6. Nursery Schools.

336. Nursery Schools for the training and care of children. between the ages of two and five were conducted during 1924–25 in twenty-seven centres. The accommodation provided was for a total of 1,307 children. Twelve of these schools were maintained by Local Education Authorities-seven in number, and the remainder by voluntary bodies of Managers. Most of these schools. are situated in the congested parts of large cities, including London, and, as far as possible, are conducted on open-air lines.

7. Evening Play Centres.

337. The number of Evening Play Centres recognised by the Board on the 31st March, 1925, was 256. 153 of these centres were organised by 36 Local Education Authorities, the remainder being conducted by 17 voluntary organisations. The total number of children in attendance at the centres on each evening was approximately 52,000.

These centres are doing excellent work in providing not only the means of recreation but also a healthy and safe environment in which the children may spend happy hours of play. The building employed during the winter months is, in the great majority of cases, an elementary school, and the activities include vigorous and quiet games. In one room a group of children may be playing ping-pong, table tennis, draughts, &c., in another room or corner a juvenile play or charade may be in preparation or performance; in another, a rehearsal of folk dancing; and in yet another, a well conducted sing-song. Or again, a superintendendent apt at storytelling may be the centre of a spell-bound circle, or a capable trainer may be imparting coaching in playground cricket to a group of elder boys absorbed in the game and its possibilities for them. In addition, these centres, properly organised and efficiently maintained, are effective agents in the inculcation of the team spirit in the children, and thus directly and indirectly are accomplishing considerable social service. A number of the centres, especially in London, continue their activities during the summer holidays. For the most part the centres are far from parks or other open spaces and are the only alternative to the streets as a place for play. They are situated in some of the poorest and most congested districts where the families are usually large, and many mothers have told the superintendents what a boon the centres are to them during the holidays in taking the children off their hands and providing a place where they can play in safety. Almost all the activities in the summer take place, of course, in the playgrounds, the school buildings remaining available for use in wet weather. In the London Play Centres, where the total number of attendances for the year amounted to 1,391,231, nearly 50,000 of these were made at the Holiday Centres.

8. Provision of Meals.

338. During the year 1924-25, 132 Local Education Authorities made provision under Sections 82 to 85 of the Education Act, 1921, for the feeding of children in attendance at public elementary schools in their area. The total number of meals provided was 10,236,718, which represented a decrease of 738,502 on the number supplied in the previous year. Special milk feeding of school children was undertaken with excellent results in certain areas during the year, including London, Birmingham, Chatham and Rochester. The Board's Special Services Regulations, recently revised, require that where meals are provided under Sections 82 to 85, the School Medical Service must be associated with the planning and administration of the arrangements.

CHAPTER X.

OFFICE OF SPECIAL INQUIRIES AND REPORTS.

1. Assistance rendered to the Dominions and Colonies.

(a) Appointments.

339. During the year 1925 the Office of Special Inquiries and Reports was asked to recommend teachers for fourteen posts in the Crown Colonies, mainly in the Federated Malay States and the Straits Settlements. It was found impossible to secure a candidate for the post of Instructress in Infant Method at the Trinidad and Tobago Government Training College for Women, two candidates. who were selected on different occasions subsequently declining to accept the appointment. Through the kind assistance of the Office National des Universités et Ecoles Françaises, the post of French Master at the Royal College, Mauritius, was filled by the appointment of a French "professeur," who has been given leave by the French Ministry of Public Instruction to hold this post for three years.

During the year statements of qualifications of one hundred and seventy English teachers were forwarded to the Education Departments of the Dominions. As is usually the case, a large number of the teachers concerned were contemplating emigration to Canada; but a considerable number of statements were also supplied to the Ministry of Education, Dublin, in respect of Irish teachers who had given service in English schools.

(b) Interchange of Teachers.

340. The new arrangements for the interchange of teachers within the Empire, which were recommended by the Imperial Education Conference in 1923, are now generally in operation, though there are still a few cases in which the interchanges are effected under the old scheme. No teacher, who has had experience of the new arrangements, has made any representations to the Board that those arrangements are in any respects inconvenient; but representations have reached the Board from other quarters to the effect that, particularly in the case of Canada, under the new scheme the salary of an English teacher, which, of course, is the English salary, is below the level of the salaries of Canadian teachers. Since the War, forty-eight Local Education Authorities in England and Wales have taken part in the interchange of teachers, namely, the Councils of fourteen Counties, twenty County Boroughs, and fourteen Boroughs and Urban Districts; and teachers from schools under all but five of the Education Departments in the Dominions

have come to this country under the scheme. During 1925, teachers from schools under fourteen different overseas Education Departments were in this country. The total number of overseas interchange teachers at the end of 1925 was ninety-three, of whom fifty were serving under the London Education Authority.

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2. Educational Pamphlets.

341. Two pamphlets have been added to the series of Educational Pamphlets (a) Rural Education (Educational Pamphlet No. 46); this pamphlet gives a survey of what has been done in English elementary, secondary and evening schools and training colleges for the adaptation of the instruction to the needs of rural areas.

(b) Report on the position of French in grant-aided Secondary Schools in England (Educational Pamphlet No. 47). This is a review of the present position written by one of Your Majesty's Staff Inspectors of Secondary Schools.

3. Scheme for the Exchange of Modern Language Teachers between England and France.

342. For the school year 1924-25 the Office of Special Inquiries and Reports was asked to find candidates for fifty-one posts in secondary schools and training colleges in France. Twenty-two Assistants (eleven men and eleven women) were appointed to the secondary school vacancies and twenty-seven (seven Répétiteurs and twenty Répétitrices) to the vacancies in the training colleges, a total of forty-nine appointments as compared with fifty-five (fourteen men Assistants, nine women Assistantes, five Répétiteurs and twenty-seven Répétitrices) in 1923-24.

For the school year 1924-25 forty-nine French Assistants (fifteen men and thirty-four women) were appointed to secondary schools, training colleges and university institutions in England and Wales. The number of appointments in 1923-24 was forty-four, namely, thirteen men and thirty-one women.

343. This scheme for the exchange of Modern Language teachers between England and France has now been in operation for more than twenty years and the following review of its working may be of interest. The subject is also referred to in Educational Pamphlet No. 47.

During the last decade of the nineteenth century, almost simultaneously in Germany, France and England, there developed a movement for the introduction of improved methods of teaching modern foreign languages. Complaints from many quarters, from academic circles as well as from the business world, had made plain the dissatisfaction caused by the poverty of expression in speech and writing displayed by pupils of secondary schools. The traditional grammatical methods of instruction then in use throughout Western Europe had, no doubt, given the better pupils a comprehension of

the written word but had left good and bad pupils alike without any command of the language for the practical affairs of everyday life. The result of the agitation was the initiation of a new method in modern language instruction based on the oral use of the language from the start. The labours of Sievers, Vietor, Passy and Sweet had provided a scientific basis for the teaching of pronunciation and an international association was founded for the encouragement of the study of phonetics. The new method could only be successful in the hands of treachers who possessed an adequate command of the foreign language acquired by residence in the country. The difficulty was to secure sufficient opportunities, for large numbers of suitable teachers were unable to sustain the additional financial burden of residence abroad; even in France and Germany where State and Municipal Authorities gave a larger measure of assistance than in this country, the provision was inadequate to meet all needs. In these circumstances the plan of attaching young teachers in a supernumerary capacity to foreign schools was proposed.

344. After a few experimental arrangements had been entered into with the help of M. Charles Martin, the Head of the Department of French in Glasgow, the French Government addressed an official proposal to the Board of Education in the summer of 1904. In the Autumn term of the year a beginning was made. Twenty-five English teachers (17 men and 8 women) were attached to Lycées and Collèges in France, while 5 French teachers were received at English Schools of which four were for boys and one for girls. In the early summer of the following year a Convention was signed by the French Ministry of Public Instruction and the Board of Education, fixing the conditions under which the teachers, known as "assistants," were to be received and the method of their selection. An "assistant" was expected to give twelve hours instruction a week. and received in return free board and lodging (or an equivalent maintenance allowance) and free access to all the classes of the school to which he was attached. Outside the twelve hours his time was at his free disposal for the pursuit of his own studies. The scheme offered considerable advantages to a young teacher desirous of acquiring a knowledge of the foreign country and fluency of oral expression. The profit of the school was more problematical and depended on the condition of its modern language instruction. and on the ability of the teacher to make suitable arrangements.

In the execution of the agreement the position of the two countries was very different. In France the fact that the lycées are State institutions and that the control of the Ministry over lycées and collèges alike is much closer than that of the Board of Education over secondary schools, enabled the French Authorities immediately to provide posts in considerable numbers, the cost of the scheme falling on the Central Government. In this country the arrangements had to be made at the expense of the schools, and accordingly