Knight & London. Co., |